Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /41 of 740

, 2013

Combinatorics Difficulty 4.4 AIME Find the answer United States

Problem:
Find the number of subsets SS of {1,2,,6}\{1,2, \ldots, 6\} satisfying the following conditions:
- SS is non-empty.
- No subset of SS has the property that the sum of its elements is 1010.

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

Solution

Solution:
Answer: 3434

We do casework based on the largest element of SS. Call a set nn-free if none of its subsets have elements summing to nn.

Case 1: The largest element of SS is 66. Then 4S4 \notin S. If 5S5 \notin S, then we wish to find all 44-free subsets of {1,2,3}\{1,2,3\} (note that 1+2+3=6<101+2+3=6<10). We just cannot include both 1,31,3, so we have 2(221)=62(2^{2}-1)=6 choices here.

If 5S5 \in S, then we want 4,54,5-free subsets of {1,2,3}\{1,2,3\}. The only 44-but-not-55-free subset is {2,3}\{2,3\}, so we have 616-1 choices here, for a case total of 6+5=116+5=11.

Case 2: The largest element of SS is 55. We seek 5,105,10-free subsets of {1,2,3,4}\{1,2,3,4\}. We just cannot have both 1,41,4 or both 2,32,3 (note that getting 1010 requires the whole set), so we have (221)2=9(2^{2}-1)^{2}=9 subsets in this case.

Case 3: The largest element of SS is at most 44. (So we want a 44-free subset of {1,2,3,4}\{1,2,3,4\}.) The only way to sum to 1010 with 1,2,3,41,2,3,4 is by using all the terms, so we simply discount the empty set and {1,2,3,4}\{1,2,3,4\}, for a total of 242=142^{4}-2=14 subsets.

In conclusion, the total number of subsets is 11+9+14=3411+9+14=34.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

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