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Language Barrier in International Meeting

Of the 1985 people attending an international meeting, no one speaks more than five languages, and in any subset of three attendees, at least two speak a common language. Prove that some language is spoken by at least 200 of the attendees.


Language Barrier in International Meeting

For The Communication in International Meeting



For any attendee A and B, having no common language there must be C who know the language of either A or B to form a trio as mentioned.

Let's make assumption contradicting the statement made in question. Suppose there are only 198 people who can talk in particular language with A or B. Since A can communicate in 5 languages, there are 5 x 198 = 990 people who can talk with A.

That is 990 people are there who have sharing 1 common language with 1 of 5 languages known by A. Similarly, B also can communicate with 990 more people.

Now, if A and B have no common language then there are only 990 + 990 = 1980 people having potential to become C in the trio. This obviously doesn't cover total of remaining people i.e. 1985 - 2 (A and B) = 1983.

Hence, our assumption goes wrong there. So there must be at least 200 attendees knowing the same language .


For Communication in International Meeting

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