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Combinatorics Difficulty 7.8 National Olympiad, round 2 Prove it Japan

Suppose there are 20102010 airports. Each airport has a number of direct flights to some of the other airports and the following conditions (1), (2) are known to be satisfied:
(1) For any pair of airports, say AA and BB, one can go from AA to BB, by making connections of several direct flights.
(2) If any one of the direct flights currently in operation is canceled, then the condition (1) will no longer be valid.
One day one of the direct flights in operation is canceled. How many possible ways are there for opening a new direct flight (which may be the same as the canceled one) in order to ensure that both of the conditions (1) and (2) above will be satisfied?
Note that even when there is a direct flight from airport XX to airport YY it is not necessarily true that there is a direct flight from YY to XX.

Solution

Let us say that the airport BB is accessible from the airport AA if one can reach BB starting from AA by making connections of direct flights.

First, we will show that the answer we seek is no more than 100421004^2.

In the sequel until we say otherwise, we will assume that we are in the situation where one of the direct flights was canceled from the original set-up in which the operation of direct flights satisfied both of the conditions (1) and (2) of the problem. Then, we see that there is a positive integer nn such that we can divide the set of the 20102010 airports into subsets V1,V2,,VnV_1, V_2, \dots, V_n in such a way that the following conditions (a), (b), (c) are satisfied.

(a) None of the subsets ViV_i (1in1 \le i \le n) is empty, and every airport belongs to one and only one of the ViV_i's.
(b) For each ii (1in1 \le i \le n), for any pair of different airports AA and BB belonging to ViV_i, BB is accessible from AA.
(c) For any pair of different i,ji, j (1i,jn1 \le i, j \le n), there are different airports AA and BB belonging to ViV_i or VjV_j such that BB is not accessible from AA.

For different groups XX and YY of airports, we say that YY is accessible from XX if the following condition is satisfied:
There exist airports AA and BB such that AA belongs to XX, BB belongs to YY and BB is accessible from AA.

We also say that a group XX of airports is a startable group if there exists a group YY of airports such that YY is accessible from XX. If there is no such group YY, then XX is called a non-startable group. XX is called an accessible group if there exists a group YY such that XX is accessible from YY. If there is no such group YY, then XX is called a non-accessible group.

Let us first show that there must exist a non-startable group and a non-accessible group. So, suppose on the contrary every group of airports is startable. Then, there exists a sequence U1,U2,U_1, U_2, \dots of airports such that for every i1i \ge 1, Ui+1U_{i+1} is accessible from UiU_i. Since the number nn of groups is finite, there exist integers j<kj < k for which Uj=UkU_j = U_k. Since UjU_j and Uj+1U_{j+1} are different groups, we must have j<j+1<kj < j+1 < k. But since each group of airports satisfies the condition (b), every airport in the group Uj+1U_{j+1} is accessible from every airport in the group UjU_j, and every airport in the group Uk=UjU_k = U_j is accessible from every airport in the group Uj+1U_{j+1}. But this contradicts the condition (c). Thus we have shown that there must exist a non-startable group. Similarly, we can show that there must exist a non-accessible group.

Now, let XX be one of the non-startable groups, and YY be one of the non-accessible groups. Suppose that the direct flight canceled was from airport AA to airport BB. Since the condition (1) of the problem was satisfied before the flight was canceled, AA must belong to the group XX and BB to the group YY. If X=YX = Y, then by the condition (b) it would be possible to reach BB from AA without using the direct flight, and this would contradict the fact that the condition (2) of the problem was satisfied before the cancelation. Therefore, we must have XYX \neq Y. We also see that AA was accessible from BB before the cancelation, and there was a way to reach BB from AA without using the direct flight from AA to BB before the cancelation and hence BB is accessible from AA even after the cancelation. So, let us suppose that B=C1,C2,,Cp=AB = C_1, C_2, \dots, C_p = A is the route of connecting direct flights starting from BB and reaching AA. Now, choose airports AA' and BB' in such a way that the following 2 conditions (i) and (ii) are satisfied:

(i) AA' belongs to the group XX and BB' belongs to the group YY.
(ii) There exists a way to reach AA' from BB' using neither a direct flight between 2 airports belonging to XX nor a direct flight between 2 airports belonging to YY.

