Find all quadruples of positive integers that satisfy the system of equations
Baltic Way Shortlist
Solution
Answer: and is any permutation of .
Since the equations are symmetrical with respect to variables , and , we can assume that . Dividing the second equation by the first one we obtain the equality
Assume that , then also . Now from and (1) we get that , therefore , but that contradicts the inequality .
Thus . It leaves us with three possibilities.
* . Writing (1) in the form we conclude that , but none of these values leads to a solution.
* and . From (1) we get that
what means that and as then and . One can check, that this is a solution, therefore we get 6 solutions where and is any permutation of .
* . From (1) we get that . The expression of the right hand side is larger than 2 and less than 3 if , what is impossible. Therefore and it remains to check that and are not solutions.