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Your friend said that there are exactly 12 different pairs of numbers with a difference of 12 and that he had found them all. How would you respond to him?

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Answer:

See explanation

Explanation:

I wouls say to my friend that he is incorrect, because there are infinitely many pairs of numbers with a difference of 12.

For example,


13-1=12\\ 14-2=12\\15-3=12\\16-4=12\\...

Here we can increase the first and the second number by 1 and get their difference equal to 12 after this operation.

The same is possible with negative numbers:


-1-(-13)=12\\ -2-(-14)=12\\-3-(-15)=12\\ ...

Actuall, we can do this with decimals too


12.5-0.5=12\\ \\13.4-1.4=12\\ \\12(1)/(8)-(1)/(8)=12\\...

Such pairs of numbers are infinitely many (because there are infinitely many real numbers) and we cannot find all possible numbers with difference of 12.

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