Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 6.0 National Olympiad Prove it United States

Problem:

Tom, Dick, and Harry play a game in which they each pick an integer between 11 and 20112011. Tom picks a number first and informs Dick and Harry of his choice. Then Dick picks a different number and informs Harry of his choice. Finally, Harry picks a number different from both Tom's and Dick's. After all the picks are complete, an integer is randomly selected between 11 and 20112011. The player whose number is closest wins 22 dollars, unless there is a tie, in which case each of the tied players wins 11 dollar. If Tom knows that Dick and Harry will each play optimally and select randomly among equally optimal choices, there are two numbers Tom can pick to maximize his expected profit; what are they?

Solution

Solution:

Answer: 503503, 15091509

Let xx denote the number Tom chooses. By the symmetry of the problem, picking xx and picking 2012x2012-x yield the same expected profit. If Tom picks 10061006, Dick sees that if he picks 10071007, Harry's best play is to pick 10051005, and Dick will win with probability 10052011\frac{1005}{2011}, and clearly this is the best outcome he can achieve. So Dick will pick 10071007 (or 10051005) and Harry will pick 10051005 (or 10071007), and Tom will win with probability 12011\frac{1}{2011}. Picking the number 22 will make the probability of winning at least 22011\frac{2}{2011} since Dick and Harry would both be foolish to pick 11, so picking 10061006 is suboptimal. It is now clear that the answer to the problem is some pair (x,2012x)(x, 2012-x).

By the symmetry of the problem we can assume without loss of generality that 1x10051 \leq x \leq 1005. We will show that of these choices, x=503x=503 maximizes Tom's expected profit. The trick is to examine the relationship between Tom's choice and Dick's choice. We claim that (a) if x>503x>503, Dick's choice is 2013x2013-x and (b) if x<503x<503, Dick's choice is 1341+x+131341+\left\lfloor\frac{x+1}{3}\right\rfloor. Let yy denote the number Dick chooses.

Proof (a). Note first that if x>503x>503, 2013x2013-x is the smallest value of yy for which Harry always chooses a number less than xx. This is obvious, for if y<2011xy<2011-x, a choice of 2012x2012-x will give Harry a greater expected profit than a choice of any number less than xx, and if y=2012xy=2012-x, Harry never chooses a number between xx and yy since x1>2012xx2=1006xx-1>\frac{2012-x-x}{2}=1006-x holds for all integers xx greater than 503503, so, by symmetry, Harry chooses a number less than xx exactly half the time. The desired result actually follows immediately because the fact that Harry always chooses a number less than xx when y=2013xy=2013-x implies that there would be no point in Dick choosing a number greater than 2013x2013-x, so it suffices to compare Dick's expected profit when y=2013xy=2013-x with that of all smaller values of yy, which is trivial.

Proof (b). This case is somewhat more difficult. First, it should be obvious that if x<503x<503, Harry never chooses a number less than xx. The proof is by contradiction. If y2011xy \leq 2011-x, Harry can obtain greater expected profit by choosing 2012x2012-x than by choosing any number less than xx. If y1002+xy \geq 1002+x, Harry can obtain greater expected profit by choosing any number between xx and yy than by choosing a number less than xx. Hence if Harry chooses a number less than xx, xx and yy must satisfy y>2011xy>2011-x and y<1002+xy<1002+x, which implies 2x>20092x>2009, contradiction. We next claim that if y1342+x+13y \geq 1342+\left\lfloor\frac{x+1}{3}\right\rfloor, then Harry chooses a number between xx and yy. The proof follows from the inequality 1342+x+13x2>2011(1342+x+13)\frac{1342+\left\lfloor\frac{x+1}{3}\right\rfloor-x}{2}>2011-\left(1342+\left\lfloor\frac{x+1}{3}\right\rfloor\right), which is equivalent to 3x+13>x43\left\lfloor\frac{x+1}{3}\right\rfloor>x-4, which is obviously true. We also claim that if y1340+x+13y \leq 1340+\left\lfloor\frac{x+1}{3}\right\rfloor then Harry chooses a number greater than yy. The proof follows from the inequality 1340+x+13x2<2011(1340+x+13)\frac{1340+\left\lfloor\frac{x+1}{3}\right\rfloor-x}{2}<2011-\left(1340+\left\lfloor\frac{x+1}{3}\right\rfloor\right), which is equivalent to 3x+13<x+23\left\lfloor\frac{x+1}{3}\right\rfloor<x+2, which is also obviously true. Now if x≢1(mod3)x \not\equiv 1 \pmod{3}, then we have 3x+13>x13\left\lfloor\frac{x+1}{3}\right\rfloor>x-1, so, in fact, if y=1341+x+13y=1341+\left\lfloor\frac{x+1}{3}\right\rfloor, Harry still chooses a number between xx and yy. In this case it is clear that such a choice of yy maximizes Dick's expected profit. It turns out that the same holds true even if x1(mod3)x \equiv 1 \pmod{3}; the computations are only slightly more involved. We omit them here because they bear tangential relation to the main proof.

We may conclude that if x>503x>503, the optimal choice for xx is 504504, and if x<503x<503, the optimal choice for xx is 502502. In the first case, y=1509y=1509, and, in the second case, y=1508y=1508. Since a choice of x=503x=503 and y=1509y=1509 clearly outperforms both of these combinations when evaluated based on Tom's expected profit, it suffices now to show that if Tom chooses 503503, Dick chooses 15091509. Since the computations are routine and almost identical to those shown above, the proof is left as an exercise to the reader.

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