You are given 5 distinct positive integers. Can their arithmetic mean be:
a) exactly 3 times larger than their largest common divisor;
b) exactly 2 times larger than their largest common divisor;
Solution
a) It's enough to provide an example of such 5 integers. One example is the set , whose arithmetic mean is , and the largest common divisor is .
b) Suppose that such numbers and exist, let be their largest common divisor, then these 5 integers can be rewritten as , and the equality in the statement is rewritten as:
Clearly numbers are distinct, so their smallest possible sum is , this contradiction completes the proof.
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