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Combinatorics Difficulty 6.6 National olympiad Prove it Austria

In the country of Oddland, there are stamps with values 11 cent, 33 cent, 55 cent, etc., one type for each odd number. The rules of Oddland Postal Services stipulate the following: for any two distinct values, the number of stamps of the higher value on an envelope must never exceed the number of stamps of the lower value.

In the country of Squareland, on the other hand, there are stamps with values 11 cent, 44 cent, 99 cent, etc., one type for each square number. Stamps can be combined in all possible ways in Squareland without additional rules.

Prove for every positive integer nn: In Oddland and Squareland there are equally many ways to correctly place stamps of a total value of nn cent on an envelope. Rearranging the stamps on an envelope makes no difference.

Solution

We construct a bijection between possible combinations in Oddland and possible combinations in Squareland. Suppose we have a combination of Squareland stamps that sum to nn cent, consisting of a1a_1 stamps of value 11 cent, a2a_2 stamps of value 44 cent, ..., aMa_M stamps of value M2M^2 cent, so that
n=k=1Mk2ak. n = \sum_{k=1}^{M} k^2 a_k.
Now we express k2k^2 as j=1k(2j1)\sum_{j=1}^{k}(2j - 1) and interchange the order of summation, which yields
n=k=1Mj=1k(2j1)ak=j=1M(2j1)k=jMak. n = \sum_{k=1}^{M} \sum_{j=1}^{k} (2j - 1) a_k = \sum_{j=1}^{M} (2j - 1) \sum_{k=j}^{M} a_k.
This gives us a possible combination of Oddland stamps: By setting bj=k=jMakb_j = \sum_{k=j}^{M} a_k, we have
n=j=1M(2j1)bj. n = \sum_{j=1}^{M} (2j - 1)b_j.
This can be interpreted as a collection of b1b_1 stamps of value 11 cent, b2b_2 stamps of value 33 cent, ..., bMb_M stamps of value (2M1)(2M - 1) cent. We have b1b2bMb_1 \ge b_2 \ge \dots \ge b_M by definition, so this is a legal combination in Oddland.

Conversely, if a combination in Oddland is given by the values b1,b2,,bMb_1, b_2, \dots, b_M, we can use the identities a1=b1b2,a2=b2b3,,aM1=bM1bM,aM=bMa_1 = b_1 - b_2, a_2 = b_2 - b_3, \dots, a_{M-1} = b_{M-1} - b_M, a_M = b_M to recover the corresponding combination in Squareland. (Note that these values are nonnegative whenever b1b2bMb_1 \ge b_2 \ge \dots \ge b_M.)

Since these two operations obviously are inverse to one another, we have found a bijection, which proves the statement.

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