Let $n \geqslant 3$ be an integer and let

$$
M=\left\{\frac{a_{1}+a_{2}+\cdots+a_{k}}{k}: 1 \leqslant k \leqslant n \text { and } 1 \leqslant a_{1}<\cdots<a_{k} \leqslant n\right\}
$$

be the set of the arithmetic means of the elements of all non-empty subsets of $\{1,2, \ldots, n\}$. Find $\min \{|a-b|: a, b \in M$ with $a \neq b\}$.

## Proposed by Romania
We observe that $M$ is composed of rational numbers of the form $a=\frac{x}{k}$, where $1 \leqslant k \leqslant n$. As the arithmetic mean of $1, \ldots, n$ is $\frac{n+1}{2}$, if we look at these rational numbers in their irreducible form, we can say that $1 \leqslant k \leqslant n-1$.

A non-zero difference $|a-b|$ with $a, b \in M$ is then of form

$$
\left|\frac{x}{k}-\frac{y}{p}\right|=\frac{\left|p_{0} x-k_{0} y\right|}{[k, p]}
$$

where $[k, p]$ is the l.c.m. of $k, p$, and $k_{0}=\frac{[k, p]}{k}, p_{0}=\frac{[k, p]}{p}$. Then $|a-b| \geqslant \frac{1}{[k, p]}$, as $\left|p_{0} x-k_{0} y\right|$ is a non-zero integer. As

$$
\max \{[k, p] \mid 1 \leqslant k<p \leqslant n-1\}=(n-1)(n-2),
$$

we can say that $m=\min _{\substack{a, b \in M \\ a \neq b}}|a-b| \geqslant \frac{1}{(n-1)(n-2)}$.
To reach this minimum, we seek $x \in\{3,4, \ldots, 2 n-1\}$ and $y \in\{1,2, \ldots, n\}$ for which

$$
\left|\frac{\frac{n(n+1)}{2}-x}{n-2}-\frac{\frac{n(n+1)}{2}-y}{n-1}\right|=\frac{1}{(n-1)(n-2)},
$$

meaning

$$
\left|\frac{n(n+1)}{2}-(n-1) x+(n-2) y\right|=1 .
$$

If $n=2 k$, we can choose $x=k+3$ and $y=2$ and if $n=2 k+1$ we can choose $x=n=2 k+1$ and $y=k$. Therefore, the required minimum is $\frac{1}{(n-1)(n-2)}$.

Comment. For $n \geqslant 5$, the only other possibilities are to take $x=3 k-1, y=2 k-1$ if $n=2 k$ and to take $x=2 k+3, y=k+2$ if $n=2 k+1$. (For $n=3,4$ there are also examples where one of the sets is of size $n$.)