04 December 2010

Mathematical curiosity

The first few powers of 5 share a curious property — their digits can be rearranged to express their value:

25 = 52
125 = 51 + 2
625 = 56 – 2
3125 = (3 + (1 × 2))5
15625 = 56 × 125
78125 = 57 × 182

It’s conjectured that all powers of 5 have this property. But no one’s proved it yet.
Found in the Futility Closet.

5 comments:

  1. If you're allowed to use *1^something then isn't it always going to be possible, there is always a 5 as the least sig digit.
    so 5^8 (which is 390625)
    the 5 is accounted for.
    we can make 8 from the 6+2
    then the remaining 390 can be expressed as x 1^390 (which is the same as saying times 1 which is saying nothing.
    So, all the conjecture really states is that for all powers of five, the power can be expressed as a calculation of some of the remaining digits of the results.

    5^23 = 11920928955078125
    = 5^(1+1+9+2+9+1) x 1 ^ 2089550782

    or whatever.

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  2. ^@.\\axxx: You forgot to count the "1" in your expression.
    So you can't say that
    390 625 = 5^(6+2) x 1^390
    fulfills the conjecture.

    But your method works whenever there is a "1" in the power of 5 (well, I think it does anyway).

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  3. Actually I spoke too soon it doesn't seem to work for 5^11 either..


    I don't know who conjectured that but I doubt they actually tried it above 5^7 ;-)

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  4. 5^8 = 390625
    5^(9-((6/3)/2)) + 0

    5^11 = 48828125
    5^(88/8) * (1^422)

    5^23 = 11920928955078125
    5^(5+9+9) + (0*218950782211)
    5^(5+9+9) * (1^208950782211)

    It seems quite trivial if you can simply eliminate extra numbers with tricks like *(1^X) or +(0*X) but i've no idea how you'd go about proving it for all values.

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  5. yea, using one to the power of a number is a cop out

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