Proving Freshman's Dream

Let \(p\) be a prime. Using the binomial theorem, we use expand \((x + y)^p\):

$$ (x+y)^p=\sum^p_{k=0}\binom{p}{k}x^{k}y^{p-k} $$

If we take out the first and last term:

$$\begin{gather} (x+y)^p = x^p + y^p + \sum^{p-1}_{k=1}\binom{p}{k}x^{k}y^{p-k} \\ (x+y)^p - x^p - y^p = \sum^{p-1}_{k=1}\binom{p}{k}x^{k}y^{p-k} \end{gather}$$

There is a factor of \(p\) inside \(\binom{p}{k}\), which means:

$$ \sum^{p-1}_{k=1}\binom{p}{k}x^{k}y^{p-k} ≡ 0 \mod p $$

This would also mean:

$$\begin{gather} (x+y)^p - x^p - y^p ≡ 0 \mod p \\ (x+y)^p ≡ x^p + y^p \mod p \end{gather}$$

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