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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.2 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:

How many ways are there to choose 2010 functions f1,,f2010f_{1}, \ldots, f_{2010} from {0,1}\{0,1\} to {0,1}\{0,1\} such that f2010f2009f1f_{2010} \circ f_{2009} \circ \cdots \circ f_{1} is constant? Note: a function gg is constant if g(a)=g(b)g(a)=g(b) for all a,ba, b in the domain of gg.

Solution

Solution:

42010220104^{2010}-2^{2010}

If all 2010 functions are bijective, then the composition f2010f2009f1f_{2010} \circ f_{2009} \circ \cdots \circ f_{1} will be bijective also, and therefore not constant. If, however, one of f1,,f2010f_{1}, \ldots, f_{2010} is not bijective, say fkf_{k}, then fk(0)=fk(1)=qf_{k}(0)=f_{k}(1)=q, so f2010f2009fk+1fkf1(0)=f2010f2009fk+1(q)=f2010f2009fk+1fkf1(1)f_{2010} \circ f_{2009} \circ \cdots \circ f_{k+1} \circ f_{k} \circ \cdots f_{1}(0)=f_{2010} \circ f_{2009} \circ \cdots \circ f_{k+1}(q)=f_{2010} \circ f_{2009} \circ \cdots \circ f_{k+1} \circ f_{k} \circ \cdots f_{1}(1). So the composition will be constant unless all fif_{i} are bijective. Since there are 4 possible functions from {0,1}\{0,1\} to {0,1}\{0,1\} and 2 of them are bijective, we subtract the cases where all the functions are bijective from the total to get 42010220104^{2010}-2^{2010}.

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