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 / d

For five points, partition the unit square into four squares of side $1/2$. Assign boundary points to just one neighbouring piece. By the pigeonhole principle, two of the points lie in one piece, whose diameter is its diagonal, $\sqrt{(1/2{)}^2+(1/2{)}^2}=\sqrt{2}/2$.

For eight points, use seven smaller-diameter pieces rather than eight rectangles. Start with the convex pentagonTake its four reflected copies at the corners of the square. The remaining pieces are the left triangle with vertices $(0,1/4),(1/4,1/2),(0,3/4)$, its right-hand reflection, and the central diamond with vertices $(1/4,1/2),(1/2,1/4),(3/4,1/2),(1/2,3/4)$. These seven polygons cover the square with disjoint interiors. To verify coverage directly, for $0\le y\le 1/4$ the two bottom pentagons split the horizontal section at $x=1/2$. For $1/4\le y\le 1/2$, the five successive sections have endpoints $0,y-1/4,3/4-y,y+1/4,5/4-y,1$ and belong respectively to the left triangle, bottom-left pentagon, diamond, bottom-right pentagon and right triangle. Reflection gives the top half.

The diameter of a finite convex hull is the greatest distance between its vertices: if two points are convex combinations of vertices, their difference is a convex combination of vertex differences, and the triangle inequality bounds its norm by the largest such distance. Checking the five vertices of $P$ gives diameter $\sqrt{(1/2{)}^2+(1/4{)}^2}=\sqrt{5}/4$; reflections preserve that value. Each remaining triangle and the diamond has diameter $1/2$, which is smaller. After assigning shared boundaries to one piece, eight points in these seven pieces force a pair in a common piece. Hence some pair is at distance at most $\sqrt{5}/4$.

Both arguments are instances of a pigeonhole distance bound from a partition.