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9-th Czech-Slovak-Polish Match

Combinatorics Difficulty 6.4 National Olympiad Prove it Czech-Polish-Slovak Mathematical Match

Given an integer n≥16n \ge 16, consider the set
G={(x,y):x,y∈{1,2,…,n}} G = \{(x, y) : x, y \in \{1, 2, \dots, n\}\}
consisting of n2n^2 points in the plane. Let AA be any subset of GG containing at least 4nn4n\sqrt{n} points. Prove that there are at least n2n^2 convex quadrangles with all their vertices in AA such that their diagonals intersect in one common point.

Solution

Let ∣A∣=m≥4nn|A| = m \ge 4n\sqrt{n} and let SS be the set of all segments with endpoints in AA. Clearly, ∣S∣=(m2)|S| = \binom{m}{2}. The coordinates of every midpoint of a segment from SS are integer multiples of 1/21/2. In the convex hull of GG there are less than 4n24n^2 such points so there exists a point BB which is a midpoint of at least (m/2)/(4n2)(m/2)/(4n^2) segments from SS. Let PP be the set of all segments from SS with their midpoints in BB. Then
∣P∣≥(m2)4n2=m(m−1)8n2≥4nn(4nn−1)8n2=16n3−4nn8n2=2n−12n>2n−1. |P| \ge \frac{\binom{m}{2}}{4n^2} = \frac{m(m-1)}{8n^2} \ge \frac{4n\sqrt{n}(4n\sqrt{n}-1)}{8n^2} = \frac{16n^3 - 4n\sqrt{n}}{8n^2} = 2n - \frac{1}{2\sqrt{n}} > 2n-1.
and ∣P∣≥2n|P| \ge 2n.

Let us divide PP into disjoint families of segments which lay on the same line. Suppose that the number of such families is kk and in the ii-th family we have aia_i segments, for i=1,…,ki = 1, \dots, k. Every segment from aia_i segments of one family has its endpoints in GG and they have a common midpoint, so ai≤n/2a_i \le n/2. Moreover every two segments from PP are the diagonals of a parallelogram iff they do not lay on the same line. Therefore for the number of different parallelograms with diagonals belonging to PP we have
∑1≤i<j≤kaiaj=12((∑i=1kai)2−∑i=1kai2)≥12((∑i=1kai)2−∑i=1kai⋅n2)=12(∣P∣2−∣P∣⋅n2)=12∣P∣(∣P∣−n2)≥n(2n−n2)=32n2>n2. \sum_{1 \le i < j \le k} a_i a_j = \frac{1}{2} \left( \left( \sum_{i=1}^{k} a_i \right)^2 - \sum_{i=1}^{k} a_i^2 \right) \ge \frac{1}{2} \left( \left( \sum_{i=1}^{k} a_i \right)^2 - \sum_{i=1}^{k} a_i \cdot \frac{n}{2} \right) = \frac{1}{2} \left( |P|^2 - |P| \cdot \frac{n}{2} \right) = \frac{1}{2} |P| \left( |P| - \frac{n}{2} \right) \ge n \left( 2n - \frac{n}{2} \right) = \frac{3}{2} n^2 > n^2.
Thus we have more than n2n^2 convex quadrangles (parallelograms) satisfying the given condition.

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