Found problems: 60
2010 ELMO Shortlist, 1
For a permutation $\pi$ of $\{1,2,3,\ldots,n\}$, let $\text{Inv}(\pi)$ be the number of pairs $(i,j)$ with $1 \leq i < j \leq n$ and $\pi(i) > \pi(j)$.
[list=1]
[*] Given $n$, what is $\sum \text{Inv}(\pi)$ where the sum ranges over all permutations $\pi$ of $\{1,2,3,\ldots,n\}$?
[*] Given $n$, what is $\sum \left(\text{Inv}(\pi)\right)^2$ where the sum ranges over all permutations $\pi$ of $\{1,2,3,\ldots,n\}$?[/list]
[i]Brian Hamrick.[/i]
2016 Israel Team Selection Test, 3
On each square of an $n$x$n$ board sleeps a dragon. Two dragons are called neighbors if their squares have a side in common. Each turn, Minnie wakes up a dragon which has a living neighbor and Max directs it towards one of its living neighbors. The dragon than breathes fire on that neighbor and destroys it, and then goes back to sleep.
Minnie's goal is to minimize the snoring of the dragons and leave as few living dragons as possible. Max is a member of PETD (People for the Ethical Treatment of Dragons), and he wants to save as many dragons as he can.
How many dragons will stay alive at the end if
1. $n=4$?
2. $n=5$?
1992 China Team Selection Test, 1
16 students took part in a competition. All problems were multiple choice style. Each problem had four choices. It was said that any two students had at most one answer in common, find the maximum number of problems.
2001 Junior Balkan MO, 4
Let $N$ be a convex polygon with 1415 vertices and perimeter 2001. Prove that we can find 3 vertices of $N$ which form a triangle of area smaller than 1.
1997 Junior Balkan MO, 1
Show that given any 9 points inside a square of side 1 we can always find 3 which form a triangle with area less than $\frac 18$.
[i]Bulgaria[/i]
2019 ELMO Shortlist, C1
Elmo and Elmo's clone are playing a game. Initially, $n\geq 3$ points are given on a circle. On a player's turn, that player must draw a triangle using three unused points as vertices, without creating any crossing edges. The first player who cannot move loses. If Elmo's clone goes first and players alternate turns, who wins? (Your answer may be in terms of $n$.)
[i]Proposed by Milan Haiman[/i]
2000 All-Russian Olympiad, 4
Some pairs of cities in a certain country are connected by roads, at least three roads going out of each city. Prove that there exists a round path consisting of roads whose number is not divisible by $3$.
2019 Canada National Olympiad, 3
You have a $2m$ by $2n$ grid of squares coloured in the same way as a standard checkerboard. Find the total number of ways to place $mn$ counters on white squares so that each square contains at most one counter and no two counters are in diagonally adjacent white squares.
2004 Germany Team Selection Test, 3
We attach to the vertices of a regular hexagon the numbers $1$, $0$, $0$, $0$, $0$, $0$. Now, we are allowed to transform the numbers by the following rules:
(a) We can add an arbitrary integer to the numbers at two opposite vertices.
(b) We can add an arbitrary integer to the numbers at three vertices forming an equilateral triangle.
(c) We can subtract an integer $t$ from one of the six numbers and simultaneously add $t$ to the two neighbouring numbers.
Can we, just by acting several times according to these rules, get a cyclic permutation of the initial numbers? (I. e., we started with $1$, $0$, $0$, $0$, $0$, $0$; can we now get $0$, $1$, $0$, $0$, $0$, $0$, or $0$, $0$, $1$, $0$, $0$, $0$, or $0$, $0$, $0$, $1$, $0$, $0$, or $0$, $0$, $0$, $0$, $1$, $0$, or $0$, $0$, $0$, $0$, $0$, $1$ ?)
2006 Tuymaada Olympiad, 1
There are 100 boxers, each of them having different strengths, who participate in a tournament. Any of them fights each other only once. Several boxers form a plot. In one of their matches, they hide in their glove a horse shoe. If in a fight, only one of the boxers has a horse shoe hidden, he wins the fight; otherwise, the stronger boxer wins. It is known that there are three boxers who obtained (strictly) more wins than the strongest three boxers. What is the minimum number of plotters ?
[i]Proposed by N. Kalinin[/i]
1992 Taiwan National Olympiad, 2
Every positive integer can be represented as a sum of one or more consecutive positive integers. For each $n$ , find the number of such represententation of $n$.
2019 ELMO Shortlist, C1
Elmo and Elmo's clone are playing a game. Initially, $n\geq 3$ points are given on a circle. On a player's turn, that player must draw a triangle using three unused points as vertices, without creating any crossing edges. The first player who cannot move loses. If Elmo's clone goes first and players alternate turns, who wins? (Your answer may be in terms of $n$.)
[i]Proposed by Milan Haiman[/i]
2004 Germany Team Selection Test, 3
We consider graphs with vertices colored black or white. "Switching" a vertex means: coloring it black if it was formerly white, and coloring it white if it was formerly black.
Consider a finite graph with all vertices colored white. Now, we can do the following operation: Switch a vertex and simultaneously switch all of its neighbours (i. e. all vertices connected to this vertex by an edge). Can we, just by performing this operation several times, obtain a graph with all vertices colored black?
[It is assumed that our graph has no loops (a [i]loop[/i] means an edge connecting one vertex with itself) and no multiple edges (a [i]multiple edge[/i] means a pair of vertices connected by more than one edge).]
