Friday 15 August 2014

elementary number theory - Last $500$ digits of $2015!-1$



As the title says, I'm looking for the last $500$ digits of $2015!-1$. I assume it's a repetition of zeroes from the factorial, so the final result is a lot of $9$-s, but I can't formulate a solution in a mathematical way. I know that $201$ zeroes come from $10$-s in there, also, $202$ from the $5$-s that are multiplied by even numbers, $20$ extra from the $100$-s, $2$ more from the $1000$-s, but I'm still missing a couple.


Answer



There are 403 numbers between 1 and 2015 are divisible by 5. Not all of them contribute just one factor of 5.



The multiples of 25 contribute two factors of 5 (there are 80 such). We already have 483 factors of 5.



A further 16 numbers are divisible by 125 and they contribute yet another factor of 5. We're now up to 499 factors of 5.




Finally, the multiples of 625 contribute yet another factor, and there are 3 such numbers. So we have at least 502 factors of 5 in 2015!. (There are in fact exactly 502 factors, but that's not important here).



There is no dearth of factors of 2, which occur more often than the factors of 5. So we know that $10^{502}$ divides 2015!. I think you know what to do from here!


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