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triangular square pentagonal numbers?

Triangular numbers: n(n + 1)/2

1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36 …

Square numbers: n²

1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36

Pentagonal numbers: n(3 n - 1)/2

1, 5, 12, 22, 35, 51, 70 …

Lots of triangular squares (e.g. 36)

Lots of square pentagonals (e.g.9801, 94109401)

I conjecture there are no triangular square pentagonal numbers. Machine search out to around 10^16 puts a lower bound on such a number (and that took a LONG runtime). Can anyone give me a proof, though? I think this would need some quite deep mathematics and would actually be a significant result, if that's any incentive.

Figurate numbers: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/FigurateNumber.html

Update:

UPDATE: yes, I meant other than the trivial result of unity.

Update 2:

UPDATE 2: gianlino, thanks, last time I checked Mathworld that entry either wasn't their or I missed it. It's a satisfactory answer, and it seems like the conjecture is correct.

3 Answers

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  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    There is a list triangular pentagonals and it increases very fast.

    http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PentagonalTriangularN...

    "1, 210, 40755, 7906276, 1533776805, ... (Sloane's A014979)."

    The induction rule is N_k = 194 N_(k-1) - N_(k-2) + 16 with N_0 = 0 and N_1 = 1.

    Similarly for triangular squares, the induction rule is

    N_k = 34 N_(k-1) - N_(k-2) + 2 with N_0 = 0 and N_1 = 1.

    To show that these 2 sequences don't intersect after 0 or 1 is hard. However according to

    http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PentagonalSquareTrian...

    this has been done.

  • Anonymous
    4 years ago

    Pentagonal Numbers List

  • 1 decade ago

    Yes, there is one triangular, square, pentagonal number--1.

    Of course, that is the trivial result. I know you want a different one; I am looking into it at this time.

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