MATHFEST 2014 - RIGOUROUS SOLVING

VIHARI VEMURI AND M.RAMCHANDRAN

On the occasion of BITS Golden Jubilee Celebration
1. Combinatorial Tiling Techniques
In combinatorics, the essence of proving identities or discovering them is to ask
a question and solve it in two dierent ways.
Fibonacci Numbers: F
0
= 0 , F
1
= 1 and for n 2 ,
(1.1) F
n
= F
n1
+ F
n2
Consider an n-board i.e rectangle (1 n)
Let us tile the n-board with squares and dominoes (1 2)
You can verify that for a 4-board there are 5 possible tilings.
Theorem 1. Let f
n
count the ways to tile the n-board with squares and dominoes.
Then for n 1
f
n
= F
n+1
f
n
= f
n1
+ f
n2
Proof. Question : In how many ways can you tile a n-board?
First method: By denition the answer is f
n
Second Method: Consider the tiling of a n-board in the following two cases.
Case 1. First tile is a square.
Now, the remaining (n 1) tiles can be tiled in f
n1
ways.
Case 2. First tile is a domino
Now the remaning (n 2) tiles can be tiled in f
n2
ways
Thus for method 2, we get f
n1
+ f
n2
Since the above two cases exhaust all possibilties of tiling a n-board with
squares and dominoes, our proof is complete.

Conditioning: Typically as we count by two methods, atleast for one we

will have to break the counting problem into disjoint cases based on some
property.
This is referred to as conditioning on that property.
Breakability: A tiling of a n-board is breakable at cell k is the tiling can
be decomposed into two tilings of 1 to k and k + 1 to n. Which implies
that there cannot be a domino at (k, k + 1)
Some commonly used properties for conditioning are -
(1) Location of last square
(2) Location of last domino
1
2 VIHARI VEMURI AND M.RAMCHANDRAN
(3) No. of squares
(4) No. of dominoes
(5) Breakabilty
Using the above ideas , try your luck to provide proofs for the following identities.
Answer the following questions as 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 in your answer-sheets.
Question 1 is 7 marks and the remaining are each 10 marks.
(1) For n 0

