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Print60th Belarusian Mathematical Olympiad
Belarus geometry
Problem
Fifteen points are marked on a plane. Some of them are painted red, some others are painted blue, and all remained points are painted green. It is known that the number of the red points is the largest. The sum of the distances between the red points and the blue points is , the sum of the distances between the red points and the green points is , and the sum of the distances between the blue points and the green points is . Find the number of points of each color. (I. Voronovich)
Solution
Let be respectively the numbers of red, green, and blue points. Let be respectively the sums of the distances between blue and green points, red and blue points, red and green points. From the inequality of triangle it follows that the following inequalities are necessary for the existence of the points on a plane: In our case By condition . Since the number of the red points is the largest, we have . Suppose that . Then from (1) it follows , hence , which gives . Therefore, , so , and we have
Therefore, . Now equality (1) has the form
Therefore, . Now equality (1) has the form
Final answer
red 6, blue 5, green 4
Techniques
Triangle inequalitiesDistance chasing