Problem:
For integers , prove that the product
is divisible by .
Problem:
For integers , prove that the product
is divisible by .
Solution:
Let be a prime number. We will prove that the number of factors of in is greater than or equal to the number of factors of in .
We first explain the widely known method for computing . Out of the numbers from to , exactly of them are multiples of ; they will contribute "first" factors of to the product . In addition, of these numbers are also divisible by , giving "second" factors of . This continues, and we get
where the sum continues until eventually all of its terms become due to a lack of terms divisible by very high powers of .
Now we estimate . If , then since every term of the arithmetic sequence is divisible by but not . In this case it is clear that
Now assume that . Divide the arithmetic progression into blocks of length , discarding any terms that remain; because the common difference is relatively prime to , each block will have one representative of each congruence class , and in particular exactly one multiple of . Thus the product will have at least "first" factors of . By the same argument, using blocks of length , there are at least "second" factors of , and so on, so
as desired.