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Le Monde puzzle [#822]

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For once Le Monde math puzzle is much more easily solved on a piece of paper than in R, even in a plane from Roma:

Given a partition of the set {1,…,N} in k groups, one considers the collection of all subsets of  the set {1,…,N} containing at least one element from each group. Show that the size of the collection cannot be 50.

Obviously, one could consider a range of possible N’s and k’s and run a program evaluating the sizes of the corresponding collections. However, if the k groups are of size n1,…,nk, the number of subsets satisfying the condition is

and it is easily shown by induction that this number is necessarily odd, hence the impossible 50.


Filed under: Books, Kids, R Tagged: combinatorics, induction, Le Monde, mathematical puzzle, odd numbers, partition, R
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