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Legendre's Mistake (Posted on 2009-09-11) Difficulty: 3 of 5
Legendre famously "proved" that 6 could not be the sum of the cubes of two rational numbers. Puzzlist Dudeney proved him wrong by producing two rational numbers the sum of whose cubes is 6.

Find the two rational numbers without researching Legendre or Dudeney.

  Submitted by Charlie    
Rating: 5.0000 (1 votes)
Solution: (Hide)
list
   10   for T=1 to 1000
   20   for N=1 to T-1
   30     D=T-N
   35     if gcd(N,D)=1 then
   40     :F=6-(N//D)^3
   50     :N1=num(F):D1=den(F)
   60     :Ncr=int(fnCr(N1)+0.5)
   65     :Dcr=int(fnCr(D1)+0.5)
   70     :if Ncr*Ncr*Ncr=N1 and Dcr*Dcr*Dcr=D1 then
   80      :print N//D,Ncr//Dcr
   90   next
  100   next
  200   end
  400   fnCr(X)
  410    R=sgn(X)*abs(X)^(1/3)
  420   return(R)
OK
run
 17//21          37//21
 37//21          17//21
OK

This shows 17/21 and 37/21 are the two rational numbers.

Comments: ( You must be logged in to post comments.)
  Subject Author Date
Puzzle Thoughts K Sengupta2023-04-05 00:23:23
computer solutionDaniel2009-09-12 11:30:37
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