Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 4.1 AIME Find the answer Philippines

Problem:

For how many primes p<50p < 50 is p4+5p3+4p^{4} + 5p^{3} + 4 divisible by 55?

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

Solution:

Clearly, the expression is not divisible by 55 when p=5p = 5. For any prime pp other than 55, note that p41(mod5)p^{4} \equiv 1 \pmod{5}, so p4+5p3+40(mod5)p^{4} + 5p^{3} + 4 \equiv 0 \pmod{5}. Hence, the problem reduces to counting the number of primes less than 5050 other than 55. There are 1313 such primes.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.