Generalized Partitions and New Ideas on Number Theory and Smarandache Sequences

Book excerpt: Florentin Smarandache is an incredible source of ideas, only some of which are mathematical in nature. Amarnath Murthy has published a large number of papers in the broad area of Smarandache Notions, which are math problems whose origin can be traced to Smarandache. This book is an edited version of many of those papers, most of which appeared in Smarandache Notions Journal, and more information about SNJ is available at http://www.gallup.unm.edu/~smarandache/ . The topics covered are very broad, although there are two main themes under which most of the material can be classified. A Smarandache Partition Function is an operation where a set or number is split into pieces and together they make up the original object. For example, a Smarandache Repeatable Reciprocal partition of unity is a set of natural numbers where the sum of the reciprocals is one. The first chapter of the book deals with various types of partitions and their properties and partitions also appear in some of the later sections.The second main theme is a set of sequences defined using various properties. For example, the Smarandache n2n sequence is formed by concatenating a natural number and its double in that order. Once a sequence is defined, then some properties of the sequence are examined. A common exploration is to ask how many primes are in the sequence or a slight modification of the sequence. The final chapter is a collection of problems that did not seem to be a precise fit in either of the previous two categories. For example, for any number d, is it possible to find a perfect square that has digit sum d? While many results are proven, a large number of problems are left open, leaving a great deal of room for further exploration.