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2024 AMC 10B Problem 12

Problem 12 of 25IntermediateAlgebraCounting & Probability

A group of 100100 students from different countries meet at a mathematics competition. Each student speaks the same number of languages, and, for every pair of students AA and B,B, student AA speaks some language that student BB does not speak, and student BB speaks some language that student AA does not speak. What is the least possible total number of languages spoken by all the students?

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Solution

Give each student the set of languages they speak. The condition says no one’s set sits inside another’s. Everyone speaks the same number kk of languages, and two distinct kk-element sets can never contain each other, so all we need is 100100 different kk-subsets of the nn languages, i.e. (nk)100.\binom{n}{k} \ge 100. With n=8n = 8 the best we can manage is (84)=70,\binom{8}{4} = 70, short of 100.100. But (94)=126100.\binom{9}{4} = 126 \ge 100. So 99 languages are both enough and necessary. Therefore, the answer is A.

More practice

Concepts: subsets · combinations · extremal argument

Problem text and solution from the LIVE past-contest archive. See also the AoPS wiki page for community solutions.