Suppose that and are integers with for all real numbers . What is the sum of all possible values of ?
Solution
We are told that for all real numbers . In particular, this equation holds when . Substituting gives or . Since and are integers, then and are integers, which means that is a divisor of 3. Therefore, the possible values of are . These yield values for of . We need to confirm that each of these values for gives integer values for and . If , then . The equation tells us that and so . When and , the original equation becomes . Expanding the right side gives and so . The quadratic factors as and so and this equation is an identity that is true for all real numbers . Similarly, if , then and . (This is because and are interchangeable in the original equation.) Also, if , then and we can check that . Similarly, if , then and . Therefore, the possible values of are . The sum of these values is .