Topics / Number Theory
Divisibility & Factors
Divisors, number/sum of divisors, factorization, divisibility rules
What you need to know
- Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic: every integer factors uniquely as with distinct primes .
- Number of divisors: . Sum of divisors: .
- Divisors come in pairs ; has an odd number of divisors exactly when is a perfect square.
- Divisibility rules: from the last digit; from the last two; from the last three; from the digit sum; from the alternating digit sum.
- The number of multiples of in is .
- If and , then for any integers .
How AMC 10 tests it
- Early problems (1–8) factor the contest year and ask for a sum or digit fact about its factors.
- Middle problems (10–18) ask "how many positive divisors of are ..." (even, perfect squares, multiples of ), which is with constrained exponents.
- "How many integers up to are divisible by or but not " combines floor counting with inclusion–exclusion.
- Products of consecutive integers: which number must divide ? The trick is a single counterexample.
- Late problems reverse the direction: given or , find the smallest such or count the possibilities.
Standard approaches
- Prime factorize immediately; almost every divisor question becomes a question about exponents.
- Count divisors with a property by restricting each exponent to allowed values and multiplying the counts.
- To find the smallest with a given , write as a product of factors and assign the largest exponents to the smallest primes; compare all factorizations.
- Count multiples with floors and correct for overlaps using .
- For "must divide" claims, test one small example such as .
Worked example
Let be the smallest positive integer with exactly positive divisors. What is the sum of the digits of ?
(A) (B) (C) (D) (E)
Write as a product of factors each at least , in non-increasing order: , , , . Each factorization gives exponents one less, assigned to the primes in decreasing order:
The smallest is , whose digit sum is . The answer is .
Pitfalls
- Forgetting the : has divisors, not .
- Counting and inconsistently ("proper divisors" excludes ; check the wording).
- Assuming the smallest with always comes from the factorization with the most factors; you must compare all of them.
- Applying inclusion–exclusion with instead of when and share a factor.
Traps that recur
- Counting only the 15 primes as failures (answer 35) and missing that n = 4 also fails, or forgetting that n = 1 works. (2019 AMC 10A #25)
- Counting only the n with d(n) = 6 (eight of them) and missing 36 and 48, whose f_1 values 18 and 20 also feed into the fixed point 12. (2021 AMC Fall 10A #23)
- Trying to compute C(52,10) exactly, or using divisibility by 11 (which every choice satisfies) and getting nowhere. (2020 AMC 10B #19)
- Answering 121 by forgetting the word 'distinct', or subtracting only the two obvious cases 1 and 10^10 to get 119. (2019 AMC 10B #19)
Problems, easiest first
The ages of Jonie's four cousins are distinct single-digit positive integers. Two of the cousins' ages multiplied together give , while the other two multiply to . What is the sum of the ages of Jonie's four cousins?
What is the hundreds digit of
For the positive integer , let denote the sum of all the positive divisors of with the exception of itself. For example, and . What is ?
In the year , the United States will host the International Mathematical Olympiad. Let and be distinct positive integers such that the product . What is the largest possible value of the sum ?
Let be the product of all the positive integer divisors of . What is the units digit of ?
The product of three integers is . What is the least possible positive sum of the three integers?
A rectangle has integer length sides and an area of 2024. What is the least possible perimeter of the rectangle?
How many three-digit positive integers satisfy the following properties? - The number is divisible by . - The number formed by reversing the digits of is divisible by .
Consider the following sets of elements each: \begin{align} &\{1,2,3,\ldots,10\}, \\ &\{11,12,13,\ldots,20\},\\ &\{21,22,23,\ldots,30\},\\ &\vdots\\ &\{991,992,993,\ldots,1000\}. \end{align} How many of these sets contain exactly two multiples of ?
The least positive integer with exactly distinct positive divisors can be written in the form , where and are integers and is not a divisor of . What is
A single bench section at a school event can hold either adults or children. When bench sections are connected end to end, an equal number of adults and children seated together will occupy all the bench space. What is the least possible positive integer value of
There are 10 horses, named Horse 1, Horse 2, , Horse 10. They get their names from how many minutes it takes them to run one lap around a circular race track: Horse runs one lap in exactly minutes. At time 0 all the horses are together at the starting point on the track. The horses start running in the …
The largest divisor of is itself. What is its fifth largest divisor?
Three positive integers are each greater than , have a product of , and are pairwise relatively prime. What is their sum?
