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Library / HMMT February Guts Round /14 of 28

HMMT February Guts Round, 2024

Number theory Difficulty 5.2 AIME, harder Find the answer United States

Problem:

Estimate the number of positive integers n≤106n \leq 10^{6} such that n2+1n^{2}+1 has a prime factor greater than nn.

Submit a positive integer EE. If the correct answer is AA, you will receive max (0,⌊20⋅min⁡(EA,106−E106−A)5+0.5⌋)\left(0,\left\lfloor 20 \cdot \min \left(\frac{E}{A}, \frac{10^{6}-E}{10^{6}-A}\right)^{5}+0.5\right\rfloor\right) points.

Solution

Solution:

Let NN denote 10610^{6}. We count by summing over potential prime factors pp.

For any prime p>2p>2, we have that p∣n2+1p \mid n^{2}+1 for two values of nn if p≡1( mod 4)p \equiv 1(\bmod 4), and zero values otherwise. Pretending these values are equally likely to be any of 1,…,p1, \ldots, p, we expect the number of nn corresponding to a 1( mod 4)1(\bmod 4) prime to be min⁡(2,2Np)\min \left(2, \frac{2 N}{p}\right).

The number of primes up to xx is, by the Prime Number Theorem xlog⁡x\frac{x}{\log x}. Assuming around half of the prime numbers are 1( mod 4)1(\bmod 4), we on average expect some xx to be a 1( mod 4)1(\bmod 4) prime 12log⁡x\frac{1}{2 \log x} of the time. Approximating by an integral over potential primes xx from 1 to N2N^{2}, using our approximations, gives
∫1N2min⁡(2,2Nx)⋅dx2log⁡x \int_{1}^{N^{2}} \min \left(2, \frac{2 N}{x}\right) \cdot \frac{d x}{2 \log x}
We now approximately calculate this integral as follows:
∫1N2min⁡(2,2Nx)⋅dx2log⁡x=∫1Ndxlog⁡x+∫NN2Nxlog⁡xdx≈Nlog⁡N+N(log⁡log⁡(N2)−log⁡log⁡N)=Nlog⁡N+Nlog⁡2 \begin{aligned} \int_{1}^{N^{2}} \min \left(2, \frac{2 N}{x}\right) \cdot \frac{d x}{2 \log x} & =\int_{1}^{N} \frac{d x}{\log x}+\int_{N}^{N^{2}} \frac{N}{x \log x} d x \\ & \approx \frac{N}{\log N}+N\left(\log \log \left(N^{2}\right)-\log \log N\right) \\ & =\frac{N}{\log N}+N \log 2 \end{aligned}
Here, for the first integral, we estimate log⁡x\log x on [1,N][1, N] by log⁡N\log N, and for the second integral, we use that the antiderivative of 1xlog⁡x\frac{1}{x \log x} is log⁡log⁡x\log \log x.

Using log⁡2≈0.7\log 2 \approx 0.7, one can estimate
log⁡N=2log⁡1000≈20log⁡2≈14 \log N=2 \log 1000 \approx 20 \log 2 \approx 14
giving a final estimate of
106/14+106⋅0.7=771428 10^{6} / 14+10^{6} \cdot 0.7=771428
This estimate yields a score of 15. If one uses the closer estimate log⁡2≈0.69\log 2 \approx 0.69, one gets the final estimate of 761428, yielding a score of 18.

Here is a code using sympy to calculate the final answer:
```
from sympy.ntheory import factorint
cnt = 0
for n in range(1, 106+1):
if max(factorint(n
2+1, multiple=True)) > n:
cnt += 1
print(cnt)
```

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