The observation of a coincidence a bit of mathematical serendipity can often be helpful in stretching the imagination of our students. When this happens, the fun of discovery often spurs the searcher on to new questions and new finds. Here we take one such coincidence and follow it a bit later suggesting further directions of inquiry.
Some time ago, Lewis Simon, a senior citizen volunteering in the public schools of Long Beach, California, confronted me with the interesting product 48 × 42, interesting because reversing the digits does not change the answer:
48 × 42 = 84 × 24 = 2016
Are there other two-digit numbers (each with the same first digit) that enjoy the same property? This question leads us to seek integer solutions to the equation
(1)
= , which reduces to
(2)
If we ignore the trivial case where , we find, by assigning values to and that make integral, the following four instances of mirror multiplication:
24 × 21 = 42 × 12
39 × 31 = 93 × 13
48 × 42 = 84 × 24
64 × 69 = 46 × 96
There are numerous opportunities for an extension of these results. What, for example, happens if we drop the condition that each of the numbers must have the same first or last digit? We will do this by considering the equation
(3)
= , We might, for example, have explored instead
= , where and are limited to values that yield two digits. The interested student might carry this through and compare the results with those obtained using (3).
DEFINITION. When relationship (3) holds. We call a mirror multiplication and abbreviate it M M. We refer to each of the two terms in an M M as mirror multipliers.
Equation (3). when reduced, leads immediately the relation
(4) ,
and if we reverse the steps, leads to (3). Hence, (4) is a necessary and sufficient condition for a pair of two-digit numbers to be mirror multipliers. For example, if =8 and
=3, then =24. Then we can have =6 and =4, and it follows that
86 × 34 = 68 × 43.
We need some systematic way of finding all pairs of two-digit mirror multipliers, for trial and error is too tedious with four letters. In order to simplify the search, as well as to gain some insight into the process, we make some observations and list them as theorems for ease of reference.