Prove that any group of 20 people will contain at least one pair of people with the same a

Dottie Parra

Dottie Parra

Answered question

2021-08-20

Show that any group of 20 people will at least have one pair of members who have the same number of friends. (Here, you can let S={p1,p2,,p20} be an arbitrary set of 20 people, and define n(pi) for 1i20 to be the number of friends for person pi within this group. Assume friendship is symmetric, so if someone has 0 friends in the group then there cant

Answer & Explanation

l1koV

l1koV

Skilled2021-08-21Added 100 answers

Step 1 
We will use the Pigeonhole Principle, which states that if n boxes contain n+1 things, at least one box must contain at least n objects.
There are 20 people. So, one can have a maximum of 19 friends (friend with everyone). 
Step 2 
So, 20 people should be put in 19 boxes for the number of friends: 1 friend, 2 friends, 3, 4, …, 19. There are 19 boxes and 19+1 objects. Therefore, by the pigeonhole principle with n=19, there is at least one box with two objects, which means, at least one number (of friends) is assigned to two people. 
If one person has 0 friends, then the maximum will reduce to 18. That is, a person is friends with 18 others (excluding himself and the person with no friends). Then, n=18 and 18+1=19 people must be assigned to 18 boxes (1, 2, 3, …, 18 friends). 
If there are two people having 0 friends, then we already have these two people with same number of friends (0). 
Hence, at least two of them have the same number of friends.

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