Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /229 of 377

Combinatorics Difficulty 5.2 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:

We have an nn-gon, and each of its vertices is labeled with a number from the set {1,,10}\{1, \ldots, 10\}. We know that for any pair of distinct numbers from this set there is at least one side of the polygon whose endpoints have these two numbers. Find the smallest possible value of nn.

Solution

Solution:

Each number be paired with each of the 9 other numbers, but each vertex can be used in at most 2 different pairs, so each number must occur on at least 9/2=5\lceil 9 / 2\rceil=5 different vertices. Thus, we need at least 105=5010 \cdot 5=50 vertices, so n50n \geq 50.

To see that n=50n=50 is feasible, let the numbers 1,,101, \ldots, 10 be the vertices of a complete graph. Then each vertex has degree 99, and there are (102)=45\binom{10}{2}=45 edges. If we attach extra copies of the edges 12,34,56,781-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, and 9109-10, then every vertex will have degree 1010. In particular, the graph has an Eulerian tour, so we can follow this tour, successively numbering vertices of the 5050-gon according to the vertices of the graph we visit. Then, for each edge of the graph, there will be a corresponding edge of the polygon with the same two vertex labels on its endpoints. It follows that every pair of distinct numbers occurs at the endpoints of some edge of the polygon, and so n=50n=50 is the answer.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

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