Ramanujan can do this instantly

Sunday, December 22 will be Srinivasa Ramanujan's 126 126 th birthday. Ramanujan was an amazing mathematician, but one of the things he was most famous for had to do with the number 1729 1729 . When Ramanujan was in the hospital, he was visited by his friend G.H. Hardy. Hardy remarked that the taxicab that he had ridden in had a rather uninteresting number: 1729 1729 . Ramanujan said that no, 1729 1729 was very interesting because it was the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of 2 2 cubes in 2 2 different ways. These are 1 2 3 + 1 3 12^3+1^3 and 1 0 3 + 9 3 10^3+9^3 . Hence, numbers that can be written as the sum of multiple cubes are called taxicab numbers.

In the spirit of the sums of cubes, 126 126 can be written as the sum of two positive cubes, A 3 A^3 and B 3 B^3 . What is A + B A + B ?


The answer is 6.

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26 solutions

Priyanka Banerjee
Dec 23, 2013

Anybody can do this instantly

1^3+5^3 = 126

Anuj Shikarkhane - 6 years, 11 months ago

Pretty easy

Rhishikesh Dongre - 7 years, 1 month ago

This problem didnt even take a minute :3

Baidehi Chattopadhyay - 7 years, 1 month ago

so hard that it hardly took a minute

jus jaisinghani - 6 years, 4 months ago

nhaaaaaaa..........

Akashdeep Singh Rawat - 7 years, 2 months ago
Trevor B.
Dec 20, 2013

With a little experimentation or knowledge of the cubes, you will notice that 126 = 125 + 1 = 5 3 + 1 3 126=125+1=5^3+1^3 . Hence, A = 5 A=5 , and B = 1 B=1 (or the other way around, it doesn't matter). ( A + B ) 3 = 6 3 = 216 (A+B)^3=6^3=\boxed{216} .

Obviously, this isn't meant to be that hard of a problem. I'm just attaching a problem to a very cool piece of math history.

I wanted to embed links in the problem to some pages about Ramanujan and link to a very interesting video by Numberphile about taxicab numbers, but the LaTeX command I found didn't appear to work. What would the code be for embedding a link?

Trevor B. - 7 years, 5 months ago

Log in to reply

If you take a look at the formatting guide (helpfully linked right below any post as you're writing it), it'll tell you to do it using Markdown, for which a link is like so:

[What you want the link to look like] (URL where the link leads)

But without the space between them.

Morgan Dang - 7 years, 5 months ago

Is there any way to solve this without "brute force"? Say I don't know the cube of 5 nor I want to list the first 10 natural cubes, how do I go from there?

Marco Aurélio Deleu - 7 years, 5 months ago

I also done it in same way

Archana s - 7 years, 5 months ago
Kartikay Kumar
Dec 23, 2013

The cube nearest to 126 is 5 3 = 125 5^3=125 . The difference i.e. 126 125 = 1 126-125=1 is also a cube, 1 3 = 1 1^3=1 .Therefore, the two numbers are 1 and 5, and their sum is 5 A + 1 B = 6 \underbrace{5}_A+\underbrace{1}_B=6

niice answer

sonu sekar - 7 years, 5 months ago
Prasun Biswas
Dec 22, 2013

Here, let us examine and split 126 into two parts.

We can see that 126 = 125 + 1 126=125+1

Now, we can represent 125 = 5 3 125=5^{3} and 1 = 1 3 1=1^{3}

So, 126 = 125 + 1 = 5 3 + 1 3 126=125+1=5^{3}+1^{3} . So, now 126 is in A 3 + B 3 A^{3}+B^{3} form with A=5 and B=1.

So, A + B = 5 + 1 = 6 A+B=5+1=\boxed{6}

Sonu Sekar
Dec 23, 2013

the given number is 126 solu: we write 126=5^3+1^3

126=125+1

126=126

Arjun S Xetry
Dec 22, 2013

5 3 + 1 3 = 126 5^3+1^3=126 . Hence a + b = 6. a+b=6.

good

sonu sekar - 7 years, 5 months ago
Michael Thornton
Dec 22, 2013

We're looking for two numbers which, when cubed, make 126. As 126 is relatively small in terms of products of cubed numbers, we can just list the cubes of the first few natural numbers and try and spot which two we want:

1 3 = 1 1^3 = 1 2 3 = 8 2^3 = 8 3 3 = 27 3^3 = 27 4 3 = 64 4^3 = 64 5 3 = 125 5^3 = 125

Once we've reached this stage we can tell that 1 3 + 5 3 = 1 + 125 = 126 1^3 + 5^3 = 1 + 125 = 126 So it's fairly obvious that 1 + 5 = 6 1 + 5 = \boxed{6} is our answer!

