Maths Olympiad Prep

Track / Stage 5 / 159 of 400 #759 of 1964

Problem 759

AIME late
Number theory Difficulty 5.4 Find the answer

3. What is the smallest number, nn, which is the product of 3 distinct primes where the mean of all its factors is not an integer?

A number or a short expression. Spacing and $ signs are ignored.

Official solution

Solution
Let n=pqrn=p q r, where p,qp, q and rr are distinct primes.
Its factors are 1,p,q,r,pq,pr,qr1, p, q, r, p q, p r, q r and pqrp q r.
The mean of its factors is 1+p+q+r+pq+pr+qr+pqr8\frac{1+p+q+r+p q+p r+q r+p q r}{8}.
This can be factorised into (1+p)(1+q)(1+r)8\frac{(1+p)(1+q)(1+r)}{8}.
For this to not be an integer the number of factors of 2 in the numerator must be at most 2 .
This means at least one bracket must be odd, so one of the primes must be even. However, the only even prime is 2 , so one prime must be 2 and the other brackets are both even.

Therefore, neither of the other brackets can have a second factor of 2 and so be a multiple of 4 , so the primes cannot be 1 less than a multiple of 4 . The smallest two examples of this are 5 and 13.

The smallest value for nn is therefore 2×5×13=1302 \times 5 \times 13=130.

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