Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 4.9 AIME Prove it United States

Problem:

The set of positive integers is partitioned into finitely many subsets. Show that some subset SS has the following property: for every positive integer nn, SS contains infinitely many multiples of nn.

Solution

Solution:

Let the subsets be S1,S2,,SkS_{1}, S_{2}, \ldots, S_{k}. Suppose the statement is false and seek a contradiction. Then for each SiS_{i} there exists some nin_{i} such that SiS_{i} contains only finitely many multiples of nin_{i}. Let n=n1n2nkn = n_{1} n_{2} \cdots n_{k}; then every multiple of nn is a multiple of each nin_{i} and so each SiS_{i} can contain only finitely many multiples of nn. But this means that the kk sets together contain only finitely many multiples of nn, and since they partition the positive integers (which contain infinitely many multiples of nn), we have our contradiction.

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