Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 5.1 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:
A positive integer will be called "sparkly" if its smallest (positive) divisor, other than 11, equals the total number of divisors (including 11). How many of the numbers 2,3,,20032, 3, \ldots, 2003 are sparkly?

Solution

Solution:
Suppose nn is sparkly; then its smallest divisor other than 11 is some prime pp. Hence, nn has pp divisors. However, if the full prime factorization of nn is p1e1p2e2prerp_{1}^{e_{1}} p_{2}^{e_{2}} \cdots p_{r}^{e_{r}}, the number of divisors is (e1+1)(e2+1)(er+1)\left(e_{1}+1\right)\left(e_{2}+1\right) \cdots\left(e_{r}+1\right). For this to equal pp, only one factor can be greater than 11, so nn has only one prime divisor - namely pp - and we get e1=p1n=pp1e_{1}=p-1 \Rightarrow n=p^{p-1}. Conversely, any number of the form pp1p^{p-1} is sparkly. There are just three such numbers in the desired range (21,32,54)\left(2^{1}, 3^{2}, 5^{4}\right), so the answer is 33.

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