Given 20 distinct positive integers, not greater than 70. Show that among their pairwise differences, at least four are equal.

combinatoricsdiscrete mathematicselementary-number-theorypigeonhole-principle

Problem: Given 20 distinct positive integers, not greater than 70. Show that among their pairwise differences, at least four are equal.

Solution given by the professor: We may assume that the numbers form an increasing sequence:$1 \leq a _ { 1 } < a _ { 2 } < \ldots < a_{20} \leq 70$. Clearly, $$a _ { 1 } + \left( a _ { 2 } – a _ { 1 } \right) + \left( a _ { 3 } – a _ { 2 } \right) + \left( a _ { 4 } – a _ { 3 } \right) + \ldots \left( a _ { 20 } – a _ { 19 } \right) = a _ { 20 } \leq 70$$ On the other hand, the 19 parentheses above are 19 differences. Suppose for a contradiction that no difference appears more than 3 times. Then the left hand side above is at least: $$1 + 3 \times 1 + 3 \times 2 + 3 \times 3 + 3 \times 4 + 3 \times 5 + 3 \times 6 + 1 \times 7 = 71$$ which is greater than 70, a contradiction.

My question: I don't understand the last step of the solution, where do the products comes from? Why are we observing products from 1 to 6? I read multiple posts on math stackexchange similar to these problems but I still don't get the last equality.

Best Answer

You want to minimize the telescopic sum for $a_{20}$:

  • What is the minimal value for $a_1$? $1$!
  • How do we minimize the $19$ differences under the given constraints? We take the difference $1$ three times, the difference $2$ three times, ... , the difference $6$ three times and the difference $7$ one time (as we have 19 differences in total)!