For every integer $d \geq 1$, let $M_d$ be the set of all positive integers that cannot be written as a sum of an arithmetic progression with difference $d$, having at least two terms and consisting of positive integers. Let $A = M_1$, $B = M_2 \setminus \{2 \}, C = M_3$. Prove that every $c \in C$ may be written in a unique way as $c = ab$ with $a \in A, b \in B.$

Prove that the following statement holds for all odd integers $n \ge 3$: If a quadrilateral $ABCD$ can be partitioned by lines into $n$ cyclic quadrilaterals, then $ABCD$ is itself cyclic.

Anton has an isosceles right triangle, which he wants to cut into $9$ triangular parts in the way shown in the picture. What is the largest number of the resulting $9$ parts that can be equilateral triangles? A more formal description of partitioning. Let triangle $ABC$ be given. We choose two points on its sides so that they go in the order $AC_1C_2BA_1A_2CB_1B_2$, and no two coincide. In addition, the segments $C_1A_2$, $A_1B_2$ and $B_1C_2$ must intersect at one point. Then the partition is given by segments $C_1A_2$, $A_1B_2$, $B_1C_2$, $A_1C_2$, $B_1A_2$ and $C_1B_2$. [img]https://cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/attachments/0/5/5dd914b987983216342e23460954d46755d351.png[/img]

$a_1, a_2, ... , a_n$ is a sequence of integers such that every non-empty subsequence has non-zero sum. Show that we can partition the positive integers into a finite number of sets such that if $x_i$ all belong to the same set, then $a_1x_1 + a_2x_2 + ... + a_nx_n$ is non-zero.

Assume that the set of all positive integers is decomposed into $ r$ (disjoint) subsets $ A_1 \cup A_2 \cup \ldots \cup A_r \equal{} \mathbb{N}.$ Prove that one of them, say $ A_i,$ has the following property: There exists a positive $ m$ such that for any $ k$ one can find numbers $ a_1, a_2, \ldots, a_k$ in $ A_i$ with $ 0 < a_{j \plus{} 1} \minus{} a_j \leq m,$ $ (1 \leq j \leq k \minus{} 1)$.

In a regular 100-gon, 41 vertices are colored black and the remaining 59 vertices are colored white. Prove that there exist 24 convex quadrilaterals $Q_{1}, \ldots, Q_{24}$ whose corners are vertices of the 100-gon, so that [list] [*] the quadrilaterals $Q_{1}, \ldots, Q_{24}$ are pairwise disjoint, and [*] every quadrilateral $Q_{i}$ has three corners of one color and one corner of the other color. [/list]

Let P be a set of 4n points in the plane such that none of the three points are collinear. Prove that if n is large enough, then the following two statements are equivalent. (i) P can be divided into n four-element subsets such that each subset forms the vertices of a convex quadrilateral. (ii) P can not be split into two sets A and B, each with an odd number of elements, so that each convex quadrilateral whose vertices are in P has an even number of vertices in A and B.

Let $n$ be a positive integer. What is the smallest value of $m$ with $m > n$ such that the set $M = \{n, n + 1, ..., m\}$ can be partitioned into subsets so that in each subset, there is a number which equals to the sum of all other numbers of this subset?

We call a set of integers $\textit{special}$ if it has $4$ elements and can be partitioned into $2$ disjoint subsets $\{ a,b \}$ and $\{ c, d \}$ such that $ab - cd = 1$. For every positive integer $n$, prove that the set $\{ 1, 2, \dots, 4n \}$ cannot be partitioned into $n$ disjoint special sets. [i]Proposed by Mohsen Jamali, Iran[/i]

Givan the set $S = \{1,2,3,....,n\}$. We want to partition the set $S$ into three subsets $A,B,C$ disjoint (to each other) with $A\cup B\cup C=S$ , such that the sums of their elements $S_{A} S_{B} S_{C}$ to be equal .Examine if this is possible when: a) $n=2014$ b) $n=2015 $ c) $n=2018$

Let $0<f(1)<f(2)<f(3)<\ldots$ a sequence with all its terms positive$.$ The $n-th$ positive integer which doesn't belong to the sequence is $f(f(n))+1.$ Find $f(240).$

Show that the set $\{1,2,....,2^n\}$ can be partitioned in two classes, none of which contains an arithmetic progression of length $2n$.

