Wednesday, 26 April 2017

prime factorization - Why does sumlimitsik=1nftylfloorm/(nk)rfloor give you the number of times that n divides m!?




If n is a prime less than m, with n,mN, why does k=1mnk
give you the number of times that n divides m!?



Examples:




n=13



m=321



k=1321/(13k)=25



n=5



m=321




k=1321/(5k)=78



In fact,



FactorInteger[321!]={{2, 318}, {3, 157}, {5, 78}, {7, 51}, {11, 31}, {13, 25}, {17, 
19}, {19, 16}, {23, 13}, {29, 11}, {31, 10}, {37, 8}, {41, 7}, {43,
7}, {47, 6}, {53, 6}, {59, 5}, {61, 5}, {67, 4}, {71, 4}, {73,
4}, {79, 4}, {83, 3}, {89, 3}, {97, 3}, {101, 3}, {103, 3}, {107,
3}, {109, 2}, {113, 2}, {127, 2}, {131, 2}, {137, 2}, {139,

2}, {149, 2}, {151, 2}, {157, 2}, {163, 1}, {167, 1}, {173,
1}, {179, 1}, {181, 1}, {191, 1}, {193, 1}, {197, 1}, {199,
1}, {211, 1}, {223, 1}, {227, 1}, {229, 1}, {233, 1}, {239,
1}, {241, 1}, {251, 1}, {257, 1}, {263, 1}, {269, 1}, {271,
1}, {277, 1}, {281, 1}, {283, 1}, {293, 1}, {307, 1}, {311,
1}, {313, 1}, {317, 1}}


and so on, for every n,mN, n prime and $


Can someone explain?


Answer



There are mn numbers less than m that are multiples of n.
Amongst these numbers, an nth is also divisible by n2, i.e. is a multiple of it. So 1nmn=mn2 additional n's appear. Because we already counted every multiple of n2 as a multiple of n in the previous step we just add 1 to the total sum for each multiple. An nth of all these square-multiples is also a multiple of n3...
This continues for each power of n, until some number x such that nx>m. Of course we can write this as an infinite sum with x as well - we then add a finite amount of nonzero summands and an infinite amount of summands that are zero.



This doesn't hold for composite n as then the prime factors that n is composed of can also be combined by multiplying two other numbers less than m, where the product contains all prime factors of n.


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