Problem:
Let be an integer. A sequence of distinct points in the plane is called good if no three of them are collinear, the polyline is non-self-intersecting and the triangle is oriented counterclockwise for every .
For every integer determine the greatest possible integer with the following property: there exist distinct points in the plane for which there are distinct permutations such that is good.
(A polyline consists of the segments .)
Solution
Solution:
Fix points on a plane, no three of which are collinear. Let be their convex hull. Let the vertices of be (lying in this order on the boundary of counterclockwise). We denote . Also, let be the set of our fixed points other than , i.e. the points lying in the interior of .
Lemma. Every good polyline contains all but one side of .
Proof. The key observation is that if a segment is not a part of our polyline, then the point appears in the polyline before .
This is clear if is the last vertex of the polyline. Otherwise there is a segment in the polyline, where . Observe that all segments appearing after are located in the halfplane determined by the line which does not contain the point . This is because the polyline always turns left, has no self-intersections, and is a vertex of . This implies that the point must appear in the polyline before .
It is clear that at least one side of does not appear in the polyline. Suppose now that are all segments on the boundary of that do not appear in the polyline (where and ). Using the observation we know that appears after , which is followed by . Since , this means that appears after . Analogously, appears after , and so on, and appears after . Thus appears after , which is absurd. Therefore there is exactly one such that does not belong to the polyline.
Lemma. For every good polyline there is a line which intersects exactly one segment of the polyline.
Proof. Using the previous lemma we know that there is exactly one such that does not belong to the polyline. Thus the polyline is of the form . (It may happen that there are no points before and/or no points after .)
It is quite clear that and can be separated by a line. Again, this follows form the fact that polyline has no self-intersections and always turns left, and the fact that you can separate two non-intersecting convex polygons by a line. It is clear that this separating line must intersect exactly one segment of the polyline .
Lemma. Each good polyline is uniquely determined by an such that is not in the polyline and by the partition such that there is a line intersecting separating from .
Proof. This is easy to see. We use the previous lemma and the fact that the polyline only turns left and has no self-intersections.
Lemma. Consider the lines determined by the points of . Suppose that of them intersect segment . Then there are exactly good polylines not containing .
Proof. We will move a point along the segment , starting from , and count how many good partitions of are there. In the beginning of our journey there are possible partitions of by a line passing through . Every time we cross a line determined by some two points of we get exactly one new partition. Since we cross such lines, the total number of good partitions is equal to . This corresponds to good polylines.
Lemma. There are exactly good polylines.
Proof. For each there are good polylines. Summing up yields
because there are lines determined by points in and each of them intersects two sides of .
Since is decreasing, it follows that the greatest possible number of good polylines is achieved for the smallest possible value of , i.e. for . Therefore the answer is .