Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 5.3 AIME, harder Prove it

Example 4. If all terms of an arithmetic sequence are integers, and there are pp terms, if each term is coprime with pp, then its common difference must not be coprime with pp.

Solution

〔Hint〕Consider all terms
a,a+d,a+2d,,a+(p1)d a, a+d, a+2d, \cdots, a+(p-1)d

There must be two terms congruent modulo pp. Consider the difference between these terms.

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.