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Number theory Difficulty 6.9 National Olympiad Prove it Canada

Problem:

A permutation of the integers 1901,1902,,20001901, 1902, \ldots, 2000 is a sequence a1,a2,,a100a_{1}, a_{2}, \ldots, a_{100} in which each of those integers appears exactly once. Given such a permutation, we form the sequence of partial sums
s1=a1,s2=a1+a2,s3=a1+a2+a3,,s100=a1+a2++a100. s_{1} = a_{1}, \quad s_{2} = a_{1} + a_{2}, s_{3} = a_{1} + a_{2} + a_{3}, \ldots, s_{100} = a_{1} + a_{2} + \cdots + a_{100}.
How many of these permutations will have no terms of the sequence s1,,s100s_{1}, \ldots, s_{100} divisible by three?

Solution

Solution:

Let {1901,1902,,2000}=R0R1R2\{1901, 1902, \ldots, 2000\} = R_{0} \cup R_{1} \cup R_{2} where each integer in RiR_{i} is congruent to ii modulo 33. We note that R0=R1=33|R_{0}| = |R_{1}| = 33 and R2=34|R_{2}| = 34. Each permutation S=(a1,a2,,a100)S = (a_{1}, a_{2}, \ldots, a_{100}) can be uniquely specified by describing a sequence S=(a1,a2,,a100)S' = (a_{1}', a_{2}', \ldots, a_{100}') of residues modulo 33 (containing exactly 3333 zeros, 3333 ones and 3434 twos), and three permutations (one each of R0,R1R_{0}, R_{1}, and R2R_{2}). Note that the number of permutations of RiR_{i} is exactly Ri!=12Ri|R_{i}|! = 1 \cdot 2 \cdots |R_{i}|.

The condition on the partial sums of SS depends only on the sequence of residues SS'. In order to avoid a partial sum divisible by three, the subsequence formed by the 6767 ones and twos in SS' must equal either 1,1,2,1,2,,1,21, 1, 2, 1, 2, \ldots, 1, 2 or 2,2,1,2,1,,2,12, 2, 1, 2, 1, \ldots, 2, 1. Since R2=R1+1|R_{2}| = |R_{1}| + 1, only the second pattern is possible. The 3333 zero entries in SS' may appear anywhere among a1,a2,,a100a_{1}', a_{2}', \ldots, a_{100}' provided that a10a_{1}' \neq 0. There are (9933)=99!33!66!\binom{99}{33} = \frac{99!}{33!\,66!} ways to choose which entries in SS' equal zero. Thus there are exactly (9933)\binom{99}{33} sequences SS' whose partial sums are not divisible by three. Therefore the total number of permutations SS satisfying this requirement is exactly
(9933)33!33!34!=99!33!34!66!. \binom{99}{33} \cdot 33! \cdot 33! \cdot 34! = \frac{99! \cdot 33! \cdot 34!}{66!}.
Incidentally, this number equals approximately 4.4×101384.4 \times 10^{138}.

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