Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 6.1 National olympiad Prove it Saudi Arabia

In a school there are 40 different clubs, each of them contains exactly 30 children. For every ii from 11 to 3030 define nin_{i} as a number of children who attend exactly ii clubs. Prove that it is possible to organize 40 new clubs with 30 children in each of them such that the analogical numbers n1,n2,,n30n_{1}, n_{2}, \ldots, n_{30} will be the same for them.

Solution

We will do the following algorithm to rearrange the children.
- Put the children who attend exactly one club at the start of the line (in any order).
- Put the children who attend exactly 2 clubs at the start of the line (in any order), and so on.
- Finally, put the children who attend exactly 30 clubs at the start of the line (in any order).

Since each club contains 40 children, then the number of pairs (club, child) is equal to
1200=30×40=n1+2n2++30n30. 1200 = 30 \times 40 = n_{1} + 2 n_{2} + \cdots + 30 n_{30}.

Now back to the line, we will count from 112001 \rightarrow 1200 and for each number, we will point at the children in the following way:
- We point at the children from the top to the bottom of the line.
- If a child attends kk clubs, we point at him kk times (each time, we also count the numbers).

Finally, we create the new clubs C1,C2,,C40C_{1}, C_{2}, \ldots, C_{40} and add children to them using the rule: if we count a number imod40i \bmod 40 while pointing at some child, then put that one into CiC_{i} for any ii.

We will count 120040=30\frac{1200}{40} = 30 numbers which are imod40i \bmod 40 for each ii, so indeed, each club has exactly 30 children, and no one appears in the same club since each child is counted at most 30 times in the row. And it is easy to check that the numbers n1,n2,,n30n_{1}, n_{2}, \ldots, n_{30} remain unchanged.

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