An integer partition, is a way of writing n as a sum of positive integers. Two sums that differ only in the order of their summands are considered the same partition.
For example, 4 can be partitioned in five distinct ways:
4
3 + 1
2 + 2
2 + 1 + 1
1 + 1 + 1 + 1
The number of partitions of n is given by the partition function . So .
Determine all the positive integers so that .
Solution
We need to determine all positive integers such that
where denotes the partition function, which counts the number of ways can be partitioned into positive integers.
To solve this, we consider the equivalent equation by setting :
We analyze the behavior of the partition function using coarse partitions. A partition of is called coarse if all parts are at least three. Let denote the number of coarse partitions of .
By generating functions, we derive the following identity for :
We then examine the cases for odd and even :
1. **Odd **:
with equality if and only if .
2. **Even **:
- For :
- For :
From the above analysis, we find that the only solutions to the equation are . Converting back to the original variable using , we obtain the solutions:
The answer is: 3, 5}.