Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /1291 of 1394

, 2019

Combinatorics Difficulty 6.0 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:

Tessa the hyper-ant has a 2019-dimensional hypercube. For a real number kk, she calls a placement of nonzero real numbers on the 220192^{2019} vertices of the hypercube kk-harmonic if for any vertex, the sum of all 2019 numbers that are edge-adjacent to this vertex is equal to kk times the number on this vertex. Let SS be the set of all possible values of kk such that there exists a kk-harmonic placement. Find kSk\sum_{k \in S}|k|.

Solution

Solution:

By adding up all the equations on each vertex, we get 2019S=kS2019 S = k S where SS is the sum of all entries, so k=2019k = 2019 unless S=0S = 0. In the latter case, by adding up all the equations on a half of the cube, we get 2018SS=kS2018 S - S = k S where SS is the sum of all entries on that half of the cube, so k=2017k = 2017 unless S=0S = 0. In the latter case (the sum of all entries of any half is zero), by adding up all the equations on a half of the half-cube, we get 2017S2S=kS2017 S - 2 S = k S, so k=2015k = 2015 unless S=0S = 0. We continue this chain of casework until we get that the sum of every two vertices connected by unit segments is zero, in which case we have k=2019k = -2019. This means that kk can take any odd value between 2019-2019 and 20192019 inclusive, so the sum of absolute values is 210102=20402002 \cdot 1010^{2} = 2040200.

To achieve these values, suppose that the vertices of the hypercube are {0,1}2019\{0,1\}^{2019} and that the label of (x1,x2,,x2019)\left(x_{1}, x_{2}, \ldots, x_{2019}\right) is a1x1a2x2a2019x2019a_{1}^{x_{1}} a_{2}^{x_{2}} \ldots a_{2019}^{x_{2019}} for constants a1,a2,,a2019{1,1}a_{1}, a_{2}, \ldots, a_{2019} \in \{-1,1\}, then it is not difficult to see that this labeling is (a1+a2++a2019)\left(a_{1} + a_{2} + \cdots + a_{2019}\right)-harmonic for any choice of aia_{i}'s, so this can achieve all odd values between 2019-2019 and 20192019 inclusive.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.