P-SET FOR 2/3/2012

JOE STAHL

1. Problem 1 The lights that will be left on after everybody pulls the chains corresponding to his or her place in line will be the lights that are in a perfect square position, i.e. the rst, fourth, ninth, sixteenth, etc. lights. Reason: The divisors of numbers come in pairs. If m is a divisor of n, then n = mk for some k N. For every divisor m of n, the switch is pulled for m, but the switch is also pulled for k. For perfect squares, however, there is a divisor m such that m2 = n, so rather than n getting pulled twice for m and k, it only gets pulled one for m. Then n is pulled an odd number of times if it is a perfect square, and an even number of times if it is not. The lights that get switched an odd number of times are left on, so these are precisely the perfect squares. (If there are 20000 lights, the perfect squares s 20000 will be left on.) 2. Problem 2 a) The numbers less than n that are vaguely prime-like are the odd numbers without 1 and including 2. For integers n greater than or equal to two, the number of vaguely prime-like numbers less than or equal to n is C2 (n) = n (for n 2, C2 (n) = {number of positive odd numbers less than or equal to n}). So 2 C2 (1000) = 1000 = 500 = 500 vaguely prime-like numbers less than 1001. 2 b) The number of prime-like numbers less than or equal to some n N, n 7 is given by: For m 1 C3 (6m + 1) = C3 (6m + 2) = C3 (6m + 3) = C3 (6m + 4) = 2m + 2 C3 (6m + 5) = C3 (6m + 6) = 2m + 3 Because after the initial counting of 2 and 3 and the exclusion of 1 the numbers for which C3 increases by 1 diers by 6, the least common multiple of 2 and 3 (to be complete, C3 (1) = 0, C3 (2) = 1, C3 (3) = 2, C3 (4) = 2, C3 (5) = 3, C3 (6) = 3). To nd C3 (1000), note that 1000 = 166 6 + 4, so C3 (1000) = 2 166 + 2 = 335 prime-like natural numbers less than 1001. c) The very prime-like numbers less than n (C5 (n)) also exhibit a pattern; however, to describe it fully we must account for all the dierent cases where n 30 and also the cases n s mod 30, where n 30 and s = 0, 1, ..., 29. Since 1000 = 33 30 + 10, we shall look at C5 (n) for n = 30m + 10 (m N). After creating a chart, one can see that C5 (30m + 10) = 8m + 4, so there are C5 (1000) = 8 33 + 4 = 268 very prime-like natural numbers less than 1001. d) The probability that a randomly chosen n N is vaguely prime-like, prime-like, or very prime-like can be found in dierent ways, and one way is to compute limn Cm (n) for m = 2, 3, 5, n because the probability that a number less than or equal to n is vaguely prime-like, prime-like, or very prime-like is found by dividing the number of vaguely prime-like, prime-like, or very prime-like numbers less than or equal to n by n. Rather then consider all cases, we can assume the dierence between dierent cases of n for Cm will become negligible as n becomes large (in fact, the dierence will be less than or equal to 7 for numbers within 30 numbers of each other), so C2 (2n) C2 (2n + 1)
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JOE STAHL

C3 (6n + 1) C3 (6n + 2) ... C3 (6n) 2n C5 (30n + 1) C5 (30n + 2) ... C5 (30n + 29) C5 (30n) 8n for large n N. Then it follows that the probability that a randomly chosen n N is vaguely prime-like is n 1 P2 = lim = n 2n 2 The probability that a randomly chosen n N is prime-like is 1 2n = P3 = lim n 6n 3 The probability that a randomly chosen n N is very prime-like is 8n 4 P5 = lim = n 30n 15