Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /23 of 48

, 2016

Geometry Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Prove it Hong Kong

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.

Solution

The maximum number of acute-angled triangles is 27291482402729148240.
Let n=2015n = 2015, so that there are 2n+12n + 1 lines. We fix one of the lines \ell and place it as the xx-axis of the coordinate plane. Then the other 2n2n 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 aa and bb be the sizes of these two groups respectively.

Observe that every pair of lines belonging to the same group form an obtuse triangle with \ell. Therefore, the number of obtuse triangles having \ell as a sideline that is adjacent to the obtuse angle is
(a2)+(b2)2(n2)=n(n1) \binom{a}{2} + \binom{b}{2} \ge 2\binom{n}{2} = n(n-1)
by Jensen's inequality, since the binomial function (x2)\binom{x}{2} is convex.

By considering all choices of \ell, each obtuse triangle is counted twice. Therefore, the number of acute-angled triangles is at most
(2n+13)(2n+1)n(n1)2=n(n+1)(2n+1)6. \binom{2n+1}{3} - \frac{(2n+1)n(n-1)}{2} = \frac{n(n+1)(2n+1)}{6}.
This bound is attainable. Indeed, consider the sidelines of a regular polygon with 2n+12n + 1 sides. Then for every line \ell being the xx-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 n=2015n = 2015, the answer is 2015×2016×40316=2729148240\frac{2015 \times 2016 \times 4031}{6} = 2729148240.

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