Maths Olympiad Prep

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, 2017

Combinatorics Difficulty 6.8 National Olympiad Prove it United States

Problem:

Let pp be a prime. A complete residue class modulo pp is a set containing at least one element equivalent to k(modp)k \pmod{p} for all kk.

a. Show that there exists an nn such that the nnth row of Pascal's triangle forms a complete residue class modulo pp.

b. Show that there exists an np2n \leq p^{2} such that the nnth row of Pascal's triangle forms a complete residue class modulo pp.

Solution

Solution:

We use the following theorem of Lucas:
Theorem. Given a prime pp and nonnegative integers a,ba, b written in base pp as a={anan1a0}pa=\{\overline{a_{n}} a_{n-1} \ldots a_{0}\}_{p} and b=bnbn1b0b=\overline{b_{n} b_{n-1} \ldots b_{0}} respectively, where 0ai,bip10 \leq a_{i}, b_{i} \leq p-1 for 0in0 \leq i \leq n, we have
(ab)=i=0n(aibi)(modp) \binom{a}{b}=\prod_{i=0}^{n}\binom{a_{i}}{b_{i}} \quad(\bmod p)
Now, let n=(p1)×p+(p2)=p22n=(p-1) \times p+(p-2)=p^{2}-2. For k=pq+rk=pq+r with 0q,rp10 \leq q, r \leq p-1, applying Lucas's theorem gives
(nk)(p1q)(p2r)(modp) \binom{n}{k} \equiv \binom{p-1}{q}\binom{p-2}{r} \quad(\bmod p)
Note that
(p1q)=i=1qpii(1)q(modp) \binom{p-1}{q}=\prod_{i=1}^{q} \frac{p-i}{i} \equiv (-1)^{q} \quad(\bmod p)
and
(p2r)=i=1rp1ii(1)r(r+1)!r!=(1)r(r+1)(modp) \binom{p-2}{r}=\prod_{i=1}^{r} \frac{p-1-i}{i} \equiv (-1)^{r} \frac{(r+1)!}{r!}=(-1)^{r}(r+1) \quad(\bmod p)
So for 2ip2 \leq i \leq p we can take k=(p+1)(i1)k=(p+1)(i-1) and obtain (nk)i (modp)\binom{n}{k} \equiv i\ (\bmod p), while for i=1i=1 we can take k=0k=0. Thus this row satisfies the desired property.

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