Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 27 2 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
For a fixed prime , the grid has circular spacing . Consequently an arc of length contains at most three points of this grid, including endpoints. The standard Chebyshev estimate for the prime-counting function givesSince , the local-multiplicity large sieve yields the prime-denominator large sieve:By contrast, distinct reduced fractions with denominators at most have circular distance at least : their difference, even after subtraction of an integer, has a nonzero integer numerator over denominator . Applying part (a) alone gives only . The local-multiplicity argument saves a factor of .