A very basic doubt in Modular Arithmetic

Primes, divisors, arithmetic, number properties, ...
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MuthuVeerappanR
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A very basic doubt in Modular Arithmetic

Post by MuthuVeerappanR »

Say I want to find the following:

(145 - 1)/(7 - 1) % 100 = 24

But since 145 is a big number in my problem, I can only get its value mod 100 i.e. 45 (= 145 % 100)

In this case,

(45 - 1)/(7 - 1) = 22 / 3

3 ^ -1 = 67 mod 100

22 * 67 = 1474 = 74 mod 100.

What am I doing wrong and how to correctly get 24? Kindly request any of the fellow solvers to clarify my doubt. Any help is greatly appreciated
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mpiotte
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Re: A very basic doubt in Modular Arithmetic

Post by mpiotte »

Division modulo n must be done by multiplying with the multiplicative inverse. However, your divisor is 6 = 7 - 1 is not coprime with n=100, and thus the inverse does not exist. In this example, you can divide by 3 by multiplying by 3-1 mod 100, but to divide by 2 you must keep track of the value modulo 2*n=200 because 2|n. Modulo 2*n, you can make an ordinary division by 2 to get the value modulo n.
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