Let be a prime number. Prove that it is possible to choose a permutation of such that the numbers all give different remainders when divided by .
Solution
Let , for . We prove that it is possible to choose the permutation such that for all . For , if . We now choose and for . It is now sufficient to prove that for all and for all .
Assume for the sake of contradiction that for some . Then , so , so . Since , this is a contradiction. Now assume that for some . Then so so so . But we had , so this cannot be.
We conclude that if we choose the as indicated above, all will be distinct, making it indeed a permutation of . Furthermore, by definition, , so the second condition is also satisfied.
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