IMC / 2009 / Problems / Day 1, P1
IMC 2009 · Day 1 · P1
easySuppose that and are real-valued functions on the real line and for every rational . Does this imply that for every real if
a) and are non-decreasing?
b) and are continuous?
Solution (official)
a) No. Counter-example: and can be chosen as the characteristic functions of and , respectively.
b) Yes. By the assumptions is continuous on the whole real line and nonnegative on the rationals. Since any real number can be obtained as a limit of rational numbers we get that is nonnegative on the whole real line.
How the field did
contestants scored
334
average (of 10)
9.28
solved (≥ 80%)
88.0%
near-0 (≤ 10%)
1.8%
discrimination
0.33
Score distribution (field cohort)
Computed on contestants with a meaningful total (field cohort); discrimination is the corrected item–total correlation.