For an irrational number , let be the integer nearest to . Define . Show that for every irrational number , the minimum of the numbers is less than .
Solution
Consider the 2002 intervals where . Since is irrational, the numbers , , , are irrational numbers between and . Thus, each of them belongs to one of the 's.
We claim that one of the numbers (with ) belongs to or . Suppose on the contrary that all these numbers belong to the other 2000 intervals. By the pigeonhole principle, two of them, say and with , belong to the same interval . Then we have
Therefore, is the closest integer to , and we know that belongs to or . This is a contradiction. Therefore,
we can find some belonging to or . For this , we have
This completes the proof.
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