Existence of “sufficiently rich” unions Let m be a positive integer and define M &#x2261;<!--

woowheedr

woowheedr

Answered question

2022-07-12

Existence of “sufficiently rich” unions
Let m be a positive integer and define M { 1 , , m }. Let A 1 , , A m be (not necessarily disjoint and potentially empty) finite sets. Moreover, let c 1 , , c m be non-negative integers. For each i M, A i may or may not contain precisely c i elements, but assume that the following is true (here, # denotes cardinality):
# ( i M A i ) = i M c i .
Conjecture: There exists a non-empty index subset T M with the following properties:
- # ( i T A i ) i T c i whenever T T ; and
- # ( i T A i ) i T c i whenever T T .
In words, I am looking to establish the existence of an index set T such that if the index set T is either a subset or a superset of T , then the union of the A i 's over T contains at least as many elements as the sum of the c i 's over T.
Any references to a proof or hints about a counterexample would be appreciated.

Answer & Explanation

Alexzander Bowman

Alexzander Bowman

Beginner2022-07-13Added 19 answers

Step 1
For each k M, let B k = A k i < k A i . Then we have
# ( i T B i ) # ( i T A i )
for every T M, so to find a subset T M that has the desired properties with respect to the A i it suffices to find one that has the desired properties with respect to the B i . Note that the B i are pairwise disjoint.
Now, let T M be the set { i M : # B i c i }. Certainly T is non-empty, since otherwise # B i < c i for every i M, contradicting that
# ( i M B i ) = # ( i M A i ) = i M c i .
I claim that T has the desired property. For the first bullet point, suppose T T . Then # ( i T B i ) = i T # B i i T c i ,, as desired, where the first equality follows from pairwise disjointness of the B i and the second follows from definition of T .
Step 2
For the second bullet point, suppose T does not have that property, and let T T be a counterexample. Then # ( i T B i ) < i T c i . On the other hand, by definition of T , and since T T , we have # B i < c i for every i M T. In particular, # ( i M T B i ) i M T c i , with equality holding only if M T = . So now # ( i M B i ) = # ( i T B i ) + # ( i M T B i ) < i T c i + i M T c i = i M c i , a contradiction. So we are done.

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