The impossibility of exactly simplifying the floor quotient below the square root

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Let pp be a prime number and let aa be an integer satisfying 1<a<p1<a<p. Consider the quotient ⌊pa⌋\left\lfloor \frac{p}{a}\right\rfloor for a≤⌊p⌋a\leq\left\lfloor\sqrt{p}\right\rfloor. Impossibility conjecture. It is impossible to find any exact simplification for

⌊pa⌋\left\lfloor \frac{p}{a}\right\rfloor

when a≤⌊p⌋a\leq\left\lfloor\sqrt{p}\right\rfloor. The claim concerns the distribution of first-order focals in the geometric view of the sieve of Eratosthenes; no resolution or supporting result is supplied in the excerpt.

References

Primary source

Alexandru Iosif, “A Geometric View of the Sieve of Eratosthenes”, arXiv:1112.5796 (2026).

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