Problem:
In any cell of an table a number is written such that all the rows are different. Prove that one can remove a column such that the rows in the new table are still different.
Problem:
In any cell of an table a number is written such that all the rows are different. Prove that one can remove a column such that the rows in the new table are still different.
Solution:
Consider a graph with vertices the lines of the table and edges that join two vertices if the respective lines are different exactly in one position. Write on the edges the respective elements that are different.
Assume that the given statement is not true. Then the graph has vertices and edges. It is not difficult to prove by induction on that there is a cycle in the graph. We may suppose that this cycle is .
Starting from , we remove to get , then remove or add to get , etc. When we turn back to , we obtain a second copy of which does not contain (any edge contains no ), a contradiction.