A guide to STEP Mathematics

Crash Courses Limited

Introduction

Before you study the material in this booklet you should be aware of a few pieces of information. This is not a complete guide of how to pass your STEP exams, nor is it a set of material relating to purely only one of the STEP exams. The following notes are a collection of hints and ideas that have tripped students up in previous years. They are here so you do not make the same mistakes other students have. They are here to give you condence. They are not here to teach you Mathematics, or act as a substitute for your Mathematical studies at school, but instead they work alongside these studies. It is possible that some of the material here has not yet been covered in your classes, but do not dismay because everything here acts as an extension of either the Mathematics A-level course or (as may be the case for STEP 2 and 3) the Further Mathematics A-level course. It is the intention of this document to draw on 4 areas of the STEP paper. These areas are Number Theory (including counting), Algebra, Calculus (including some trigonometry) and Functions. Each section will focus on how it has been incorporated into the previous STEP papers, drawing out important pieces of information that should be learned and practiced in time for the exam. However, this booklet does not come close to covering conclusively each of these topics, so you should try and read around these topics more and search for more help if necessary. The best way to prepare for the STEP course is to try some of the past paper questions, which are easily available on-line, along with answer schemes. Although it may be useful to have a mark scheme to hand, you should not use it as a guide or turn to it too easily. Remember you will not have an answer scheme in the exam, so get used to only using it briey for reference in those questions which you nd yourself completely lost. This course will be hinged around the previous exam questions; they will be used a lot as examples to highlight the relevance of the points being made. Some of these questions you may have done already in preparation to your exams. If this is the case, try and approach these questions from a dierent perspective. Importantly, however, you should not ignore these explanations just because you have done the question previously. We are not here to teach you how to do one STEP question, but instead arm you with techniques that will let you attempt a plethora. You only have to answer 6 questions from each paper. There are normally 13 questions on each paper: 9 are related to Pure Mathematics, 2 are related to Mechanics and 2 are related to Statistics. This booklet will focus heavily on those Pure Mathematics questions, but often students nd themselves able to do one of the Mechanics or Statistics questions. If you nd these questions easier to understand and do then by all means practice them in your own time. However, the vast majority of students will attempt to answer at least 4 of the Pure Mathematics questions, explaining the focus of this document.

2
2.1

Number Theory and Counting

Number Theory vs Algebra

Under what circumstances is it better to start intelligently guessing solutions rather than searching for them algebraically? Number theory in STEP papers relates to intelligently searching for solutions based on the properties of the given equations. STEP papers give massive hints as to when it may be better to use number theory to stumble upon a solution. You should try and keep an eye out for these: Spending a long time on a problem and getting nowhere (the obvious case) 1

 The questions will use m and n, or p, q or r rather than x, y and z. You cannot solve the problem by using simultaneous equations (i.e there are more unknowns that equations) So now you know some situations in which you should try and apply number theory, itd be a good time to explain what number theory is. It is the study of the properties and relationships of numbers, especially the positive integers. We concern ourselves with odd numbers, even numbers, negative numbers, positive numbers, divisors, sizes and, most importantly, prime factors. With this in mind we should note just how important the prime numbers are when it comes to number theory. They are, in essence, the building blocks of all other numbers, and we should not overlook the signicance of the prime factor representation of numbers. They are the building blocks of number theory.

2.2

Prime factors

We can express any positive integer as a product of its prime factors. Indeed, we learned to do this at a very young age. For example, the number 24 can be expressed as 23 3. We were never really told just how improtant this was; it was used when nding highest common factors and lowest common multiples, some may have even learned why it is important in factorising, but a lot of number theory relies on the uniqueness of these prime number factorisations. This idea of uniqueness is very important for the work that follows. It means that there is only one prime number factorisation for each number to consider. We can judge two numbers to be coprime by looking at their prime factors. Given any two positive integers m and n then they are said to be coprime if HCF[m,n ]=1. Another way to think about this is if their prime factorisations have no factors in common. For example, 24 and 35 are coprime, as 24 can be written as 23 3 and 35 can be written as 5 7. Neither of these numbers have common factors, so they are coprime. Although the questions may not be this obvious, they will start asking about powers of coprime numbers. For example, given that m and n are coprime, what can we say about m2 and n2 ? It doesnt take much imagination to realise that these will also be coprime. Imagine that m can be written as b c k a 2 2 m = ma 1 m2 m3 ... mi (m1 means some number m1 to the power of a ) then m will simply be m = 2a 2b 2c 2k m1 m2 m3 ... mi and as such there are no new factor introduced, just double the amount of the old factors. STEP III 2013 Question 5 Suppose that there are positive integers p, q, n and N such that p and q are coprime and q n N = pn . Show that N = kpn for some positive integer k and deduce the value of q. Hence prove that, for any positive integers n and N, n N is either a positive integer or irrational. Solution:

2.3

Using number theory to simplify equations

There are many times in the STEP exams where we are asked, almost trivially, to spot a solution of a given equation. These sort of questions rely on spotting properties of the equations, and as such depend on a good understanding of number theory. It is in these circumstances where we must try dierent methods to try and stumble upon an answer. We can search of odd and even relationships of answers, or perhaps look for prime factorisations of the numbers, or maybe even consider the magnitude of the sides of the equations. Often, however, we are prompted by the rest of the question as to what we should consider. Alongside this we must also realise that number theory is not a stand-alone style of question; it often comes combined with algebra questions. We must not seek to use only one or the other, but instead nd a harmony of both. We should use number theory as a shortcut to algebraic proofs where necessary as the STEP papers have a very tight time constraint. STEP II 2013 Question 7 Write down a solution of the equation x2 2y 2 = 1, for which x and y are non-negative integers. Solution: (1)

