Let and be coprime natural numbers of different parity. Prove that the numbers and are coprime as well.
, 2013
Solution
Denote and . We notice that and . Because we have and , the greatest common divisor divides . We also know that
This equals because numbers and are coprime. The greatest common divisor can thus only be 1, 3 or 9.
But one of the numbers and must be even since they are of different parity. Suppose this is . We then have and hence . This is to say, number is not divisible by 3, it is coprime to 3. The greatest common divisor of the numbers and must thus be 1, which means that and are coprime.
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