I have found these articles, where it's already described:
https://codeforces.me/blog/entry/72527
https://codeforces.me/blog/entry/46620
They are both very good, but I want to write a more concise blog about the modular inverse specifically, as it is needed in many problems that don't even belong to number theory.
The Problem
There are two integer numbers A
and B
. Suppose you know that A
is divisible by B
. But they are very big, so you only know their remainders modulo some prime number M
: A % M
and B % M
. You want to know the remainder of their quotient – (A / B) % M
. But (A % M)
may be not divisible by (B % M)
. What to do?
Such question is very common in combinatorical problems, for example when counting binomial coefficients, where you need to divide n!
by k!
and (n - k)!
.
The solution
The short answer is you need to calculate B
to the power of M - 2
modulo M
(using binary exponentiation). The resulting number is called the modular inverse of B
. Now you can multiply A
by it to effectively divide it by B
.
Note: this only works if B % M
is not 0 and M
is prime.
#include <bits/stdc++.h>
using namespace std;
#define int int64_t
const int mod = 998244353;
int bin_exp(int a, int b) {
if (b == 0) {
return 1;
}
if (b % 2) {
return bin_exp(a, b - 1) * a % mod;
}
int res = bin_exp(a, b / 2);
return res * res % mod;
}
int inv(int a) {
return bin_exp(a, mod - 2);
}
int32_t main() {
ios_base::sync_with_stdio(false);
cin.tie(0); cout.tie(0);
int a, b;
cin >> a >> b;
cout << a * inv(b) % mod << '\n';
}
The Proof
This is a well-known formula that relies on Fermat's little theorem and the fact that every non-zero element of the ring of remainders modulo prime number has exactly one multiplicative inverse. If you want to know more, you can read the aforementioned articles.