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Geometry Difficulty 8.1 Shortlist Prove it Hong Kong

a. Given five points on a plane such that no three of the points are collinear, show that among the triangles which are drawn using any three of these five points as vertices, at least three of the triangles formed are not acute-angled triangles. (An acute-angled triangle is one in which all the three interior angles are acute angles.)

b. Given any 100 points on a plane such that no three of the points are collinear, show that among the triangles which are drawn using any three of these 100 points as vertices, at least 30% of the triangles are not acute-angled triangles.

Solution

(a) We first show that there must be a non-acute triangle among any 4 points. Consider the convex hull of AA, BB, CC, DD.

* If the convex hull is a quadrilateral ABCDABCD, then since
ABC+BCD+CDA+DAB=360, \angle ABC + \angle BCD + \angle CDA + \angle DAB = 360^\circ,
one of these angles is at least 9090^\circ. This gives rise to a non-acute triangle.

* If the convex hull is a triangle, say ABC\triangle ABC, then since
ADB+BDC+CDA=360, \angle ADB + \angle BDC + \angle CDA = 360^\circ,
one of these angles is obtuse.

Figure 1
Figure 2

Now, suppose on the contrary that at most 2 triangles are non-acute. Note that each triangle belongs to exactly 2 quadrilaterals, and there are (54)=5\binom{5}{4} = 5 quadrilaterals in total. Therefore, there must be a quadrilateral which does not consist of any non-acute triangles, contradicting the above observation. Therefore, there are at least 3 non-acute triangles.

(b) There are (1005)\binom{100}{5} groups of 5 points formed from the 100 points. By part (a), there are at least 3 non-acute triangles in each group. Since each triangle belongs to (972)\binom{97}{2} groups of 5 points, there are at least
3(1005)÷(972) 3 \binom{100}{5} \div \binom{97}{2}
non-acute triangles. As there are (1003)\binom{100}{3} triangles in total, at least
3(1005)÷(972)÷(1003)=310=30% 3 \binom{100}{5} \div \binom{97}{2} \div \binom{100}{3} = \frac{3}{10} = 30\%
of the triangles are non-acute.

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