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Legendre's three-square theorem states which numbers can be expressed as the sum of three squares; Jacobi's four-square theorem gives the number of ways that a number can be represented as the sum of four squares. For the number of representations of a positive integer as a sum of squares of k integers, see Sum of squares function.
In number theory, the sum of squares function is an arithmetic function that gives the number of representations for a given positive integer n as the sum of k squares, where representations that differ only in the order of the summands or in the signs of the numbers being squared are counted as different.
In mathematics and statistics, sums of powers occur in a number of contexts: . Sums of squares arise in many contexts. For example, in geometry, the Pythagorean theorem involves the sum of two squares; in number theory, there are Legendre's three-square theorem and Jacobi's four-square theorem; and in statistics, the analysis of variance involves summing the squares of quantities.
Formulas for summing consecutive squares to give a cubic polynomial, whose values are the square pyramidal numbers, are given by Archimedes, who used this sum as a lemma as part of a study of the volume of a cone, [2] and by Fibonacci, as part of a more general solution to the problem of finding formulas for sums of progressions of squares. [3]
Gauss [10] pointed out that the four squares theorem follows easily from the fact that any positive integer that is 1 or 2 mod 4 is a sum of 3 squares, because any positive integer not divisible by 4 can be reduced to this form by subtracting 0 or 1 from it. However, proving the three-square theorem is considerably more difficult than a direct ...
Lagrange's four-square theorem, also known as Bachet's conjecture, states that every nonnegative integer can be represented as a sum of four non-negative integer squares. [1] That is, the squares form an additive basis of order four. = + + + where the four numbers ,,, are integers.
Therefore, the theorem states that it is expressible as the sum of two squares. Indeed, 2450 = 7 2 + 49 2. The prime decomposition of the number 3430 is 2 · 5 · 7 3. This time, the exponent of 7 in the decomposition is 3, an odd number. So 3430 cannot be written as the sum of two squares.
The number of ways to represent n as the sum of four squares is eight times the sum of the divisors of n if n is odd and 24 times the sum of the odd divisors of n if n is even (see divisor function), i.e.