Re:Math Team
by jhshah on Wednesday December 20, 2023 @08:55PM
(#38716162)
Completely agree, I also liked the problem and thought it was conceptual as far as these things go.
Asking for N mod 1000 was another cute twist that was meant to get you thinking about the divisibility properties of the totient function - "hmm, so (p-1) always divides \phi(n) for all prime factors p of n, how convenient..."
Re:Math Team
by lupire on Thursday December 21, 2023 @07:43AM
(#38719751)
That's a cute coincidence that 1000 divides (11-1)(101-1), but I doubt it was intentional. The test writers didn't have much choice unless they chose a different base than 5+5.
Asking for N mod 1000 was another cute twist that was meant to get you thinking about the divisibility properties of the totient function - "hmm, so (p-1) always divides \phi(n) for all prime factors p of n, how convenient..."