Let , , and let be a bijective function distinct from the identity. Let and let be the number of ordered pairs of elements of such that and . Show that , and that if and only if there do not exist positive integers such that .
Solutions — 2
Solution 1
We say a pair is a-good if , and b-good if . If , no pair or is k-good. If , there are no k-good pairs of the form and exactly of the form . Likewise, if there are exactly k-good pairs. In any case, there are exactly k-good pairs.
For every pair with and , the pair is a-good if , and b-good if . The number of pairs counted in is at most the number of good pairs, which is less than or equal to the sum of the . So, . Let be the smallest integer with . Then , . The pair is both -good and -good. Equality does not hold, and .
Let and . The element is in and not in if and only if is a pair counted in . Similarly, is in and not in if and only if is a pair counted in . Then, .
We look at the equality case. for all or for all There do not exist such that , There do not exist such that , .
Solution 2
For bijective functions in general, we shall prove , with only for the identity and if and only if there do not exist such that . We argue by induction on .
If , , for all , and is the identity. In this case, , and there do not exist with . This satisfies the result.
Now, suppose that the statement is true for , and we have a function with . . Since , there exists with (that is, ), and with . Let be the smallest value of with . because if it was equal, then . Since , and by definition of , . There are values of less than with . Let be the greatest one.
We define as follows: , and for the rest of the values. We define as , and define and analogously to and for . Let .
For all with , is not less than by definition of , nor greater than by definition of . Therefore, . If , then , impossible. Hence, . In the same way, .
, so by induction hypothesis .
Let us find the value of , by finding the cases when is included in and is not included in , and vice versa. The condition for the first case can be written as , and . It is clear that one of the terms must be or . and satisfies this. If only one of the terms appears and it is , then , and . All the values of in this interval satisfy the condition because . Likewise, if the term that appears is , then and satisfies the conditions. We can check that there are no pairs counted in but not counting in . .
Using the previous results, . This proves the inequality.
All that remains is finding when holds. This happens whenever and . If , and . We can therefore suppose . We need to prove that there exist with if and only if there exist with . . If two elements of are neither nor , for example and , then , and since , . If both and appear, they cannot be and because and are consecutive integers. Hence, one of them is , for example . and . As , there are more values of with and than with . Since is an example of the latter, there is not equal to with and , and therefore and , where does not appear. We reduced the problem to the previous case. The same argument works if or if , and we are done.