Is it possible to line up the numbers 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 . We claim that the numbers 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 for all . We will use induction on .
In the base case this is obvious.
Now, let us assume that for some the numbers can be arranged into the sequence
so that for any pair their arithmetic mean does not lie in between the two numbers.
We notice that the sequence
is a permutation of which satisfies the condition of the problem. Indeed, by the induction hypothesis the arithmetic mean of and , where either or , does not lie in between them and if , then the arithmetic mean of and is not an integer at all. We have thus proven the statement for .
Finally, if the positive integer is not a power of , then there exists such that . In this case we can first arrange the numbers into the sequence that satisfies the condition and then simply remove any numbers greater than . The new sequence obtained in this way will obviously still satisfy the condition.