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60th Belarusian Mathematical Olympiad

Belarus geometry

Problem

Fifteen red, blue and green points are marked on a plane. It is known that 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 , the sum of the distances between the blue points and the green points is . How many points of each color are marked? (Determine all possibilities.)
Solution
Let , , denote respectively the number of red, green, blue points. Then . From (*) in the solution of Problem 2, Category C, we have Substitute for in (1) to obtain (after simple manipulations) Substitute for in (2) to obtain . Using , we obtain , hence If , then we have or . From (3), it follows that . However, it is easy to verify that the last equality cannot be valid for . Verifying the values , we see that inequalities (3) and (4) can be valid only if or . Then we have respectively , and . Examples for these values can be constructed similarly to the example of Problem 2, Category B.

Therefore, the answer is or .
Final answer
Either red 8, green 3, blue 4; or red 13, green 1, blue 1.

Techniques

Distance chasingLinear and quadratic inequalitiesColoring schemes, extremal arguments