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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.3 AIME, harder Find the answer

Eight points are chosen on the circumference of a circle, labelled P1,P2,,P8P_{1}, P_{2}, \ldots, P_{8} in clockwise order. A route is a sequence of at least two points Pa1,Pa2,,PanP_{a_{1}}, P_{a_{2}}, \ldots, P_{a_{n}} such that if an ant were to visit these points in their given order, starting at Pa1P_{a_{1}} and ending at PanP_{a_{n}}, by following n1n-1 straight line segments (each connecting each PaiP_{a_{i}} and Pai+1P_{a_{i+1}} ), it would never visit a point twice or cross its own path. Find the number of routes.

A number or a short expression. Spacing and $ signs are ignored.

Solution

Solution 1: How many routes are there if we are restricted to nn available points, and we must use all nn of them? The answer is n2n2n 2^{n-2} : first choose the starting point, then each move after that must visit one of the two neighbors of your expanding region of visited points (doing anything else would prevent you from visiting every point). Now simply sum over all possible sets of points that you end up visiting: (88)(826)+(87)(725)++(82)(220)=8744\binom{8}{8}\left(8 \cdot 2^{6}\right)+\binom{8}{7}\left(7 \cdot 2^{5}\right)+\cdots+\binom{8}{2}\left(2 \cdot 2^{0}\right)=8744. Solution 2: We use recursion. Let f(n)f(n) be the answer for nn points, with the condition that our path must start at PnP_{n} (so our final answer is 8f(8)8 f(8) ). Then f(1)=0f(1)=0 and f(2)=1f(2)=1. Now suppose n3n \geq 3 and suppose the second point we visit is Pi(1i<n)P_{i}(1 \leq i<n). Then we can either stop the path there, yielding one possibility. Alternatively, we can continue the path. In this case, note that it may never again cross the chord PiPnP_{i} P_{n}. If the remainder of the path is among the points P1,,PiP_{1}, \ldots, P_{i}, there are f(i)f(i) possible routes. Otherwise, there are f(ni)f(n-i) possible routes. As a result, f(n)=i=1n11+f(i)+f(ni)=(n1)+2i=1n1f(i)f(n)=\sum_{i=1}^{n-1} 1+f(i)+f(n-i)=(n-1)+2 \sum_{i=1}^{n-1} f(i) From here we may compute: \begin{tabular}{c|cccccccc} nn & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 & 7 & 8 \\ \hlinef(n)f(n) & 0 & 1 & 4 & 13 & 40 & 121 & 364 & 1093 \end{tabular} Therefore the answer is 81093=87448 \cdot 1093=8744.

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Source: Omni-MATH, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.