Determine the last 3 digits of the number obtained by multiplying all the odd numbers between and .
Solution
Let be the product of all the odd integers lying in between and . It is clear that the last digits of equals the remainder obtained when is divided by . Note that .
From the identity , valid for any choice of integers , it follows that for any integer which can be written as a product of integers and , the remainder obtained when is divided by is the same as the product of the remainders obtained when and are divided by , respectively. Therefore, the remainder obtained by dividing by must be the product of the remainders obtained when each odd integer lying in between and are divided by .
When odd numbers are divided by the remainders are obtained, and one can see easily that the block of numbers , repeats times and followed by (as and ). Therefore, we can conclude that the remainder obtained when is divided by equals the remainder obtained by dividing by , and this number equals , since , and the remainder obtained by dividing by is .
Furthermore, since is divisible by , the remainder obtained when the last -digits of is divided by must also be . From these considerations we conclude that the solution to the problem is given by the number between and which is a multiple of and gives a remainder when divided by . The number is the only number satisfying these requirements and is the desired answer.