Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 7.0 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it Brazil

A figure on a computer screen shows nn points on a sphere, no four coplanar. Some pairs of points are joined by segments. Each segment is colored red or blue. For each point there is a key that switches the colors of all segments with that point as endpoint. For every three points there is a sequence of key presses that makes the three segments between them red. Show that it is possible to make all the segments on the screen red. Find the smallest number of key presses that can turn all the segments red, starting from the worst case.

Solution

Consider three of the nn points. The parity of the number of blue segments of the triangle with these points as vertices doesn't change while switching the keys. Since it is possible to make all three segments red, the number of blue segments in each triangle is even.

Let PP be one of the nn points. Let AA be the set of points connected to PP by red segments and BB be the set of points connected to PP by blue segments. Let A1,A2AA_1, A_2 \in A. So PA1PA_1 and PA2PA_2 are both red and thus A1A2A_1A_2 is red. Now consider B1,B2BB_1, B_2 \in B. Then PB1PB_1 and PB2PB_2 are both blue and thus B1B2B_1B_2 is red. Finally, consider AAA \in A and BBB \in B. PAPA is red and PBPB is blue, so ABAB is blue. Put PP in AA. All this reasoning shows that segments in the same set are red and segments connecting points in different sets are blue.

Switching all points in set AA will make all segments red. Indeed, all segments in AA will change twice, one time from each of its edges, all segments connecting points from A\mathcal{A} and B\mathcal{B} will change once, turning from blue to red and segments in B\mathcal{B} won't change. This proves the first part.

For the second part, notice first that one needs to switch each point at most once. Let A=k|\mathcal{A}| = k and B=nk|\mathcal{B}| = n-k. If we switch aa points from A\mathcal{A} and bb points from B\mathcal{B} we change at most a(nk)+bka(n-k) + bk blue segments. Suppose without loss of generality that knk    kn2k \le n-k \iff k \le \lfloor \frac{n}{2} \rfloor. Then k(nk)a(nk)+bka(nk)+b(nk)    ka+bk(n-k) \le a(n-k) + bk \le a(n-k) + b(n-k) \implies k \le a+b. So the number of key presses is at most kk and, in the worst case, n2\lfloor \frac{n}{2} \rfloor. This number is needed to make all segments red if A=n2|\mathcal{A}| = \lfloor \frac{n}{2} \rfloor.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.