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A milestone on a tortuous road..

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A milestone on a tortuous road.. by Total Gadha - Saturday, 17 March 2007, 10:35 AM It is funny how one proble m give s rise to anothe r. O f course this happe ns be cause of the irritating habit that m athe m aticians have of ask ing, if it was som e thing e lse and not som e thing lik e this, what would be the solution? And the n you start all ove r again. He re is a good proble m I was discussing with a colle ague In how m any ways can you write the num be r 210 as a product of thre e inte ge rs? 210 = 2 3 5 7. Since the proble m ask s for inte ge rs, we will first calculate for positive num be rs and the n assign signs to the se num be rs. Your first instinct is to write down 2, 3, 5 and 7 in a row and place two partitions be twe e n the m . The partitions will give you thre e groups of num be rs. Som e thing lik e this:

But you should quick ly re alize that in this way no m atte r whe re you place your partitions, the num be r 2 and 7, 3 and 7, 2 and 5 will ne ve r be toge the r. The partition m e thod wont work . In fact, the situation is sim ilar to placing 4 sim ilar balls in thre e sim ilar box e s. How would you do that? The hard way of course : So we have to place 4 prim e num be rs in 3 place s. If a place re m ains e m pty afte r distribution that m e ans we will assum e num be r 1 ove r the re . Le ts find the num be r of ways of distributing the se prim e num be rs. Since the box are all sam e only the diffe re nt grouping of num be r m atte rs. As we are talk ing about inte ge rs, the num be rs of possible case s are : All positive O ne positive and two ne gative (we will have to find diffe re nt ways of assigning positive and ne gative signs also in this case )

The re ! 55 is the answe r. But do you stop at that? No, you ask anothe r que stion:

So how do we do it? The hard way again. Case I (positive, positive, positive)

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Case II (positive, negative, negative) e.g. (2, - 1, - 210) The num be r of case s will be e qual to the num be r of case s whe n all of the m are positive . All we have to do is to write the inte ge r triple ts (x , y, z) of case I and the n assign ne gative signs to y and z. The re fore , total num be r of case s = 81. Case III (negative, positive, positive) e.g. ( - 2, 1, 210)

Case IV (negative, negative, negative) The num be r of ways in this case will again be e qual to the num be r of ways in case III as we can assign ne gative sign to y and z to all the case s of case III. The re fore , the num be r of ways = 54 The re fore , the total num be r of ways = 81 + 81 + 54 + 54 = 270. The re . W e have found answe r to one m ore que stion. But what if it was? The road is e ndle ss..
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Re: A milestone on a tortuous road.. by Sanju P - Friday, 22 June 2007, 12:43 PM HI TG, Awe som e article ! I just love d re ading that! Thank s, S P
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Re: A milestone on a tortuous road.. by Vim ale sh Kobla - Thursday, 16 August 2007, 09:26 PM Hi TG, what is that prim e factor? can you e x plain m e again?
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Re: A milestone on a tortuous road.. by Sodium Hydro Phosphate - Tue sday, 21 August 2007, 10:22 PM Badhiya hai TG. Tortuous road pe chalne se k uch re luctancy aa gayi hai ab to. I would have to ove rhaul m y syste m s again. Is baar 'A' nik aalna hai
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Re: A milestone on a tortuous road.. by vik as choudhary - W e dne sday, 19 Se pte m be r 2007, 01:44 PM Awe som e article TG. Ke e p it up.....
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Re: A milestone on a tortuous road.. by ram ya n - Thursday, 20 Se pte m be r 2007, 10:49 AM hi... it m ay sound stupid bt i re ally don unde rstand this if x yz = 210 and x = 2^a the n, 2^(ayz) = 210.

The n how wil ayz = 210 be possible ? pls clarify

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Re: A milestone on a tortuous road.. by R IDHIMA C HO PR A - Saturday, 27 O ctobe r 2007, 11:09 PM tg sir plz can u e x plain this wid som e sim ple r m e thod i have not unde rstood anythng
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Re: A milestone on a tortuous road.. by Ashish Sharm a - Monday, 19 O ctobe r 2009, 04:10 PM

hmmm... suppose we want to find no. of ways we can write 210 as a product of three natural no.s... then according to your m e thod it should be 14...but m ge tting 15 as the answe r...
four prim e factors: 2,3,5,7 x yz=210 now le t x has "a" prim e factors of 2,3,5,7 ; sim ilarly y has "b" and z has "c"....he nce a+b+c=4 the non-ne gative solutions of the se e quation will be 6C 2=15.... ple ase te ll whe re m m istak e n.... which e x tra case i m counting
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Re: A milestone on a tortuous road.. by Total Gadha - W e dne sday, 21 O ctobe r 2009, 09:50 PM Ashish, Be fore applying a conce pt le arn a conce pt com ple te ly. Half-cook e d le arning is dange rous. In this e quation (0, 0, 4), (4, 0, 0) and (0, 4, 0) are diffe re nt solution but the y are actually sam e for the proble m - 210 1 1. Sim ilarly, (1, 1, 2), (2, 1, 1) e tc. Total Gadha
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Re: A milestone on a tortuous road.. by Ashish Sharm a - Tue sday, 3 Nove m be r 2009, 10:30 PM thank s TG. spe cially for this post and the othe r one on grouping and arrangm e nts...cuz i always try to use the balls and walls proble m in arrange m e nts... Thank s again
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Re: A milestone on a tortuous road.. by spunk y arora - W e dne sday, 22 June 2011, 01:37 PM y in case of no. of case s we n all positive u m ultiply it by 3! i dint ge t it pls e x plain sir
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