 Jacobi reciprocity law

For coprime positive odd integers $a,b$, the Jacobi symbol satisfies $(a/b)(b/a)=(-1{)}^{(a-1)(b-1)/4}$. It follows by factoring $a$ and $b$ into primes and multiplying the quadratic reciprocity for each prime pair; the parity of the sums of prime half-differences agrees with $(a-1)/2$ and $(b-1)/2$. A Jacobi symbol equal to one does not imply that its numerator is a quadratic residue for a composite denominator.