At Least 2 People in a Set of n Have Same # of Acquaintances

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SUMMARY

In a set of n people, at least two individuals must have the same number of acquaintances. This conclusion is derived from the principle of the pigeonhole, where the acquaintance function K(a) maps each person to the number of acquaintances they have, constrained between 0 and n-1. Since there are n individuals but only n-1 possible acquaintance counts, the function K cannot be injective for n > 1, confirming that at least two individuals share the same number of acquaintances.

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show that in a set that has n people at least 2 of them have the same amount of acquaintances in the set

well what i tried is that first of all if we have n people one person can know n-1 people within the set so having a set of n people at least 2 of them should have the same amount of acquaintances in the set

but, i don't think its right, maybe someone could guide me please, i would appreciate it

i really think that i haven't fully understood how to use this principle here
 
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Let K(a) be the number of acquaintances of a; then, you can only say that [itex]0 \leq K\left(a\right) \leq n-1[/itex]. This is a range of n, which is exactly the number of persons, so you cannot infer (yet) that K(a)=K(b) for some a and b.

Think like this: the function K goes from the set {1,...,n} (persons) to {0,1,...,n-1} (number of acquaintances of each person); if you manage to prove that this function cannot be injective, for n > 1, then you are done.
 

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