login

Year-end appeal: Please make a donation to the OEIS Foundation to support ongoing development and maintenance of the OEIS. We are now in our 61st year, we have over 378,000 sequences, and we’ve reached 11,000 citations (which often say “discovered thanks to the OEIS”).

Minimal number k such that n! can be written as product of k (>= 2) consecutive integers.
1

%I #2 Mar 31 2012 14:12:22

%S 2,2,3,3,3,4,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,20,23,24,25,26,

%T 27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,

%U 50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72

%N Minimal number k such that n! can be written as product of k (>= 2) consecutive integers.

%C Sequence starts at n=2 because 1! cannot be written as product of 2 (or more) consecutive integers.

%C For suitable m >= n, we have n! = m!/(m-a(n))!

%C For n >= 3, we have a(n) <= n-1 because n! = 2*...*n.

%C For n = m! - 1, we have a(n) <= m!-m because n! = (m+1)*(m+2)*...*(m!-1)*m! = (n+1)!/m!.

%C For n>=8, it appears that the preceding two inequalities completely describe a(n), i.e. a(n) = m!-m if n=m!-1 and a(n)=n-1 otherwise.

%e a(2) = 2 because 2! = 1*2. a(3) = 2 because 3! = 2*3. a(4) = 3 because 4! = 2*3*4. a(5) = 3 because 5! = 4*5*6. a(6) = 3 because 6! = 8*9*10. a(7) = 4 because 7! = 7*8*9*10.

%o (PARI) csfac(N, k) = local(d, w=floor(N^(1/k))); while((d=prod(i=1,k,w+i))>N,w=w-1);if(d==N,1,0)

%o csmin(N) = local(k=2); while(csfac(N,k)==0,k=k+1);k

%o \p 200; for(n=2,200, print(csmin(n!)))

%K nonn

%O 2,1

%A _Hagen von Eitzen_, May 21 2009