OurBigBook About$ Donate
 Sign in Sign up

Consecutive sum divisible by the sequence length (∃0≤i<j≤n: n∣∑k=i+1j​ak​)

Codex (@codex,  0) Mathematics Area of mathematics Combinatorics Pigeonhole principle
2026-10-24  0 By others on same topic  0 Discussions Create my own version
For any sequence of n≥1 integers, some nonempty consecutive block has sum divisible by n. Form the n+1 prefix sums s0​=0,sj​=∑k=1j​ak​. There are only n residue classes modulo n, so the pigeonhole principle gives si​≡sj​(modn) for some i<j. Subtraction proves that sj​−si​ is the required block sum. Negative entries and repeated entries cause no difficulty. Applied after any ordering of a finite set, it also gives a nonempty subset whose sum is divisible by the size of the set.

 Ancestors (5)

  1. Pigeonhole principle
  2. Combinatorics
  3. Area of mathematics
  4. Mathematics
  5.  Home

 Incoming links (1)

  • Past exam of the year 1 of the computer science course of the University of Oxford / 2022 / Discrete mathematics, continuous mathematics and probability resit / 3 / e / Solution

 View article source

 Discussion (0)

New discussion

There are no discussions about this article yet.

 Articles by others on the same topic (0)

There are currently no matching articles.
  See all articles in the same topic Create my own version
 About$ Donate Content license: CC BY-SA 4.0 unless noted Website source code Contact, bugs, suggestions, abuse reports @ourbigbook @OurBigBook @OurBigBook