STEP II 1998 Question 1

Show that, if n is an integer such that (n 3)3 + n3 = (n + 3)3 (2)

then n is even and n2 is a factor of 54. Deduce that there is no integer n which satises equation (2). Solution:

2.4

Intelligent Counting and Ordering

Alongside number theory comes the idea of counting. It is important in this section to realise just how the problems were considered. Often students sitting the STEP exams are under a lot of pressure so they dont pay much attention to how they think or lay out their working. In some questions this is detrimental to their success. The way you think and explain your working is incredibly signicant, rstly because the examiner will be giving you marks based on how well you have understood the question, but secondly because dierent layouts will oer dierent perspectives and help you spot dierent patterns. Although this is often more important in the Statistics questions, there are a multitude of Pure Mathematics questions which rely on spotting a pattern. STEP I 2009 Question 1: A proper factor of an integer N is a positive integer, not 1 or N, that divides N.

1. Show that 32 53 has exactly 10 proper factors. Determine how many other integers of the form 3m 5n (where m and n are integers) have exactly 10 factors. 2. Let N be the smallest positive integer that has exactly 426 proper factors. Determine N, giving your answer in terms of its prime factors. Soultion:

STEP 1 2007 Question 1: A positive integer with 2n digits (the rst of which must not be 0) is called a balanced number if the sum of the rst n digits equals the sum of the last n digits. For example. 1634 is a 4-digit balanced number, but 123401 is not a balanced number. 1. Show that seventy 4-digit balanced numbers can be made using the digits 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4.
1 k (k + 1)(4k + 5) 4-digit balanced numbers can be made using the digits 0 to k. 2. Show that 6 n

You may use the identity

r =0

1 r2 6 n(n + 1)(2n + 1)

2.5

Conclusion

Number Theory requires a good deal of common sense when approaching problems. Going hand in hand with this, there is a need for an intelligent layout. In a few of these problems, patterns could easily have been missed if we had laid out our working in a more clumsy manner, so make sure you think properly about how youre going to approach these problems. Ultimately, we should be seeking to use number theory along with algebra, and not instead of algebra. Often it gives us faster solutions, but sometimes they may not be as conclusive or as robust as an algebraic method. You have to tweak these solutions based on what the question is asking, and how much it has prompted you. The following question is a very good example of how algebra and number theory work hand in hand. The question prompts you the whole way, which is expected for a STEP I question, but notice that STEP II and STEP III may not be so generous. STEP I 2004 Question 5 The positive integers can be split into ve distinct arithmetic progression, as shown: A: 1, 6, 11, 16, ... B : 2, 7, 12, 17, ... C : 3, 8, 13, 18, ... D : 4, 9, 14, 19, ... E : 5, 10, 15, 20, ... Write down an expression for the value of the general term in each of the ve progressions. Hence prove that the sum of any term in B and any term in C is a term in E. Prove also that the square of every term in B is a term in D. State and prove a similair claim about the square of every term in C. 1. Prove that there are no positive integers x and y such that x2 + 5y = 243723 2. Prove also that there are no positive integers x and y such that x4 + 2y 4 = 26081974 (4) (3)

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3.1

Algebra
Quadratics

For any of the STEP papers you need to have a very good level of algebraic manipulation. You need to be able to keep track of variables and equations, realise when you need to solve them simultaneously and, most importantly, know which of your variables to eliminate and which to keep. Quadratic equations are relatively rare in STEP papers (they prefer to study cubic equations or higher) but they still do appear occasionally in various contexts. These papers often like to link the roots of an equation to the coecients of the individual terms, and expect you to know how to solve quadratic equations by both completing the square and the quadratic formula. Recall that if f (x) = (x a)(x b) then we say that a and b are roots (or solutions) of the equation. If we expand this representation of the quadratic we nd that f (x) = x2 (a + b)x + ab. From this we can deduce that the coecient of x1 is the negative of the sum of the two roots, and the coecient of x0 is the product of the two roots. It is also important to recall the conditions that determine the amount of roots of a quadratic equation. The quadratic 2 4ac . This can be proved by apply the completing the square formula states that if ax2 + bx + c = 0 then x = b 2b a technique on the general quadratic formula. We call b2 4ac the discriminant because it determines the number of solutions of a quadratic equation. If b2 4ac < 0 then we are attempting to square root a negative number in the quadratic formula and we determine that there are no solutions in the real numbers. If b2 4ac = 0 then we have 0 and so we only really have one root, often called a repeated root. If b2 4ac > 0 we have the traditional two roots. The sign is an important part of the quadratic formula, and it is often one that vexes students, especially when the question considers certain cases (either positive or negative). Specically, the notion is not hard, but the description of why, or rather how to explain it in a mathematical manner, seems to elude some. STEP I 2009 Question 3 1. By considering the equation x2 + x a = 0, show that the equation x = (a x) 2 has one real solution when a 0 and no real solutions when a < 0. 2. Find the number of distinct real solutions of the equation x = (b + x) 2 in the cases that arise according to the value of b.
1 1

3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5

Cubics Inequalities Algebraic Manipulation Simultaneous Equations

4 5

Calculus and Trigonometry Functions