Maths Olympiad Prep

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, 2017

Combinatorics Difficulty 6.9 National Olympiad Prove it United States

Problem:

There are 2017 frogs and 2017 toads in a room. Each frog is friends with exactly 2 distinct toads. Let NN be the number of ways to pair every frog with a toad who is its friend, so that no toad is paired with more than one frog. Let DD be the number of distinct possible values of NN, and let SS be the sum of all possible values of NN. Find the ordered pair (D,S)(D, S).

Solution

Solution:

Answer: (1009,210092)\left(1009,2^{1009}-2\right)

I claim that NN can equal 00 or 2i2^{i} for 1i10081 \leq i \leq 1008. We prove this now. Note that the average number of friends a toad has is also 22. If there is a toad with 00 friends, then clearly N=0N=0. If a toad has 11 friend, then it must be paired with its only friend, so we have reduced to a smaller case. Otherwise, all toads and frogs have exactly degree 22, so the graph is a union of cycles. Each cycle can be paired off in exactly two ways. The number of cycles can range anywhere from 11 to 10081008, and this completes the proof.

To construct all N=21,22,,21008N=2^{1}, 2^{2}, \ldots, 2^{1008}, we can simply let our graph be a union of ii cycles, which would have 2i2^{i} matchings. Clearly we can choose any i=1,2,,1008i=1,2, \ldots, 1008.

Therefore, D=1009D=1009 and S=21+22++21008=210092S=2^{1}+2^{2}+\cdots+2^{1008}=2^{1009}-2.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.