Problem:
Find all nonempty finite sets of real numbers with the following property:
Solution
Solution:
Let , , where .
If , then , which is a contradiction because but is the largest element of .
The contradiction in the previous paragraph implies that . If , then . Hence, we must have , so that for any , .
Hence, in order for the desired property to be satisfied, must be a finite subset of the interval and it must contain . On the other hand, such subsets satisfy the said property.
The only nonempty finite sets that satisfy the desired property are those finite subsets of containing .
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