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jmc

number theory intermediate

Problem

An arithmetic sequence with first term has a common difference of . A second sequence begins with and has a common difference of . In the range of to , what is the largest number common to both sequences?
Solution
Let be the smallest common term. We know that We see that means that there exists a non-negative integer such that . Substituting this into yields So has a lower bound of . Then . We see that satisfies both congruences so . If is any common term, subtracting from both sides of both congruences gives Since , we have , that is, So for some integer . The largest such number less than is , which happens to satisfies the original congruences.
Final answer
67