How statement and proof provenance work
The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.
- Literature-sourced — the exact statement appears in a cited source; only wording and notation differ.
- AI-adapted — a semantically identical restatement of literature-sourced material, modulo indexing, notation, and boundary cases adopted by the library.
- AI-generated — a genuinely novel statement formulated by AI, with no source for the claim itself.
These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.
Division with remainder in : for and there are unique with and
Statement
Let (The integers as equivalence classes of pairs of naturals) with . Then there exist integers and with
and the pair with these two properties is unique.
We say divides , written , when for some ; by the above, for this holds exactly when the remainder is .
Facts & Assumptions
Given: Integers and with , and the embedding , , of The naturals embed in the integers.
is a commutative ring: addition and multiplication are associative and commutative, , , multiplication distributes over addition, and every has an additive inverse ; we write for (The integers form a commutative ring, Arithmetic on the integers).
The order on is total, antisymmetric and transitive, is compatible with addition ( implies ), and positives are closed under multiplication ( and imply ) (The integers form a totally ordered ring, Order on the integers).
is injective, preserves addition, multiplication and order, and its image is exactly the set of nonnegative integers; and (The naturals embed in the integers, Arithmetic on the integers).
Every nonempty subset of has a least element (The well-ordering principle).
On : every is a successor (Every nonzero natural number is a successor); (The natural numbers (von Neumann), Addition is commutative); means for some (Order on the natural numbers); and exactly one of , , holds (Trichotomy of the order on ).
Proof
Sums and products of nonnegative integers are nonnegative: if and then by compatibility with addition, so by transitivity; and if either factor is then , while if both are positive then .
Discreteness: if in then . Indeed is nonnegative, so for some , and because ; hence for some , so in , and applying , which preserves the order, gives .
reflects the order: if then . For otherwise trichotomy on gives , whence because preserves the order, and this together with contradicts antisymmetry.
Write with , which is possible because for some naturals and .
Uniqueness. Suppose with for , and set . Ring arithmetic gives .
From and step 1.2, , so by compatibility with addition.
Put . Then , by ring arithmetic.
If then by step 1.2, so and hence by step 1.1, that is ; but gives , so , contradicting antisymmetry.
If then , and the same computation with the roles of the two pairs interchanged, using , gives , again a contradiction.
The integer is nonnegative: and because both lie in the image of , by step 2.1, and sums and products of nonnegative integers are nonnegative.
Hence by totality, so , and then .
Hence the set is nonempty, since is a nonnegative integer and therefore equals for some .
By well-ordering let be the least element of , choose with , and set . Then and .
Suppose . Then by compatibility with addition, and by ring arithmetic, so for some with . Also , since , so , that is , whence by step 1.3. This contradicts the minimality of .
Therefore fails, and by totality of the order ; with step 5.1 this establishes existence of a pair with and .
Existence is step 7.1 and uniqueness is step 3.2, so for every and every there is exactly one pair of integers with and .
Remarks
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Stated for a positive divisor only. Nothing here needs an absolute value on , and none is available at this point in the reading order. The version for , with , follows once absolute values are in hand and is not needed by anything on this page.
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Why it is proved here. The characterisation of the order of an element, exactly when divides , and the count , are both unprovable without division with remainder (If then iff is an integer multiple of , the powers are distinct, and has exactly elements; if has infinite order then only for ). No earlier page in the library supplies it.
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This is not a theory of divisibility. The relation is defined here for use on this page and its companion; greatest common divisors, primes and unique factorisation are developed on a later page, and that page must record that its general divisibility in a ring restricts on to the relation defined here, rather than introduce a second notion silently.
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A published claim this theorem falsified. A published example on the metric spaces companion page used to record in its Remarks that this library had no divisibility theory at all in which to state or prove Euclid's lemma. That was true when it was written; the present item, which is earlier in the reading order, made it false, and the sentence has since been narrowed to say that the example itself neither establishes nor assumes that lemma. Nothing here depends on that example, and nothing here supplies Euclid's lemma either: what is proved above is division with remainder, and no more.
