How many ordered sets of primes ( p , q , r ) are there such that p < q < r and r − q = q − p = 2 ?
Inspired by a talk received at Cambridge on Addictive Number Theory
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You went to a talk at Cambridge for mathematics? If I knew abouts them I would go every time. But now I'm at Cambridge im sure I'll be seeing them all the time.
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Oh are you going to Cambridge too? Which college?
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Caius College, what about you?
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@Isaac Buckley – Fitzwilliam, I look forward to seeing you there then.
If you boil this problem down, we're simply asked how many primes are consecutive odd integers. Let's cross-examine both lists:
1 , 3 , 5 , 7 , 9 , 1 1 , 1 3 , 1 5 , 1 7 , 1 9 , 2 1 , 2 3 …
This is not to say that all prime numbers are simply non-multiples of 3 , odd, integers. On the contrary, I've simply proven that given any three consecutive odd integers beginning with n > 5 , there will always be a multiple of three present, and thus cannot be prime. We now must only consider sequences of primes starting with n < 5 . Notice
2 , 3 , 5 , 7 , 1 1 , …
And 3 , 5 , 7 matches the conditions. Now that we have proven that no sequence of n odd integers can be all prime for n ≥ 3 . So we're finished, and the answer is thus 1 .
@Danny He Thanks for the awesome problem and for being awesome! I'm sure you'll win an award someday. :D
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Ah, it hasn't been updated in a while, I wont a trophy!!!! :D
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YAY! What for?
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@Finn Hulse – A regional Maths team competition held by a neighboring school :P
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@Danny He – Aw nice dude! Kicking butt and taking names. :D
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@Finn Hulse – Haha thank you, very happy about it :)
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@Danny He – Did you get first? What was the test like? How many people were there? Was there a buzzer round? Tell me more! :D
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@Finn Hulse – Yeah we won :D and nothing fancy, there was a codebreaking round, and then a general round with 15 questions that we had 30 minutes for I think. We didn't actually do that well, we got 8 right, but we did well enough to win :D
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@Danny He – Oh nice bro. Hey, are you following me? :O
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@Finn Hulse – Yesssss
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Assume that there exists three primes p , q , r such that the requirements are met. Therefore we have p = q − 2 , r = q + 2 and the numbers from p to r become q − 2 , q − 1 , q , q + 1 , q + 2
Since q − 2 , q , q + 2 are all prime, either q − 2 = 3 ⇒ ( p , q , r ) = ( 3 , 5 , 7 ) , or q − 2 > 3 and so 3 ∣ q − 1 ⇒ 3 ∣ q + 2 or 3 ∣ q + 1 ⇒ 3 ∣ q − 2 .
In both of the latter cases we have one of the three primes becoming a multiple of 3 which contradicts their prime nature, and hence they can't be prime given that p = q − 2 > 3
Thus there is only one solution, 3 , 5 , 7