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Math Forum » Discussions » Math Topics » discretemath

Topic: Finding pairs of numbers that meet a specific criteria
Replies: 8   Last Post: Nov 5, 2011 9:06 AM

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musicgold

Posts: 12
From: x
Registered: 4/16/09
Finding pairs of numbers that meet a specific criteria
Posted: Oct 31, 2011 11:50 AM
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Hi,

I am struggling with this strange problem.

I have to find pairs of positive integers that satisfy two specific conditions.

1. you can?t go from one pair to another by subtracting/adding the same number to both members of the pair.

2. You can?t go from one pair to another by subtracting/adding a number from one of the numbers in the pair.

I have so far found the following pairs using a graph paper. Note that the order of the numbers in a pair is not important.

(0,0) (1,2) (3, 5) (4, 7) (6, 10) (8, 13)

I want to able to find say 100th pair. How should I go about doing this?

Also, what branch of mathematics handles this kind of problems?

Thanks.

Question cross posted at:
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3590295&posted=1#post3590295

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