Combinatorics course week 6

Hoang Nguyen
July 2021

1 In-class problems
1. We are given two square sheets of paper, each of area 2015. Each sheet is
divided into 2015 polygons of area 1 (the divisions may be different). One
sheet is placed on top of the other. Show that we can place 2015 pins in
such a way that the interior of each of the 4030 polygons is pierced.
2. In an island there are n castles, and each castle is in country A or B.
There is one commander per castle, and each commander belongs to the
same country as the castle he’s initially in. There are some (two-way)
roads between castles (there may be roads between castles of different
countries), and call two castles adjacent if there is a road between them.
Prove that the following two statements are equivalent:
(1) If some commanders from country B move to attack an adjacent castle
in country A, some commanders from country A could appropriately move
in defense to adjacent castles in country A so that in every castle of country
A, the number of country A’s commanders defending that castle is not less
than the number of country B’s commanders attacking that castle. (Each
commander can defend or attack only one castle at a time.)
(2) For any arbitrary set X of castles in country A, the number of country
A’s castles that are in X or adjacent to at least one of the castle in X is
not less than the number of country B’s castles that are adjacent to at
least one of the castles in X.

2 Homework
1. The columns and the row of a 3n×3n square board are numbered 1, 2, . . . , 3n.
Every square (x, y) with 1 ≤ x, y ≤ 3n is colored asparagus, byzantium
or citrine according as the modulo 3 remainder of x + y is 0, 1 or 2 re-
spectively. One token colored asparagus, byzantium or citrine is placed
on each square, so that there are 3n2 tokens of each color. Suppose that
one can permute the tokens so that each token is moved to a distance
of at most d from its original position, each asparagus token replaces a
byzantium token, each byzantium token replaces a citrine token, and each

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 citrine token replaces an asparagus token. Prove that it is possible to
permute the tokens so that each token is moved to a distance of at most
d + 2 from its original position, and each square contains a token with the
same color as the square.
2. An airline company offers flights out of n airports, conveniently labeled
from 1 to n. The flight time tij from airport i to airport j is known for
every i and j. It may be the case that tij 6== tji , due to things like wind
or geography. Upon landing at a given airport, a plane must be inspected
before it can be flown again. This inspection time pi is dependent only
on the airport at which the inspection is taking place and not where the
previous flight may have originated. Given a set of m flights that the
airline company must provide, determine the minimum number of planes
that the company needs to purchase. The airline may add unscheduled
flights to move the airplanes around if that would reduce the total number
of planes needed.

3. You are mapping a faraway planet using a satellite. Your satellite has
captured an image of the planet’s surface. The photographed section can
be modeled as a grid. Each grid cell is either land, water, or covered by
clouds. Clouds mean that the surface could either be land or water, but
we can’t tell. An island is a set of connected land cells. Two cells are con-
sidered connected if they share an edge. Given the image, determine the
maximum number of islands that is consistent with the given information.

4. Let n be a positive integer, where 2n people are in a spacecraft, and

any two of them are friends or enemies (the relationship is reciprocal).
Two aliens play the following game: Alternately, each player chooses one
person, such that the chosen one (of each round) is friend of the person
chosen (by the other player) in the previous round. In the first round, the
player can choose any person, each person can be chosen in at most one

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 round, and the player who can not play anymore, loses the game. Prove
that the second player has the winning strategy, if and only if, the 2n
people can be split into n pairs, such that two people on the same pair
are friends.
5. Let an be the number of permutations (x1 , x2 , . . . , xn ) of the numbers
(1, 2, . . . , n) such that the n ratios xkk for 1 ≤ k ≤ n are all distinct. Prove
that an is odd for all n ≥ 1.
6. Each girl among 100 girls has 100 balls; there are in total 10000 balls in
100 colors, from each color there are 100 balls. On a move, two girls can
exchange a ball (the first gives the second one of her balls, and vice versa).
The operations can be made in such a way, that in the end, each girl has
100 balls, colored in the 100 distinct colors. Prove that there is a sequence
of operations, in which each ball is exchanged no more than 1 time, and
at the end, each girl has 100 balls, colored in the 100 colors.
7. We have n countries. Each country have m persons who live in that
country (n > m > 1). We divide m · n persons into n groups each with m
members such that there don’t exist two persons in any groups who come
from one country. Prove that one can choose n people into one class such
that they come from different groups and different countries.
8. There are 42 students taking part in the Team Selection Test. It is known
that every student knows exactly 20 other students. Show that we can
divide the students into 2 groups or 21 groups such that the number of
students in each group is equal and every two students in the same group
know each other.

