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Steffi Problem
A homework problem proposed in Steffi's math class in January 2003 asked students to prove that no ratio of two unequal numbers obtained by permuting all the digits 1, 2, ..., 7 results in an integer. If such a ratio existed, then some permutation of 1234567 would have to be divisible by . can immediately be restricted to , since a ratio of two permutations of the first seven digits must be less than , and the permutations were stated to be unequal, so . The case can be eliminated by the divisibility test for 3, which says that a number is divisible by 3 iff the sum of its digits is divisible by 3. Since the sum of the digits 1 to 7 is 28, which is not divisible by 3, there is no permutation of these digits that is divisible by 3. This also eliminates as a possibility, since a number must be divisible by 3 to be divisible by 6.
This leaves only the cases , 4, and 5 to consider. The case can be eliminated by noting that in order to be divisible by 5, the last digits of the numerator and denominator must be 5 and 1, respectively
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(1)
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The largest possible ratio that can be obtained will then use the largest possible number in the numerator and the smallest possible in the denominator, namely
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(2)
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But , so it is not possible to construct a fraction that is divisible by 5. Therefore, only and 4 need now be considered.
In general, consider the numbers of pairs of unequal permutations of all the digits in base () whose ratio is an integer. Then there is a unique solution
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(3)
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a unique solution
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(4)
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three solutions
and so on.
The number of solutions for the first few bases and numbers of digits are summarized in the table below (Sloane's A080202).
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solutions for digits , , ..., |
3 |
0 |
4 |
0, 1 |
5 |
0, 0, 1 |
6 |
0, 0, 3, 25 |
7 |
0, 0, 0, 2, 7 |
8 |
0, 0, 0, 0, 68, 623 |
9 |
0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 124, 1183 |
10 |
0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2338, 24603 |
11 |
0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 598, 5895 |
12 |
0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 161947, 2017603 |
As can be seen from the table, in base 10, the only solutions are for the digits 12345678 and 123456789. Of the solutions for , there are two that produce three different integers for the same numerator:
Taking the diagonal entries from this list for , 4, ... gives the sequence 0, 1, 1, 25, 7, 623, 1183, 24603, ... (Sloane's A080203).
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