For example, among the ClC_l's belonging to YY, let ClC_{l'} be the one corresponding to the largest index and define B=ClB' = C_{l'}, and define AA' to be the CmC_m corresponding to the smallest index among CmC_m (m>lm > l') belonging to XX.

Let us now show by opening a direct flight we can attain a situation where both the conditions (1) and (2) are satisfied. Let us denote by A1,A2,,AsA_1, A_2, \dots, A_s and B1,B2,,BtB_1, B_2, \dots, B_t the airports belonging to the group XX and YY, respectively. In order to satisfy the condition (1), we see that we have to open a direct flight starting from an airport in the group XX and arriving at an airport belonging to the group YY. Therefore, the number of ways to open a direct flight to achieve our goal is at most stst. Furthermore, we have the condition s+t2010s + t \le 2010. Thus, we see that if

s=1s=1 or t=1t=1 is satisfied, the number of ways is less than or equal to 20092009. We assume in the sequel that both ss and tt are greater than or equal to 22.

Since XX satisfies the condition (b), there exists an airport AA'' in XX such that there exists a direct flight from AA'' to AA'. Similarly, there exists an airport BB'' in YY such that there exists a direct flight from BB' to BB''. Suppose opening a direct flight from AiA_i to BjB_j we can get the situation where both of the conditions (1) and (2) are satisfied. We can show that AiAA_i \neq A''. Suppose on the contrary we have Ai=AA_i = A''. Then after opening the direct flight AiBjA_i \to B_j, we get a direct flight from AA'' to BjB_j, and by the condition (b) we can reach BB' from BjB_j by using several direct flights between 2 airports belonging to YY, and by the condition (ii) we can reach AA' from BB' without using any direct flight between 2 airports belonging to XX. Thus we can reach from AA'' to AA' without using the direct flight from AA'' to AA'. If we then cancel the direct flight from AA'' to AA' the condition (1) remains valid, so we get a contradiction to the fact that the condition (2) must be satisfied after the direct flight AiBjA_i \to B_j is opened. Therefore, we must have AiAA_i \neq A''. By a similar argument we can also show that BjBB_j \neq B''.

We thus see that the number of ways of opening a direct flight so as to have the conditions (1) and (2) satisfied is at most (s1)(t1)(s-1)(t-1). Since s+t2010s+t \le 2010 is also satisfied, we see that the desired number is at most 100421004^2.

Let us finally show that there is an example where there are 100421004^2 ways of opening a direct flight to have the conditions (1) and (2) satisfied.

Suppose for 20102010 airports A1,A2,,A1005,B1,B2,,B1005A_1, A_2, \dots, A_{1005}, B_1, B_2, \dots, B_{1005} there are direct flights from AiA_i to Ai+1A_{i+1}, from Bi+1B_{i+1} to BiB_i for each ii (1i10041 \le i \le 1004), direct flights from A1005A_{1005} to A1A_1 and B1B_1 to B1005B_{1005}, and direct flights from A4A_4 to B4B_4 and from B2B_2 to A2A_2. We can easily check that the conditions (1) and (2) are satisfied with this situation. Now suppose we cancel the direct flight from A4A_4 to B4B_4. Then by opening any direct flight from AiA_i to BjB_j where 2i10052 \le i \le 1005 and 2j10052 \le j \le 1005 we can get the situation where the conditions (1) and (2) will be satisfied. Thus there are at least 100421004^2 ways of opening a direct flight to have both of the conditions (1) and (2) are satisfied.

We have thus shown that the desired answer to the problem is 10042=10080161004^2 = 1008016.

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