Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /988 of 1394

, 2016

Combinatorics Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:
A nonempty set SS is called well-filled if for every mSm \in S, there are fewer than 12m\frac{1}{2} m elements of SS which are less than mm. Determine the number of well-filled subsets of {1,2,,42}\{1,2, \ldots, 42\}.

Solution

Solution:
Let ana_{n} be the number of well-filled subsets whose maximum element is nn (setting a0=1a_{0}=1). Then it's easy to see that
a2k+1=a2k+a2k1++a0a2k+2=(a2k+1Ck)+a2k++a0 \begin{aligned} & a_{2k+1} = a_{2k} + a_{2k-1} + \cdots + a_{0} \\ & a_{2k+2} = \left(a_{2k+1} - C_{k}\right) + a_{2k} + \cdots + a_{0} \end{aligned}
where CkC_{k} is the number of well-filled subsets of size k+1k+1 with maximal element 2k+12k+1.
We proceed to compute CkC_{k}. One can think of such a subset as a sequence of numbers 1s1<<sk+12k+11 \leq s_{1} < \cdots < s_{k+1} \leq 2k+1 such that si2i1s_{i} \geq 2i-1 for every 1ik+11 \leq i \leq k+1. Equivalently, letting si=i+1+tis_{i} = i+1 + t_{i}, it's the number of sequences 0t1tk+1k+10 \leq t_{1} \leq \cdots \leq t_{k+1} \leq k+1 such that tiit_{i} \geq i for every ii. This gives the list of xx-coordinates of steps up in a Catalan path from (0,0)(0,0) to (k+1,k+1)(k+1, k+1), so
Ck=1k+2(2(k+1)k+1) C_{k} = \frac{1}{k+2} \binom{2(k+1)}{k+1}
is equal to the (k+1)(k+1)th Catalan number.
From this we can solve the above recursion to derive that
an=(n(n1)/2) a_{n} = \binom{n}{\lfloor (n-1)/2 \rfloor}
Consequently, for even nn,
a0++an=an+1=(n+1n/2) a_{0} + \cdots + a_{n} = a_{n+1} = \binom{n+1}{\lfloor n/2 \rfloor}
Putting n=42n=42 gives the answer, after subtracting off the empty set (counted in a0a_{0}).

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