Online Course Discussion Forum

Question for MC II-A Number Theory 5.21 (a)

 
 
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Question for MC II-A Number Theory 5.21 (a)
by Lucas Qi - Wednesday, 29 July 2020, 10:26 AM
 

What does this question mean, I don't understand it.

 
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Re: Question for MC II-A Number Theory 5.21 (a)
by Areteem Professor - Friday, 31 July 2020, 7:08 PM
 

Here we want to find what is the remainder of $n\cdot a$ when dividing by $8$ for $n=1,2,\dots,7$ and $a = 5,6$. For example, for $n = 3$ and $a=5$, we have $3\cdot 5 = 15$, which is $7 \pmod{8}$, and for $n = 7$ and $a = 5$, we have $7 \cdot 5 = 35$, which is $3 \pmod{8}$.

The purpose of this problem is to see how the set of different values $\pmod{8}$ that can be obtained by multiplying the possible remainders $\pmod{8}$ (so $n=0,1,\dots,7$) by $5$ and $6$ differ from one another.