Factorial divisors

True or false :

For any positive integer n n , there exists another positive integer m m , such that m ! m! has exactly n n trailing number of zeros .

For example, if n = 3 n=3 , one value for m m would be 16 as 16 ! = 20922789888 000 16! = 20922789888\underline{000} .

Any such examples have not yet been found computationally True False Cannot be determined

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5 solutions

Alex Li
Jun 12, 2016

By counter-example:

Call the number of trailing zeros in 99! "z".

100! must have z+2 trailing zeros.

Since multiplying will never decrease the amount of trailing zeros, we will never have z+1 trailing zeros, and therefore the statement is false.

The number of trailing 0's is determined by the number of factors of 5 the final factorial has. This is found by the infinite series trailing 0's =floor(n/5)+floor(n/5^2)+floor(n/5^3)+... which does not cover all integers

I.e. there is no solution for n=5 (24! has 4 0's 25! has 6)

What does 100000! end with? Wouldn't m=100000 when n=5?

Shane Bough - 5 years ago

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No, while the number 100000 has 5 trailing 0's it's factorial (which is the number I was referring to in the question) has 24999.

William Whitehouse - 5 years ago

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Ah - so, your question doesn't allow more than 5 trailing 0's. OK.

Shane Bough - 5 years ago

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@Shane Bough I don't understand what you're getting at; 25 is a solution for n=6

William Whitehouse - 5 years ago
Prince Loomba
Jun 18, 2016

When a multiple of 25 is added, the number of zeroes becomes n+2 ,where n is previous number of zeroes. Thus 1 number is skipped. So its false

Abhay Tiwari
Jun 13, 2016

The fact that for every integer n n there exists another integer m m where m ! m! will have n n number of trailing zeroes is not true because when we try to find out the trailing number of zeroes we look for number of 5 in the expression. Because 5 × 2 = 10 5×2=10 and thus a 0 0 is produced.

For example, take 23 ! 23! , it will have [ 23 5 ] = 4 [\dfrac{23}{5}]=4 , where [ ] [] denotes greatest integer, so here n = 4 n=4

But let's take the case of 25 ! 25! , it will have [ 25 5 ] = 5 [\dfrac{25}{5}]=5 and [ 25 25 ] = 1 [\dfrac{25}{25}]=1 , here I divided 25 also as 25 = 5 × 5 25=5×5 and has two 5, while dividing 25 by 5, I only count one of the 5. So, total number of 5 in 25 ! 25! are 6. And so n = 5 n=5 never exists. And thus our the statement above is not true.

Benjámin Major
Jun 12, 2016

Integers can be negative?

Yes, The set of integers is all positive and negative natural numbers and 0. It is symbolised by Z

William Whitehouse - 5 years ago

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n should be stated as a positive integer, because if n is set to -1 the question becomes trivially false.

Andrew Lin - 5 years ago

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