Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2023/iii/paper-109/1/ii/solution

Again let be the characteristic vectors. They all lie in the even-weight subspace
which has dimension . Their Gram matrix is
because its diagonal entries are zero and its off-diagonal entries are one. If and , then . Consequently
Since for a matrix whose rows lie in , its rank is at most . If is even, an even cannot reach , while an odd is at most ; hence . If is odd, the same calculation gives .
Both bounds are sharp. For odd , take for : each set has even size and two distinct sets meet in the odd number . For even , apply the same construction to and regard the resulting sets as subsets of .

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