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Print62nd Ukrainian National Mathematical Olympiad, Third Round, First Tour
Ukraine counting and probability
Problem
Teacher wrote on the board 5 distinct numbers. After that Petrik counted the sums of each two of these numbers and wrote them on the left half of the board, Vasyl did the same for the sums of each three of these numbers and wrote them on the right half of the board. Could the teacher write such numbers so that the sets of numbers written on the left and right halves of the board are the same (counting multiplicity)?
Solution
It's enough to choose the following numbers: . Then we can write down the sets of integers, but we can also apply the following reasoning: for any two numbers, say, , selected by Petrik, from one side exists pair of numbers , whose sum is the opposite to the initial, and, from another side, there exists a triple of numbers except , and their sum also is , as the sum of all five numbers is zero. So we get a correspondence between the numbers from the left and from the right parts of the board.
Final answer
Yes; for example, −2, −1, 0, 1, 2.
Techniques
Recursion, bijectionIntegers