Proof that an integer is even if its square is even
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Hello everyone. Today we will prove that an integer is even if its square is even. We will use proof by contraposition as proof method.
Theorem: Let \(n \) be an integer. If \(n ^ 2 \) is an even number, then \(n \) is also an even number.
Proof:
The contrapositive of this statement is: Let \(n \) be an integer. If \(n \) is an odd number, then \(n ^ 2 \) is also an odd number.
Let us now prove the contrapositive. Since \(n \) is an odd number, we can write it in the form \(n = 2k + 1 \) where \(k \) is an integer. By squaring this equation we get: \[n ^ 2 = (2k + 1) ^ 2 \] \[n ^ 2 = 4k ^ 2 + 4k + 1 \] \[n ^ 2 = 2 \left(2k ^ 2 + 2k \right) +1 \] Since \(k \) is an integer then \(2k ^ 2 + 2k \) must be an integer due to the closedness of addition, multiplication and addition operations on the set of integers. Denote \(2k ^ 2 + 2k \) by \(l \), then we have that \(n ^ 2 = 2l + 1 \), from which we conclude that \(n ^ 2 \) is an odd number. Since we have proved that the contrapositive of the original statement is correct, it means that the original statement must be correct as well.
\(\blacksquare \)
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