Determine all natural numbers with the property that there are two permutations and of the numbers such that are consecutive natural numbers.
Solution
The permutations exist if and only if is odd.
We have
On the other hand, there is a natural number such that
and therefore
We obtain the equation which becomes .
Therefore, the number is an integer if and only if is odd.
It remains to investigate if two permutations with the desired property exist for every odd number with . Let with .
Experimenting with and can lead to the following pattern:
Summing the two rows gives the consecutive numbers as desired.
(Walther Janous)
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