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66th Czech and Slovak Mathematical Olympiad

Czech Republic number theory

Problem

Find all triplets of integers such that each of the fractions is an integer.
Solution
The considered fractions are symmetric in the sense that if we permute we get the same three fractions (possibly in different order). The same is true if we replace by . This simplifies the following casework.

Let us suppose that numbers are such that all three fractions are integers. If one of them equals zero, without loss of generality we assume . Plugging this in we get that both and are integers. Hence and are nonzero and both and implying that . Moreover, is the denominator of the first fraction, hence and . Altogether, we obtain (clearly admissible) triplets and their permutations for any nonzero integer .

It remains to solve the case .

Due to the observations from the first paragraph we can assume that at least two of the numbers are positive. If all three were positive, the fraction with at its numerator lies between 0 and 1 and can't be integer.

Assume and are positive and () negative. Plugging this in, the fractions rewrite as The last one implies that . Hence the first one has positive denominator and since it is an integer, we have , i.e. . Therefore () and altogether we obtain triplets of nonzero numbers such that . All such triplets are admissible as the value of each fraction then equals .
Final answer
All integer triples are either (i) nonzero triples with a + b + c = 0, or (ii) permutations of (0, t, t) with t ≠ 0.

Techniques

Divisibility / FactorizationTechniques: modulo, size analysis, order analysis, inequalities