Given positive integers , first select two different () in the integer set and take the difference . Then arrange the differences in ascending order to form a new sequence, which we call 'derived sequence' and is denoted by . The number of elements in that can be divided by is denoted by . Prove that for any , the corresponding derived sequences and , with regard to and , satisfy the inequality .
Solution
Proof For any integer , if the remainder of divided by is , , then belongs to the residue class modulus , .
Suppose in the set , the number of elements that belong to is (), while in the set , the number of elements that belong to is (), then
It is obvious that for every , , and is a multiple of if and only if belong to the same residue class. As to any two elements in , we have .
Hence, the elements in form multiples of .
Considering all the , we obtain
Similarly,
Hence, to solve the problem, we just need to prove that
From ①, if for every , , then and must be the same group (in spite of the different order), and equality holds in ②. Otherwise, if there exist , such that , then we should just change the two elements for respectively, where , , and . Since
the sum of the left side in ② will decrease after adjustment. Therefore, the minimum value of ② is attained if and only if and are the same group (in spite of the different order), that is, the inequality ② holds.