For every positive integer $n$, let $p(n)$ denote the number of sets $\{x_1, x_2, \dots, x_k\}$ of integers with $x_1 > x_2 > \dots > x_k > 0$ and $n = x_1 + x_3 + x_5 + \dots$ (the right hand side here means the sum of all odd-indexed elements). As an example, $p(6) = 11$ because all satisfying sets are as follows: $$\{6\}, \{6, 5\}, \{6, 4\}, \{6, 3\}, \{6, 2\}, \{6, 1\}, \{5, 4, 1\}, \{5, 3, 1\}, \{5, 2, 1\}, \{4, 3, 2\}, \{4, 3, 2, 1\}.$$ Show that $p(n)$ equals to the number of partitions of $n$ for every positive integer $n$.

[b][i](a) [/i][/b] Show that the set $\mathbb N$ of all positive integers can be partitioned into three disjoint subsets $A, B$, and $C$ satisfying the following conditions: \[A^2 = A, B^2 = C, C^2 = B,\] \[AB = B, AC = C, BC = A,\] where $HK$ stands for $\{hk | h \in H, k \in K\}$ for any two subsets $H, K$ of $\mathbb N$, and $H^2$ denotes $HH.$ [b][i](b)[/i][/b] Show that for every such partition of $\mathbb N$, $\min\{n \in N | n \in A \text{ and } n + 1 \in A\}$ is less than or equal to $77.$

Let $ A_n $ be the set of partitions of the sequence $ 1,2,..., n $ into several subsequences such that every two neighbouring terms of each subsequence have different parity,and $ B_n $ the set of partitions of the sequence $ 1,2,..., n $ into several subsequences such that all the terms of each subsequence have the same parity ( for example,the partition $ {(1,4,5,8),(2,3),(6,9),(7)} $ is an element of $ A_9 $,and the partition $ {(1,3,5),(2,4),(6)} $ is an element of $ B_6 $ ). Prove that for every positive integer $ n $ the sets $ A_n $ and $ B_{n+1} $ contain the same number of elements.

Let $S={1,2,\ldots,100}$. Consider a partition of $S$ into $S_1,S_2,\ldots,S_n$ for some $n$, i.e. $S_i$ are nonempty, pairwise disjoint and $\displaystyle S=\bigcup_{i=1}^n S_i$. Let $a_i$ be the average of elements of the set $S_i$. Define the score of this partition by \[\dfrac{a_1+a_2+\ldots+a_n}{n}.\] Among all $n$ and partitions of $S$, determine the minimum possible score.

Consider $A = \{1, 2, ..., 16\}$. A partition of $A$ into nonempty sets $A_1, A_2,..., A_n$ is said to be good if none of the Ai contains elements $a, b, c$ (not necessarily distinct) such that $a = b + c$. (a) Find a good partition $\{A_1, A_2, A_3, A_4\}$ of $A$. (b) Prove that no partition $\{A_1, A_2, A_3\}$ of $A$ is good

Let $n$ be a positive integer, and let $A$ be a subset of $\{ 1,\cdots ,n\}$. An $A$-partition of $n$ into $k$ parts is a representation of n as a sum $n = a_1 + \cdots + a_k$, where the parts $a_1 , \cdots , a_k $ belong to $A$ and are not necessarily distinct. The number of different parts in such a partition is the number of (distinct) elements in the set $\{ a_1 , a_2 , \cdots , a_k \} $. We say that an $A$-partition of $n$ into $k$ parts is optimal if there is no $A$-partition of $n$ into $r$ parts with $r<k$. Prove that any optimal $A$-partition of $n$ contains at most $\sqrt[3]{6n}$ different parts.

