There are $n$ students in a class, and some pairs of these students are friends. Among any six students, there are two of them that are not friends, and for any pair of students that are not friends there is a student among the remaining four that is friends with both of them. Find the maximum value of $n$.
Problem
Source: Mongolian Mathematical Olympiad P5
Tags: combinatorics, graph theory, Extremal
30.01.2024 23:23
This was also problem 2 of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy Olympiad 2023. The answer is 25.
06.02.2024 17:27
Oh, that reminds my nostalgic memories. If I had solved it during the contest, my life would have been different. I hate this problem.
29.02.2024 20:30
Answer: $25$. Example: Take $5$ subgraphs $A,B,C,D,E$. Let each of them has $5$ vertices and any two vertices in the same subgraph are not connected. Any two vertices in different subgraphs are connected. Proof: $\rule{15cm}{0.2mm}$ Claim: Everyone has at least $n-5$ friends. Proof: Let $A$ be a vertex. If $A$ is friend with all other vertices, then the claim is true. Let $B$ be a vertex which is not friend with $A$. There cannot be $4$ vertices which are not friend with both $A$ and $B$. So there are at least $n-5$ vertices which are friend with both $A$ and $B$. The claim is proven. $\rule{15cm}{0.2mm}$ $der \ v_i\geq n-5$ for all $i=1,2,...,n$ so $|E|=\frac{\sum{der \ v_i}}{2}\geq \frac{n^2-5n}{2}$ We don't have $6-$clique hence by Turan's Theorem, we have \[\frac{n^2-5n}{2}\leq |E|\leq \frac{4n^2}{10}=\frac{2n^2}{5}\iff 4n^2\geq 5n^2-25n\iff 25n\geq n^2\iff 25\geq n\]Which gives the desired conclusion.$\blacksquare$