Problem:
Find the number of subsets of satisfying the following conditions:
- is non-empty.
- No subset of has the property that the sum of its elements is .
, 2013
Solution
Solution:
Answer:
We do casework based on the largest element of . Call a set -free if none of its subsets have elements summing to .
Case 1: The largest element of is . Then . If , then we wish to find all -free subsets of (note that ). We just cannot include both , so we have choices here.
If , then we want -free subsets of . The only -but-not--free subset is , so we have choices here, for a case total of .
Case 2: The largest element of is . We seek -free subsets of . We just cannot have both or both (note that getting requires the whole set), so we have subsets in this case.
Case 3: The largest element of is at most . (So we want a -free subset of .) The only way to sum to with is by using all the terms, so we simply discount the empty set and , for a total of subsets.
In conclusion, the total number of subsets is .