Compute where the sum runs over all triples of nonnegative integers such that and .
Solution
We tile a board with red pieces, blue pieces, and green pieces. Suppose we use total pieces, blue pieces, and green pieces. Then we must have , and the number of ways to order the pieces is Thus, the desired sum is the number of ways to do this. Let be the number of ways to do this on a board. Then we have the recursion by casework on the first piece: if it is , we are left with a board, and otherwise we are left with a board. We also know and , so the characteristic polynomial for this recursion is , which has roots 2 and -1 . Thus, Then plugging in and gives and , so With , this evaluates to our answer of 2731 .
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