Found problems: 175
2012 Belarus Team Selection Test, 2
Determine the greatest possible value of n that satisfies the following condition:
for any choice of $n$ subsets $M_1, ...,M_n$ of the set $M = \{1,2,...,n\}$ satisfying the conditions
i) $i \in M_i$ and
ii) $i \in M_j \Leftrightarrow j \notin M_i$ for all $i \ne j$,
there exist $M_k$ and $M_l$ such that $M_k \cup M_l = M$.
(Moscow regional olympiad,adopted)
1982 Spain Mathematical Olympiad, 7
Let $S$ be the subset of rational numbers that can be written in the form $a/b$, where $a$ is any integer and $b$ is an odd integer. Does the sum of two of its elements belong to the $S$ ? And the product? Are there elements in $S$ whose inverse belongs to $S$ ?
1997 Pre-Preparation Course Examination, 1
Let $ k,m,n$ be integers such that $ 1 < n \leq m \minus{} 1 \leq k.$ Determine the maximum size of a subset $ S$ of the set $ \{1,2,3, \ldots, k\minus{}1,k\}$ such that no $ n$ distinct elements of $ S$ add up to $ m.$
1991 Czech And Slovak Olympiad IIIA, 6
The set $N$ is partitioned into three subsets $A_1,A_2,A_3$.
Prove that at least one of them has the following property: There exists a positive number $m$ such that for any $k$ one can find numbers $a_1 < a_2 < ... < a_k$ in that subset satisfying $a_{j+1} -a_j \le m$ for $j = 1,...,k -1$.
2023 Iran Team Selection Test, 6
Suppose that we have $2n$ non-empty subset of $ \big\{0,1,2,...,2n-1\big\} $ that sum of the elements of these subsets is $ \binom{2n+1}{2}$ . Prove that we can choose one element from every subset that some of them is $ \binom{2n}{2}$
[i]Proposed by Morteza Saghafian and Afrouz Jabalameli [/i]
2025 Romania EGMO TST, P2
Let $m$ and $n$ be positive integers with $m > n \ge 2$. Set $S =\{1,2,...,m\}$, and set $T = \{a_1,a_2,...,a_n\}$ is a subset of $S$ such that every element of $S$ is not divisible by any pair of distinct elements of $T$. Prove that
$$\frac{1}{a_1}+\frac{1}{a_2}+ ...+ \frac{1}{a_n} < \frac{m+n}{m}$$
2015 Moldova Team Selection Test, 4
Consider a positive integer $n$ and $A = \{ 1,2,...,n \}$. Call a subset $X \subseteq A$ [i][b]perfect[/b][/i] if $|X| \in X$. Call a perfect subset $X$ [i][b]minimal[/b][/i] if it doesn't contain another perfect subset. Find the number of minimal subsets of $A$.
1969 IMO Longlists, 42
$(MON 3)$ Let $A_k (1 \le k \le h)$ be $n-$element sets such that each two of them have a nonempty intersection. Let $A$ be the union of all the sets $A_k,$ and let $B$ be a subset of $A$ such that for each $k (1\le k \le h)$ the intersection of $A_k$ and $B$ consists of exactly two different elements $a_k$ and $b_k$. Find all subsets $X$ of the set $A$ with $r$ elements satisfying the condition that for at least one index $k,$ both elements $a_k$ and $b_k$ belong to $X$.
1988 Tournament Of Towns, (177) 3
The set of all $10$-digit numbers may be represented as a union of two subsets: the subset $M$ consisting of all $10$-digit numbers, each of which may be represented as a product of two $5$-digit numbers, and the subset $N$ , containing the remaining $10$-digit numbers . Which of the sets $M$ and $N$ contains more elements?
(S. Fomin , Leningrad)
2008 Indonesia TST, 2
Let $S = \{1, 2, 3, ..., 100\}$ and $P$ is the collection of all subset $T$ of $S$ that have $49$ elements, or in other words: $$P = \{T \subset S : |T| = 49\}.$$ Every element of $P$ is labelled by the element of $S$ randomly (the labels may be the same). Show that there exist subset $M$ of $S$ that has $50$ members such that for every $x \in M$, the label of $M -\{x\}$ is not equal to $x$
1978 Swedish Mathematical Competition, 5
$k > 1$ is fixed. Show that for $n$ sufficiently large for every partition of $\{1,2,\dots,n\}$ into $k$ disjoint subsets we can find $a \neq b$ such that $a$ and $b$ are in the same subset and $a+1$ and $b+1$ are in the same subset. What is the smallest $n$ for which this is true?
1974 Poland - Second Round, 1
Let $ Z $ be a set of $ n $ elements. Find the number of such pairs of sets $ (A, B) $ such that $ A $ is contained in $ B $ and $ B $ is contained in $ Z $. We assume that every set also contains itself and the empty set.
