Saturday, September 19th, 2020
The concept of ‘divide and conquer’, derived from the Latin phrase ‘Divide et impera’, was put into use effectively by everyone from Caesar to Napoleon to The British in India. Even Gaddafi tried using the same but as current events show us – he wasn’t very effective. Dividing rather divisibility rules to be specific can come in really handy at times in solving problems based on Number Systems.
The standard rules which nearly all of us are very comfortable with are the ones for 2n and 5n. For these all that one needs to do is look at the last ‘n’ digits of the number. If the last ‘n’ digits of a number are divisible by 2n or 5n, then the number is divisible by 2n or 5n and vice versa. For details about other numbers, I suggest that you read on.
 For checking divisibility by ‘p’, which is of the format of 10n – 1, sum of blocks of size ‘n’ needs to be checked (Blocks should be considered from the least significant digit ie the right side). If the sum is divisible by p, then the number is divisible by p.
Eg 1.1 Check if a number (N = abcdefgh) is divisible by 9
Eg 1.2 Check if a number (N = abcdefgh) is divisible by 99
Eg 1.3 Check if a number (N = abcdefgh) is divisible by 999
 For checking divisibility by ‘p’, which is of the format of 10n + 1, alternating sum of blocks of size ‘n’ needs to be checked (Blocks should be considered from the least significant digit ie the right side). If the alternating sum is divisible by p, then the number is divisible by p.
(Alternating Sum: Sum of a given set of numbers with alternating + and – signs. Since we are using it to just check the divisibility, the order in which + and – signs are used is of no importance.)
Eg 1.1 Check if a number (N = abcdefgh) is divisible by 11
Eg 1.2 Check if a number (N = abcdefgh) is divisible by 101
Eg 1.3 Check if a number (N = abcdefgh) is divisible by 1001
Osculator / seed number method
For checking divisibility by ‘p’,
Step 1: Figure out an equation such that
If we have this equation, the osculator / seed number for ‘p’ will be . (-m in case of 10m+1 and +m in case of 10m – 1)
Step 2: Remove the last digit and multiply it with the seed number.
Step 3: Add the product with the number that is left after removing the last digit.
Step 4: Repeat Steps 2 and 3 till you get to a number which you can easily check that whether or not it is divisible by p.
Eg: Check whether 131537 is divisible by 19 or not.
I hope that these divisibility rules will enable you to divide and conquer few of the Number Systems problems that you encounter during your preparation.
Permutation and Combination – Fundamental Principle of Counting
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Set Theory- Maximum and Minimum Values
How to solve questions based on At least n in Set Theory for CAT Exam?
Sequence and Series Problems and Concepts for CAT Exam Preparation
Basic Probability Concepts for CAT Preparation
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