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 April 16th, 2011, 11:01 AM #1 Newbie   Joined: Oct 2009 Posts: 14 Thanks: 0 Number of terms in a sequence of primes Dear all, I'm trying to figure out how many terms are in this sequence: $2, 4, 6, ..., p - 3, p - 1$, where $p$ is an odd prime. I can't see the answer immediately, so I tried some smaller sequences: i) For $p= 4$ (ie) $2, 4, 6, 8$: There are $4= \frac{7 + 1}{2}$ terms. ii) For $p= 5$ (ie) $2, 4, 6, 8, 10$: There are $5= \frac{9 + 1}{2}$ terms. So for $p= k - 1$ terms, I reasoned that there'd be $\frac{k - 1}{2}= \frac{[(k - 1) - 1] + 1}{2}$ terms. But the correct answer is $\frac{k + 1}{2}$. Where have I gotten wrong? This may seem an easy question, but it's from a more complicated question so I thought to post it here. Thank you very much1
 April 16th, 2011, 11:42 AM #2 Senior Member   Joined: Apr 2011 From: Recife, BR Posts: 352 Thanks: 0 Re: Number of terms in a sequence of primes this is actually an arithmetic progression question, p being an odd prime doesn't interfere in the answer. dividing the sequence by 2 yields $1,2,3..,\frac{p-1}{2}$, which has obviously$\frac{p-1}{2}$ terms, the same number of terms of the original sequence. Where did "k" come from anyways?
 April 17th, 2011, 08:31 AM #3 Newbie   Joined: Oct 2009 Posts: 14 Thanks: 0 Re: Number of terms in a sequence of primes Thanks for your response, proglote. So why does the solution say that there are $\frac{p + 1}{2}$ terms? And I used $k$ to illustrate my reasoning when we had $p - 1$ terms (so that I didn't have to write $p= p - 1$ ). In any case, I asked the original question since I am trying to figure out these two steps for a question on number theory: $1 \times 3 \times ... \times (p - 2) \equiv (-2) \times (-4) \times ... \times -(p - 1) \pmod {p}$ $\Longrightarrow ? 1 \times 3 \times ... \times (p - 2) \equiv (-1)^{\frac{p +1}{2}} \times (2) \times (4) \times ... \times (p - 1) \pmod {p}$
 April 17th, 2011, 10:41 AM #4 Member   Joined: Jul 2010 Posts: 44 Thanks: 0 Re: Number of terms in a sequence of primes The solution could possibly be taking into account zero as the first term. Otherwise you've got it all right I believe
 April 17th, 2011, 11:17 AM #5 Math Team   Joined: Apr 2010 Posts: 2,780 Thanks: 361 Re: Number of terms in a sequence of primes The statement is also: $(p-2)!! \equiv (-1)^{\frac{p-1}{2}} \cdot (p-1)!! \bmod p$ k!! is a double factorial
April 19th, 2011, 01:00 PM   #6
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Re: Number of terms in a sequence of primes

Quote:
 Originally Posted by mrtamborineman10 The solution could possibly be taking into account zero as the first term. Otherwise you've got it all right I believe
Thanks for the replies.

@mrtamborineman10: Could you please explain what you mean by zero as the first term?

We have:
$1 \times 3 \times ... \times (p - 2) \equiv (-2) \times (-4) \times ... \times -(p - 1) \pmod {p}$, where the RHS starts with $(-2)$. Where would the 0 appear?

@Hoempa: We haven't done double factorials so that confuses me a bit. Could you explain without double factorials?

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