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Number theory Difficulty 7.4 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it Japan

There are two blackboards AA and BB, and on each of these blackboards certain number of distinct integers greater than or equal to 22 and less than or equal to 2020 are written in such a way that any pair of numbers one of which is chosen from AA and the other from BB are relatively prime. Determine the maximum possible value the product of the number of integers written on AA and the number of integers written on BB can take.

Solution

Denote by AA and BB the set of numbers written on the blackboard AA and BB, respectively. Denote also by X|X| the number of elements belonging to the set XX. If we let
A={2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10,12,15,16,18,20},B={7,11,13,17,19}, A = \{2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 20\}, \quad B = \{7, 11, 13, 17, 19\},
then we see that arbitrary pair of numbers (a,b)(a, b) with aAa \in A and bBb \in B are relatively prime, and that we have AB=65|A||B| = 65. We will show in the sequel that 6565 is the maximum possible value for the product AB|A||B|.

So, suppose that for some choice of AA and BB, AB66|A||B| \ge 66, and we will show that this will lead to a contradiction. From A+B2AB266|A| + |B| \ge 2\sqrt{|A||B|} \ge 2\sqrt{66}, it follows that we must have A+B17|A| + |B| \ge 17. Therefore, we conclude that there are at most 22 numbers among the integers, greater than or equal to 22 and less than or equal to 2020, which belong neither to AA nor to BB. Hence, at least one number among 6,12,186, 12, 18 must belong either to AA or to BB. We may suppose without loss of generality that the former is the case. By the assumption of the problem, multiples of a same positive number cannot belong to both AA and BB. Since at least one of the numbers 6,12,186, 12, 18 belongs to AA, we conclude that all the multiples of 22 and all the multiples of 33 must also belong to AA. Since there are only six numbers 5,7,11,13,17,195, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, among the numbers greater than or equal to 22 and less than or equal to 2020, which are neither multiples of 22 nor multiples of 33, we conclude that B6|B| \le 6 must be satisfied. If we assume that B4|B| \le 4, then we get AB(19B)B60|A||B| \le (19-|B|)|B| \le 60, which contradicts our assumption. Therefore, we must have either B=5|B| = 5 or B=6|B| = 6.

* When B=5|B| = 5:

In this case, we must have either 55 or 77 in the set BB. But then at least one of the numbers 1010 or 1414 cannot be in the set AA, so that we have A13|A| \le 13, which implies that AB65|A||B| \le 65, which contradicts our assumption.

* When B=6|B| = 6:

In this case, we have B={5,7,11,13,17,19}B = \{5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19\}, so neither 1010 nor 1414 can belong to the set AA, which means that A9|A| \le 9, and this also leads to the contradiction to our assumption.

Thus we conclude that 6565 is the maximum possible value that the product AB|A||B| can take.

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