Parliament

Among 30 people, any two are either mutual friends or enemies, and each person has exactly 6 enemies. How many groups of three people consist of all pairwise friends or all pairwise enemies?


The answer is 1990.

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1 solution

Let us represent 30 persons with 30 points in space, no four points of which are coplanar. If two persons are friends that connect the corresponding points with a red segment and a blue segment if they are opponents. We denote an angle that has sides of different colours as a bad angle . Observe that in a good triangle there are no bad angles and in a non-good/bad triangle , there are 2 bad angles . Now, from the question, we can deduce that the number of bad angles per person is 23 × 6 = 138 23\times6=138 and 138 × 30 = 4140 138\times30=4140 for the entire parliament. Since two bad angles are needed for each bad triangle , we have 4140 ÷ 2 = 2070 4140\div2=2070 bad triangles . Given that the total number of triangles within these 30 people is 30 C 3 30C3 , the answer is therefore 30 C 3 2070 = 1990 30C3-2070=1990 .

Shouldn't you also show that this arrangement of friends/opponents is actually possible? It is, but...

Mark Hennings - 4 years, 11 months ago

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Here is a group of ten people each of whom are enemies with exactly six of the others (only the lines of enmity are marked). Have three disjoint graphs like this.

Mark Hennings - 4 years, 11 months ago

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Great example! What led you to derive this graph?

A Former Brilliant Member - 4 years, 11 months ago

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@A Former Brilliant Member I was looking for an example, and thought it would be easier to find if the graph could be split into disjoint subgraphs. I therefore tried to find examples for n n people, where n n was a factor of 30 30 . Since n > 6 n > 6 , n = 10 n=10 was my first attempt!

Mark Hennings - 4 years, 11 months ago

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@Mark Hennings An easy example is to index everyone from 1 to 30, and then you are enemies with people ± 1 , ± 2 , ± 3 \pm 1, \pm 2, \pm 3 (taken modulo 30).

Calvin Lin Staff - 4 years, 11 months ago

i don't know, what is bad angles ? as well as what is good triangle ? why do you use good and bad ?

Abdullah Ahmed - 4 years, 11 months ago

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I defined a bad angle as an angle with sides of different colours. I defined a good triangle as a monochromatic triangle. Hence, a bad triangle means a triangle which is not a good triangle . I used these definitions (good and bad) so that my solution is easier to follow and not so wordy (which would be the case if I had to use the lengthy definition every time).

A Former Brilliant Member - 4 years, 11 months ago

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thanks sir .

Abdullah Ahmed - 4 years, 11 months ago

Great job on the graph. Nice problem too =)

Lam Nguyen - 4 years, 11 months ago

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