Problem:
Let be real numbers. All possible pairwise sums of these 5 numbers are computed. Among these 10 sums, the three smallest are , while the two largest are and . Determine all possible values that can assume.
Problem:
Let be real numbers. All possible pairwise sums of these 5 numbers are computed. Among these 10 sums, the three smallest are , while the two largest are and . Determine all possible values that can assume.
Solution:
It is first of all evident that the two smallest sums, and , are respectively and . In the same way, the two largest sums, and , are respectively and . Thus , ; subtracting the first equation from the second one obtains
In the same way, from , one obtains
and finally, subtracting (1) from (2), one obtains
It remains to understand which sum corresponds to the value . A priori, there are two possibilities: or . If it were , then by (3) one would have , which is absurd. Therefore only the possibility remains. At this point it is easy to compute the values of and . Indeed , from which , and . Once the value of is known, we can also compute , from which . With these values of it indeed turns out that the three smallest sums are and and the two largest sums are and , so the only possible value for is .