[Solutions] William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition 2006

1. Find the volume of the region of points $(x,y,z)$ such that \[\left(x^{2}+y^{2}+z^{2}+8\right)^{2}\le 36\left(x^{2}+y^{2}\right). \]
2. Alice and Bob play a game in which they take turns removing stones from a heap that initially has $n$ stones. The number of stones removed at each turn must be one less than a prime number. The winner is the player who takes the last stone. Alice plays first. Prove that there are infinitely many such $n$ such that Bob has a winning strategy. (For example, if $n=17,$ then Alice might take $6$ leaving $11;$ then Bob might take $1$ leaving $10;$ then Alice can take the remaining stones to win.)
3. Let $1,2,3,\dots,2005,2006,2007,2009,2012,2016,\dots$ be a sequence defined by $x_{k}=k$ for $k=1,2\dots,2006$ and $x_{k+1}=x_{k}+x_{k-2005}$ for $k\ge 2006.$ Show that the sequence has 2005 consecutive terms each divisible by 2006.
4. Let $S=\{1,2\dots,n\}$ for some integer $n>1.$ Say a permutation $\pi$ of $S$ has a local maximum at $k\in S$ if \[\begin{array}{ccc}\text{(i)}&\pi(k)>\pi(k+1)&\text{for }k=1\\ \text{(ii)}&\pi(k-1)<\pi(k)\text{ and }\pi(k)>\pi(k+1)&\text{for }1<k<n\\ \text{(iii)}&\pi(k-1)M\pi(k)&\text{for }k=n\end{array}\] (For example, if $n=5$ and $\pi$ takes values at $1,2,3,4,5$ of $2,1,4,5,3,$ then $\pi$ has a local maximum of $2$ as $k=1,$ and a local maximum at $k-4.$)
   What is the average number of local maxima of a permutation of $S,$ averaging over all permuatations of $S?$
5. Let $n$ be a positive odd integer and let $\theta$ be a real number such that $\theta/\pi$ is irrational. Set $a_{k}=\tan(\theta+k\pi/n),\ k=1,2\dots,n.$ Prove that \[\frac{a_{1}+a_{2}+\cdots+a_{n}}{a_{1}a_{2}\cdots a_{n}}\] is an integer, and determine its value.
6. Four points are chosen uniformly and independently at random in the interior of a given circle. Find the probability that they are the vertices of a convex quadrilateral.
7. Show that the curve $x^{3}+3xy+y^{3}=1$ contains only one set of three distinct points, $A,B,$ and $C,$ which are the vertices of an equilateral triangle.
8. Prove that, for every set $X=\{x_{1},x_{2},\dots,x_{n}\}$ of $n$ real numbers, there exists a non-empty subset $S$ of $X$ and an integer $m$ such that \[\left|m+\sum_{s\in S}s\right|\le\frac1{n+1}\]
9. Let $S$ be a finite set of points in the plane. A linear partition of $S$ is an unordered pair $\{A,B\}$ of subsets of $S$ such that $A\cup B=S,\ A\cap B=\emptyset,$ and $A$ and $B$ lie on opposite sides of some straight line disjoint from $S$ ($A$ or $B$ may be empty). Let $L_{S}$ be the number of linear partitions of $S.$ For each positive integer $n,$ find the maximum of $L_{S}$ over all sets $S$ of $n$ points.
10. Let $Z$ denote the set of points in $\mathbb{R}^{n}$ whose coordinates are $0$ or $1.$ (Thus $Z$ has $2^{n}$ elements, which are the vertices of a unit hypercube in $\mathbb{R}^{n}$.) Given a vector subspace $V$ of $\mathbb{R}^{n},$ let $Z(V)$ denote the number of members of $Z$ that lie in $V.$ Let $k$ be given, $0\le k\le n.$ Find the maximum, over all vector subspaces $V\subseteq\mathbb{R}^{n}$ of dimension $k,$ of the number of points in $V\cap Z.$
11. For each continuous function $f: [0,1]\to\mathbb{R},$ let $I(f)=\int_{0}^{1}x^{2}f(x)\,dx$ and $J(f)=\int_{0}^{1}x\left(f(x)\right)^{2}\,dx.$ Find the maximum value of $I(f)-J(f)$ over all such functions $f.$
12. Let $k$ be an integer greater than $1.$ Suppose $a_{0}>0$ and define \[a_{n+1}=a_{n}+\frac1{\sqrt[k]{a_{n}}}\] for $n\ge 0.$ Evaluate \[\lim_{n\to\infty}\frac{a_{n}^{k+1}}{n^{k}}.\]

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