On the success of mishandling Euclid's lemma

DOI10.4169/AMER.MATH.MONTHLY.123.9.924MaRDI QIDQ4576565zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Adrian W. Dudek

Publication date 12 July 2018

Published in The American Mathematical Monthly (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.03555

zbMATH Keywords

Euclid's lemma

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Multiplicative structure; Euclidean algorithm; greatest common divisors (11A05) Arithmetic functions; related numbers; inversion formulas (11A25)

Abstract: We examine Euclid's lemma that if $p$ is a prime number such that $p|ab$, then $p$ divides at least one of $a$ or $b$. Specifically, we consider the common misapplication of this lemma to numbers that are not prime, as is often made by undergraduate students. We show that a randomly chosen implication of the form $r|abRightarrowr|aextorr|b$ is almost surely false in a probabilistic sense, and we quantify this with a corresponding asymptotic formula.

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Cites work

• An introduction to the theory of numbers. Edited and revised by D. R. Heath-Brown and J. H. Silverman. With a foreword by Andrew Wiles

Cited in

(2)

• On the success of \textit{seriously} mishandling Euclid's lemma
• A summation involving the divisor and GCD functions

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