Processing math: 100%

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Harmonic mean of integers

The harmonic mean of a set of n numbers xi is defined as nni=1x1i. While investigating the number of subsets of {1,...,n} such that the harmonic mean is an integer (OEIS sequence A339453), I formulated and proved the following result, which states that for n>1 positive integers whose maximum is a prime power that is attained by a single element, their harmonic mean is not an integer:

Theorem: Let xi be a finite set of positive integers such that xj=maxixi=pk for some prime p and positive integer k and all other numbers xi are strictly less than pk, then the harmonic mean of {xi} is not an integer.

Proof: Let M be the least common multiple of {xi}. Assume that xi are sorted in nondecreasing order. Thus xn=pk and xi<pk for all i<n . Then M=Wpk where p does not divide W. Let Qi=M/xi and Q=iQi. This implies that Qn=W and p divides Qi for i<n.

The harmonic mean H can then be written as nM/Q. Since p does not divide W, this implies that p does not divide Q. Suppose H is an integer. Then this implies that Q divides nM/pk=nW.

As xi<xn for i<n, this implies that Qi>W for i<n, i.e. Q>nW, and this contradicts the fact that Q divides nW and thus H is not an integer.

No comments:

Post a Comment