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Combinatorics Difficulty 8.6 Shortlist Prove it United States

There are 51 senators in a senate. The senate needs to be divided into nn committees so that each senator is on one committee. Each senator hates exactly three other senators. (If senator AA hates senator BB, then senator BB does *not* necessarily hate senator AA.) Find the smallest nn such that it is always possible to arrange the committees so that no senator hates another senator on his or her committee.

Solution

The smallest such number is 77. Assume that there are 77 senators A1,,A7A_1, \dots, A_7 such that each AiA_i hates Ai+1A_{i+1}, Ai+2A_{i+2}, and Ai+3A_{i+3} (where indices are taken modulo 77). In this situation, for any different Ai,AjA_i, A_j, either AiA_i hates AjA_j or vice versa. The senators A1,,A7A_1, \dots, A_7 must be placed on seven different committees. Thus, n7n \ge 7.

In order to show that n7n \le 7, we will prove the following stronger statement by induction on k1k \ge 1: for kk senators, each of whom hates *at most* 33 others, it is possible to arrange the senators into 77 committees so that no senator hates another senator on his or her committee.

For the base case k=1k = 1, note that we can have 77 committees, 66 of which are empty and 11 of which contains the sole senator.

Now assume the claim is true for all km1k \le m-1. Suppose we are given mm senators, each of whom hates at most 33 others. If each of those mm senators is hated by more than 33 others, then the total number of acts of hating must be greater than 3m3m, but this is not possible since each senator hates at most 33 others. Therefore, there must be at least one senator AA who is hated by at most 33 others. By the induction hypothesis, we can split the m1m-1 other senators into 77 committees satisfying the property that no senator hates another senator on the same committee. By the Pigeonhole Principle, one of those committees contains neither a person whom AA hates nor a person who hates AA. We can therefore place AA in that committee. The induction is complete.

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