MathDB
Matching scientists and topics with certain restrictions

Source: ARO 2011 11-3

April 26, 2011
modular arithmeticgraph theoryextremal principlecombinatorics proposedcombinatorics

Problem Statement

There are 999 scientists. Every 2 scientists are both interested in exactly 1 topic and for each topic there are exactly 3 scientists that are interested in that topic. Prove that it is possible to choose 250 topics such that every scientist is interested in at most 1 theme.
A. Magazinov