Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.2 AIME, harder Prove it Romania

In the Cartesian plane are given 5151 points of integer coordinates, with pairwise integer distances. Prove that more than 49%49\% of the distances are even integers.

Solution

Among the given 5151 points there cannot exist simultaneously a point with odd coordinates and a point with even coordinates. Indeed, that be the case, let (2a,2b)(2a, 2b) and (2c+1,2d+1)(2c+1, 2d+1) be such points. The square of the distance between them is (2a2c1)2+(2b2d1)2=M4+2(2a - 2c - 1)^2 + (2b - 2d - 1)^2 = M4 + 2, which is not the square of an integer.

By the same argument as above, if an (even, odd)-coordinate point existed, there cannot exist an (odd, even)-coordinate point.

Let now kk be the number of points with coordinates of the same parity, then notice that all distances among them are even integers. So there exist 51k51 - k points with coordinates of different parity, again all distances among them being even integers.

Therefore, at least (k2)+(51k2)\binom{k}{2} + \binom{51-k}{2} distances are even numbers (by definition (nk)=0\binom{n}{k} = 0 if k>nk > n). Since there are (512)\binom{51}{2} distances in all, one has
(k2)+(51k2)(512)=k(k1)+(51k)(50k)5150=1+k251k512515125125=151100=49%. \begin{aligned} \frac{\binom{k}{2} + \binom{51-k}{2}}{\binom{51}{2}} &= \frac{k(k-1) + (51-k)(50-k)}{51 \cdot 50} \\ &= 1 + \frac{k^2 - 51k}{51 \cdot 25} \ge 1 - \frac{51^2}{51 \cdot 25} = 1 - \frac{51}{100} = 49\%. \end{aligned}

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