Problem:
Let be a finite set of nonzero real numbers, and let be a function with the following property: for each , either
Prove that for all .
Solution
Solution:
We will use the notation to denote , where we iterate the function times. Suppose, to the contrary, that for some . This implies that as well, since is either the sum or the average of and and these are distinct non-zero real numbers. Likewise, implies that . We can keep iterating the function to create a sequence
where no term is equal to the term preceding it. However, since is finite, eventually there has to be a repeating value. In other words, there exists , with , such that .
Let . Then is a cycle of length . Since cannot equal (the sum of and cannot equal since is nonzero and the average of and cannot equal because ), the cycle has length at least 3. Since the cycle is finite, and the terms are nonzero, there must be a term of maximum absolute value. Call this , and without loss of generality, assume that is positive.
We know that the cycle has at least three terms, so consider the consecutive terms in the cycle (since it is a cycle, it can start "anywhere"). We have and . We claim that is positive, for if it were negative, then would be either the average of and or the sum of and , which would force to be larger than , contradicting the fact that is the largest term in the cycle.
But if is positive, then must be greater than , since it is either the sum or average of a positive number and . Likewise, must also be greater than , since it is either the sum or average of and a value that is greater than . Once we have two consecutive terms in the cycle that are greater than , all subsequent terms in the cycle will be greater than . In other words, the cycle starting at ,
consists entirely of terms whose value is greater than . Also, starting with the third term, each term is either the sum or average of the two terms preceding it. But since it is a cycle, eventually it will come back to the value of , and that is impossible: is neither the sum nor the average of two terms greater than . We have achieved a contradiction, and conclude that there are no such that ; i.e. for all .