Induction on a list of integers?

Question

let $(a_1,\cdots,a_n)$ be a list of integers prove that if $a_1$ is even and $a_n$ is odd then there is an index $i$, $1\leq i < n$ such that $a_i$ is even and $a_i+1$ is odd. I’m extremely confused on how to even preform induction on this. What would the base case even be?

Answer 1

Induction on the value of $n$. For $n=2$ is trivial. If it’s true for $n$, take $(a_1,\cdots,a_{n+1})$ and choose some intermediate element $a_k$ with $1 < k < n+1$. If $a_k$ is odd, apply induction on $(a_k,\cdots,a_{n+1})$. If it’s even, apply induction on $(a_1,\cdots,a_k)$.

Answer 2

If $a_2$ is odd then we are done. Suppose $a_2$ is even. Now if $a_3$ is odd we are similarly done. So assume that $a_3$ is even. Continuing this argument $n-2$ times we find that for all $1 \leq i <n$ we have $a_i$ is even. So in particular $a_{n-1}$ is even.Take $j=n-1.$ Then $a_{j}$ and $a_{j+1}$ have the required property.