# Combinatorical problem about consecutive values

I have the following problem, quoted directly from Biggs, Discrete Mathematics:

A golfer has $d$ days to prepare for a tournament and must practice by playing at least one round each day. In order to avoid staleness he should not play more than $m$ rounds altogether. Show that if $r$ satisfies $1\leq r\leq 2d-m-1$, then there is a sequence of consecutive days during which he plays exactly $r$ rounds.

I'm not asking for a full solution, but rather for a hint on how to start. Any ideas?

• Without thinking too much, an obvious thing to do is pick a specific example (say, $(d,m,r)=(5,3,4)$) and see if you can figure out why it works in that case. (Alternatively, take $r=2d-m=7$ in that case and convince yourself why the inequality matters.) Also, right now the $r$ seems only to be a value constrained by that inequality. Is it supposed to be the total number of rounds he plays in preparation? – Semiclassical Oct 9 '14 at 18:48

For $i=1,\ldots,d$ let $r_i$ be the number of rounds that he plays on day $i$; $r_i\ge 1$ for each $i$. Let $s_0=0$, and for $n=1,\ldots,d$ let $s_n=\sum_{k=1}^nr_k$; then $s_0<s_1<\ldots<s_d\le m$. Suppose that he plays exactly $r$ rounds altogether on days $i+1,\ldots,j$; then $s_i+r=s_j$. Thus, there is a string of consecutive days on which he plays a total of exactly $r$ rounds if and only if at least one of the numbers $s_0+r,s_1+r,\ldots,s_{d-1}+r$ is in the set $\{s_1,s_2,\ldots,s_d\}$. Turn it around: there fails to be such a string of days if and only if the $2d$ numbers $s_0+r,s_1+r,\ldots,s_{d-1}+r,s_1,s_2,\ldots,s_d$ are all distinct. What are the smallest and largest possible values of one of these numbers?