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International Mathematical Olympiad

Combinatorics Difficulty 7.9 National Olympiad, round 2 Prove it China

Let AA be a subset of the set S={1,2,…,1000000}S = \{1, 2, \dots, 1000000\} containing exactly 101101 elements. Prove that there exist numbers t1,t2,…,t100t_1, t_2, \dots, t_{100} in SS such that the sets
Aj={x+tj∣x∈A} for j=1,2,…,100 A_j = \{x + t_j \mid x \in A\} \text{ for } j = 1, 2, \dots, 100
are pairwise disjoint.

Solution

Consider the set D={x−y∣x,y∈A}D = \{x-y \mid x, y \in A\}. There are at most 101×100+1=10101101 \times 100 + 1 = 10101 elements in DD. Two sets AiA_i and AjA_j have nonempty intersection if and only if ti−tjt_i - t_j is in DD. So we need to choose the 100100 elements in such a way that the difference for any two elements is not in DD.

Now select these elements by induction. Choose one element arbitrarily from SS. Assume that kk elements, k≤99k \le 99, are already chosen. An element xx in SS that is already chosen prevents us from selecting any element from the set x+Dx+D, where x+D={x+y∣y∈D}x+D = \{x+y \mid y \in D\}. Thus after kk elements are chosen, at most 10101k10101k elements are forbidden. Since SS has 10000001000000 elements, and 10101×99=1000000−9910101 \times 99 = 1000000 - 99, there is always at least one element left to choose for the next tk+1t_{k+1}. Therefore, we can choose 100100 such elements t1,t2,…,t100t_1, t_2, \dots, t_{100} so that the sets AjA_j are pairwise disjoint.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.