MathDB
2n students at a "fair" math competition

Source: Romanian IMO Team Selection Test TST 2003, problem 6

September 24, 2005
algorithmcombinatorics proposedcombinatorics

Problem Statement

At a math contest there are 2n2n students participating. Each of them submits a problem to the jury, which thereafter gives each students one of the 2n2n problems submitted. One says that the contest is fair is there are nn participants which receive their problems from the other nn participants. Prove that the number of distributions of the problems in order to obtain a fair contest is a perfect square.