Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Does Induction theorem fails here at Euler's conjecture?



I read in a Book written by Raymond A. Barnett and Micheal R. Ziegler the way to prove conjectures for infinite members of a given set and that is, Mathematical Induction. When I read Induction, I found it very interesting. The way to prove propositions using induction theorem looks like this:



Step 1: Base case i.e. to prove for 1.




Step :2 Inductive step i.e. to assume that proposition is true for any unknown number (k) and then prove for k+1



Then on other page I found an conjecture given by Euler i.e. for each positive integer n, the number n^2 - n + 41 is a prime. When I tried it to prove by Induction theorem stated above, it resulted it to be true for each positive integer however Euler's proposition failed when I put n=41. Is there any other method to check for the Euler's proposition; that could prove it wrong for all n?


Answer



You can certainly show it is true for the base case n=1 which gives 41 which is indeed prime.



You then assume that it is true for n=k and get:k2k+41=pk

where pk is some prime number.



If we now use the inductive step and try to prove this is also true for n=k+1 then we get:(k+1)2(k+1)+41=k2+2k+1k1+41=(k2k+41)+2k

=pk+2k
Now how did you conclude that pk+2k is also prime?



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