Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /140 of 196

Combinatorics Difficulty 5.7 AIME, harder Prove it Soviet Union

Problem:
Given three arbitrary infinite sequences of natural numbers, prove that we can find unequal natural numbers mm, nn such that for each sequence the mmth member is not less than the nnth member.

Solution

Solution:
Given any infinite sequence of natural numbers, we can find a non-decreasing subsequence (proof below).

So suppose the three sequences are aa, bb, and cc. Take a non-decreasing subsequence of aia_i. Suppose it is ai1a_{i_1}, ai2a_{i_2}, ai3a_{i_3}, ... . Now consider the infinite sequence bi1b_{i_1}, bi2b_{i_2}, ... . It must have a non-decreasing subsequence. Suppose it is bj1b_{j_1}, bj2b_{j_2}, ... . Now consider the infinite sequence cj1c_{j_1}, cj2c_{j_2}, ... . It must have a non-decreasing subsequence ck1c_{k_1}, ck2c_{k_2}, ... . Each of the three subsequences ak1a_{k_1}, ak2a_{k_2}, ... , bk1b_{k_1}, bk2b_{k_2}, ... , ck1c_{k_1}, ck2c_{k_2}, ... is non-decreasing. So we may take, for example, m=k2m = k_2 and n=k1n = k_1.

[Proof that any infinite sequence of natural numbers has a non-decreasing subsequence: if the original sequence is unbounded, then we can take a strictly increasing subsequence. If not, then since there are only finitely many possible numbers not exceeding the bound, at least one of them must occur infinitely often.]

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.