2014 EGMO, 5
Let $n$ be a positive integer. We have $n$ boxes where each box contains a non-negative number of pebbles. In each move we are allowed to take two pebbles from a box we choose, throw away one of the pebbles and put the other pebble in another box we choose. An initial configuration of pebbles is called [i]solvable[/i] if it is possible to reach a configuration with no empty box, in a finite (possibly zero) number of moves. Determine all initial configurations of pebbles which are not solvable, but become solvable when an additional pebble is added to a box, no matter which box is chosen.
2017 Junior Balkan Team Selection Tests - Moldova, Problem 8
The bottom line of a $2\times 13$ rectangle is filled with $13$ tokens marked with the numbers $1, 2, ..., 13$ and located in that order. An operation is a move of a token from its cell into a free adjacent cell (two cells are called adjacent if they have a common side). What is the minimum number of operations needed to rearrange the chips in reverse order in the bottom line of the rectangle?
2014 Junior Balkan MO, 4
For a positive integer $n$, two payers $A$ and $B$ play the following game: Given a pile of $s$ stones, the players take turn alternatively with $A$ going first. On each turn the player is allowed to take either one stone, or a prime number of stones, or a positive multiple of $n$ stones. The winner is the one who takes the last stone. Assuming both $A$ and $B$ play perfectly, for how many values of $s$ the player $A$ cannot win?
2022 Switzerland - Final Round, 4
Let $n \geq 2$ be an integer. Switzerland and Liechtenstein are performing their annual festive show. There is a field divided into $n \times n$ squares, in which the bottom-left square contains a red house with $k$ Swiss gymnasts, and the top-right square contains a blue house with $k$ Liechtensteiner gymnasts. Every other square only has enough space for a single gymnast at a time. Each second either a Swiss gymnast or a Liechtensteiner gymnast moves. The Swiss gymnasts move to either the square immediately above or to the right and the Liechtensteiner gymnasts move either to the square immediately below or to the left. The goal is to move all the Swiss gymnasts to the blue house and all the Liechtensteiner gymnasts to the red house, with the caveat that a gymnast cannot enter a house until all the gymnasts of the other nationality have left. Determine the largest $k$ in terms of $n$ for which this is possible.
2010 ELMO Shortlist, 1
For a permutation $\pi$ of $\{1,2,3,\ldots,n\}$, let $\text{Inv}(\pi)$ be the number of pairs $(i,j)$ with $1 \leq i < j \leq n$ and $\pi(i) > \pi(j)$.
[list=1]
[*] Given $n$, what is $\sum \text{Inv}(\pi)$ where the sum ranges over all permutations $\pi$ of $\{1,2,3,\ldots,n\}$?
[*] Given $n$, what is $\sum \left(\text{Inv}(\pi)\right)^2$ where the sum ranges over all permutations $\pi$ of $\{1,2,3,\ldots,n\}$?[/list]
[i]Brian Hamrick.[/i]
1997 IMC, 6
Suppose $F$ is a family of finite subsets of $\mathbb{N}$ and for any 2 sets $A,B \in F$ we have $A \cap B \not= \O$.
(a) Is it true that there is a finite subset $Y$ of $\mathbb{N}$ such that for any $A,B \in F$ we have $A\cap B\cap Y \not= \O$?
(b) Is the above true if we assume that all members of $F$ have the same size?
2000 Junior Balkan MO, 4
At a tennis tournament there were $2n$ boys and $n$ girls participating. Every player played every other player. The boys won $\frac 75$ times as many matches as the girls. It is knowns that there were no draws. Find $n$.
[i]Serbia[/i]
1976 Bundeswettbewerb Mathematik, 4
Each vertex of the 3-dimensional Euclidean space either is coloured red or blue. Prove that within those squares being possible in this space with edge length 1 there is at least one square either with three red vertices or four blue vertices !
2006 Lithuania National Olympiad, 4
Find the maximal cardinality $|S|$ of the subset $S \subset A=\{1, 2, 3, \dots, 9\}$ given that no two sums $a+b | a, b \in S, a \neq b$ are equal.
2010 Contests, 1
A finite set of integers is called [i]bad[/i] if its elements add up to $2010$. A finite set of integers is a [i]Benelux-set[/i] if none of its subsets is bad. Determine the smallest positive integer $n$ such that the set $\{502, 503, 504, . . . , 2009\}$ can be partitioned into $n$ Benelux-sets.
(A partition of a set $S$ into $n$ subsets is a collection of $n$ pairwise disjoint subsets of $S$, the union of which equals $S$.)
[i](2nd Benelux Mathematical Olympiad 2010, Problem 1)[/i]
2019-IMOC, C1
Given a natural number $n$, if the tuple $(x_1,x_2,\ldots,x_k)$ satisfies
$$2\mid x_1,x_2,\ldots,x_k$$
$$x_1+x_2+\ldots+x_k=n$$
then we say that it's an [i]even partition[/i]. We define [i]odd partition[/i] in a similar way. Determine all $n$ such that the number of even partitions is equal to the number of odd partitions.
2006 QEDMO 3rd, 12
Per and Kari each have $n$ pieces of paper. They both write down the numbers from $1$ to $2n$ in an arbitrary order, one number on each side. Afterwards, they place the pieces of paper on a table showing one side. Prove that they can always place them so that all the numbers from $1$ to $2n$ are visible at once.