Monday, 13 January 2014

elementary number theory - Prove at least two are not relatively prime, for any 8 composite positive integers not exceeding 360




Prove that in any 8 composite positive integers not exceeding 360, at least two are not relatively prime.





What I think is as below.



First we know there are 41 prime numbers less than 180, and that are all factors of 8 composite integers, then try to find "least" 8 composite integers then we can get a contradiction, but I do not know how to find these least 8 composite integers.


Answer



360 is just 1 less than 192, so every number in {1,,360} is either prime or divisible by a prime less than 19, i.e. by one of 2,3,5,7,11,13,17. Just seven primes are here. Every one of your eight composite numbers is divisible by at least one of these seven. So use the pigeonhole principle.


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