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”).

a(n) is the least number of terms needed to represent n as a sum of powers of the same prime.
1

%I #18 Jan 03 2021 01:01:52

%S 1,1,1,1,1,2,1,1,1,2,1,2,1,2,3,1,1,2,1,2,3,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,1,2,2,

%T 3,2,1,2,3,2,1,2,1,2,3,2,1,2,1,2,3,3,1,2,3,2,3,2,1,2,1,2,3,1,2,2,1,2,

%U 3,3,1,2,1,2,3,3,4,4,1,2,1,2,1,2,3,2,3,3,1,2,3,4,3,2,3,2,1,2,3,3,1,2,1,2,3,2,1,2,1,2

%N a(n) is the least number of terms needed to represent n as a sum of powers of the same prime.

%C A000961 gives all n such that a(n)=1. A024619 gives all n such that a(n) > 1.

%C If a(n) < m, let p be a prime such that n is a sum of < m powers of p. Then for any positive integers c_1, ... c_m that add up to n, p divides the m-nomial coefficient n!/(c_1!*c_2!*...*c_m!). If a(n) >= m then there is no prime that divides all such coefficients.

%H Alois P. Heinz, <a href="/A187279/b187279.txt">Table of n, a(n) for n = 1..10000</a>

%H Mathematics StackExchange, <a href="https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2962334/the-largest-number-y-in-which-xxyx2/2962386#2962386">The largest number y in which (x!)^(x+y)|(x^2)!</a>

%e a(15) = 3 because 15 can be expressed with powers of 3 as 3^2+3^1+3^1, or with powers of 7 as 7^1+7^1+7^0, or with powers of 13 as 13^1+13^0+13^0, but there is no such expression with fewer than three terms.

%p with(numtheory):

%p b:= proc(n, p) local c, m; m:=n; c:=0;

%p while m>0 do c:= c+irem(m, p, 'm') od; c

%p end:

%p a:= n-> min(seq(b(n, ithprime(i)), i=1..pi(n+1))):

%p seq(a(n), n=1..100); # _Alois P. Heinz_, Nov 06 2013

%t Join[{1}, Table[Min[Plus @@@ IntegerDigits[n, Prime[Range[PrimePi[n]]]]], {n, 2, 110}]] (* _T. D. Noe_, Mar 08 2011 *)

%K nonn,easy

%O 1,6

%A _David Wasserman_, Mar 07 2011