There are sheep and a wolf in sheep's clothing . Some of the sheep are friends (friendship is mutual). The goal of the wolf is to eat all the sheep. First, the wolf chooses some sheep to make friend's with. In each of the following days, the wolf eats one of its friends. Whenever the wolf eats a sheep :
(a) If a friend of is originally a friend of the wolf, it un-friends the wolf.
(b) If a friend of is originally not a friend of the wolf, it becomes a friend of the wolf.
Repeat the procedure until the wolf has no friend left.
Find the largest integer in terms of satisfying the following: There exists an initial friendsheep structure such that the wolf has different ways of choosing initial sheep to become friends, so that the wolf has a way to eat all of the sheep.
Solution
1. Graph Representation and State Definition:
- Represent the problem as a graph where each sheep is a vertex and edges represent mutual friendships.
- Define the state of each vertex (sheep) as if the sheep is friends with the wolf and otherwise.
2. Wolf's Move and State Change:
- Each day, the wolf can remove one of its friends (a vertex with state ).
- When the wolf eats a sheep :
- If a friend of is originally a friend of the wolf, it un-friends the wolf.
- If a friend of is originally not a friend of the wolf, it becomes a friend of the wolf.
3. Example with Star Graph:
- Consider a star graph with vertices, where one central vertex is connected to leaf vertices.
- If there are an odd number of vertices with state , the wolf can remove all the leaf vertices with state , and then remove .
- Removing is possible because there were initially an odd number of vertices with state .
- After removing , the wolf can remove all remaining vertices since they all have state .
4. Counting Initial States:
- The number of ways to choose initial states such that there are an odd number of vertices with state is .
5. **Proof for :**
- Let denote the number of vertices with state .
- We need to prove that if the wolf can remove all vertices, then initially the condition holds.
- Consider the invariant , where and are the number of vertices and edges left, respectively.
- After each move, the parity of does not change, and at the end, .
- Therefore, initially should be even, which implies .
6. Conclusion:
- The largest integer such that there exists an initial friendship structure where the wolf has different ways of choosing initial friends to ensure it can eat all the sheep is .
The final answer is .