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).

1565 questions
1
vote
1 answer

Select $2n+1$ numbers from {$1,2,3,...,4n$}, prove any positive integer j that divides $2n$,there must be two selected numbers whose difference is j.

I'm doing practice problems to familiarize myself with the Pigeonhole Principle, and I encountered this: Suppose $2n+1$ numbers are selected from {$1,2,3,...,4n$}. Using Pigeonhole Principle, show that for any positive integer $j$ that divides…
1
vote
2 answers

A student is preparing for an exam. Show that there exists consecutive days such that the student learns exactly 4 hours.

A student is preparing for an exam for $13$ days. In total, he prepares no more then $20$ hours. Every day he prepares a whole number of hours, and each day he prepares for at least one hour. Show that there are consecutive days where the student…
Omer
  • 2,490
1
vote
1 answer

Tricky problem on pigeonhole principle

The question was asked in my today's quiz and I have no idea how to start with it. It's evident that we have to use pigeonhole principle somehow but how I am not getting. Question is " A 4×9 rectangular board is divided into squares each of which is…
ogirkar
  • 2,681
  • 14
  • 27
1
vote
1 answer

birthday problem help

For the birthday problem, how many people are needed to ensure that at least three people are born in the same month? After looking at the problem I think the answer would be 25 because 12 + 12 + 1?
1
vote
1 answer

Deducing divisibility based on Pigeonhole Principle

I am trying to solve this below problem from Norman Bigg's Discrete Mathematics textbook, but cannot reconcile his solution with my work. Let $X$ be a subset of $\{1, 2, \ldots 2n\}$ and $Y$ be the set of odd numbers $\{1, 3, \ldots, 2n-1\}$.…
user465188
1
vote
1 answer

Pigeonhole Principle Question - Selecting some items from a box that contains fifty items with different colors

Please help me understand this question. I got the answer 101, however it says the solution to this question is 11. Perhaps it was a typo? Suppose you select some items from a box that contains fifty items, where there are ten each of the colors…
1
vote
1 answer

Prove that for $n\in\mathbb{Z}^+$, a sequence of $n^3$ elements either has $n$ equal elements or a monotone subsequence with $n$ elements.

Prove that $\forall n\in\mathbb{Z}^+$, a sequence with $n^3$ elements either has $n$ equal elements or a monotone subsequence with $n$ elements (strictly increasing or strictly decreasing). I tried to apply the pigeonhole principle but had no idea…
Thomas
  • 329
1
vote
1 answer

Pigeonhole problem

I'm struggling with this problem for a while now, and I just can't figure it out. Prove: Let $n_1, n_2, . . . , n_t \in \mathbb{N}^+$ If $n_1 + n_2 + . . . + n_t-t + 1$ Objects are laid in t Pigeonholes then there's at least one $i \in \{1, . . .,…
1
vote
2 answers

Pigeonhole principle: prove that a class of 21 has at least 11 male or 11 female students.

Here is the problem in full with no other special restrictions: "If there are 21 students in a class, show that at least 11 must be male or female."
1
vote
1 answer

Application of Pigeonhole Principle - non-constructive

Claim: every sequence of $m^2 + 1$ distinct numbers has an increasing or decreasing subsequence of length $m+1$. Proof: Idea Associate every position $ 1 <= l <= m^2 +1 $ with a pair of lengths of longest increasing (decreasing) subsequences…
1
vote
1 answer

Maximum size of a subset S of $\{1,2,...,9\}$ such that sum of each of two members are distinct

What is the maximum size of a subset S of $\{1,2,...,9\}$ such that sum of each of two members of it are distinct? I considered the following partition: $\{1,9\},\{2,8\},\{3,7\},\{4,6\},\{5\},$ and since these subsets have equal sum I deduced…
Hamid Reza Ebrahimi
  • 3,445
  • 13
  • 41
1
vote
3 answers

Proving a statement using Pigeonhole principle

I am trying to understand how to prove a Statement using the pigeonhole principle. Prove the following result using the pigeon-hole principle. In every collection of 7 integers there are at least two whose difference is divisible by 6. any ideas?…
1
vote
1 answer

pigeonhole problem understanding a step

I've got $\sum_{i} F_+(i) \ge k \sum_{i} G(i)$ and it says that implies there's an $i$ such that $F(i) \ge k G(i)$, $F_+$ is the positive part of $F$ and $\sum_{i} F(i) = 0$. How does it follow? From Thomas Andrews I realized $$\sum_{i} F_+(i) =…
user51427
1
vote
2 answers

A problem on pigeon hole principle

The question is to show that there is a power of $2$ whose decimal representation starts with the digits $1999$. [Hint : apply pigeon hole principle] How to approach this problem?
chelsea
  • 195
1
vote
1 answer

cover all squares in a square grid by moving to adjacent squares

Admittedly this is a problem I encountered from school but I cannot think of a proper proof solution. I thought about the logic that in order to cover all squares, there must be closed loops of movements. So in the easiest case, where there are only…