Find all natural numbers such that there exists reals which satisfy
Let . contains eight numbers, three of which are chosen from and the other five numbers from . . Find the minimum possible value of .
Solution
We need to find all natural numbers (where ) such that there exist real numbers which satisfy the condition:
We claim that only work. We can construct the sets of numbers for these values of as follows:
- For , we can use .
- For , we can use .
- For , we can use .
Now, consider . Let . Without loss of generality, assume and , with all other lying between these two values. To produce a difference of , let . To produce a difference of , we cannot have or , so let . The only possible value for that creates a difference of and does not repeat a difference is 4, which also happens to create a difference of .
However, there is no possible way to place a difference of without repeating. Thus, it is impossible to satisfy the condition for .
Therefore, the natural numbers that satisfy the given condition are .
The answer is: 3, 4}.