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Combinatorics Difficulty 6.1 National Olympiad Prove it Philippines

Problem:

For a set of real numbers AA, let AAA-A be the set of distinct pairwise differences of AA; that is,
AA:={ab:a,bA} A-A := \{ a-b : a, b \in A \}
If AA=25|A-A| = 25, find the sum of all possible values of A|A|.

Solution

Solution:

First, we show that 6A136 \leq |A| \leq 13. To do this, we show that if A=n|A| = n, then 2n1AAn(n1)+12n-1 \leq |A-A| \leq n(n-1)+1. The upper bound is easily attained; the number of distinct differences is bounded above by the number of ordered pairs (a,b)(a, b) of distinct elements of AA plus 1, to account for the remaining pairs (a,a)(a, a) which give a difference of 00; this is exactly n(n1)+1n(n-1)+1.

For the lower bound, suppose that A={a1,a2,,an}A = \{ a_1, a_2, \ldots, a_n \} with a1<a2<<ana_1 < a_2 < \cdots < a_n. Then the n1n-1 differences ana1,ana2,,anan1a_n - a_1, a_n - a_2, \ldots, a_n - a_{n-1} are all positive and distinct and appear in AAA-A; their additive inverses are all negative and distinct and also appear in AAA-A. Also, 0AA0 \in A-A and 00 is not among those differences previously listed. This gives us at least 2(n1)+1=2n12(n-1)+1 = 2n-1 differences in AAA-A. These bounds show us that if AA=25|A-A| = 25, we must have 6A136 \leq |A| \leq 13 as desired.

We then show that for any nn with 6n136 \leq n \leq 13, there exists a set AA such that A=n|A| = n and AA=25|A-A| = 25. Consider now the sets B={1,2,4,8,12,13}B = \{ 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 13 \} and C={1,2,,13}C = \{ 1, 2, \ldots, 13 \}. Then we have B=6|B| = 6, C=13|C| = 13, BCB \subseteq C, and BB=CC={12,11,,0,,11,12}B-B = C-C = \{ -12, -11, \ldots, 0, \ldots, 11, 12 \}. Now, for any set AA with BACB \subseteq A \subseteq C, we have BBAACCB-B \subseteq A-A \subseteq C-C, and so we must have AA=BB=CCA-A = B-B = C-C. For any nn with 6n136 \leq n \leq 13, it is always possible to choose AA such that A=n|A| = n and BACB \subseteq A \subseteq C, and this will give us the desired AA.

Thus, the sum of all possible values of A|A| is 6+7++13=766 + 7 + \cdots + 13 = 76.

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