olymmath

Putnam 2006 B4

  • Session B

Let ZZ denote the set of points in Rn\mathbb{R}^n whose coordinates are 0 or 1. (Thus ZZ has 2n2^n elements, which are the vertices of a unit hypercube in Rn\mathbb{R}^n.) Given a vector subspace VV of Rn\mathbb{R}^n, let Z(V)Z(V) denote the number of members of ZZ that lie in VV. Let kk be given, 0≤k≤n0 \leq k \leq n. Find the maximum, over all vector subspaces V⊆RnV \subseteq \mathbb{R}^n of dimension kk, of the number of points in V∩ZV \cap Z. [Editorial note: the proposers probably intended to write Z(V)Z(V) instead of "the number of points in V∩ZV \cap Z", but this changes nothing.]

Curated text Kedlaya Putnam archive. Quoted with source.

Solutions

Human solution Solution 1 by Kiran Kedlaya and Lenny Ng

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