Given a positive integer , consider a triangular array with entries where ranges from to and ranges from to . The entries of the array are all either or , and, for all and any associated , is if , and is otherwise.
Let denote the set of binary sequences of length , and define a map via . Determine the number of fixed points of .
Geoffrey Smith, United Kingdom, RMM 2013 Short List
Solutions — 2
Solution 1
is bijective, on one hand, and that is fixed by if and only if is a palindrome , on the other.
To begin with, notice that the definition of the is equivalent to the Pascal-like relation in :
Henceforth, such a triangular array will be called a Pascal binary (or dyadic) array.
Clearly, each binary string a in S yields a unique Pascal binary array .
For more convenience, view a triangular array as a function on the standard lattice triangle
situated in the first quadrant; thus, the first index runs horizontally and corresponds to columns, and the second index runs vertically and corresponds to rows.
Further, use the symbols , , , , and to denote the oriented sides of ; explicitly,
To establish a bijection between the fixed points of and the binary palindromes of length , consider the transformations and of defined by
The former is a permutation of order ( is the identity), and the latter is an involution ( is the identity). It is easily seen that
so , , and . It is also readily checked by (1) that, if is a Pascal binary array, then so are both
We are now in a position to prove the desired results.
Since exchanges and , the assignment is bijective.
Since exchanges and , and reverses orientation on the bottom row of , if is fixed by , then , so and consequently ; that is, the bottom row of is a palindrome.
Conversely, if the bottom row of is a palindrome, , then , so and consequently, ; that is, is fixed by . This ends the proof.
The required number is .
Solution 2
For convenience, we denote and for every . Our aim is to find the set of relations for which are equivalent to the relation . All the calculations will be made in .
The definition of is equivalent to
A straightforward check shows then that
For two nonnegative integers and , we will write if the binary representation of can be obtained from that of by replacing some ones by zeroes (the leading zeroes are allowed; thus and for every ). We write if and . Recall that by Lucas' theorem, is odd if and only if . Thus,
Now, the conditions rewrite as the set of equations
for all .
Denote by the set of all strings such that are satisfied for all odd . Each string in this set is determined uniquely by the values of () and : the values of (for ) are found inductively from . Thus
Now we claim that is exactly the desired set of fixed points; in fact, we will prove that all the relations for even follow from the relations for odd .
Consider any even . To establish , we add up all the relations , where , obtaining a sum
But one can easily check that is odd, and is even for all . Thus our equality rewrites exactly as .
Therefore, the number of fixed points is .