Problem:
Find all positive integers for which there do not exist consecutive composite positive integers less than .
, 2019
Solutions — 2
Solution 1
Solution:
Answer:
First, note that clearly there are no composite positive integers less than , and no consecutive composite positive integers less than . The only composite integers less than are
and it is easy to see that there are no consecutive composite positive integers among them. Therefore, all works.
Define . To see that there are no other such positive integers, we first show that for all , . Let . Note that , while
This means that at least powers of are lost when going from to . Since , when , we have
as desired. Since , we can rule out all such that , which happens when or . Moreover, when , we may also rule out all .
We thus need only check values of between and :
: , ;
: , ;
: , ;
: , .
In all cases, , as desired.
To finish, note that are all composite (divisible by respectively), which gives the desired consecutive numbers. Therefore, all integers do not satisfy the problem condition, and we are done.
Solution 2
Solution:
Here is a different way to show that constructions exist for . Note that when is not prime, the numbers are all composite (the first are clearly composite, the last one is composite because and ). Otherwise, if for prime , then the numbers are all composite (the first one and the last are clearly composite since , the second one is composite since by Wilson's theorem).