A number theory problem by Kenny O.

Find the smallest n n such that: n 2 n^2 and n 3 n^3 use all the digit from 0-9 exactly once.
Put answer as 0 if you think that there is no such number.


The answer is 69.

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1 solution

Kenny O.
Aug 26, 2017

We know that for n 2 n^2 and n 3 n^3 to have all the digits, the number of the digits in each number must add up to 10.
We also know that n 2 n^2 would have an equal or less amount of digits than n 3 n^3 .
If n 2 n^2 has 1 digit, n 3 n^3 would need to have 9 digits but the most digits for n 3 n^3 , if n 2 n^2 has only 1 digit, is 2 (27)
If n 2 n^2 has 2 digits, n 3 n^3 would need to have 8 digits but the most digits for n 3 n^3 , if n 2 n^2 has 2 digits, is 3 (729)
If n 2 n^2 has 3 digits, n 3 n^3 would need to have 7 digits but the most digits for n 3 n^3 , if n 2 n^2 has 3 digits, is 5 (29791)
If n 2 n^2 has 4 digits, n 3 n^3 would need to have 6 digits, which is possible. The range is 48<n<100.
For all the digits to appear exactly once, the units digits cannot be 1, 5, 6 and 0.
The sum of all numbers is 45, the sum of n 2 n^2 and n 3 n^3 must be a multiple of 9. n 2 ( n + 1 ) = 9 k n^2(n+1)=9k where k is an integer. Thus, n is a multiple of 3 or n=9a+8 where a is an integer.
This reduces the possible answers to:
53, 54, 57, 62, 63, 69, 72, 78, 84, 87, 89, 93, 98 and 99.
Doing manual calculation, you will get 69.
6 9 2 69^2 = 4761
6 9 3 69^3 = 328509


How do you know that 1, 2, 3, ... , 68 doesn't satisfy this constraint? Did you manually test them all?

Pi Han Goh - 3 years, 9 months ago

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I've shown how I've eliminated 44 numbers from 70 possible numbers.

Kenny O. - 3 years, 9 months ago

It doesn't help much, but there's a slight error where you say "if n 2 n^2 has 4 4 digits, n 3 n^3 must have 6 6 digits". This isn't true - take, for example, n = 32 n=32 , whose cube has just five digits.

The range of possible n n (based on numbers of digits) is 47 n 99 47 \le n \le 99 .

Chris Lewis - 1 year, 6 months ago

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