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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.1 AIME, harder Find the answer

Consider sequences aa of the form a=(a1,a2,,a20)a=\left(a_{1}, a_{2}, \ldots, a_{20}\right) such that each term aia_{i} is either 0 or 1. For each such sequence aa, we can produce a sequence b=(b1,b2,,b20)b=\left(b_{1}, b_{2}, \ldots, b_{20}\right), where bi={ai+ai+1i=1ai1+ai+ai+11<i<20ai1+aii=20b_{i}= \begin{cases}a_{i}+a_{i+1} & i=1 \\ a_{i-1}+a_{i}+a_{i+1} & 1<i<20 \\ a_{i-1}+a_{i} & i=20\end{cases}. How many sequences bb are there that can be produced by more than one distinct sequence aa?

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

Solution

Let the two sequences be bb and b^\hat{b}. Then, observe that given aa, if b1=b^1b_{1}=\hat{b}_{1} and b2=b^2b_{2}=\hat{b}_{2}, then b=b^b=\hat{b} (since aa will uniquely determine the remaining elements in bb and b^\hat{b}). Thus, bb and b^\hat{b} must start with (1,0,)(1,0, \ldots) and (0,1,)(0,1, \ldots), respectively (without loss of generality). Note that a3a_{3} is either 1 (in which case b3=b^3=0b_{3}=\hat{b}_{3}=0) or 2 (in which case b3=b^3=1b_{3}=\hat{b}_{3}=1). Moreover, b4,b5b_{4}, b_{5} must be the same as b1,b2b_{1}, b_{2} (and the same for b^\hat{b}) for the sequences to generate the same a3,a4a_{3}, a_{4}. We can then pick a6,a9,a_{6}, a_{9}, \ldots. Observe, that the last elements also have to be (,1,0)(\ldots, 1,0) for bb and (,0,1)(\ldots, 0,1) for b^\hat{b}. Thus, the answer is nonzero only for sequence lengths of 2(mod3)2(\bmod 3), in which case, our answer is 2k2^{k}, where the length is 3k+23k+2 (since we have two choices for every third element). Here, since N=20=3(6)+2N=20=3(6)+2, the answer is 26=642^{6}=64.

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