3 Previous exercises solution

3.1 ARMO 2010
Lemma:Let m, n ≥ 2 be two positive integers. A graph G(V, E) is mn-colorable
iff there exists an edge partition E = E1 ∪ E2 such that G1 = G(V, E1 ) and
G2 = G(V, E2 ) are m- and n-colorable, respectively.

Just use product coloring for the ”if” direction: we can assign the color (c1 , c2 )
to a vertex colored c1 , c2 in G1 , G2 , respectively.

Conversely, if G is mn-colorable, then split the graph into m sets A1 , . . . , Am ,

each containing the vertices of exactly n colors; we can then take G1 , G2 defined
by E1 = {xy ∈ E : x ∈ Ai , y ∈ Aj , i 6= j} and E2 = {xy ∈ E : x, y ∈ Ai } =
E \ E1 , which are m- and n-colorable, respectively. Alternatively, label the mn
colors (i, j) for i = 1, 2, . . . , m and j = 1, 2, . . . , n and define E1 , E2 by the first
and second coordinates, respectively—the induced subgraphs G1 , G2 are clearly
m- and n-colorable, and we can then remove duplicate edges from E1 , E2 until

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we get an edge partition. (The idea is that independent sets behave like single
vertices, and Kmn can easily be split in the desired form.) 

Now, we try to find an edge partition such that G1 and G2 are both bipar-
tite.

Let G1 = G(V, E1 ) be a maximal bipartite subgraph; then we can’t add any

more edges to E1 without inducing an odd cycle. Now assume for the sake
of contradiction that G2 = G(V, E2 ) (where E2 = E \ E1 ) has an odd cycle
C = v1 v2 . . . v` v1 , ` ≥ 3. By the maximality of G1 , vi and vi+1 (indices modulo
`) are connected by a (simple) path of even length in G1 (i.e. with edges in
E1 ) for all i, so in particular vi , vj are connected in G0 = G(V, E \ E(C)) for all
i 6= j. Then since G is connected, every vertex v ∈ / C is connected in G0 to at
0
least one vertex of C, whence G must be connected as well, contradicting the
problem hypothesis. Hence G2 must be bipartite and since G1 is bipartite by
construction, we’re done by the lemma.

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4 References and hints
4.1 Problem sources
4.1.1 In-class exercises
1. Georgia Tech ACO exam 2015
2. Korea Final 2014

4.1.2 Homework
1. IMO Shortlist 2012

2. ACM-ICPC Pacific Northwest 2015

3. ACM-ICPC Pacific Northwest 2016
4. Brazil undergraduate MO 2015
5. USAMO 2018

6. ARMO 2021
7. Vietnam TST 2010
8. Vietnam TST 2012

4.2 Ideas
• #matching
• #duality

• #maximalpath

5 Theory
5.1 System of distinct representatives
A system of distinct representatives for a sequence of (not necessarily distinct)
sets S1 , S2 , ..., Sm is a sequence of distinct elements x1 , x2 , ..., xm such that xi ∈
Si ∀1 ≤ i ≤ m.

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5.2 Proof techniques
The system of distinct representatives formulation is a more generalized of the
matching formulation. The first idea is to prove the Hall’s marriage condition
as from the Hall’s theorem it is also a sufficient condition for matching.

The second proof technique is to consider the augmenting path, that is con-
sider the maximal path alternating between edges belong to the matching and
not to the matching. The Berge’s lemma states that a matching M is maximum
if and only if there is no augmenting path (an alternating path that starts from
and ends on free (unmatched) vertices) with respect to M.

The third proof technique is to use the duality between maximal matching and
minimal vertex cover (see theorem 3).

5.3 Theorems
Theorem 1. (Hall) A family S of finite sets has a system of distinct represen-
tatives if and only if S satisfies the marriage condition.
Theorem 2. (Tutte) A graph, G = (V, E), has a perfect matching if and only
if for every subset U ⊂ V , the subgraph induced by V − U has at most |U |
connected components with an odd number of vertices.

Theorem 3. (Konig) In a bipartite graph G, the size of a maximum matching

is the same as the size of a minimum vertex cover
Theorem 4. If M is a matching in a graph and S is a vertex cover, then
|M | ≤ |S|