Euler's totient function
From Conservapedia
The totient function
of a positive integer n is the number of integers k less than n which have no factors in common with n (i.e. such that the greatest common divisor of k and n is 1). For example, the numbers 1, 5, 7, and 11 have no factors in common with 12, so
. The totient function can be computer from a prime factorization of n using the formula
.
Some properties of the totient function
- For a prime number p, all numbers less than p are coprime to it, so
.
- For every n,
. This is because there are only n − 1 numbers less than n.
- The totient may also be bounded below: for n > 6 it satisfies
. \
- A sharper bound is
- How fast does the totient function grow? For large n,
"on average". One way to make this precise is by stating
, while in contrast