what do you think?
Answer : -11, 11
Why don’t you try to manipulate the equation by taking the common term.
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How do we get -11 as an answer?
guess you take 3^522 common and get the following expression:
3^522 (3^3-1) = 3^522 (26) = 3^522 * 13 * 2 ; hence the prime factors are 3, 13 and 2. The possible difference between the smallest (2) and largest (13) prime factors are 2-13 & 13-2 = -11, 11.
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2-13 is a difference between smallest and largest prime number (not the difference between largest and smallest), ain’t it?
yes. however note that the question is asking “which of the following could be the difference between A and B” its not asking difference from A to B or difference from B to A (where there can be only one answer). Rather it is asking for both as per official answer right? I guess this is the tricky part of the question, I would have not thought twice about -11 either.
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yeah… got it… thanks.
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