Showing posts with label LCD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LCD. Show all posts

Friday, April 9, 2010

An Interesting Property of Relatively-Prime Numbers

Hello Guys,
There are a few more parabola questions in line, but I need to solve a number theory question. I have a proof but it is very long and clumsy. I am looking for a slicky solution. Here it goes:

a and b are relatively-prime integers such as,
3 and 8 (e.g. GCD(3,8)=1).
Let N=ab.
Let 1 ≤ k ≤ a, and 1 ≤ m ≤ b, both are integers.
Let set A be all integers, x=k+ia AND x ≤ N AND i=0,1,...
Let set B be all integers, y=m+jb AND y ≤ N AND j=0,1,...

PROVE THAT A∩B contains one integer only.

Example:
a=3, b=8, GCD(3,8)=1
N=24
Let k=2 and m=6.
A={2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23}
B={6, 14, 22}
A∩B={14}
Note that the above statement is true for any k and m satisfying
1≤k≤a, and 1≤m≤b respectively.

It is very obvious that there should be a short and beautiful proof.