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Combinatorics Difficulty 6.2 National Olympiad Prove it Singapore

Find the smallest positive integer nn for which there exist integers x1<x2<<xnx_1 < x_2 < \dots < x_n such that every integer from 10001000 to 20002000 can be written as a sum of some of the integers from x1,x2,,xnx_1, x_2, \dots, x_n, without repetition.

Solution

The answer is n=11n = 11. The 1111 integers 20,21,,2102^0, 2^1, \dots, 2^{10} certainly work. Now we show that n=10n = 10 does not work.

Suppose on the contrary that the 1010 integers x1<x2<<x10x_1 < x_2 < \dots < x_{10} satisfy the requirement. They can form 210=10242^{10} = 1024 sums, not necessarily distinct. There are 10011001 integers from 10001000 to 20002000. So at most 2323 of these sums can be <1000< 1000. Now x1,,x9x_1, \dots, x_9 can pair up to form (92)=36\binom{9}{2} = 36 sums. So at least one of the sums is 1000\ge 1000. Therefore x9>500x_9 > 500.

Let ss be the sum of some of the integers in x1,,x8x_1, \dots, x_8. Since x9+x101003x_9 + x_{10} \ge 1003, at most one of s1000s \ge 1000 and s+x9+x102000s + x_9 + x_{10} \le 2000 can hold. Therefore at most 33 of the 44 sums
s, s+x9, s+x10, s+x9+x10 s,\ s+x_9,\ s+x_{10},\ s+x_9+x_{10}
can be between 10001000 and 20002000 (both inclusive). The integers x1,,x8x_1, \dots, x_8 can form at most 282^8 different sums. Therefore x1x10x_1 \dots x_{10} can form at most 3×28<10003 \times 2^8 < 1000 sums between 10001000 and 20002000. So n=10n = 10 is impossible.

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