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Irska

Ireland counting and probability

Problem

Suppose that each point of the plane is coloured either black or white. Show that there is a set of three points of the same colour which form the vertices of an equilateral triangle.

problem
Solution
Assume, if possible, that the result is false so every equilateral triangle in the plane has two vertices of different colours. Consider a regular hexagon with centre .



Assume is coloured black. One of the vertices of the triangle must be black; assume it is . Considering the equilateral triangles and , then and are both white. From the triangle , then is black and from the vertex is white. If is the point of intersection of and , then we get a contradiction for the colouring of . If it is white (black) then the triangle () is an equilateral triangle with all the vertices of the same colour. So we conclude that there is an equilateral triangle whose vertices do have the same colour.

Techniques

Coloring schemes, extremal argumentsConstructions and loci