Class 1

The pigeon-hole principle

If we put N+1 pigeons in N pigeon-holes, then some pigeon-hole contains at least two pigeons.

Problems

1. Prove that among every 1000 people there are two which selebrate their birthday on the same day. Can one find a day when 3 people selebrate their birthdays? How about 4 people?

2. Prove that among any 101 numbers one can find two numbers whose difference is divisible by 100.

3. A city has 10000 different telephone lines numbered by 4-digit numbers. More than half of the telephone lines are in the downtown. Prove that there are two telephone numbers in the downtown whose sum is again the number of a downtown telephone line.

4. Thirty members of the Cannibal Club had a joint dinner. After the dinner, it became known that among every six members of the club, one ate ] another one. Prove that there are at least 6 members of the club which are inside one another (the first member is inside the second one, the second member is inside the third one and so on).

5. There are 1091 small bugs on a table of size 2 ft by 3 ft. Prove that at any time you can catch at least 6 of them by covering them with a cylindrical drinking glass of diameter 3 in.

6. A student solves math problems every day. It is known that he never solves more than 12 problems per week. Prove that there are several consecutive days in one year when he solved exactly 20 problems.

7. There are 6 people at a party. Prove that either 3 of them knew each other before the party or 3 of them were complete strangers before the party.

Solutions of the class problems

1. A typical year consists of 365 days. We have 1000 people. Since 1000 is greater than 365*2+1=731, the pigeon-hole principle says that there is always a day when (at least) three of the people have their birthdays. (Note: we don't know which particular day those three people selebrate their birthdays. We only know that such a day does exist.) Since 1000 less than 365*3, it is perfectly possible that there is no day such that four people have their birthdays at this day. For example, it can happen that each day from January,1 through October,1 exactly three of the people have their birthdays and each day from October,1 through December, 31 no more than two of them have their birthdays.

2. There are exactly 100 possible remainders when we divide a number by 100. These are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ..., 97, 98, 99. The pigeon-hole principle says that since we have 101 numbers and only 100 possible remainders, there are (at least) two numbers among them which have the same remainders. Then the difference of two such numbers has remainder 0 and therefore is divisible by 100.

3. We know that there are at least 5001 different telephone numbers in the downtown. It may happen that the number 0000 is in the downtown. In this case we can add this number to any other downtown number, get the same downtown number and we are done. Suppose that the number 0000 is not in the downtown. Take the smallest telephone number N in the downtown and consider all possible differences between downtown telephone numbers and N. There are at least 5000 distinct positive values for these differences and there are at least 5001 positive downtown telephone numbers. Since there are only 9999 positive telephone numbers in all, by the pigeon-hole principle, there is a telephone number M in the downtown which is also the difference of two downtown telephone numbers, say T-N. So, M=T-N and T=M+N. We are done.