Consider increasing integer sequences with elements from . Such a sequence is Adriatic if its first element equals and if every element is at least twice the preceding element. A sequence is Tyrrhenian if its final element equals and if every element is strictly greater than the sum of all preceding elements. Decide whether the number of elements of Adriatic sequences is (i) smaller than or (ii) equal to or (iii) greater than the number of Tyrrhenian sequences.
Solution
Consider the Adriatic sequence starting with . Construct a new sequence
from it. Note that the new sequence is Tyrrhenian, as
holds for and as
Next, consider the Thyrrenian sequence with . Construct a new sequence
from it. Note that this new sequence is Adriatic, since
is equivalent to the Thyrrenian property .
These two constructions yield two injections and demonstrate that the number of Adriatic sequences equals the number of Thyrrenian sequences. (In fact the second injection is the inverse of the first injection, so that we have a clean bijection between the two sets.)
Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track
puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.