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Geometry Difficulty 4.3 AIME Prove it North Macedonia

n4n \ge 4 points in the plane are given such that every three of them are not collinear. Prove that there exists a triangle such that all the points are in its interior, and on each of its sides lies exactly one point of the given points.

Solution

The given points are finitely many in number so therefore there exists a disk which contains them in its interior.
Namely, we are searching for the point which is at a maximal distance from the origin of the coordinate system. If we denote that distance by RR, then the disk centered at the origin with radius 2R2R contains all the given points.
We draw all the possible lines between the nn points in the plane. They are also finitely many in number ((n2)\binom{n}{2}), so we can choose a point AA which doesn't lie on any of those lines and is outside the disk containing the points and the biggest angle under which every segment in the disk is seen is acute. We draw an arbitrary line through AA which doesn't intersect the disk. We rotate that line until it passes through a point from the given nn points and we denote it by A1A_1. On that line lies one of the sides of the triangle. We continue rotating the line until we get a line on which one of the given points lies and we denote it by AnA_n. On that line lies another side of the triangle. Each of the two lines pass only through A1A_1 and AnA_n respectively since the point AA does not lie on any of the (n2)\binom{n}{2} lines.

Let AiA_i denote the point from the given nn points which is at the greatest distance from AA and let dd denote that distance. It may be that there are several points at a greatest distance from AA, but then we pick an arbitrary one. We draw a tangent of the circle centered at AA and radius dd. On that line lies the third side of the triangle.

Figure 1

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