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Combinatorics Difficulty 7.6 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it Japan

2008 boys and 2008 girls decided to get together and play the game of exchanging presents. Each participating boy was asked to bring a bouquet of flowers and each participating girl was asked to bring a bar of chocolate to the get-together. When all the participants showed up, they were lined up in some way and were seated in a circular arrangement with every one facing toward the interior of the circle. Then they were ordered to pass on simultaneously the presents they brought to the person sitting on their right in the circular arrangement. After the actions were repeated a certain number of times the situation was reached where every participating boy had in his possession a chocolate bar and every participating girl possessed a bouquet of flowers. How many possible arrangements of the chairs occupied by the boys are there?

Solution

[2251+2502+21004+22008][2^{251} + 2^{502} + 2^{1004} + 2^{2008}]

Let us call the situation the [initial state] if every participating boy has a bouquet of flowers and every participating girl has a chocolate bar, and call the situation the [good state] if every participating boy has a chocolate bar and every participating girl has a bouquet of flowers.

Suppose the good state was attained for the first time after dd actions, then after 2d2d actions, the situation returns for the first time to the initial state. This is because the good state represents the situation in which the possessions of boys and girls are completely reversed from those in the initial state, and therefore, if we repeat once more the process of reversing the possessions of boys and girls completely, it is clear that the situation returns to the initial state. Furthermore, if for some d<2dd' < 2d the situation returned to the initial state after dd' actions, then this would mean that after dd|d-d'| actions the initial state and the good state were interchanged, and since dd<d|d-d'| < d, this is a contradiction. So, 2d2d is exactly the number of actions necessary to return to the initial state for the first time. Let us prove the following Lemma

Lemma. Suppose after aa actions the situation returns for the first time to the initial state. If the situation returns to the initial state after bb actions, then bb must be a multiple of aa.

Proof of Lemma bb can be represented as b=ma+kb = ma + k with a nonnegative integer mm and a number kk satisfying 0k<a0 \le k < a. From the definition of aa it follows that the situation returns to the initial state after mama actions. Consequently, after bb actions the situation is the same as the situation reached after kk actions from the initial state. If k>0k > 0, then this would mean that the situation returns to the initial state in less than aa actions, and this contradicts the fact that aa was assumed to be the number of actions necessary to return for the first time to the initial state. Therefore, we must have k=0k = 0, and this proves the Lemma.

From what we obtained above, we see that the situation returns to the initial state after the repetition of even multiples of dd actions, and goes into the good state after an odd multiples of dd actions. Furthermore, in view of the Lemma, we see that at no other time the initial state or the good state would be attained.

Since there are altogether 40164016 people participating, it is clear that after 40164016 actions, the situation returns to the initial state. Therefore, 2d2d must be a factor of 40164016, and this implies that dd must be one of the numbers

1,2,4,8,251,502,1004,20081, 2, 4, 8, 251, 502, 1004, 2008. We note that the good state can be reached also by going through 251251 actions if d=1d=1, by 502502 actions if d=2d=2, by 10041004 actions if d=4d=4 and by 20082008 actions if d=8d=8 respectively. By the Lemma, we see that there are no common seating arrangement among the seating arrangements corresponding to 251,502,1004,2008251, 502, 1004, 2008 as the number of actions necessary to get to the good state for the first time. Therefore, to obtain the possible number of seating arrangements to satisfy the requirement of the problem, it is enough to determine how many possible seating arrangements there are which produce the good state after 251,502,1004251, 502, 1004 and 20082008 actions.

So, let n{251,502,1004,2008}n \in \{251, 502, 1004, 2008\}, and consider seating arrangements that will produce the good state after nn actions. Since the number 4016n\frac{4016}{n} is an even integer, we see that if we decide the seating arrangement for some block consisting of nn consecutive chairs by deciding whether a boy or a girl sits in each of these nn chairs, then precisely 11 seating arrangement for all the participants satisfying the requirement of the problem can be produced by putting alternately this arrangement of seating and the arrangement obtained by changing a boy by a girl and a girl by a boy in each chair to each of 4016n\frac{4016}{n} distinct blocks of nn consecutive chairs. Therefore, there are 2n2^n seating arrangement satisfying the requirement for each nn.

Consequently, the number of possible arrangements satisfying the requirement of the problem is

2251+2502+21004+22008 2^{251} + 2^{502} + 2^{1004} + 2^{2008}

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