Skip to main content

All Questions

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
18 votes
1 answer
1k views

When is $(q^k-1)/(q-1)$ a perfect square?

Let $q$ be a prime power and $k>1$ a positive integer. For what values of $k$ and $q$ is the number $(q^k-1)/(q-1)$ a perfect square, that is the square of another integer? Is the number of such ...
Huangjun Zhu's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
179 views

Only trivial solution to a pair of constrained linear diophantine equations

Given positive integer $n$, we are looking for a set of $n$ positive integers $a_i$. The following linear integer program must have only the trivial integer solution of all ones. $0 \le x_i \le \frac{...
joro's user avatar
  • 25.4k
27 votes
1 answer
2k views

Solutions to $\binom{n}{5} = 2 \binom{m}{5}$

In Finite Mathematics by Lial et al. (10th ed.), problem 8.3.34 says: On National Public Radio, the Weekend Edition program posed the following probability problem: Given a certain number of ...
Nick Matteo's user avatar
21 votes
1 answer
1k views

Permutations $\pi\in S_n$ with $\sum_{k=1}^n\frac1{k+\pi(k)}=1$

Let $S_n$ be the symmetric group of all the permutations of $\{1,\ldots,n\}$. Motivated by Question 315568 (http://mathoverflow.net/questions/315568), here I pose the following question. QUESTION: ...
Zhi-Wei Sun's user avatar
  • 15.6k
13 votes
7 answers
3k views

Special arithmetic progressions involving perfect squares

Prove that there are infinitely many positive integers $a$, $b$, $c$ that are consecutive terms of an arithmetic progression and also satisfy the condition that $ab+1$, $bc+1$, $ca+1$ are all perfect ...
Cosmin Pohoata's user avatar