{"year": "2011", "tier": "T0", "problem_label": "1", "problem_type": null, "exam": "USA_TSTST", "problem": "Find all real-valued functions $f$ defined on pairs of real numbers, having the following property: for all real numbers $a, b, c$, the median of $f(a, b), f(b, c), f(c, a)$ equals the median of $a, b, c$. (The median of three real numbers, not necessarily distinct, is the number that is in the middle when the three numbers are arranged in nondecreasing order.)", "solution": " We prove the following main claim, from which repeated applications can deduce the problem. Claim - Let $ad_{2}>\\cdots>d_{k}$ and $\\operatorname{gcd}\\left(d_{1}, d_{2}, \\ldots, d_{k}\\right)=1$. For every integer $n \\geq n_{0}$, define $$ x_{n}=\\left\\lfloor\\frac{x_{n-d_{1}}+x_{n-d_{2}}+\\cdots+x_{n-d_{k}}}{k}\\right\\rfloor . $$ Show that the sequence $\\left(x_{n}\\right)$ is eventually constant.", "solution": " Note that if the initial terms are contained in some interval $[A, B]$ then they will remain in that interval. Thus the sequence is eventually periodic. Discard initial terms and let the period be $T$; we will consider all indices modulo $T$ from now on. Let $M$ be the maximal term in the sequence (which makes sense since the sequence is periodic). Note that if $x_{n}=M$, we must have $x_{n-d_{i}}=M$ for all $i$ as well. By taking a linear combination $\\sum c_{i} d_{i} \\equiv 1(\\bmod T)($ possibly be Bezout's theorem, since $\\operatorname{gcd}_{i}\\left(d_{i}\\right)=1$ ), we conclude $x_{n-1}=M$, as desired.", "metadata": {"resource_path": "USA_TSTST/segmented/en-sols-TSTST-2011.jsonl"}} {"year": "2011", "tier": "T0", "problem_label": "9", "problem_type": null, "exam": "USA_TSTST", "problem": "Let $n$ be a positive integer. Suppose we are given $2^{n}+1$ distinct sets, each containing finitely many objects. Place each set into one of two categories, the red sets and the blue sets, so that there is at least one set in each category. We define the symmetric difference of two sets as the set of objects belonging to exactly one of the two sets. Prove that there are at least $2^{n}$ different sets which can be obtained as the symmetric difference of a red set and a blue set.", "solution": " We can interpret the problem as working with binary strings of length $\\ell \\geq n+1$, with $\\ell$ the number of elements across all sets. Let $F$ be a field of cardinality $2^{\\ell}$, hence $F \\cong \\mathbb{F}_{2}^{\\oplus \\ell}$. Then, we can think of red/blue as elements of $F$, so we have some $B \\subseteq F$, and an $R \\subseteq F$. We wish to prove that $|B+R| \\geq 2^{n}$. Want $|B+R| \\geq 2^{n}$. Equivalently, any element of a set $X$ with $|X|=2^{n}-1$ should omit some element of $|B+R|$. To prove this: we know $|B|+|R|=2^{n}+1$, and define $$ P(b, r)=\\prod_{x \\in X}(b+r-x) $$ Consider $b^{|B|-1} r^{|R|-1}$. The coefficient of is $\\binom{2^{n}-1}{|B|-1}$, which is odd (say by Lucas theorem), so the nullstellensatz applies.", "metadata": {"resource_path": "USA_TSTST/segmented/en-sols-TSTST-2011.jsonl"}}