Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /1168 of 1394

, 2016

Number theory Difficulty 5.7 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:

For positive integers nn, let cnc_{n} be the smallest positive integer for which ncn1n^{c_{n}}-1 is divisible by 210, if such a positive integer exists, and cn=0c_{n}=0 otherwise. What is c1+c2++c210c_{1}+c_{2}+\cdots+c_{210} ?

Solution

Solution:

In order for cn0c_{n} \neq 0, we must have gcd(n,210)=1\operatorname{gcd}(n, 210)=1, so we need only consider such nn. The number ncn1n^{c_{n}}-1 is divisible by 210 iff it is divisible by each of 2,3,52,3,5, and 77, and we can consider the order of nn modulo each modulus separately; cnc_{n} will simply be the LCM of these orders. We can ignore the modulus 2 because order is always 1. For the other moduli, the sets of orders are
a{1,2}mod3b{1,2,4,4}mod5c{1,2,3,3,6,6}mod7 \begin{array}{rr} a \in\{1,2\} & \bmod 3 \\ b \in\{1,2,4,4\} & \bmod 5 \\ c \in\{1,2,3,3,6,6\} & \bmod 7 \end{array}
By the Chinese Remainder Theorem, each triplet of choices from these three multisets occurs for exactly one nn in the range {1,2,,210}\{1,2, \ldots, 210\}, so the answer we seek is the sum of lcm(a,b,c)\operatorname{lcm}(a, b, c) over a,b,ca, b, c in the Cartesian product of these multisets. For a=1a=1 this table of LCMs is as follows:

123366
1123366
2226666
44412121212
44412121212

which has a sum of 21+56+28+56=16121+56+28+56=161. The table for a=2a=2 is identical except for the top row, where 1,3,31,3,3 are replaced by 2,6,62,6,6, and thus has a total sum of 7 more, or 168. So our answer is 161+168=329161+168=\mathbf{329}.

This can also be computed by counting how many times each LCM occurs:
- 12 appears 16 times when b=4b=4 and c{3,6}c \in\{3,6\}, for a contribution of 12×16=19212 \times 16=192;
- 6 appears 14 times, 8 times when c=6c=6 and b2b \leq 2 and 6 times when c=3c=3 and (a,b)(a, b) \in {(1,2),(2,1),(2,2)}\{(1,2),(2,1),(2,2)\}, for a contribution of 6×14=846 \times 14=84;
- 4 appears 8 times when b=4b=4 and a,c{1,2}a, c \in\{1,2\}, for a contribution of 4×8=324 \times 8=32;
- 3 appears 2 times when c=3c=3 and a=b=1a=b=1, for a contribution of 3×2=63 \times 2=6;
- 2 appears 7 times when a,b,c{1,2}a, b, c \in\{1,2\} and (a,b,c)(1,1,1)(a, b, c) \neq(1,1,1), for a contribution of 2×7=142 \times 7=14;
- 1 appears 1 time when a=b=c=1a=b=c=1, for a contribution of 1×1=11 \times 1=1.
The result is again 192+84+32+6+14+1=329192+84+32+6+14+1=329.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.