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Combinatorics Difficulty 7.8 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it Croatia

Andrija and Boris have 2014 cards labelled with numbers from 1 to 2014. Andrija has all the cards with even, and Boris all the cards with odd numbers. Andrija arranged his cards in a circle clockwise, from 2 to 2014 respectively, and put them upside down, so that the numbers on the cards can not be seen. Boris knows that the cards are arranged in that order and that direction, but does not know the position of the card with number 2. After that, Boris puts one of his cards on top of each Andrija's card thus forming 1007 pairs of cards.

For each pair they compare the numbers on the cards and give one point to the player whose card has the larger number.
Find the largest possible NN such that Boris can be certain he will gain at least NN points. (Ukraine 2010)

Solution

The largest number of points for which Boris can be certain to gain is 503503.

We claim that if Boris arranges his cards clockwise, but in the reverse order, from 20132013 to 11, then regardless of Andrija's arrangement of cards, Boris will gain 503503 points.

Figure 1

For such Boris' arrangement, let us consider some Andrija's arrangement. Under Boris' card 20132013 is Andrija's card 2k2k, for some kNk \in \mathbb{N}. Let us assume that 2k20142k \neq 2014, the case in which 2k=20142k = 2014 follows directly. In the figure we can see the arrangement of the cards in a series, starting with the position where Boris put the card 20132013. We split pairs of cards into two parts: the part containing Andrija's cards 2k2k, 2k+22k+2, ..., 20122012, 20142014, and the other part containing 22, 44, ..., 2k42k-4, 2k22k-2. In the first part Andrija's cards (from left to right) increase from 2k2k to 20142014, and Boris' decrease from 20132013. In other words, at the beginning of that part Boris' cards are larger, but at the end Andrija's cards are larger. Let us denote by 2a+12a+1 (aNa \in \mathbb{N}) the last Boris' card in the first part which is larger than the corresponding Andrija's card, which we denote by 2b2b for some bNb \in \mathbb{N}. Hence, we have
2a+1>2b,2a1<2b+2. 2a+1 > 2b, \quad 2a-1 < 2b+2.
From the previous inequalities we get 2a3<2b<2a+12a - 3 < 2b < 2a + 1, so 2b=2a22b = 2a - 2 or 2b=2a2b = 2a. Let us notice that the sum of the cards in each pair of the first part is the same and equals to 2013+2k2013 + 2k. In fact, in each next pair Boris' number is by 22 smaller than the previous, while Andrija's is by 22 larger than the previous, so the sum does not change. Hence we have (2a+1)+2b=2013+2k(2a + 1) + 2b = 2013 + 2k.

If 2b=2a22b = 2a - 2, then kk is odd and a=1007+k2a = \frac{1007 + k}{2}. Similarly, if 2b=2a2b = 2a, then kk is even and a=1006+k2a = \frac{1006 + k}{2}. If XX is the number of the pairs in the first part in which Boris' card is larger than Andrija's, then X=bk+1X = b - k + 1. Thus we have
X={1007k2,for odd k,1008k2,for even k. X = \begin{cases} \frac{1007-k}{2}, & \text{for odd } k, \\ \frac{1008-k}{2}, & \text{for even } k. \end{cases}
Furthermore, let us denote by YY the number of pairs in the second part in which Boris' card is larger than Andrija's. Analogously we get
Y={k12,for odd k,k22,for even k. Y = \begin{cases} \frac{k-1}{2}, & \text{for odd } k, \\ \frac{k-2}{2}, & \text{for even } k. \end{cases}
Hence X+Y=503X + Y = 503, regardless of the number kk, so we can conclude that arranging the cards in this way Boris will gain 503503 points (and Andrija 504504 points).

It remains to prove that Boris can not arrange his cards such that he gains more than 503503 points, regardless of Andrija's arrangement.

Let us assume that there is Boris' arrangement for which Andrija gains less than 504504 points, regardless of how he arranges his cards. For such Boris' arrangement, let us denote by AA the total number of points that Andrija gains in all of his possible arrangements. There are 10071007 possible Andrija's arrangements, so by the assumption we have A<1007504A < 1007 \cdot 504. On the other hand, let us see how many points each of Boris' cards contributes to the number AA. The card with the number 22 contributes 11 point because it gives points only in the arrangement in which the card with the number 11 is on top of it. The card with the number 44 contributes 22 points (cases in which cards 11 and 33 are on top of it). In general, for k{1,2,,1007}k \in \{1, 2, \dots, 1007\} the card with the number 2k2k contributes kk points. Hence we have
A=1+2++1007=100710082=1007504. A = 1 + 2 + \dots + 1007 = \frac{1007 \cdot 1008}{2} = 1007 \cdot 504.
We reached a contradiction, so we conclude that our assumption was wrong, i.e. Boris can not be certain to gain more than 503503 points.

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