Let $ A_0 \equal{} (a_1,\dots,a_n)$ be a finite sequence of real numbers. For each $ k\geq 0$, from the sequence $ A_k \equal{} (x_1,\dots,x_k)$ we construct a new sequence $ A_{k \plus{} 1}$ in the following way. 1. We choose a partition $ \{1,\dots,n\} \equal{} I\cup J$, where $ I$ and $ J$ are two disjoint sets, such that the expression \[ \left|\sum_{i\in I}x_i \minus{} \sum_{j\in J}x_j\right| \] attains the smallest value. (We allow $ I$ or $ J$ to be empty; in this case the corresponding sum is 0.) If there are several such partitions, one is chosen arbitrarily. 2. We set $ A_{k \plus{} 1} \equal{} (y_1,\dots,y_n)$ where $ y_i \equal{} x_i \plus{} 1$ if $ i\in I$, and $ y_i \equal{} x_i \minus{} 1$ if $ i\in J$. Prove that for some $ k$, the sequence $ A_k$ contains an element $ x$ such that $ |x|\geq\frac n2$. [i]Author: Omid Hatami, Iran[/i]

Let $N$ be a positive integer, and consider an $N \times N$ grid. A [i]right-down path[/i] is a sequence of grid cells such that each cell is either one cell to the right of or one cell below the previous cell in the sequence. A [i]right-up path[/i] is a sequence of grid cells such that each cell is either one cell to the right of or one cell above the previous cell in the sequence. Prove that the cells of the $N \times N$ grid cannot be partitioned into less than $N$ right-down or right-up paths. For example, the following partition of the $5 \times 5$ grid uses $5$ paths. [asy] size(4cm); draw((5,-1)--(0,-1)--(0,-2)--(5,-2)--(5,-3)--(0,-3)--(0,-4)--(5,-4),gray+linewidth(0.5)+miterjoin); draw((1,-5)--(1,0)--(2,0)--(2,-5)--(3,-5)--(3,0)--(4,0)--(4,-5),gray+linewidth(0.5)+miterjoin); draw((0,0)--(5,0)--(5,-5)--(0,-5)--cycle,black+linewidth(2.5)+miterjoin); draw((0,-1)--(3,-1)--(3,-2)--(1,-2)--(1,-4)--(4,-4)--(4,-3)--(2,-3)--(2,-2),black+linewidth(2.5)+miterjoin); draw((3,0)--(3,-1),black+linewidth(2.5)+miterjoin); draw((1,-4)--(1,-5),black+linewidth(2.5)+miterjoin); draw((4,-3)--(4,-1)--(5,-1),black+linewidth(2.5)+miterjoin); [/asy] [i]Proposed by Zixiang Zhou, Canada[/i]

Let $N$ be a positive integer. It is given set of weights which satisfies following conditions: $i)$ Every weight from set has some weight from $1,2,...,N$; $ii)$ For every $i\in {1,2,...,N}$ in given set there exists weight $i$; $iii)$ Sum of all weights from given set is even positive integer. Prove that set can be partitioned into two disjoint sets which have equal weight

Let $n$ be a positive integer, and let $A$ be a subset of $\{ 1,\cdots ,n\}$. An $A$-partition of $n$ into $k$ parts is a representation of n as a sum $n = a_1 + \cdots + a_k$, where the parts $a_1 , \cdots , a_k $ belong to $A$ and are not necessarily distinct. The number of different parts in such a partition is the number of (distinct) elements in the set $\{ a_1 , a_2 , \cdots , a_k \} $. We say that an $A$-partition of $n$ into $k$ parts is optimal if there is no $A$-partition of $n$ into $r$ parts with $r<k$. Prove that any optimal $A$-partition of $n$ contains at most $\sqrt[3]{6n}$ different parts.

Let $f(n)$ be the number of ways to express positive integer $n$ as a sum of positive odd integers. Compute $f(n).$ (If the order of odd numbers are different, then it is considered as different expression.)

Can we partition the positive integers in two sets such that none of the sets contains an infinite arithmetic progression of nonzero ratio ?

Consider the set of natural numbers $ U = \{1,2,3, ..., 6024 \} $ Prove that for any partition of the $ U $ in three subsets with $ 2008 $ elements each, we can choose a number in each subset so that one of the numbers is the sum of the other two numbers.