Exam Questions.

Prajit Adhikari

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1 Number theory
1. Find the number of positive integers n for which
(i) n ≤ 1991;
(ii) 6 is a factor of (n2 + 3n + 2)
Solution:
We want to get that n2 + 3n + 2 ≡ (n + 1)(n + 2) ≡ 0 (mod 6).
We see that (n + 1)(n + 2) ≡ 0 (mod 2).
We therefore want (n + 1)(n + 2) ≡ 0 (mod 3) so n 6≡ 0 (mod 3).
We know that there are b 1991
3 c = 663 multiples of 3 less than or equal to
1991.
We calculate our answer to be 1991 − 663 = 1328 .

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2. Find all triples (p, x, y) such that px = y 4 + 4, where p is a prime and x
and y are natural numbers.
Solution:

If p is two =⇒ y is even. So 4|y 4 and clearly x ≥ 3. Then divide the

equation by 4. We get 2|RHS but 2 6 | LHS
So p is an odd prime. Note that

px = y 4 +4 = (y 2 −2y+2)(y 2 +2y+2) =⇒ y 2 −2y+1|y 2 +2y+1 =⇒ y 2 −2y+2|4y

y 2 − 2y + 2 ≤ 4y =⇒ y = 2, 1
Verifying, we get y = 1 satisfying. Giving us (p, x, y) = (5, 1, 1) as the
only solution.

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2 Combinatorics
1. The numbers 1 to 500 are written on a board. Two pupils A and B play
the following game: A player in turn deletes one of the numbers from the
board. The game is over when only two numbers remain. Player B wins if
the sum of the two remaining numbers is divisible by 3, otherwise A wins.
If A plays rst, show that B has a winning strategy.
Solution:
We have that
500 · 501
3|1 + 2 + ... + 500 = =S
2
so if the player A removes i then B removes 501 − i and 3|S 0 = S − 501
so B has winning strategy.

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2. There are n boys and n girls in a school class, where n is a positive in-
teger. The heights of all the children in this class are distinct. Every
girl determines the number of boys that are taller than her, subtracts the
number of girls that are taller than her, and writes the result on a piece
of paper. Every boy determines the number of girls that are shorter than
him, subtracts the number of boys that are shorter than him, and writes
the result on a piece of paper. Prove that the numbers written down by
the girls are the same as the numbers written down by the boys (up to a
permutation).
Solution:

Arrange all the students in the increasing order of height. Consider the
sequence obtained by putting all the numbers calculated by the students
side by side. Observe that if a boy and a girl appear side by side, the
numbers calculated by each of them will be the same. If two girls appear
consecutively the later will be 1 less than the previous number. Lastly, if
two boys appear side by side the later will be 1 more than the previous
number. It indeed suffices to prove that any number in the sequence
appears even number of times.
Now we will induct on n. The base case n = 1 is trivial. Suppose that
it’s true for n. We will prove that it’s true for n + 1. Observe that in
the original boy-girl sequence at-least one pair of a boy and a girl must
appear side by side. Notice that removing the very first such pair will not
damage the sequence:

B
|{z} B
|{z} G
|{z} G/B
| {z }
i i+1 i+1 i/i+1

G
|{z} G
|{z} B
|{z} B/G
| {z }
i i−1 i−1 i/i−1

Thus deleting the B, G pair in the middle pair will simply delete two
i+1/i−1’s from the sequence creating a new sequence with 2(n+1)−2 = 2n
terms. But by induction hypothesis, there is an even number of each terms
in this sequence. Thus there was an even number of each elements in our
original sequence with 2(n + 1) terms.