Maths Olympiad Prep

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, 2018

Combinatorics Difficulty 7.7 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it Saudi Arabia

A non-empty subset of {1,2,,n}\{1,2, \ldots, n\} is called arabic if arithmetic mean of its elements is an integer. Show that the number of arabic subsets of {1,2,,n}\{1,2, \ldots, n\} has the same parity as nn.

Solution

The solution is based on a simple fact, that if you add the arithmetic mean of the sequence to the sequence, then the arithmetic mean of the sequence will not change, since
a1+a2++ann=a1+a2++an+a1+a2++annn+1 \frac{a_{1}+a_{2}+\cdots+a_{n}}{n}=\frac{a_{1}+a_{2}+\cdots+a_{n}+\frac{a_{1}+a_{2}+\cdots+a_{n}}{n}}{n+1}
Denote by μ(A)\mu(A) the arithmetic mean of the elements of AA. Denote
P={A{1,2,,n}:μ(A)Z+,μ(A)A} P=\left\{A \subset\{1,2, \ldots, n\} \quad: \quad \mu(A) \in \mathbb{Z}_{+}, \mu(A) \in A\right\}
and
Q={A{1,2,,n}:μ(A)Z+,μ(A)A}. Q=\left\{A \subset\{1,2, \ldots, n\} \quad: \quad \mu(A) \in \mathbb{Z}_{+}, \mu(A) \notin A\right\} .
We need to prove that P+Q|P|+|Q| is even. For that we will prove P=Q|P|=|Q|. Really, take any set from PP and remove its arithmetic mean. We will get an element from QQ. Take any set from QQ and add its arithmetic mean. We will get an element from PP. Since arithmetic mean of the set is defined uniquely, so we have bijection between PP and QQ.

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