Problem:
Four positive integers are such that, given any two of them, their greatest common divisor is greater than , but . What is the minimum value that can take?
Problem:
Four positive integers are such that, given any two of them, their greatest common divisor is greater than , but . What is the minimum value that can take?
Pick one
Solution:
The answer is . First of all, there is at least one number that is not divisible by , otherwise divides . We want to prove that must have at least two distinct prime factors: indeed, if this were not the case, we would have for some prime and natural number . But in this case, for every other number , , we have that can only be a number of the form , with (because it must be a divisor of , and it is greater than by the first hypothesis). But this would imply that all four numbers are multiples of , which is impossible by the second hypothesis. Therefore there is at least one number that has at least two distinct prime factors other than two, and hence it is at least . On the other hand, one verifies that the quadruple satisfies all the hypotheses of the problem, so is indeed the minimum we are looking for.