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UMUMC29

The document outlines the instructions and problems for the University of Michigan's Undergraduate Math Competition held on March 31, 2012. It includes ten mathematical problems of varying difficulty, covering topics such as combinatorics, probability, and graph theory. Participants are required to prove their answers for full credit, and calculators are not allowed.

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8 views3 pages

UMUMC29

The document outlines the instructions and problems for the University of Michigan's Undergraduate Math Competition held on March 31, 2012. It includes ten mathematical problems of varying difficulty, covering topics such as combinatorics, probability, and graph theory. Participants are required to prove their answers for full credit, and calculators are not allowed.

Uploaded by

TiltTheTilt
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

UNDERGRADUATE MATH COMPETITION 29


MARCH 31, 2012

Instructions. Write on the front of your blue book your student ID number. Do
not write your name anywhere on your blue book. Each question is worth 10 points.
For full credit, you must prove that your answers are correct even when the question
doesn’t say “prove”. There are lots of problems of widely varying difficulty. It is not
expected that anyone will solve them all; look for ones that seem easy and fun. No
calculators are allowed.

Problem 1. It is March Math Madness. 512 math teams are randomly assigned
numbers from 1 to 512. Repeated rounds are played. In the first round, the teams
are paired and 256 contests are held. The winner progresses to the next round while
the loser is eliminated. Thus, in the second round there are 128 pairs of teams, in the
third round 64 pairs, and so forth. Eventually, only two teams are left and they play
to determine the champion. Show that no matter how the pairings are done and no
matter who wins, at some point in the competition two teams play whose numbers
differ by 31 or more.
Problem 2. Determine the number of integers n, 0 ≤ n ≤ 2012, such that 2012

n
is
not divisible by 13.
Problem 3. Let Wn be the set of n letter strings formed from the letters a, b and
satisfying the additional condition that the maximal substrings consisting entirely of
the letter a must have an even number of occurrences of a. E.g., W4 contains aabb, baab,
and aaaa, but not abba. Let pn be the probability that a string in Wn has rightmost
character b. Find limn→∞ pn .
Problem 4. Let a1 , a2 , . . .Pbe a sequence of positive real numbers such that ∞
P
i=1 ai
∞
converges and define bn = i=n ai for all n. Show that
∞
X an
n=1
bn
diverges.

1
2 (U M )2 C 29

Problem 5. Let k and n be positive integers with 2k + 1 ≤ n. Let f be a bijective


function from the set consisting of the first n positive integers, An = {1, . . . , n}, to
itself. Define f to have a k-maximum at h ∈ An if f is increasing on the set of integers
from h − k, . . . , h − 1, h and decreasing on the set h, h + 1, . . . h + k. For example, there
is a 2-maximum at h = 5 if f (3) < f (4) < f (5) > f (6) > f (7). Let Mk (f ) denote the
number of integers that are k-maxima for f , and m(n, k) denote the average value of
Mk (f ) taken over all possible choices of the bijection f : An → An . Express m(n, k) in
closed form as a rational function of n, k, and k!
Problem 6. Suppose that r is a positive integer. Show that for every positive integer
n with n ≤ r! there exist positive integer m with m ≤ 2r and positive integers k1 :=
n > k2 > · · · > km = 1 such that
1 1
−
ki+1 ki
is the reciprocal of an integer for i = 1, 2, . . . , m − 1. For example if n = 23 ≤ 4! then
we can take m = 6 ≤ 2 · 4 and (k1 , k2 , k3 , k4 , k5 , k6 ) = (23, 22, 20, 4, 2, 1), because
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
− = , − = , − = , − = , − = .
22 23 506 20 22 220 4 20 5 2 4 4 1 2 2
Problem 7. Suppose that the positive integers k1 < k2 < · · · < kr have the property
that for every complex solution (x1 , . . . , xn , y1 , . . . , yn ) ∈ C2n of the system
y1 xk11 + · · · + yn xkn1 = 0
y1 xk12 + · · · + yn xkn2 = 0
.. ..
. .
y1 xk1r + · · · + yn xknr = 0
we have
y1 xk1 + · · · + yn xkn = 0
for all positive integers k. Prove that k1 k2 · · · kr /n! is an integer.
(U M )2 C 29 3

Problem 8. You are playing a game of connect the dots with the devil. The devil
tells you how many dots there are, say n, and names them. The devil then decides
which pairs of two distinct dots are directly connected: one also says that they form
an edge, but tells you nothing about this. The array is called a graph. Two dots A and
B are connected if they are the same, or are directly connected, or if there is a path
between them, i.e., a sequence of dots A1 , . . . , Ak such that A and A1 , Ai and Ai+1 ,
1 ≤ i ≤ k − 1, and Ak and B are edges. The devil’s whole array is called connected if
every dot is connected to every other dot. You get to ask questions. In each question,
you are allowed to ask whether two specific dots are directly connected. You are trying
to determine whether the whole array is connected or not. You win if you can do this
without asking about every pair of dots. Otherwise, the devil wins. In deciding on
what to ask, you may take the answers to the previous questions into account. Just to
make your life harder, at any point between two questions, the devil can change the
whole array, provided that the new array gives the same answers as the old to your
previous questions. The devil can do this repeatedly. Determine, for every value of n,
who can win the game with best strategy.
Problem 9. Your spaceship is at rest, parked at the origin in R. The control panel of
the spaceship displays not only your position x, but also your velocity x0 , acceleration
x00 and all higher derivatives x(k) of your position. All readings are currently at 0.
At time t = 0 you enter in new values for n of the derivatives:
(x(k) (0), . . . , x(k+n−1) (0)) := v ∈ Rn
and hang on for your life until t = 1 when you mark down the readouts for n other
derivatives:
w = (x(m0 ) (1), x(m1 ) (1), . . . , x(mn−1 ) (1)).
You may assume that x(t) is an analytic function on the interval [0, 1]. Show that
the determinant of the linear map which sends v ∈ Rn to w ∈ Rn is either 0 or the
reciprocal of an integer.
Problem 10. A room has the shape of a, not necessarily convex, n-gon. For each
n ≥ 3 find the smallest positive integer k such that, regardless of the shape of the
room, k lights can be placed in the room such that at every position in the room, at
least 1 light is visible.

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