CombinatoricsDifficulty 6.4National OlympiadProve itCzech-Polish-Slovak Mathematical Match
Given an integer n≥16, consider the set G={(x,y):x,y∈{1,2,…,n}} consisting of n2 points in the plane. Let A be any subset of G containing at least 4nn points. Prove that there are at least n2 convex quadrangles with all their vertices in A such that their diagonals intersect in one common point.
Solution
Let ∣A∣=m≥4nn and let S be the set of all segments with endpoints in A. Clearly, ∣S∣=(2m). The coordinates of every midpoint of a segment from S are integer multiples of 1/2. In the convex hull of G there are less than 4n2 such points so there exists a point B which is a midpoint of at least (m/2)/(4n2) segments from S. Let P be the set of all segments from S with their midpoints in B. Then ∣P∣≥4n2(2m)=8n2m(m−1)≥8n24nn(4nn−1)=8n216n3−4nn=2n−2n1>2n−1. and ∣P∣≥2n.
Let us divide P into disjoint families of segments which lay on the same line. Suppose that the number of such families is k and in the i-th family we have ai segments, for i=1,…,k. Every segment from ai segments of one family has its endpoints in G and they have a common midpoint, so ai≤n/2. Moreover every two segments from P 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 P we have 1≤i<j≤k∑aiaj=21(i=1∑kai)2−i=1∑kai2≥21(i=1∑kai)2−i=1∑kai⋅2n=21(∣P∣2−∣P∣⋅2n)=21∣P∣(∣P∣−2n)≥n(2n−2n)=23n2>n2. Thus we have more than n2 convex quadrangles (parallelograms) satisfying the given condition.
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