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Geometry Difficulty 6.2 National olympiad Prove it Croatia

One of the numbers 00 or 11 is assigned to every vertex of a regular polygon. Rudi divides the polygon to triangles by drawing some diagonals that intersect each other only in the vertices of the polygon, and then inside each triangle writes the sum of the numbers assigned to its vertices. Prove that Rudi can choose the diagonals to draw in such a way that the minimal and the maximal number inside the triangles differ by at most 11. (Estonia 2010)

Solution

Note that if the numbers assigned to all vertices are equal, then Rudi can choose any diagonals.
Hence we assume there is at least one 00-vertex and at least one 11-vertex. (We shall call the vertices "0-vertex" or "1-vertex", according to the number assigned to it.)
By the strong induction on the number nn of vertices we will prove that Rudi can choose diagonals in such a way that the number written in each triangle is either 11 or 22.
If n=3n = 3, the statement is obviously true.
The case n=4n = 4 is also easy. If there is a diagonal connecting a 00-vertex with a 11-vertex, then Rudi draws that diagonal. Otherwise he draws any diagonal and obtains equal numbers (11 or 22) in both triangles.
Assume that the statement is true for all polygons with less than nn vertices (n5n \ge 5), such that there are both a 00-vertex and a 11-vertex.
In a polygon with nn vertices, we can choose two adjacent vertices AA and BB so that AA is a 00-vertex and BB a 11-vertex. Let PP be a vertex which is not adjacent to AA or BB (such vertex exists since n5n \ge 5). If PP is a 00-vertex, Rudi connects it to BB, otherwise to AA. In this way Rudi has divided the polygon into two polygons with smaller number of vertices and each of them has both a 00-vertex and a 11-vertex. By the inductive hypothesis each of the two smaller polygons can be divided into triangles such that the numbers 11 and 22 are written in all of them, so the same holds for the polygon with nn vertices. This finishes the inductive step.

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