Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.4 AIME, harder Find the answer Italy

Problem:

Jacopo has 6 colors available (including white) to color all the integers. However, he wants to respect these conditions: nn and n+5n+5 must have the same color for every integer nn, and moreover if abab is white, then at least one of aa and bb must be white. In how many ways can Jacopo color the integers?

Pick one

Solution

Solution:

The answer is (E)\mathbf{(E)}. The condition that nn and n+5n+5 have the same color is equivalent to restricting the problem to the 5 congruence classes modulo 5 (which we will keep calling 0,1,2,3,40,1,2,3,4).

Let us now study the second condition; let us write down all the possible ways to obtain a number as the product of two others:

00k0 \equiv 0 \cdot k with k{0,1,2,3,4}k \in \{0,1,2,3,4\}

11123441 \equiv 1 \cdot 1 \equiv 2 \cdot 3 \equiv 4 \cdot 4

212342 \equiv 1 \cdot 2 \equiv 3 \cdot 4

313243 \equiv 1 \cdot 3 \equiv 2 \cdot 4

41422334 \equiv 1 \cdot 4 \equiv 2 \cdot 2 \equiv 3 \cdot 3

Each congruence implies that if the product is white then one of the two factors is white. One can see that the color of 0 does not affect the colors of the other classes.

On the other hand, if 1 is white, then 4 is also white; if 4 is white then both 2 and 3 are white; if 2 (or 3) is white then either 3 (or 2) is white or 4 is white, but 4 white implies both 2 and 3 white.

Summing up, if 1 is white, then 2, 3 and 4 are also white. If 4 is white, but 1 is not, 2 and 3 are white. Finally if 2 is white, but neither 1 nor 4 is, then 3 is also white, and vice versa.

We therefore have four cases for the classes in {1,2,3,4}\{1,2,3,4\} colored white: {1,2,3,4}\{1,2,3,4\}, {2,3,4}\{2,3,4\}, {2,3}\{2,3\}, \emptyset.

Recalling that 0 can be colored independently, we obtain 6(1+5+52+54)=39366 \cdot \left(1+5+5^2+5^4\right) = 3936 different colorings.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from it; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.