Let , , and three sets of real numbers , pairwise disjoint, each of them having elements.
Let be the number of triples for which and be the number of triples for which . Prove that is divisible by .
Solution
Consider , arbitrarily chosen. Denote by the number of pairs for which , and by the number of pairs for which .
Let and .
On the real axis, separates the numbers into numbers smaller than and numbers greater than , where is some number from . Likewise, are separated by into numbers smaller than and numbers greater than , where . It follows that and , so .
Summing over all , we get . Since and depend on , but for each the difference is an integer, and the sum is multiplied by , it follows that is divisible by .
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