2022 New Zealand MO, 3
Let $S$ be a set of $10$ positive integers. Prove that one can find two disjoint subsets $A =\{a_1, ..., a_k\}$ and $B = \{b_1, ... , b_k\}$ of $S$ with $|A| = |B|$ such that the sums $x =\frac{1}{a_1}+ ... +\frac{1}{a_k}$ and $y =\frac{1}{b_1}+ ... +\frac{1}{b_k}$ differ by less than $0.01$, i.e., $|x - y| < 1/100$.
2002 USAMO, 1
Let $S$ be a set with 2002 elements, and let $N$ be an integer with $0 \leq N \leq 2^{2002}$. Prove that it is possible to color every subset of $S$ either black or white so that the following conditions hold:
(a) the union of any two white subsets is white;
(b) the union of any two black subsets is black;
(c) there are exactly $N$ white subsets.
2019 Junior Balkan Team Selection Tests - Romania, 4
Consider two disjoint finite sets of positive integers, $A$ and $B$, have $n$ and $m$ elements, respectively. It is knows that all $k$ belonging to $A \cup B$ satisfies at least one of the conditions $k + 17 \in A$ and $k - 31 \in B$.
Prove that $17n = 31m$.
2014 Czech-Polish-Slovak Junior Match, 1
The set of $\{1,2,3,...,63\}$ was divided into three non-empty disjoint sets $A,B$. Let $a,b,c$ be the product of all numbers in each set $A,B,C$ respectively and finally we have determined the greatest common divisor of these three products. What was the biggest result we could get?
2004 Switzerland Team Selection Test, 1
Let $S$ be the set of all n-tuples $(X_1,...,X_n)$ of subsets of the set $\{1,2,..,1000\}$, not necessarily different and not necessarily nonempty. For $a = (X_1,...,X_n)$ denote by $E(a)$ the number of elements of $X_1\cup ... \cup X_n$. Find an explicit formula for the sum $\sum_{a\in S} E(a)$
1998 IMO Shortlist, 4
Let $U=\{1,2,\ldots ,n\}$, where $n\geq 3$. A subset $S$ of $U$ is said to be [i]split[/i] by an arrangement of the elements of $U$ if an element not in $S$ occurs in the arrangement somewhere between two elements of $S$. For example, 13542 splits $\{1,2,3\}$ but not $\{3,4,5\}$. Prove that for any $n-2$ subsets of $U$, each containing at least 2 and at most $n-1$ elements, there is an arrangement of the elements of $U$ which splits all of them.
1992 IMO Longlists, 75
A sequence $\{an\}$ of positive integers is defined by
\[a_n=\left[ n +\sqrt n + \frac 12 \right] , \qquad \forall n \in \mathbb N\]
Determine the positive integers that occur in the sequence.
2016 Kurschak Competition, 1
Let $1\le k\le n$ be integers. At most how many $k$-element subsets can we select from $\{1,2,\dots,n\}$ such that for any two selected subsets, one of the subsets consists of the $k$ smallest elements of their union?
2019 Purple Comet Problems, 16
Find the number of ordered triples of sets $(T_1, T_2, T_3)$ such that
1. each of $T_1, T_2$, and $T_3$ is a subset of $\{1, 2, 3, 4\}$,
2. $T_1 \subseteq T_2 \cup T_3$,
3. $T_2 \subseteq T_1 \cup T_3$, and
4. $T_3\subseteq T_1 \cup T_2$.
2009 Ukraine Team Selection Test, 3
Let $S$ be a set consisting of $n$ elements, $F$ a set of subsets of $S$ consisting of $2^{n-1}$ subsets such that every three such subsets have a non-empty intersection.
a) Show that the intersection of all subsets of $F$ is not empty.
b) If you replace the number of sets from $2^{n-1}$ with $2^{n-1}-1$, will the previous answer change?
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]
1993 IMO Shortlist, 4
Let $n \geq 2, n \in \mathbb{N}$ and $A_0 = (a_{01},a_{02}, \ldots, a_{0n})$ be any $n-$tuple of natural numbers, such that $0 \leq a_{0i} \leq i-1,$ for $i = 1, \ldots, n.$
$n-$tuples $A_1= (a_{11},a_{12}, \ldots, a_{1n}), A_2 = (a_{21},a_{22}, \ldots, a_{2n}), \ldots$ are defined by: $a_{i+1,j} = Card \{a_{i,l}| 1 \leq l \leq j-1, a_{i,l} \geq a_{i,j}\},$ for $i \in \mathbb{N}$ and $j = 1, \ldots, n.$ Prove that there exists $k \in \mathbb{N},$ such that $A_{k+2} = A_{k}.$
2018 Regional Competition For Advanced Students, 3
Let $n \ge 3$ be a natural number.
Determine the number $a_n$ of all subsets of $\{1, 2,...,n\}$ consisting of three elements such that one of them is the arithmetic mean of the other two.
[i]Proposed by Walther Janous[/i]