English

An Investigation on Partitions with Equal Products

Number Theory 2025-06-24 v1 Combinatorics

Abstract

An ordered triple (s,p,n)(s,p,n) is called admissible if there exist two different multisets X={x1,x2,,xn}X=\{x_1,x_2,\dotsc,x_n\} and Y={y1,y2,,yn}Y=\{y_1,y_2,\dotsc,y_n\} such that XX and YY share the same sum ss, the same product pp, and the same size nn. We first count the number of nn such that (s,p,n)(s,p,n) are admissible for a fixed ss. We also fully characterize the values pp such that (s,p,n)(s,p,n) is admissible. Finally, we consider the situation where rr different multisets are needed, instead of just two. This project is also related to John Conway's wizard puzzle from the 1960s.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1811.07451,
  title  = {An Investigation on Partitions with Equal Products},
  author = {Byungchul Cha and Adam Claman and Joshua Harrington and Ziyu Liu and Barbara Maldonado and Alexander Miller and Ann Palma and Tony W. H. Wong and Hongkwon V. Yi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.07451},
  year   = {2025}
}

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