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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.8 AIME, harder Prove it Slovenia

Is it possible to line up the numbers 1,2,3,,20131, 2, 3, \ldots, 2013 so that the arithmetic mean of any two of the numbers is never located between them?

Solution

Let us show that the statement is true for any nNn \in \mathbb{N}. We claim that the numbers 1,2,,n1, 2, \dots, n can be lined up so that for any pair their arithmetic mean does not lie somewhere in between.

First, we will show that this is true for n=2mn = 2^m for all mNm \in \mathbb{N}. We will use induction on mm.

In the base case m=1m = 1 this is obvious.

Now, let us assume that for some mm the numbers 1,2,,2m1, 2, \dots, 2^m can be arranged into the sequence
(a1,a2,,a2m)(a_1, a_2, \dots, a_{2^m}) so that for any pair their arithmetic mean does not lie in between the two numbers.

We notice that the sequence
(b1,b2,,b2m+1)=(2a11,2a21,,2a2m1,2a1,2a2,,2a2m) (b_1, b_2, \dots, b_{2^{m+1}}) = (2a_1 - 1, 2a_2 - 1, \dots, 2a_{2^m} - 1, 2a_1, 2a_2, \dots, 2a_{2^m})
is a permutation of 1,2,,2m+11, 2, \dots, 2^{m+1} which satisfies the condition of the problem. Indeed, by the induction hypothesis the arithmetic mean of bib_i and bjb_j, where either 1i<j2m1 \le i < j \le 2^m or 2m+1i<j2m+12^m + 1 \le i < j \le 2^{m+1}, does not lie in between them and if 1i2m<j2m+11 \le i \le 2^m < j \le 2^{m+1}, then the arithmetic mean of bib_i and bjb_j is not an integer at all. We have thus proven the statement for n=2mn = 2^m.

Finally, if the positive integer nn is not a power of 22, then there exists mNm \in \mathbb{N} such that n<2mn < 2^m. In this case we can first arrange the numbers 1,2,,2m1, 2, \dots, 2^m into the sequence that satisfies the condition and then simply remove any numbers greater than nn. The new sequence obtained in this way will obviously still satisfy the condition.

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