Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 5.2 AIME, harder Find the answer

A positive integer is called primer if it has a prime number of distinct prime factors. A positive integer is called primest if it has a primer number of distinct primer factors. A positive integer is called prime-minister if it has a primest number of distinct primest factors. Let NN be the smallest prime-minister number. Estimate NN.

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

An estimate of E>0E>0 earns 20min(NE,EN)\left\lfloor 20 \min \left(\frac{N}{E}, \frac{E}{N}\right)\right\rfloor points. One heuristic for estimating the answer is that numbers of the form p^{q} r^{s}forprimes for primes p, q, r, swith with p \neq r, q \neq s$ are primest. Thus, primest numbers are not very rare, so we can expect the answer to be relatively small with only a few distinct prime factors.

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