by AuSmith » Thu Mar 08, 2007 11:58 pm
To show that if a polygon is cyclic (able to be inscribed in a circle), you only need the side lengths to determine the area
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(1)Draw the radius to each of the vertices, i.e cut the polygon into pizza slices. You may rearrange the slices in any order to form any other polygon with the same side lengths. Note that you may have polygons with the same side lengths that are not cyclic.
(2) Cut through the polygon from one vertex to another vertex. Take one of the parts and flip it, then put it back. You can swap any two consecutive edges this way, so you can order the edges however you wish while preserving the area.
A circle of radius r is determined by 3 points with integer coordinates. Show that at least 2 of these points are at least a distance of [unparseable or potentially dangerous latex formula] apart.
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My solution wasn't this nice. This is the official Putnam solution. If R is the radius of the circumscribed circle, the area K is given by
[unparseable or potentially dangerous latex formula]
By Pick's theorem, the triangle area is never less than [unparseable or potentially dangerous latex formula].
[unparseable or potentially dangerous latex formula] where I is the number of lattice points in the interior and P is the number of points on the periphery.
[unparseable or potentially dangerous latex formula]
[unparseable or potentially dangerous latex formula]
Since the geometric mean has to be in the middle somewhere,
[unparseable or potentially dangerous latex formula]