Definition 26.0.1 · Diophantine Equation
A Diophantine equation is a polynomial equation where we only look for integer solutions (every variable must be an integer).
Equations where only whole-number answers count: factor them, bound them, or take a mod to prove that no solution can exist.
In this section you will be able to solve equations in integers by factoring, bounding and taking mods, and prove when no solution exists.
A right triangle has legs and and hypotenuse . Then , so any odd works. With , how many are there?
A Diophantine equation only allows whole-number answers. That restriction is a weapon: integers factor, they have remainders, and they can’t hide between two consecutive values.
Three moves solve most contest problems. Factor (SFFT, difference of squares) and list the factor pairs. Bound the variables so only a few cases are left. Take a mod to show some cases are impossible.
A square is always or mod . So has no solutions: leaves remainder .
A Diophantine equation is a polynomial equation where we only look for integer solutions (every variable must be an integer).
Here are some ideas for solving Diophantine equations.
How many right triangles have integer leg lengths and and a hypotenuse of length , where ?
Write the Pythagorean theorem and expand . What is in terms of ?
There exist unique positive integers and that satisfy the equation . Find .
Complete the square: . What goes in the box?
Assume that , , , and are positive integers such that , , and . Determine .
. Every prime exponent in must be a multiple of , so is a perfect fourth power: . Then
Integers and with satisfy . What is ?
How many ordered pairs of integers satisfy the equation
This problem also appears in the book as 21.3.17.
There is a prime number such that is the cube of a positive integer. Find .
Find if and are integers such that .
If the positive integer has positive integer divisors and with , then and are said to be complementary divisors of . Suppose that is a positive integer that has one complementary pair of divisors that differ by and another pair of complementary divisors that differ by . What is the sum of the digits of ?
How many ordered pairs of integers satisfy the equation ?
Determine all non-negative integral solutions if any, apart from permutations, of the Diophantine Equation
Two farmers agree that pigs are worth dollars and that goats are worth dollars. When one farmer owes the other money, he pays the debt in pigs or goats, with "change" received in the form of goats or pigs as necessary. (For example, a dollar debt could be paid with two pigs, with one goat received in change.) What is the amount of the smallest positive debt that can be resolved in this way?
In this section you will be able to combine factoring, bounding and mods on harder integer equations.
Time to mix the strategies. Each problem below hides an integer equation: find it, then factor, bound or take a mod. Every problem has three hints if you get stuck.
Want every problem from this chapter on one page? Open the problem set.
Let and be relatively prime positive integers with and . What is ?
Two distinct numbers are selected from the set so that the sum of the remaining numbers is the product of these two numbers. What is the difference of these two numbers?
How many triples of positive integers satisfy the simultaneous equations
An arithmetic sequence (of positive integers) has terms, initial term and common difference . Carl wrote down all the terms in this sequence correctly except for one term which was off by . The sum of the terms was . What was ?
How many ordered pairs of positive integers exist where both and do not have distinct, real solutions?
A four-term sequence is formed by adding each term of a four-term arithmetic sequence of positive integers to the corresponding term of a four-term geometric sequence of positive integers. The first three terms of the resulting four-term sequence are , , and . What is the fourth term of this sequence?
There is a unique ordered triple of nonnegative integers such that
What is ?
A rectangular grid of squares has rows and columns. Each square has room for two numbers. Horace and Vera each fill in the grid by putting the numbers from through into the squares. Horace fills the grid horizontally: he puts through in order from left to right into row , puts through into row in order from left to right, and continues similarly through row . Vera fills the grid vertically: she puts through in order from top to bottom into column , then through into column in order from top to bottom, and continues similarly through column . How many squares get two copies of the same number?
Hiram's algebra notes are pages long and are printed on sheets of paper; the first sheet contains pages and , the second sheet contains pages and , and so on. One day he leaves his notes on the table before leaving for lunch, and his roommate decides to borrow some pages from the middle of the notes. When Hiram comes back, he discovers that his roommate has taken a consecutive set of sheets from the notes and that the average (mean) of the page numbers on all remaining sheets is exactly . How many sheets were borrowed?
One of Euler's conjectures was disproved in the 1960s by three American mathematicians when they showed there was a positive integer such that
Find the value of .
Find the largest possible value of for which is expressible as the sum of consecutive positive integers.
For some integer , the polynomial has the three integer roots , , and . Find .
Let be an odd integer, and let denote the number of quadruples of distinct integers with for all such that divides . There is a polynomial
such that for all odd integers . What is ?