Depends on
- The integers as equivalence classes of pairs of naturals
- Arithmetic on the integers
- Order on the integers
- The integers form a commutative ring
- The integers form a totally ordered ring
- The naturals embed in the integers
- The well-ordering principle
- The natural numbers $\mathbb{N}$ (von Neumann)
- Order on the natural numbers
- Every nonzero natural number is a successor
- Trichotomy of the order on $\mathbb{N}$
- Addition is commutative
Used by
- Division with remainder for any nonzero divisor: for a ∈ ℤ and b ≠ 0 there are unique q, r ∈ ℤ with a = qb + r and 0 ≤ r < |b| Corollary
- The extended Euclidean algorithm: the same descent produces integers x, y with ax + by = gcd(a,b), so Bézout coefficients are computed and not merely shown to exist Corollary
- 6 ∣ 4 · 9 while 6 ∤ 4 and 6 ∤ 9: dividing a product does not force dividing a factor, and the coprimality hypothesis is what fails Counterexample
- If 1 were admitted as a prime, uniqueness would fail: 6 = 2 · 3 = 1 · 2 · 3 = 1 · 1 · 2 · 3, lists of different lengths that no permutation matches Counterexample
- In the multiplicative monoid H = {1, 4, 7, 10, …} of positive integers one more than a multiple of 3, the element 100 has two genuinely different factorisations into irreducibles, 4 · 25 and 10 · 10 Counterexample
- Divisibility in ℤ: d ∣ a when a = dq for some integer q Definition
- ⟨ a∣ aⁿ⟩≅(ℤ/n,+) for every n≥ 1 Example
- 360 = 2³ · 3² · 5 and 84 = 2² · 3 · 7, with gcd(360,84) = 12 and lcm(360,84) = 2520 read off the exponents Example
- ax + by = c has an integer solution exactly when gcd(a,b) ∣ c: 6x + 15y = 9 is solvable and 6x + 15y = 7 is not Example
- Consecutive Fibonacci numbers are coprime, and for every m ∈ ℕ the Euclidean algorithm on (Fₘ₊₃, Fₘ₊₂) takes exactly m+1 divisions, with quotient 1 in the first m of them and quotient 2 in the last Example
- For n ≥ 1 the congruence classes modulo n form an abelian group (ℤ/n, +) of order n, generated by the class of 1 Example
- gcd(1071, 462) = 21 by the Euclidean algorithm, with the back-substitution giving 21 = 7 · 462 - 3 · 1071 Example
- nℤ is a subgroup of (ℤ, +) for every n ∈ ℤ, and every subgroup of (ℤ, +) has this form Example
- The Klein four-group as the direct product of two groups of order 2 Example
- The trivial action of ℤ/2 on a singleton is transitive but not faithful Example
- FALSE: for every finite list p₀, …, pₙ₋₁ of distinct primes, p₀ ⋯ pₙ₋₁ + 1 is prime False statement
- FALSE: The union of two subgroups is a subgroup False statement
- Every subgroup of (ℤ, +) is ⟨ n ⟩ = nℤ for exactly one natural number n Lemma
- If ord(g) = n then gᵏ = e iff k is an integer multiple of n, the powers g⁰, …, gⁿ⁻¹ are distinct, and ⟨ g ⟩ has exactly n elements; if g has infinite order then gʲ = gᵏ only for j = k Lemma
- Bézout's identity: for integers a, b not both zero, gcd(a,b) is the least positive element of { ax + by : x, y ∈ ℤ }; in particular ax + by = gcd(a,b) has an integer solution Theorem
- Every subgroup of a cyclic group is cyclic; the least positive exponent in a nontrivial subgroup supplies a generator Theorem
- For n≥ 1, every class in ℤ/n has one representative r with 0≤ r<n, so |ℤ/n|=n; while ℤ/0 is in bijection with ℤ Theorem
- The Euclidean algorithm: for a ∈ ℤ and b > 0 the remainder descent from (a,b) terminates, and the last nonzero remainder is gcd(a,b) Theorem
Dependency tree · next 3 levels
Direct dependencies and their dependencies through the next three levels: 47 results over 18 levels. An arrow runs from a result to what uses it, and this result sits at the bottom with a heavier outline. Click the chart to enlarge it.
Sources
- Euclidean division (Wikipedia) (standard reference, not scraped)
- T. Tao, Analysis I, 3rd ed., §4.1 (the integers) (standard reference, not scraped)