How many ordered pairs of positive integers satisfy the equation
In multiplying two positive integers and , Ron reversed the digits of the two-digit number . His erroneous product was . What is the correct value of the product of and ?
A majority of the 30 students in Ms. Deameanor's class bought pencils at the school bookstore. Each of these students bought the same number of pencils, and this number was greater than 1. The cost of a pencil in cents was greater than the number of pencils each student bought, and the total cost of all the pencils was …
A ticket to a school play cost dollars, where is a whole number. A group of 9th graders buys tickets costing a total of , and a group of 10th graders buys tickets costing a total of . How many values for are possible?
Kiana has two older twin brothers. The product of their three ages is 128. What is the sum of their three ages?
Suppose that is an integer. Which of the following statements must be true about ?
A standard six-sided die is rolled, and is the product of the five numbers that are visible. What is the largest number that is certain to divide ?
What is the probability that a randomly drawn positive factor of is less than ?
What is the probability that an integer in the set is divisible by and not divisible by ?
Suppose that is the product of three consecutive integers and that is divisible by . Which of the following is not necessarily a divisor of ?
Emmy says to Max, "I ordered math club sweatshirts today." Max asks, "How much did each shirt cost?" Emmy responds, "I'll give you a hint. The total cost was , where and are digits and $A \neq 0 …
Let . What is the ratio of the sum of the odd divisors of to the sum of the even divisors of ?
Call a positive integer an uphill integer if every digit is strictly greater than the previous digit. For example, , , and are all uphill integers, but , , and are not. How many uphill integers are divisible by ?
A positive integer divisor of is chosen at random. The probability that the divisor chosen is a perfect square can be expressed as , where and are relatively prime positive integers. What is ?
How many positive integer divisors of are perfect squares or perfect cubes (or both)?
The base-ten representation for is , where , , and denote digits that are not given. What is ?
What is the greatest three-digit positive integer for which the sum of the first positive integers is a divisor of the product of the first positive integers?
Let be a set of integers taken from with the property that if and are elements of with , then is not a multiple of . What is the least possible value of an element in ?
The number has over positive integer divisors. One of them is chosen at random. What is the probability that it is odd?
In how many ways can be written as the sum of an increasing sequence of two or more consecutive positive integers?
What is the greatest power of that is a factor of ?
Circle has radius . Circle has an integer radius and remains internally tangent to circle as it rolls once around the circumference of circle . The two circles have the same points of tangency at the beginning and end of circle 's trip. How many possible values can have?
For how many positive integers does evenly divide ?
How many positive cubes divide ?
What is the largest integer that is a divisor of for all positive even integers ?
For each positive integer , let be twice the number of positive integer divisors of , and for , let . For how many values of is
In a certain card game, a player is dealt a hand of cards from a deck of distinct cards. The number of distinct (unordered) hands that can be dealt to the player can be written as . What is the digit ?
Let be the set of all positive integer divisors of How many numbers are the product of two distinct elements of
Joey and Chloe and their daughter Zoe all have the same birthday. Joey is year older than Chloe, and Zoe is exactly year old today. Today is the first of the birthdays on which Chloe's age will be an integral multiple of Zoe's age. What will be the sum of the two digits of Joey's age the next time his age …
Mary chose an even -digit number . She wrote down all the divisors of in increasing order from left to right: . At some moment Mary wrote as a divisor of . What is the smallest possible value of the next divisor written to the right of ?
For some positive integer , the number has positive integer divisors, including and the number . How many positive integer divisors does the number have?
Let be a positive integer greater than 4 such that the decimal representation of ends in zeros and the decimal representation of ends in zeros. Let denote the sum of the four least possible values of . What is the sum of the digits of ?
A group of pirates agree to divide a treasure chest of gold coins among themselves as follows. The pirate to take a share takes of the coins that remain in the chest. The number of coins initially in the chest is the smallest number for which this arrangement will allow each pirate …
A positive integer is nice if there is a positive integer with exactly four positive divisors (including and ) such that the sum of the four divisors is equal to . How many numbers in the set are nice?
For , let , where there are zeros between the and the . Let be the number of factors of in the prime factorization of . What is the maximum value of ?
Mr. Jones has eight children of different ages. On a family trip his oldest child, who is 9, spots a license plate with a 4-digit number in which each of two digits appears two times. "Look, daddy!" she exclaims. "That number is evenly divisible by the age of each of us kids!" "That's right," replies Mr. Jones, "and …
For how many positive integers less than or equal to is evenly divisible by
For how many integers between and , inclusive, is an integer? (Recall that .)