Consider a cake in the shape of a circle. It's been divided to some inequal parts by its radii. Arash and Bahram want to eat this cake. At the very first, Arash takes one of the parts. In the next steps, they consecutively pick up a piece adjacent to another piece formerly removed. Suppose that the cake has been divided to 5 parts. Prove that Arash can choose his pieces in such a way at least half of the cake is his.
Problem
Source: Iran Second Round 2015 - Problem 1 day 1
Tags: combinatorics, 2015, Iran
21.06.2015 06:33
AHZOLFAGHARI wrote: ... Later, everyone picks up a piece on the adjacent pieces before it is removed ... Does it mean "everyone picks up a piece that is adjacent to some pieces that have been removed before"? If I've correctly understood the problem, it could be solved as follows: 1) Note that Bahram can only take two pieces, so we have to pay attention to those pairs of pieces which account for more than $\frac{1}{2}$. 2) Call those $5$ pieces $A, B, C, D, E$ in clockwise order. For a graph $G$ where $V=\{A, B, C, D, E\}$, an edge is added between $X, Y\in V$if and only if $X, Y$ together accounts for more than $\frac{1}{2}$. 3) Now we cannot have $4$ or more points that has an edge on it except for the case when all these edges share a common vertex. Or else we can find $4$ parts $X, Y, Z, W$ where $X, Y$ is more than $\frac{1}{2}$ and $Z, W$ is more than $\frac{1}{2}$, absurd! If they share a common vertex, then Arash can take that common vertex at first so that Bahram can never take more than a half and thus Arash surely wins. 4) Again if there are $3$ or less vertices having an edge but all edges share a common vertex, Arash can still win by taking the common vertex in the very beginning. Now we only have to deal with the case where all the edges form a triangle. WLOG there only two cases:$(a) \Delta ABC, (b) \Delta ACD$. 4.a) Arash takes $B$ in the beginning. Bahram can only choose $A$ or $C$ in the turn. Arash takes the other one left among $A, C$. Arash wins. 4.b) Arash takes $A$ in the beginning. Then Arash takes $C$ if Bahram takes $B$ beforehand, and takes $D$ if Bahram takes $E$ before hand. $\Box$
30.12.2019 20:33
I dont remember theire name so i just call those 2 A and B abd i call the pieces QWERT since B only takes 2 pieces we should have 2 pieces such that they are more than half of the cake and this two pieces are not adjant since A can eat the cake in some order such that B has to eat to cakes that are NOT adjant we say that Q+E is higher than half of the cake if A takes Q B shold take T and after the cake is finished the A has eated Q+W+R and B eated E+T and if A eats E in the same way after the cake is finished the pieces that A has eated areE+W+T and B eated Q+R and since (E+W+T)+(Q+W+R)>Q+W+E+R+T we should have that one of them is higher than half of the cake contradiction