Questions tagged [pigeonhole-principle]

This tag is for questions involving the Pigeonhole Principle, which roughly states that if $n$ items are placed in $m$ containers and $n>m$, then at least one container has more than one item.

The Pigeonhole Principle roughly states that if $n$ items (e.g. pigeons) are placed in $m$ containers (e.g. pigeonholes) and $n>m,$ then at least one container has more than one item. Stated more formally, the Pigeonhole Principle asserts that there is no injective function whose codomain has smaller cardinality than its domain.

An example application of the Pigeonhole Principle is a demonstration that if five points are placed on a sphere, then there must be some hemisphere which contains at least four of these points: any two points define a great circle, which divides the sphere into two hemispheres. By the Pigeonhole Principle, one of these two hemispheres must contain at least two points. This hemisphere then contains four of the five points (the two on the boundary, and the two found via the Pigeonhole Principle).

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Twenty distinct integers are chosen from $\{1,2,...,69\}$ and their differences

Twenty distinct integers are chosen from $\{1,2,...,69\}$. Prove that amongst their pairwise differences there are at least four which are identical. I understand that the set $\{1...69\}$ is arbitrary. I'm having a hard time proving it.…
user61646
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Subset containing a power of 2 or two members having a sum equal to a power of 2

$A$ is a subset of $\{0,1,2,...,1997\}$ with more than 1000 members.Using pigeon hole principle prove that either $A$ has a power of 2 or consists of two distinct members whose sum equals a power of 2. Can you generalize your solution to the set…
Hamid Reza Ebrahimi
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A Pigeonhole Problem

How do I find out how many students must be in a classroom in order for at least 3 of them to have a birthday in one of January, February, March, April or at least 4 of their birthdays in one of the remaining months? For example, if there are 3…
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Understanding the Wikipedia article on the Pigeonhole principle

While reading about hash collisions I landed on this problem in Wikipedia Article on the Pigeonhole Principle. While I think I understand the Pigeonhole principle, I am not sure what to make of this example and what the author tries to explain with…
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Pigeonhole-principle with two choices

I am able to solve this sort of problem pretty easily. An arm wrestler is the champion for a period of 75 hours. The arm wrestler had at least one match an hour, but no more than 125 total matches. Show that there is a period of consecutive…
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How to apply pigeonhole principle to this problem?

There are 33 students in the class and sum of their ages 430 years. Is it true that one can find 20 students in the class such that sum of their ages greater 260 ? My approach: The average age of each student comes out to be 13.03 If each student…
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Not quite understanding parts of Pigeon Hole Principle Generalization

Q Suppose that I place n items into k boxes. What is the largest number m such that I can be guaranteed that one of the boxes contains at least m items? First off, I'm not completely understanding the question. "The largest number m such that I can…
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Pigeonhole Principle Emergency Room problem

Can't find any ideas online yet about this PHP problem. An emergency room physician was on duty for 36 hours. During this period there was at least one emergency case each hour, but no more than 50 emergencies total. Show that there was some period…
Jared Y
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Pigeonhole principle for proof

Prove that if a is a natural number, then there exists two unequal natural numbers k and l for which $$ a^k - a^l $$ is divisible by 10. I'm strangely lost on this one. I understand the pigeonhole principle but I'm unsure how to apply it here. Any…
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Pigeonhole question with finding a number.

Show that there is a number consisting only of 1’s that is divisible by 2001. I know that it relates to the Quotient-Remainder Theorem and I got m=2001q+r, r: [0,2001). But I don't know how it relates to the Pigeonhole Principle.
Joey
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51 Dalmatians grouping

Suppose there are 51 dalmatians and number of dots on each dalmatian is not null. Prove (or dis-prove) there is always a grouping such that at least one group has total number of dots as multiple of 11. I can easily prove the statement for 101…
kchpchan
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pigeonhole principle - Oneway Island

There is a group of cities with the follwoing rule: Each city is connected to each city linked by a oneway street: For any two different cities $A$ and $B$ is it you either go directly from $A$ to $B$ or $B$ to $A$ but not both. I have to show that…
Gandalf
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Pigeon hole principle

Out of eleven square integers we can pick six integers such that $a^2+b^2+c^2=d^2+e^2+f^2 \,(\mod 12)$ This was probably the toughest question in section b of our maths paper.I knew this question needs php but I couldn't bring the condition to…
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Pigeonhole principle: 112 hrs over 12 days, then at least 19 hrs over some consecutive 2 days

The problem I'm working on says: A basketball player has been training for 112 hours during 12 days. He has trained an integer number of hours every day. Prove that there was two consecutive days where he has trained for at least 19 hours. I'm…
Javi
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Pigeonhole principle question - relatively prime

Prove that every subset A of the set {2, 3, ... 99, 100} with |A| > 26, has at least one pair of integers that is not relatively prime. 2, 3, 5 .. , there are 26 primes below 100. Can someone give me some hints for solving this please. I can see…
Chinku
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