Imc2021day1 Problems

Welcome to International Mathematics Competition Online!
Please read carefully the following important instructions.

There will be 4 problems for 4 hours each day. The teams are free to choose when to start the
exam, but all members of the team should start at the same time, with downloading and printing
the problems. The teamless students can choose from the Asian and the Oceanian Contest Halls as
posted on the IMC website.
* You must write your solutions on A4 or US letter papers.
* Only the standard drawing tools (pens, straightedges etc.) and printed dictionaries are allowed.
* Using any electronic tool or printed material is not allowed.
* The scripts should not contain any text, name or mark from which the student can be identified.
* The language of the contest is English; solutions written in other languages will not be evalu-
ated.
How to write your solutions

TURN OFF your mobile phones and all other electronic devices.
DO NOT mix work on different problems on the same page. Every page should contain work for
ONE problem ONLY. CLEARLY WRITE the number of the problem on the TOP of EACH page.
For draft pages, write „DRAFT” on the top of EACH of your draft pages.
DO NOT write ANYTHING related to your personality or nationality ANYWHERE.
Write your solutions USING PEN and IN ENGLISH ONLY. You may use your language dictio-
nary if you need one.
Procedure
1. At the beginning of the contest, you or your team leader have to log in to the IMC website,
download and print the problems. If you have no printer, you have to copy the problems from the
screen manually. After that you should not have any display switched on. Do not download the
problem earlier; all downloads will be logged.
2. After printing the problems, you have 4 hours for solving the problems and elaborate the
solutions.
You may ASK QUESTIONS about the meaning of the text of the problems DURING THE
FIRST 30 MINUTES ONLY. If you have questions relating to the text of the problems, ask your
team leader. If you still need clarification after this, your team leader submit your question to the
jury IN WRITING ONLY. You will receive a written answer.
3. When the 4 hours working time has passed, you have to submit your solution as soon as
possible.
1
Submission
At the end of the exam you have to produce 5 files, containing the solutions and draft papers each
day:
Day 1 Day 2
prob1.pdf prob5.pdf
prob2.pdf prob6.pdf
prob3.pdf prob7.pdf
prob4.pdf prob8.pdf
draft1.pdf draft2.pdf
The files draft1.pdf and draft2.pdf should contain those sheets that do not belong to your
official solutions, usually unorganized writings and drawings on mixed problems. Usually these pages
are not evaluated, but sometimes they contain important information that can help us understand
the solution.
Please use exactly these file names. The scripts must be uploaded immediately after the 4
hour of the contest. Usually this takes at most 10 minutes. You have received your personal
upload link. Please use only your own link.
For creating the files it is recommended to use the application named CamScanner, available both
for Android and Apple based cell phones. Using CamScanner it is easy to make photographs of the
papers, crop, resize and rearrange the pages and save the pictures into a PDF. If your phone has
internet connection, you can upload the files immediately.
Remark. We have seen a few cases when uploading from a cellphone did not work. In most
cases, rebooting the phone solved the problem. Another possibility is to upload the files from a
laptop or a desktop computer.
The end of the contest day is 24:00. Please keep the problems confidential, and do not share any
information about the problems with others until that.
At the end of the contest day (24:00 UTC), the solutions will be posted at imc-math.org.uk.
2
IMC 2021 Online
First Day, August 3, 2021
Problem 1. Let A be a real n × n matrix such that A3 = 0.

(a) Prove that there is a unique real n × n matrix X that satisfies the equation
X + AX + XA2 = A.
(b) Express X in terms of A.

(10 points)
Problem 2. Let n and k be fixed positive integers, and let a be an arbitrary non-negative integer.
Choose a random k-element subset X of {1, 2, . . . , k + a} uniformly (i.e., all k-element subsets are
chosen with the same probability) and, independently of X, choose a random n-element subset Y of
{1, . . . , k + n + a} uniformly.
Prove that the probability
P( min(Y ) > max(X))
does not depend on a.
(10 points)
Problem 3. We say that a positive real number d is good if there exists an infinite sequence
a1 , a2 , a3 , . . . ∈ (0, d) such that for each n, the points a1 , . . . , an partition the interval [0, d] into
segments of length at most 1/n each. Find
sup {d ∣ d is good}.
(10 points)
Problem 4. Let f ∶ R → R be a function. Suppose that for every ε > 0, there exists a function
g ∶ R → (0, ∞) such that for every pair (x, y) of real numbers,
if ∣x − y∣ < min {g(x), g(y)}, then ∣f (x) − f (y)∣ < ε.
Prove that f is the pointwise limit of a sequence of continuous R → R functions, i.e., there is a
sequence h1 , h2 , . . . of continuous R → R functions such that lim hn (x) = f (x) for every x ∈ R.
n→∞
(10 points)

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Welcome to International Mathematics Competition Online!

Please read carefully the following important instructions.

* You must write your solutions on A4 or US letter papers.

* Using any electronic tool or printed material is not allowed.

How to write your solutions

Problem 1. Let A be a real n × n matrix such that A3 = 0.

(b) Express X in terms of A.

if ∣x − y∣ < min {g(x), g(y)}, then ∣f (x) − f (y)∣ < ε.

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