Sathiya Narayanan
Dec 22, 2013

(5^3)+(1^3)=126

Devesh Rai
Dec 22, 2013

HELLOW TO ALL . 126 CAN BE EXPRESSED AS
126 = 5 3 5^{3} + 1 3 1^{3} . WHERE A = 5 AND B = 1 SO A + B = 6 . SO THE ANSWER IS 6 \boxed{6} .

There should not be w in the spelling of hello !!

Devesh Rai - 7 years, 5 months ago

126 = 125 + 1 = 5 3 + 1 3 126=125+1=5^3+1^3

A + B = 1 + 5 = 6 \rightarrow A+B=1+5=\boxed {6}

Hariharan Gandhi
Dec 21, 2013

There are 5 cubes lesser than 126: 1,8,27,64,125. Taking a^{3}=125, a=5. 126-125=1. 1 is its own cube,so b^{3}=1 and b=1. Therefore, a+b=5+1=6.

Jubayer Nirjhor
Dec 20, 2013

126 = 125 + 1 = 5 3 + 1 3 126=125+1=5^3+1^3

( 5 + 1 ) 3 = 6 3 = 216 (5+1)^3=6^3=\fbox{216}

Noel Lo
Jun 17, 2015

Seriously....this is like level 0, not even level 1.

Vishal S
Dec 17, 2014

We can write 126 as 5^3+1^3 =>5+1=6

Giri Manigandan
May 13, 2014

(5)3 + (1)3 =125+1=126

Nishanth R
Apr 6, 2014

Since A^3 + B^3 = 126, Sum of cube of last digit of A and B should be equal to 6. So the pair of last digits could be 1 and 5 or 3 and 9 or 4 and 8. Now pick the first last digit combination 1 and 5. 1^3. + 5^3 itself is 126. Hence A+B=6

public class numbers{ public static void main(String[] args){

  for(int number1 = 0;number1 < 126;number1++){
        for(int number2 = 0;number2 < 126;number2++){
              boolean CUBE = Math.pow(number1, 3) + Math.pow(number2, 3) == 126;

            if(CUBE){
                  System.out.println(number1 + "^3 + " + number2 + "^3 = 126");
            }
         }
     }
 }

}

inside the 'if' statement ,,,,System.out.println(number1 + " + " + number2 + " = " + (number1 + number2)); ,,, and u'll get 6 ...

A Former Brilliant Member - 7 years, 2 months ago
Vaibhav Zambad
Mar 23, 2014

5 and 1 are the numbers so 5+1=6

5^3+1^3=126= 5+1=6

Suraj Chaudhari
Feb 7, 2014

5^(3)+1^(3) = 125+1 = 126

5^3+1^3=125+1=126; So, A=5 and B=1; That is why, A+B=5+1=6

Arjun Dubey
Jan 19, 2014

it is very easy ifu start from 10 and cube them you wil get like this 10cube=1000, 9=729,8=512,7=343,6=216,5=125,4=64,3=27,2=8and1=1 now from which cubing add you get 126 it is 125+1 that is 5+1=6

Muhammad Usman
Jan 14, 2014

1^3+5^3

Sanghamitra Anand
Dec 30, 2013

The number 126 can be written as a sum of 125 and 1.
125 can be expressed as A³ and 1 can be expressed as B³.
Therefore to find A and B,
we have to find the cube roots(³√) of 125 and 1.
The ³√125 = 5 and the ³√1 = 1.
Hence, A³ can be written as 5³ and
B³ can be written as 1³.
Therefore, A = 5 and B = 1.
The sum of A and B = 5 + 1 = 6.







Gulraiz Shah
Dec 26, 2013

starting from 2 keep going then when you reach at 5 you see that the cube of 5 comes 125 and then your mind just clicks that the cube of 1 is always 1 and adding 125 and 1 comes 126 so here is the answer 5 and 1 then adding 1 and 5 comes 6 so 6 is the right answer

Mateo Torres
Dec 24, 2013

# for (int x = 1; x <= 126; x++) for (int y = 126; y >= 1; y--) if ((x x x) + (y y y) == 126) { cout << x << " - " << y << "\n"; }

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