Problem:
Let be a fixed positive integer, and choose positive integers . Given a permutation on the first positive integers, let is an integer . Let denote the number of distinct sets as ranges over all such permutations. Determine, in terms of , the maximum value of over all possible values of .
, 2020
Solution
Solution:
The answer is .
Let be the matrix where is if is a divisor of and otherwise. For a subset of , let be the matrix obtained from by flipping every entry where . Observe that if and only if for all .
To show that we consider two cases. If all the rows of are distinct, then there exist different possibilities for that set a row equal to zero. In this case, there is clearly no so that . Thus there are at most possible . Otherwise, if two rows in are the same, then choose an such that has two zero rows. Then, the sets that are at most "one element away" from are such that only has one column with nonzero entries in those two rows. This makes it impossible for as well, so .
Now we construct by setting . By Hall's marriage theorem, it suffices to prove the following:
Assuming that has no completely-zero rows, given a set there exist at least values of so that there exists an so that . Call such admissible.
Without loss of generality assume .
Note that if , then is admissible. Therefore the numbers are admissible, since for divides but does not. So we only need to find one more admissible . Assume that is not admissible; now it must be the case that all the are divisors of .
At this point we note that the case is easy, since no row of is zero. Moreover, if , , so in the row with the zero there must be somewhere, yielding a second admissible column.
In the case where , note that . Therefore , but divides and does not. Thus we have found the last admissible column. Having exhausted all cases, we are done.