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Combinatorics Difficulty 6.5 National olympiad Prove it Bulgaria

Let MM be a set of 20172017 positive integers. For every non-empty AMA \subset M we define
f(A)={xM:x is divisible by odd number of elements of A}. f(A) = \{x \in M : x \text{ is divisible by odd number of elements of } A\}.
Find the minimum number of colors such that it is possible to paint all nonempty subset of MM in such a way that whenever Af(A)A \neq f(A), the sets AA and f(A)f(A) are in different colors.

Solution

We first prove that the function ff is injective, i.e. ABA \neq B implies f(A)f(B)f(A) \neq f(B). Let aa be the smallest number which belongs to exactly one of the sets AA and BB. We can assume, aAa \in A, aBa \notin B. Let C={b1,b2,,bm}C = \{b_1, b_2, \dots, b_m\} be the set (possibly empty) of the numbers from BB which divide aa. Then the definition of aa yields that the numbers from AA which divide aa are exactly aa and the numbers from CC. This means that aa belongs to exactly one of the sets f(A)f(A) and f(B)f(B), i.e. f(A)f(B)f(A) \neq f(B).

Consider now the directed graph GG with vertices the nonempty subsets of MM and edges (A,f(A))(A, f(A)) (direction from AA to f(A)f(A)) iff Af(A)A \neq f(A). It follows from the above that every vertex of GG is either isolated or it is a tail and a head of exactly one edge. Therefore GG can be partitioned into cycles.

We will prove that all cycles in GG have even length, whence it follows that two colors are enough. Let (A1,A2,,Am,A1)(A_1, A_2, \dots, A_m, A_1) be a cycle of length m2m \ge 2. Let {a1,a2,,ak}=i=1mAi\{a_1, a_2, \dots, a_k\} = \bigcup_{i=1}^m A_i, where a1<a2<<aka_1 < a_2 < \dots < a_k. It is clear that a1Aia_1 \in A_i for every i=1,2,,mi = 1, 2, \dots, m. Let tt be the smallest number such that there exists ii such that atAia_t \notin A_i. There exists index jj such that atAja_t \notin A_j, but atAj+1a_t \in A_{j+1}. This implies that ata_t has odd number of divisors among a1,,at1a_1, \dots, a_{t-1}. Then atAj1a_t \in A_{j-1} and so on, i.e. the ata_t alternate, whence we conclude that the cycle's length is even.

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