Pigeon Hole Principle with 13 birds somewhere

333 Views Asked by At

$13$ birds are landing somewhere. Destiny wants that each of the $5$ birds that you choose $4$ of them must stand on a circle. Prove that there at least $6$ birds on the same circle.

I don't know how use the property of the circle in the proof. But I tried something else which is to use the pigeon hole directly but that didn't help.

Can somebody give an explanation on how to tackle this problem?

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On BEST ANSWER

Let us consider, among all birds, $4$ that are not on the same circle. Let us call these birds $A, B, C, D\,\,$. Within this group, we can identify $4$ possible subsets of $3$ birds ($ABC\,\,$, $ABD\,\,$, $ACD\,\,$, $BCD\,\,$). Each of these subsets identifies a unique circle. Let us trace these $4$ circles.

Now let us consider the groups of $5$ birds that can be obtained by taking $A,B,C,D\,\,$ plus a fifth bird given by any of the remaining $13-4=9\,\ $ ones. In each of these $9$ groups, the fifth bird must necessarily stand on one of the above mentioned $4$ circles.

So we have to place $9$ birds on $4$ circles that already contain $3$ birds each. Even if we homogeneously distribute the first $8$ of these birds among the $4$ circles (i.e. $2$ birds for each circle), we are left with $4$ circles containing $5$ birds each, and one last bird to be placed on one of these. Thus, there must necessarily be a circle that contains at least $6$ birds.