n i
i

= f
n
(2) For n 0

i0

j0

n i
j

n j
i

= f
2n+1
(3) For m, n 0
f
m+n
= f
m
f
n
+ f
m1
f
n1
(4) For m, n 2
f
n+m1
= f
n
f
m
+ f
n2
f
m2
2. Cuts and Sizzlers
In this section you are provided with certain denitions, followed by a bunch
of questions, each question carries 5 pts. Negative marking: 2 pts for each wrong
answer.
Denition 1. Let Z denote the set of integers. The numbers of the form
p
q
where
p, q Z and q = 0 are called rational numbers denoted by Q
Let S be a non- empty subset of Q , then S is said to be a cut if and only if the
following conditions hold
(1) S = Q
(2) If x S , y Q and y < x y S
(3) If x S , then there exists a y S such that x < y
Lets explore the above denition. Answer the following questions as 2.1, 2.2, 2.3
in your answer-sheets.
(1) Give an example of a proper subset of Q which is a cut.
(2) Which of the following is not a cut
(a) Z
(b) {x | x Q, x < 1}
(c) {x | x Q, 2 < x < 3}
(d) {x | x Q, x
2
< 2}
(3) Which of the following statements are true
(a) If S is any cut, then there exists a k Q such that for every x S, x <
k
(b) If A and B are two cuts then either A
(c) If p is a prime number then there exists no cut that contains p
(d) If x is a irrational number then there exists no cut that contains x
MATHFEST 3
Denition 2. Let S be a subset of Q, S is said to be a sizzler if and only if there
exists a rational number p such that S = {x | x Q, x < p} .
For example, consider the following sets.
S
1
be the collection of all negative rational numbers
S
2
be the collection of negative integers
S
3
= {x | x Q, x <
1
2
}
S
4
= {x | x Q, x
1
2
}
then
(1) S
1
is a sizzler
Because S
1
= {x | x Q, x < 0}, hence the choice of p is 0.
(2) S
2
is not a sizzler
suppose S
2
is a sizzler, then there exists a p Q such that
S
2
= {x | x Q, x < p}
Now since S
2
is the set of all negative integers, we have
1 S
2
1 < p
Further more every rational number less than p must belong to S
2
which
would mean that every rational number less than 1 should also belong to
S
2
.
1 < p but
3
2
< 1 which does not belong in S
2
Hence a contradiction.
You may now verify yourself that S
3
is a sizzler and S
4
is not a sizzler.
Innite Intersection: Innite Intersection is the intersection of innite num-
ber of sets
Innite Union is the union of innite number of sets.
For example,
Let (a, b) be an open interval
A
1
= (1, 1)
A
2
= (1/2, 1/2)
A
3
= (1/3, 1/3)
...
A
n
= (1/n, 1/n)
where n is a natural number
Innite Intersection is
A
1
A
2
A
3
= {0}
Innite Union is
A
1
A
2
A
3
= {(1, 1)}
For the following questions answer with either true or false, if in case your answer
is false you need to provide a counter example, note that just a false without a
counter example will not fetch you any points
Answer the questions below as 2.4 to 2.13
(1) Every sizzler is a cut
(2) Every cut is a sizzler
(3) intersection of two sizzlers is a sizzler
4 VIHARI VEMURI AND M.RAMCHANDRAN
(4) union of two sizzlers is a sizzler
(5) intersection of two cuts is a sizzler
(6) union of two cuts is a sizzler
(7) intersection of two cuts is a cut
(8) union of two cuts is a cut
(9) innite union of cuts is a cut
(10) innite intersection of cuts is a cut
3. Strategy
In this section you are given a problem followed by certain strategies to solve it,
all you need to do is to verify if certain strategy is correct or not. Each question
carries 7 pts. Negative marking: 3 pts for each wrong answer
Maximum subset of non-overlapping intervals problem:
You are given a nite set of requests (a request is essentially an open interval
(S
i
, E
i
) where S
i
denotes the start time and E
i
denotes the end time).
Two requests (open intervals) are said to overlap if and only if I
1
I
2
= .
A subset of S of the given set is said to be non-conicting if and only if no two
requests in S are overlapping.
Input: A nite set of intervals
A = {(1, 4), (3, 7), (7, 9), (10, 17)}
Output: A non-conicting subset with maximum cardinality
B = {(3, 7), (7, 9), (10, 17)}
Explanation: The non-conicting subsets of A are -
{(1, 4)} , {(3, 7)} , {(7, 9)} , {(10, 17)}
{(1, 4), (7, 9)} , {(1, 4), (10, 17)} , {(3, 7), (7, 9)} , {(3, 7), (10, 17)} , {(7, 9), (10, 17)}
{(1, 4), (7, 9), (10, 17)} , {(3, 7), (7, 9), (10, 17)}
But {(1, 4), (7, 9), (10, 17)} and {(3, 7), (7, 9), (10, 17)} are the ones with
maximum cardinality.
For the next set of questions we present you with a strategy to solve the above
problem.
If you think the strategy always gives the correct solution, write the answer as
YES
If you think it does not give the correct solution always then give your answer
as NO
Just a NO without counter example will not fetch you any score. You will need
to provide a counter example (i.e a sample input for which the strategy goes wrong).
Notation: A solution set to the given problem is a non-conicting subset with
maximum cardinality. A strategy is nothing but a step by step procedure
to construct the solution set. Let input set be A and the solution set be
S . Initially the solution set is empty and as the strategy gets completed
the solution set is formed step by step. It is important to note that for
a given input there might be many non-conicting subsets with maximum
cardinality (like the sample input given has two solution sets each of which
has cardinality 3). A strategy is correct if it constructs one of the many
possible solution sets.
Below is the description of the strategies.
All ties between equivalent intervals at any point are broken arbitrarily.
MATHFEST 5
Answer the questions as 2.14 to 2.17 in your answer-sheets
(1) We take the interval I that has least starting time , put it in S and delete
the intervals that conict with I from A. We repeat these steps until we
have removed all elements from A
(2) We take the interval I that has least length, put it in S and delete the
intervals that conict with I from A. We repeat these steps until we have
removed all elements from A
(3) We take the interval I that has least end time , put it in S and delete the
intervals that conict with I from A. We repeat these steps until we have
removed all elements from A
(4) We take the interval I that has least number of conicts , put it in S and
delete the intervals that conict with I from A. We repeat these steps until
we have removed all elements from A