Journal of Integer Sequences, Vol. 12 (2009), Article 09.8.1

A Curious Bijection on Natural Numbers


B. J. Venkatachala
MO Cell, HBCSE(TIFR)
Department of Mathematics
Indian Institute of Science
Bangalore-560012
India

Abstract:

We give a greedy algorithm for describing an enumeration of the set of all natural numbers such that the sum of the first n terms of the sequence is divisible by n for each natural number n. We show that this leads to a bijection f of the set of all natural numbers onto itself that has some nice properties. We also show that the average function of the first n terms of the sequence satisfies a functional equation which completely describes all the properties of the function f. In particular, f turns out to be an involution on the set of all natural numbers.


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(Concerned with sequence A019444.)

Received June 16 2009; revised version received November 11 2009. Published in Journal of Integer Sequences, November 16 2009.


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