Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 6.0 National Olympiad Prove it United States

Problem:

Let SS be the set of all points in the plane whose coordinates are positive integers less than or equal to 100100 (so SS has 1002100^{2} elements), and let L\mathcal{L} be the set of all lines \ell such that \ell passes through at least two points in SS. Find, with proof, the largest integer N2N \geq 2 for which it is possible to choose NN distinct lines in L\mathcal{L} such that every two of the chosen lines are parallel.

Solution

Solution:

Let the lines all have slope pq\frac{p}{q} where pp and qq are relatively prime. Without loss of generality, let this slope be positive. Consider the set of points that consists of the point of SS with the smallest coordinates on each individual line in the set LL. Consider a point (x,y)(x, y) in this, because there is no other point in SS on this line with smaller coordinates, either xqx \leq q or ypy \leq p. Additionally, since each line passes through at least two points in SS, we need x+q100x+q \leq 100 and y+p100y+p \leq 100.

The shape of this set of points will then be either a rectangle from (1,1)(1,1) to (100q,100p)(100-q, 100-p) with the rectangle from (q+1,p+1)(q+1, p+1) to (100q,100p)(100-q, 100-p) removed, or if 100q<q+1100-q<q+1 or 100p<p+1100-p<p+1, just the initial rectangle. This leads us to two formulas for the number of lines,
N={(100p)(100q)(1002p)(1002q)p,q<50(100p)(100q) otherwise  N= \begin{cases}(100-p)(100-q)-(100-2 p)(100-2 q) & p, q<50 \\ (100-p)(100-q) & \text{ otherwise }\end{cases}
In the first case, we need to minimize the quantity
(100p)(100q)(1002p)(1002q)=100(p+q)3pq=1000033(q1003)(p1003) \begin{aligned} (100-p)(100-q)-(100-2 p)(100-2 q) & =100(p+q)-3 p q \\ & =\frac{10000}{3}-3\left(q-\frac{100}{3}\right)\left(p-\frac{100}{3}\right) \end{aligned}
if one of p,qp, q is above 100/3100 / 3 and the other is below it, we would want to maximize how far these two are from 100/3100 / 3. The case (p,q)=(49,1)(p, q)=(49,1) will be the optimal case since all other combinations will have p,qp, q's closer to 100/3100 / 3, this gives us 48534853 cases.

In the second case, we need to minimize pp and qq while keeping at least one above 5050 and them relatively prime. From here we need only check (p,q)=(50,1)(p, q)=(50,1) since for all other cases, we can reduce either pp or qq to increase the count. This case gives a maximum of 49504950.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.