Number theoryDifficulty 5.6AIME, harderProve itCanada
Problem:
Jane writes down 2024 natural numbers around the perimeter of a circle. She wants the 2024 products of adjacent pairs of numbers to be exactly the set {1!,2!,…,2024!}. Can she accomplish this?
Solutions — 2
Solution 1
Solution:
Given any prime p and positive integer x, let vp(x) denote the highest power of p dividing x. We claim that Jane cannot write 2024 such numbers as that would imply that 1!⋅2!⋯2024! is the square of the product of the 2024 numbers. Let p be a prime and k be a natural number such that k<p, kp≤2024, and (k+1)p>2024. Then note that vp(1!⋅2!⋯2024!)=(2024−p+1)+(2024−2p+1)+…+(2024−kp+1) In particular, let p be in (42024,22024). By Bertrand's Postulate, such a prime p exists (and p must also be odd). Further, the corresponding k is either 2 or 3. Either way, vp(1!⋅2!⋯2024!) is odd from the above formula, and so 1!⋅2!⋯2024! cannot be a perfect square.
Solution 2
Solution:
As in the first solution, we prove 1!⋅2!⋯2024! is not a perfect square. To do this, note that we can rewrite the product as (1!)2⋅2⋅(3!)2⋅4⋯(2023!)2⋅2024 which is 2⋅4⋯2024⋅(1!⋅3!⋯2023!)2=1012!⋅(21012⋅1!⋅3!⋯2023!)2 so it is sufficient to verify 1012! is not a perfect square. This can be verified by either noticing the prime 1009 only appears as a factor of 1012! once, or by evaluating v2(1012!)=1005.
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