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Geometry Difficulty 8.6 Shortlist Prove it IMO

In the plane, 2013 red points and 2014 blue points are marked so that no three of the marked points are collinear. One needs to draw kk lines not passing through the marked points and dividing the plane into several regions. The goal is to do it in such a way that no region contains points of both colors.
Find the minimal value of kk such that the goal is attainable for every possible configuration of 4027 points.

Solutions — 2

Solution 1

Answer. k=2013k=2013.

Firstly, let us present an example showing that k2013k \geqslant 2013. Mark 2013 red and 2013 blue points on some circle alternately, and mark one more blue point somewhere in the plane. The circle is thus split into 4026 arcs, each arc having endpoints of different colors. Thus, if the goal is reached, then each arc should intersect some of the drawn lines. Since any line contains at most two points of the circle, one needs at least 4026/2=20134026 / 2=2013 lines.

It remains to prove that one can reach the goal using 2013 lines. First of all, let us mention that for every two points AA and BB having the same color, one can draw two lines separating these points from all other ones. Namely, it suffices to take two lines parallel to ABA B and lying on different sides of ABA B sufficiently close to it: the only two points between these lines will be AA and BB.

Now, let PP be the convex hull of all marked points. Two cases are possible.

Case 1. Assume that PP has a red vertex AA. Then one may draw a line separating AA from all the other points, pair up the other 2012 red points into 1006 pairs, and separate each pair from the other points by two lines. Thus, 2013 lines will be used.

Case 2. Assume now that all the vertices of PP are blue. Consider any two consecutive vertices of PP, say AA and BB. One may separate these two points from the others by a line parallel to ABA B. Then, as in the previous case, one pairs up all the other 2012 blue points into 1006 pairs, and separates each pair from the other points by two lines. Again, 2013 lines will be used.

Solution 2

If nn points in the plane, no three of which are collinear, are colored in red and blue arbitrarily, then it suffices to draw n/2\lfloor n / 2\rfloor lines to reach the goal.

We proceed by induction on nn. If n2n \leqslant 2 then the statement is obvious. Now assume that n3n \geqslant 3, and consider a line \ell containing two marked points AA and BB such that all the other marked points are on one side of \ell; for instance, any line containing a side of the convex hull works.

Remove for a moment the points AA and BB. By the induction hypothesis, for the remaining configuration it suffices to draw n/21\lfloor n / 2\rfloor-1 lines to reach the goal. Now return the points AA and BB back. Three cases are possible.

Case 1. If AA and BB have the same color, then one may draw a line parallel to \ell and separating AA and BB from the other points. Obviously, the obtained configuration of n/2\lfloor n / 2\rfloor lines works.

Case 2. If AA and BB have different colors, but they are separated by some drawn line, then again the same line parallel to \ell works.

Case 3. Finally, assume that AA and BB have different colors and lie in one of the regions defined by the drawn lines. By the induction assumption, this region contains no other points of one of the colors - without loss of generality, the only blue point it contains is AA. Then it suffices to draw a line separating AA from all other points.

Thus the step of the induction is proved.

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