Find the least with the following property: In each -term sequence of positive integers with sum there are several consecutive terms with sum .
Solution
The least in question is . An example that is not enough: arrange in a row blocks , with ones in each, then add ones. This gives a sequence of length and sum . No consecutive terms in it have sum .
Take a sequence with positive integer terms with length and sum . We show that several consecutive terms add up to . Let be the sum of its first terms, . Consider the two sequences
Assume for all , otherwise the claim follows. Since for all , it follows that the integers above are in and different from . Hence two of them are the same. Because the terms in each sequence are distinct, there are indices such that . Clearly and the terms of the original sequence with indices have sum .
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