Sunday, September 4, 2016

Proof: divisibility

Question:
For all $a, b, c \in \mathbb{Z}$, if $a\mid bc$, then $a\mid b$ or $a\mid c$. Is this true?



My answer: True. (Proof by contrapositive) Proof that if $a \nmid b$ and $a \nmid c$, then $a \nmid bc$.



Suppose $b = ax+r$ and $c = ay+s$, where $x,y,r,s \in \mathbb{Z}$ and $x,y,r,s \neq 0$



Then multiply $b$ by $c$:




$bc = (ax+r)(ay+s)=a(ayz+sy+rz) + rs$



$bc = az + t$, where $z = ayz+sy+rz$ and $t = rs$



Because $a,r,s,y,z$ are all integers $\mathbb{Z}$that are non-zero, both $z$ and $t$ are integers that is not zero.



Therefore, $bc$ is not divisible by $a$ because of the reminder $t$. This completes the proof.



Actual answer: False (Disproof by example) Consider $a=6, b=3, c=4$, $a\mid bc$, but $a \nmid b$ or $a \nmid c$.




My question: What is wrong with my proof?

No comments:

Post a Comment

analysis - Injection, making bijection

I have injection $f \colon A \rightarrow B$ and I want to get bijection. Can I just resting codomain to $f(A)$? I know that every function i...