Sociable number

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In mathematics, sociable numbers are numbers whose aliquot sums form a periodic sequence. They are generalizations of the concepts of perfect numbers and amicable numbers. The first two sociable sequences, or sociable chains, were discovered and named by the Belgian mathematician Paul Poulet in 1918. [1] In a sociable sequence, each number is the sum of the proper divisors of the preceding number, i.e., the sum excludes the preceding number itself. For the sequence to be sociable, the sequence must be cyclic and return to its starting point.

Contents

The period of the sequence, or order of the set of sociable numbers, is the number of numbers in this cycle.

If the period of the sequence is 1, the number is a sociable number of order 1, or a perfect number—for example, the proper divisors of 6 are 1, 2, and 3, whose sum is again 6. A pair of amicable numbers is a set of sociable numbers of order 2. There are no known sociable numbers of order 3, and searches for them have been made up to as of 1970. [2]

It is an open question whether all numbers end up at either a sociable number or at a prime (and hence 1), or, equivalently, whether there exist numbers whose aliquot sequence never terminates, and hence grows without bound.

Example

As an example, the number 1,264,460 is a sociable number whose cyclic aliquot sequence has a period of 4:

The sum of the proper divisors of () is
1 + 2 + 4 + 5 + 10 + 17 + 20 + 34 + 68 + 85 + 170 + 340 + 3719 + 7438 + 14876 + 18595 + 37190 + 63223 + 74380 + 126446 + 252892 + 316115 + 632230 = 1547860,
the sum of the proper divisors of () is
1 + 2 + 4 + 5 + 10 + 20 + 193 + 386 + 401 + 772 + 802 + 965 + 1604 + 1930 + 2005 + 3860 + 4010 + 8020 + 77393 + 154786 + 309572 + 386965 + 773930 = 1727636,
the sum of the proper divisors of () is
1 + 2 + 4 + 521 + 829 + 1042 + 1658 + 2084 + 3316 + 431909 + 863818 = 1305184, and
the sum of the proper divisors of () is
1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 + 40787 + 81574 + 163148 + 326296 + 652592 = 1264460.

List of known sociable numbers

The following categorizes all known sociable numbers as of July 2018 by the length of the corresponding aliquot sequence:

Sequence

length

Number of known

sequences

lowest number

in sequence [3]

1

( Perfect number )

516
2

( Amicable number )

1225736919 [4] 220
453981,264,460
5112,496
6521,548,919,483
841,095,447,416
91805,984,760
28114,316

It is conjectured that if n is congruent to 3 modulo 4 then there is no such sequence with length n.

The 5-cycle sequence is: 12496, 14288, 15472, 14536, 14264

The only known 28-cycle is: 14316, 19116, 31704, 47616, 83328, 177792, 295488, 629072, 589786, 294896, 358336, 418904, 366556, 274924, 275444, 243760, 376736, 381028, 285778, 152990, 122410, 97946, 48976, 45946, 22976, 22744, 19916, 17716 (sequence A072890 in the OEIS ). It was discovered by Ben Orlin.

These two sequences provide the only sociable numbers below 1 million (other than the perfect and amicable numbers).

Searching for sociable numbers

The aliquot sequence can be represented as a directed graph, , for a given integer , where denotes the sum of the proper divisors of . [5] Cycles in represent sociable numbers within the interval . Two special cases are loops that represent perfect numbers and cycles of length two that represent amicable pairs.

Conjecture of the sum of sociable number cycles

It is conjectured that as the number of sociable number cycles with length greater than 2 approaches infinity, the proportion of the sums of the sociable number cycles divisible by 10 approaches 1 (sequence A292217 in the OEIS ).

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amicable numbers</span> Pair of integers related by their divisors

Amicable numbers are two different natural numbers related in such a way that the sum of the proper divisors of each is equal to the other number. That is, s(a)=b and s(b)=a, where s(n)=σ(n)-n is equal to the sum of positive divisors of n except n itself (see also divisor function).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Perfect number</span> Integer equal to the sum of its proper divisors

In number theory, a perfect number is a positive integer that is equal to the sum of its positive divisors, excluding the number itself. For instance, 6 has divisors 1, 2 and 3, and 1 + 2 + 3 = 6, so 6 is a perfect number.

2 (two) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 1 and preceding 3. It is the smallest and only even prime number. Because it forms the basis of a duality, it has religious and spiritual significance in many cultures.

