Thursday, 19 September 2013

mathematics - Generalization of Sum and Product puzzle


I heard from a clever person that for the problem mentioned before: I don't know the two numbers... but now I do a solution exists even if we change 100 to infinity.


So the formulation would be next:




Two perfect logicians, Summer and Proctor, are told that integers x and y have been chosen such that $x>1$ and $y>1$. Summer is given the value x+y and Proctor is given the value x⋅y. They then have the following conversation.


Proctor: "I cannot determine the two numbers."
Summer: "I knew that."
Proctor: "Now I can determine them."
Summer: "So can I."


Given that the above statements are true, what are the two numbers?



I don't know whether it is true. Can you find the solution or prove that it doesn't exists? Can you find a general solution for any integer $N$ if we have limitation $x+y



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