3. What is the smallest number, , which is the product of 3 distinct primes where the mean of all its factors is not an integer?
Problem 759
Official solution
Solution
Let , where and are distinct primes.
Its factors are and .
The mean of its factors is .
This can be factorised into .
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 is therefore .