Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 4.5 AIME Find the answer United States

Problem:
How many sequences of ten binary digits are there in which neither two zeroes nor three ones ever appear in a row?

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

Solution:
Let ana_{n} be the number of binary sequences of length nn satisfying the conditions and ending in 00, let bnb_{n} be the number ending in 0101, and let cnc_{n} be the number ending in 1111. From the legal sequences of length 22 (0101, 1111, 1010), we find that a2=b2=c2=1a_{2}=b_{2}=c_{2}=1. We now establish a recursion by building sequences of length n+1n+1 from sequences of length nn.

We can add a 00 to a sequence of length nn if and only if it ended with a 11, so an+1=bn+cna_{n+1}=b_{n}+c_{n}.

We can have a sequence of length n+1n+1 ending with 0101 only by adding a 11 to a sequence of length nn ending in 00, so bn+1=anb_{n+1}=a_{n}.

We can have a sequence of length n+1n+1 ending with 1111 only by adding a 11 to a sequence of length nn ending in 0101, so cn+1=bnc_{n+1}=b_{n}.

We can now run the recursion:

nnana_{n}bnb_{n}cnc_{n}
2111
3211
4221
5322
6432
7543
8754
9975
101297

Our answer is then 12+9+7=2812+9+7=28.

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