The Fibonacci numbers are defined inductively by , and for . Given , determine the smallest size of a set of integers such that for every there exist some such that .
, 2021
Solution
The lower bound is , where is the smallest integer greater than or equal to .
1. Estimation: Let us construct a graph using the elements of as vertices, with edges drawn as follows: for each , find a pair satisfying , and draw an edge between and ; if there is more than one pair satisfying , take only one such pair to draw the edge. At the same time, define the length of the edge to be .
We now prove that contains no cycle. Suppose has a cycle , and without loss of generality assume that the longest edge in this cycle is . Note that the lengths of the other edges in this cycle belong to and are all distinct. But this implies
which is a contradiction! Therefore, has at least edges and contains no cycle, so must have at least vertices, that is, .
2. Construction: Consider , then we have and .