Compute the number of ordered pairs of integers such that and
Solution
We have Now if , we can divide by to obtain . Thus or . If , we see that , so we see that . There are 63 ordered pairs in this case. In the second case, note that since . Since , we cannot have , so either , or . In the first case, ; in the second case, . Thus, the solutions for are of the form or for some . In either case, we must have , which holds true for any but fails for . There are a total of solutions in this case. In summary, there are a total of integer solutions to the equation with .
Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track
puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.