Problem:
Points and are inside a unit square. The score of a vertex of the square is the minimum distance from that vertex to or . What is the minimum possible sum of the scores of the vertices of the square?
Problem:
Points and are inside a unit square. The score of a vertex of the square is the minimum distance from that vertex to or . What is the minimum possible sum of the scores of the vertices of the square?
Solution:
Answer:
Let the square be . First, suppose that all four vertices are closer to than . Then, by the triangle inequality, the sum of the scores is .
Similarly, suppose exactly two vertices are closer to than . Here, we have two distinct cases: the vertices closer to are either adjacent or opposite. Again, by the triangle inequality, it follows that the sum of the scores of the vertices is at least .
On the other hand, suppose that is closer to and are closer to . We wish to compute the minimum value of , but note that we can make to simply minimize . We now want to be the Fermat point of triangle , so that .
Note that by symmetry, we must have , so .
And now we use the law of sines: and . Now, we have , which is less than , so this is our answer.