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Division (Posted on 2004-12-11) Difficulty: 3 of 5
For which positive integer values of N is 2^N-1 a multiple of N?

See The Solution Submitted by e.g.    
Rating: 3.8333 (6 votes)

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Some Thoughts Solution (i think) | Comment 3 of 17 |

This might be dumb of me not to understand... or it might not be... umm... anyway, is it 2^(N-1) or (2^N) - 1?

If it's 2^(N-1), then the solution is all powers of two.

For 2^(N-1) to be divisible by N, N must have a prime factorization of only 2s (as 2^anything has only 2s).

It is easy to see that

2^((2^0)-1)/2^0 = 1

2^((2^1)-1)/2^1 = 1

2^((2^2)-1)/2^2 = 2

2^((2^3)-1)/2^3 = 16

and so on... but this seems pretty easy, which leads me to suspect that it's (2^N) - 1

Because (2^N) - 1 is odd, all even numbers can be ruled out.


  Posted by Joe Ruby on 2004-12-12 05:03:05
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