This is a generalisation of This Statement is Tralse. Wait What? .
Suppose we have a list of 2 n statements ( n ∈ Z + ) as follows:
P 1 P 2 P n − 1 P n P n + 1 P n + 2 P 2 n − 1 P 2 n At least 1 of these statements is true. At least 2 of these statements are true. ⋮ At least n − 1 of these statements are true. At least n of these statements are true. At least n + 1 of these statements are false. At least n + 2 of these statements are false. ⋮ At least 2 n − 1 of these statements are false. At least 2 n of these statements are false. The statements P k are in the form "At least k of these statements are true" for 1 ⩽ k ⩽ n and "At least k of these statements are false" for n + 1 ⩽ k ⩽ 2 n .
How many of them is/are true?
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There can be 3 cases, n can be true, n + k can be true or n − k can be true where k is a positive integer.
n are true: Since n state,ents are true, all the statements from 1 to n are true and rest are false, which implies our assumption.
n + k are true: n statements are true definitely, so 1 to n are true and k statements of the rest are true. But the rest cannot be true because they can only be true when atleast n + 1 are false or atmost n − 1 are true. A contradiction.
n − k are true: First n − k statements are true definitely. This means n + k are false, so atleast n + 1 should be false, making ( n + 1 ) t h statement true, which means atleast n − k + 1 are true, which contradicts our assumption.
So the only possible case is n statements are true.
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Take any statement P x from P n + 1 to P 2 n and assume it is true. Then since P x is true, this implies that at least x statements are false ( n + 1 ⩽ x ⩽ 2 n ).
If any statement from P n + 1 to P 2 n is true, statements P 1 to P n must all be true (can you figure out why?).
We now have at least n + 1 true statements, in other words, we have at most n − 1 false statements. This contradicts P x as n − 1 < x .
Hence all the statements from P n + 1 to P 2 n are false.
Now take any statement P y from P 1 to P n and assume it is false. Then we have at least n + 1 false statements, which implies that P n + 1 is true, however this is a contradiction as P n + 1 is already false.
Hence all the statements from P 1 to P n are true.
Therefore, the number of true statements is n .