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Combinatorics Difficulty 7.7 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it Romania

Let nn be a positive integer, and let S1,,SnS_1, \dots, S_n be a collection of finite non-empty sets such that
1i<jnSiSjSiSj<1. \sum_{1 \le i < j \le n} \frac{|S_i \cap S_j|}{|S_i| |S_j|} < 1.

Prove that there exist pairwise distinct elements x1,,xnx_1, \dots, x_n such that xix_i is a member of SiS_i for each index ii.

Solution

A *choice function* or simply a *choice* for the collection S1,,SnS_1, \dots, S_n is a function cc from the first nn positive integers to the union S1SnS_1 \cup \dots \cup S_n such that c(i)c(i) is a member of SiS_i for each ii. We must show that an injective choice is always possible under the conditions in the statement. To this end, we prove that the number of non-injective choices is strictly less than S1Sn|S_1| \cdots |S_n|, the total number of possible choices.

Indeed, a non-injective choice function sends some ii and some jij \neq i to the same element necessarily lying in SiSjS_i \cap S_j, so the number of non-injective choices does not exceed
1i<jnSiSj  S1S^iS^jSn=S1Sn1i<jnSiSjSiSj<S1Sn; \sum_{1 \le i < j \le n} |S_i \cap S_j| \; |S_1| \cdots |\hat{S}_i| \cdots |\hat{S}_j| \cdots |S_n| = |S_1| \cdots |S_n| \sum_{1 \le i < j \le n} \frac{|S_i \cap S_j|}{|S_i| |S_j|} < |S_1| \cdots |S_n|;
where the hat over SiS_i and SjS_j means that these sets are to be omitted. The conclusion follows.

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