Problem:
For a set of real numbers , let be the set of distinct pairwise differences of ; that is,
If , find the sum of all possible values of .
Problem:
For a set of real numbers , let be the set of distinct pairwise differences of ; that is,
If , find the sum of all possible values of .
Solution:
First, we show that . To do this, we show that if , then . The upper bound is easily attained; the number of distinct differences is bounded above by the number of ordered pairs of distinct elements of plus 1, to account for the remaining pairs which give a difference of ; this is exactly .
For the lower bound, suppose that with . Then the differences are all positive and distinct and appear in ; their additive inverses are all negative and distinct and also appear in . Also, and is not among those differences previously listed. This gives us at least differences in . These bounds show us that if , we must have as desired.
We then show that for any with , there exists a set such that and . Consider now the sets and . Then we have , , , and . Now, for any set with , we have , and so we must have . For any with , it is always possible to choose such that and , and this will give us the desired .
Thus, the sum of all possible values of is .