CombinatoricsDifficulty 7.7National Olympiad, round 2Prove itHong Kong
Suppose all of the 200 integers lying in between (and including) 1 and 200 are written on a blackboard. Suppose we choose exactly 100 of these numbers and circle each one of them. By the score of such a choice, we mean the square of the difference between the sum of the circled numbers and the sum of the non-circled numbers. What is the average of the scores over all possible choices for 100 numbers?
Solution
The average score is 670000. Let n=100, and let S be any subset of {1,2,…,2n} such that ∣S∣=n. There are (n2n) such sets S. The score of S is a∈S∑a−b∈/S∑b2=(k=1∑2nk−2a∈S∑a)2=(22n(2n+1))2−4(22n(2n+1))a∈S∑a+4(a∈S∑a)2=n2(2n+1)2−4n(2n+1)a∈S∑a+4a∈S∑a2+4a,b∈Sa=b∑ab.
Therefore, the average score is n2(2n+1)2+(n2n)−1[−4n2(2n+1)2(n−12n−1)+34n(2n+1)(4n+1)(n−12n−2)+4n2(2n+1)2(n−22n−2)]=n2(2n+1)2+(−2n2(2n+1)2+3(2n−1)2n2(2n+1)(4n+1)+2n−12(n−1)n2(2n+1)2)=3n2(2n+1)=670000.
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