Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.9 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:

Let SS be the set of ordered pairs of integers (x,y)(x, y) with 1x51 \leq x \leq 5 and 1y31 \leq y \leq 3. How many subsets RR of SS have the property that all the points of RR lie on the graph of a single cubic? A cubic is a polynomial of the form y=ax3+bx2+cx+dy=a x^{3}+b x^{2}+c x+d, where a,b,ca, b, c, and dd are real numbers (meaning that aa is allowed to be 0 ).

Solution

Solution:

Answer: 796

We observe that RR must contain at most 1 point from each column of SS, because no function can contain more than 1 point with the same xx-coordinate. Therefore, R5|R| \leq 5 (R|R| denotes the number of elements of RR). Note that 4 points determine a cubic, so if RR is any subset of points in distinct columns and R4|R| \leq 4, then RR has the desired property. There are 454^{5} ways to choose at most 1 point from each column and 353^{5} ways to choose exactly 1 point from each column. There are therefore 4535=7814^{5}-3^{5}=781 subsets RR of SS such that R4|R| \leq 4 and all points of RR lie in distinct columns. As noted, these sets all automatically have the desired property.

Now we consider all sets RR of size 5. As before, each point in RR must come from a different column. Let us shift our origin to (3,2)(3,2), and let pp be the polynomial containing all 5 points of RR. Then R={(2,p(2)),(1,p(1)),(0,p(0)),(1,p(1)),(2,p(2))}R=\{(-2, p(-2)),(-1, p(-1)),(0, p(0)),(1, p(1)),(2, p(2))\}.

By the method of finite differences 333^{3} or alternately by Lagrange Interpolation there is a unique polynomial pp of degree less than 5 going through 5 specified points, and this polynomial is of degree less than 4 if and only if p(2)4p(1)+6p(0)4p(1)+p(2)=0p(-2)-4 p(-1)+6 p(0)-4 p(1)+p(2)=0.

Then p(2)+p(2)+6p(0)=4(p(1)+p(1))p(-2)+p(2)+6 p(0)=4(p(-1)+p(1)), where p(2)+p(2){2,1,0,1,2}p(-2)+p(2) \in\{-2,-1,0,1,2\}, p(1)+p(1){2,1,0,1,2}p(-1)+p(1) \in \{-2,-1,0,1,2\}, and p(0){1,0,1}p(0) \in\{-1,0,1\}. We know that 6p(0)6 p(0) and 4(p(1)+p(1))4(p(-1)+p(1)) are necessarily even, thus we must have p(2)+p(2){2,0,2}p(-2)+p(2) \in\{-2,0,2\} in order for the equation to be satisfied.

Let (a,b,c)=(p(2)+p(2),6p(0),4(p(1)+p(1)))(a, b, c)=(p(-2)+p(2), 6 p(0), 4(p(-1)+p(1))). The possible values of (a,b,c)(a, b, c) that are solutions to a+b=ca+b=c are then {(2,6,8),(2,6,4),(0,0,0),(2,6,4),(2,6,8)}\{(-2,-6,-8),(-2,6,4),(0,0,0),(2,-6,-4),(2,6,8)\}.

If (a,b,c)=(2,6,8)(a, b, c)=(-2,-6,-8), then we need p(2)+p(2)=2p(-2)+p(2)=-2, p(0)=1p(0)=-1, p(1)+p(1)=2p(-1)+p(1)=-2. There is only 1 possible solution to each of these equations: (p(2),p(2))=(1,1)(p(-2), p(2))=(-1,-1) for the first one, p(0)=1p(0)=-1 for the second, and (p(1),p(1))=(1,1)(p(-1), p(1))=(-1,-1) for the third. Hence there is 1 possible subset RR for the case (a,b,c)=(2,6,8)(a, b, c)=(-2,-6,-8).

If (a,b,c)=(2,6,4)(a, b, c)=(-2,6,4), then there is again 1 possible solution to p(2)+p(2)=2p(-2)+p(2)=-2. There are two solutions to p(1)+p(1)=1p(-1)+p(1)=1: (p(1),p(1))=(0,1),(1,0)(p(-1), p(1))=(0,1),(1,0). Also, p(0)p(0) can only be 1, so there are 2 possible subsets for this case.

If (a,b,c)=(0,0,0)(a, b, c)=(0,0,0), then there are 3 possible solutions to p(2)+p(2)=0p(-2)+p(2)=0: (p(2),p(2))=(1,1),(0,0),(1,1)(p(-2), p(2))=(-1,1),(0,0),(1,-1). Similarly, there are 3 possible solutions to p(1)+p(1)=0p(-1)+p(1)=0. Also, p(0)p(0) can only be 0, so there are 9 possible subsets for this case.

If (a,b,c)=(2,6,4)(a, b, c)=(2,-6,-4), then there is 1 possible solution to p(2)+p(2)=2p(-2)+p(2)=2: (p(2),p(2))=(1,1)(p(-2), p(2))=(1,1). There are 2 possible solutions to p(1)+p(1)=1p(-1)+p(1)=-1: (p(1),p(1))=(0,1),(1,0)(p(-1), p(1))=(0,-1),(-1,0). Also, p(0)p(0) can only be -1, so there are 2 possible subsets for this case.

If (a,b,c)=(2,6,8)(a, b, c)=(2,6,8), then there is 1 possible solution to p(2)+p(2)=2p(-2)+p(2)=2, as shown above. There is 1 solution to p(1)+p(1)=2p(-1)+p(1)=2: (p(1),p(1))=(1,1)(p(-1), p(1))=(1,1). Also, p(0)p(0) can only be 1, so there is 1 possible subset for this case.

Then there are 1+2+9+2+1=151+2+9+2+1=15 total possible subsets of size 5 that can be fit to a polynomial of degree less than 4. Hence there are 781+15=796781+15=796 possible subsets total.

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