For how many ordered pairs of positive integers like the fraction becomes a positive integer?
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.
First note that if m n − 1 ∣ n 2 + 1 then m n − 1 ∣ m 2 n 2 − 1 + n 2 + 1 = n 2 ( m 2 + 1 ) It follows that m n − 1 ∣ m 2 + 1 , so if ( m , n ) is an answer ( n , m ) will be too.
Let n = 1 , it gives m = 2 , 3 , we get 4 pairs from here: ( 1 , 2 ) , ( 2 , 1 ) , ( 1 , 3 ) , ( 3 , 1 ) Note that if m n − 1 n 2 + 1 = r then r ≡ − 1 mod n , and r have the form of k n − 1 for some positive integer k . There is no answer for m = n therefore we can suppose m > n and we can write k n − 1 = m n − 1 n 2 + 1 < n 2 − 1 n 2 + 1 = 1 + n 2 − 1 2 < 2 which follows that k n < 3 and n = 2 this gives us m = 3 . So we get 2 other solutions from here: ( 2 , 3 ) , ( 3 , 2 ) Therefore there are 6 such pairs.