2007 IMO Problems/Problem 3

Revision as of 19:35, 29 October 2007 by Temperal (talk | contribs) (solution)

Problem

In a mathematical competition some competitors are friends. Friendship is always mutual. Call a group of competitors a clique if each two of them are friends. (In particular, any group of fewer than two competitors is a clique.) The number of members of a clique is called its size. Given that, in this competition, the largest size of a clique is even, prove that the competitors can be arranged in two rooms such that the largest size of a clique contained in one room is the same as the largest size of a clique contained in the other room.

Solution

We use capital letters to denote sets of competitors. We write $cl.C$ to denote that $C$ is a clique. Some properties of cliques are listed below: $(1)\,D\subset E \vee cl.E \Rightarrow cl.D$


External links

2007 IMO (Problems) • Resources
Preceded by
Problem 2
1 2 3 4 5 6 Followed by
Problem 4
All IMO Problems and Solutions