10 (ten) is the even natural number following 9 and preceding 11. Ten is the base of the decimal numeral system, by far the most common system of denoting numbers in both spoken and written language. It is the first double-digit number. The reason for the choice of ten is assumed to be that humans have ten fingers (digits).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abundant number</span> Number that is less than the sum of its proper divisors

In number theory, an abundant number or excessive number is a number for which the sum of its proper divisors is greater than the number. The integer 12 is the first abundant number. Its proper divisors are 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 for a total of 16. The amount by which the sum exceeds the number is the abundance. The number 12 has an abundance of 4, for example.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deficient number</span> Number whose aliquot sum is less than itself

In number theory, a deficient number or defective number is a number n for which the sum of divisors of n is less than 2n. Equivalently, it is a number for which the sum of proper divisors is less than n. For example, the proper divisors of 8 are 1, 2, and 4, and their sum is less than 8, so 8 is deficient.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weird number</span>

In number theory, a weird number is a natural number that is abundant but not semiperfect.

In mathematics, a harmonic divisor number, or Ore number, is a positive integer whose divisors have a harmonic mean that is an integer. The first few harmonic divisor numbers are:

In mathematics, an aliquot sequence is a sequence of positive integers in which each term is the sum of the proper divisors of the previous term. If the sequence reaches the number 1, it ends, since the sum of the proper divisors of 1 is 0.

3000 is the natural number following 2999 and preceding 3001. It is the smallest number requiring thirteen letters in English.

8000 is the natural number following 7999 and preceding 8001.

135 is the natural number following 134 and preceding 136.

An untouchable number is a positive integer that cannot be expressed as the sum of all the proper divisors of any positive integer. That is, these numbers are not in the image of the aliquot sum function. Their study goes back at least to Abu Mansur al-Baghdadi, who observed that both 2 and 5 are untouchable.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Znám's problem</span> On divisibility among sets of integers

In number theory, Znám's problem asks which sets of integers have the property that each integer in the set is a proper divisor of the product of the other integers in the set, plus 1. Znám's problem is named after the Slovak mathematician Štefan Znám, who suggested it in 1972, although other mathematicians had considered similar problems around the same time.

In number theory, a Thabit number, Thâbit ibn Qurra number, or 321 number is an integer of the form for a non-negative integer n.

216 is the natural number following 215 and preceding 217. It is a cube, and is often called Plato's number, although it is not certain that this is the number intended by Plato.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Perfect power</span> Positive integer that is an integer power of another positive integer

In mathematics, a perfect power is a natural number that is a product of equal natural factors, or, in other words, an integer that can be expressed as a square or a higher integer power of another integer greater than one. More formally, n is a perfect power if there exist natural numbers m > 1, and k > 1 such that mk = n. In this case, n may be called a perfect kth power. If k = 2 or k = 3, then n is called a perfect square or perfect cube, respectively. Sometimes 0 and 1 are also considered perfect powers.

In number theory, the aliquot sums(n) of a positive integer n is the sum of all proper divisors of n, that is, all divisors of n other than n itself. That is,

Betrothed numbers or quasi-amicable numbers are two positive integers such that the sum of the proper divisors of either number is one more than the value of the other number. In other words, (mn) are a pair of betrothed numbers if s(m) = n + 1 and s(n) = m + 1, where s(n) is the aliquot sum of n: an equivalent condition is that σ(m) = σ(n) = m + n + 1, where σ denotes the sum-of-divisors function.

Paul Poulet (1887–1946) was a self-taught Belgian mathematician who made several important contributions to number theory, including the discovery of sociable numbers in 1918. He is also remembered for calculating the pseudoprimes to base two, first up to 50 million in 1926, then up to 100 million in 1938. These are now often called Poulet numbers in his honour. In 1925, he published forty-three new multiperfect numbers, including the first two known octo-perfect numbers. His achievements are particularly remarkable given that he worked without the aid of modern computers and calculators.

References

  1. P. Poulet, #4865, L'Intermédiaire des Mathématiciens 25 (1918), pp. 100–101. (The full text can be found at ProofWiki: Catalan-Dickson Conjecture.)
  2. Bratley, Paul; Lunnon, Fred; McKay, John (1970). "Amicable numbers and their distribution". Mathematics of Computation. 24 (110): 431–432. doi: 10.1090/S0025-5718-1970-0271005-8 . ISSN   0025-5718.
  3. https://oeis.org/A003416 cross referenced with https://oeis.org/A052470
  4. Sergei Chernykh Amicable pairs list
  5. Rocha, Rodrigo Caetano; Thatte, Bhalchandra (2015), Distributed cycle detection in large-scale sparse graphs, Simpósio Brasileiro de Pesquisa Operacional (SBPO), doi:10.13140/RG.2.1.1233.8640