By: Rich Zwelling (Apex GMAT Instructor)
Date: 30th March 2021
As I said in my previous post, GMAT Prime Numbers are my favorite topic. This is because not only are they inherently interesting mathematically but they show up in unexpected circumstances on GMAT problems, even when the term “prime” is not explicitly mentioned.
But before we get to that, I thought it would help to review a basic definition:
If you’ve gone through school, you’ve likely heard the definition of a prime as “any number that can be divided only by 1 and itself.” Or put differently, “any number that has only 1 and itself as factors.” For example, 3 is a prime number, because 1 and 3 are the only numbers that are factors of 3.
However, there is something slightly problematic here. I always then ask my students: “Okay, well then, is 1 prime? 1 is divisible by only 1 and itself.” Many people are under the misconception that 1 is a prime number, but in truth 1 is not prime.
There is a better way to think about prime number definitionally:
*A prime number is any number that has EXACTLY TWO FACTORS*
By that definition, 1 is not prime, as it has only one factor.
But then, what is the smallest prime number? Prime numbers are also by definition always positive, so we need not worry about negative numbers. It’s tempting to then consider 3, but don’t overlook 2.
Even though 2 is even, it has exactly two factors, namely 1 and 2, and it is therefore prime. It is also the only even prime number. Take a moment to think critically about why that is before reading the next paragraph…
Any other even number must have more than two factors, because apart from 1 and the number itself, 2 must also be a factor. For example, the number 4 will have 1 and 4 as factors, of course, but it will also have 2, since it is even. No even number besides 2, therefore, will have exactly two factors.
Another way to read this, then, is that every prime number other than 2 is odd.
You can see already how prime numbers feed into other number properties so readily, and we’ll talk much more about that going forward. But another question people often ask is about memorization: do I have to memorize a certain number of prime values?
It’s good to know up to a certain value. but unnecessary to go beyond that into conspicuously larger numbers, because the GMAT as a test is less interested in your ability to memorize large and weird primes and more interested in your reasoning skills and your ability to draw conclusions about novel problems on the fly. If you know the following, you should be set (with some optional values thrown in at the end):
2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, (41, 43)
Thankfully, you’ll notice the list is actually pretty manageable.
(And an interesting note that many people forget that 27 is actually not prime. But don’t beat yourself up if this happens to you: Terence Tao, one of the world’s leading mathematicians and an expert on prime numbers, actually slipped briefly on national television once and said 27 was prime before catching himself. And he’s one of the best in the world. So even the best of the best make these mistakes.)
Now, here’s an Official Guide problem that takes the basics of Prime Numbers and forces you to do a little reasoning. As usual, give it shot before reading the explanation:
The product of all the prime numbers less than 20 is closest to which of the following powers of 10 ?
A) 109
B) 108
C) 107
D) 106
E) 105
Explanation
For this one, you have a little hint going in, as we’ve provided you with the necessary list of primes you’ll use to find the product.
And the language given (“closest to”) is a huge hint that you can estimate:
2*3*5*7*11*13*17*19 ~= ??
Since powers of 10 are involved, let’s try to group the numbers to get 10s as much as possible. The following is just one of many ways you could do this, but the universal easiest place to start is the 2 and the 5, so let’s multiply those. We’ll mark numbers we’ve accounted for in red:
(2*5)*3*7*11*13*17*19 ~= ??
10*3*7*11*13*17*19 ~= ??
Next, we can look at the 19 and label it as roughly 20, or 2*10:
10*3*7*11*13*17*19 ~= ??
10*3*7*11*13*17*20 ~= ??
10*3*7*11*13*17*2*10 ~= ??
We could also take the 11 and estimate it as another 10:
10*3*7*11*13*17*2*10 ~= ??
10*3*7*10*13*17*2*10 ~= ??
At this point, we should be able to eyeball this. Remember, it’s estimation. We may not know 17*3 and 13*7 offhand. But we know that they’re both around or less than 100 or 102. And a look at the answer choices lets us know that each answer is a factor of 10 apart, so the range is huge. (In other words, estimation error is not likely to play a factor.)
So it’s not unreasonable in the context of this problem to label those remaining products as two values of 102:
10*3*7*10*13*17*2*10 ~= ??
10*(102)*10*(102)*2*10 ~= ??
And at this point, the 2 is negligible, since that won’t be enough to raise the entire number to a higher power of 10. What do we have left?
101*(102)*101*(102)*101 ~= 107
The correct answer is C.
Next time, we’ll get into Prime Factorizations, which you can do with any positive integer.
Find other GMAT Number Theory topics here:
Odds and Ends (…or Evens)
Consecutive Integers (plus more on Odds and Evens)
Consecutive Integers and Data Sufficiency (Avoiding Algebra)
GMAT Prime Factorization (Anatomy of a Problem)
A Primer on Primes