An interesting equation

Algebra Level 5

How many solutions are there to the equation x y = y x x^{y}=y^{x} where x x and y y are distinct integers?


The answer is 4.

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

2 solutions

Achal Jain
Feb 14, 2017

The same question has been posted by Mr. Calvin Lin. Nevertheless the solutions are

4 2 = 2 4 \large 4^{2}=2^{4}

2 4 = 4 2 \large 2^{4}=4^{2}

2 4 = 4 2 \large -2^{-4}=-4^{2}

4 2 = 2 4 \large -4^{-2}=-2^{-4}

What is the procedure to find them?

Vedant Saini - 2 years, 6 months ago
James Wilson
Feb 8, 2018

The only four solutions I could find are ( 1 , 1 ) , ( 1 , 1 ) , ( 2 , 4 ) (1,-1),(-1,1),(2,4) and ( 4 , 2 ) (4,2) .

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...