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equaalize the balloons

Source: Italy TST 2001

September 27, 2008
inductioncalculusintegrationcombinatorics unsolvedcombinatorics

Problem Statement

We are given 20012001 balloons and a positive integer kk. Each balloon has been blown up to a certain size (not necessarily the same for each balloon). In each step it is allowed to choose at most kk balloons and equalize their sizes to their arithmetic mean. Determine the smallest value of kk such that, whatever the initial sizes are, it is possible to make all the balloons have equal size after a finite number of steps.