Maths Olympiad Prep

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, 2007

Combinatorics Difficulty 6.8 National olympiad Prove it Vietnam

Given a regular 2007-polygon. Find the smallest positive integer kk satisfying the following property: In every set of kk vertices there are 4 vertices which form a quadrilateral with 3 edges of the given 2007-polygon.

Solution

Denote the vertices of the regular 2007-polygon by A1,A2,,A2007A_1, A_2, \dots, A_{2007}. Note that every quadrilateral has 3 edges of the given polygon if and only if its 4 vertices are consecutive vertices of the polygon.

Denote by AA the set of the vertices except A4kA_{4k} (k=1,2,,501k=1, 2, \dots, 501) and A2007A_{2007}, in fact, A={A1,A2,A3,A5,A6,A7,,A2005,A2006}A = \{A_1, A_2, A_3, A_5, A_6, A_7, \dots, A_{2005}, A_{2006}\}. Let A=1505|A| = 1505 and AA has no 4 consecutive vertices of the given 2007-polygon. Thus, k1506k \ge 1506.

Now, we will prove that every subset BB of 1506 vertices contains 4 consecutive vertices of the given 2007-polygon. Let TT be a subset of arbitrary 1506 vertices of the given 2007-polygon. By deleting 501 vertices not belonging to BB we obtain a decomposition of the set of the vertices of the given 2007-polygon into the subsets B1,B2,,BmB_1, B_2, \dots, B_m with m501m \le 501. By the Dirichlet principle, there is a set BiB_i containing 1506501>3\ge \frac{1506}{501} > 3 consecutive vertices.

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