Skip to content

The abc conjecture, explained as a game

bit-player.org
42 pointsColinWright3 comments
On HN

Comments

The current discussion[0] about the abc conjecture has a number of confused questions over what it's saying. This is a link to a presentation I found useful to say what the conjecture is about.

[0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4502856

I may have misunderstood something, but I believe it is simple to prove that R cannot equal c.

Because c is relatively prime to both a and b, there exists some prime p which b is divisible by and c is not. Because b is divisible by p, R=rad(a,b,c) is also divisible by p. Since R is divisible by p and c is not, R!=c.

The comments on the article make it clear that c!=R using reasoning effectively the same as yours, but yes, nice proof.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.