2012 USAMO Problems/Problem 6
Problem
For integer , let , , , be real numbers satisfying For each subset , define (If is the empty set, then .)
Prove that for any positive number , the number of sets satisfying is at most . For what choices of , , , , does equality hold?
Solution
For convenience, let .
Note that , so the sum of the taken two at a time is . Now consider the following sum:
Since , it follows that at most sets have .
Now note that . It follows that at most half of the such that are positive. This shows that at most sets satisfy .
Note that if equality holds, every subset of has . It immediately follows that is a permutation of . Since we know that , we have that .
See Also
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