4031 lines are drawn on the plane. No two lines are parallel or perpendicular, and no three lines meet at one point. Determine the maximum number of acute-angled triangles that may be formed.
, 2016
Solution
The maximum number of acute-angled triangles is .
Let , so that there are lines. We fix one of the lines and place it as the -axis of the coordinate plane. Then the other lines can be partitioned into two groups, one consisting of those lines with positive slopes and one consisting of those lines with negative slopes. Let and be the sizes of these two groups respectively.
Observe that every pair of lines belonging to the same group form an obtuse triangle with . Therefore, the number of obtuse triangles having as a sideline that is adjacent to the obtuse angle is
by Jensen's inequality, since the binomial function is convex.
By considering all choices of , each obtuse triangle is counted twice. Therefore, the number of acute-angled triangles is at most
This bound is attainable. Indeed, consider the sidelines of a regular polygon with sides. Then for every line being the -axis, the number of lines with positive slopes is equal to the number of lines with negative slopes by symmetry. Therefore, equality of the above deduction holds.
When , the answer is .