Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.1 AIME, harder Find the answer

Find the number of subsets SS of {1,2,,48}\{1,2, \ldots, 48\} satisfying both of the following properties: - For each integer 1k241 \leq k \leq 24, exactly one of 2k12 k-1 and 2k2 k is in SS. - There are exactly nine integers 1m471 \leq m \leq 47 so that both mm and m+1m+1 are in SS.

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

Solution

This problem can be thought of as laying down a series of 1×21 \times 2 dominoes, with each one having either the left or right square marked. The second condition states that exactly 9 pairs of consecutive dominoes will have the leftmost one with the right square marked and the rightmost one with the left square marked. Therefore, this problem can be thought of as laying down a series of dominoes with the left square marked, followed by a series with the right square marked, followed by left square and so on and so forth, with the pattern LRLRLRL...LR. However, the left end is not guaranteed to be left marked dominoes and the right end is not guaranteed to be right marked dominoes. However, we can add a left marked domino to the left end and a right marked domino to the right end without changing the number of right-left combinations in the sequence. Further, there will be 10 of each left and right blocks, and a total of 26 dominoes, such that each block has at least 1 domino. If there are a1,a2,,a20a_{1}, a_{2}, \ldots, a_{20} dominoes in each block, then a1+a2++a20=26a_{1}+a_{2}+\ldots+a_{20}=26 and ai>0a_{i}>0 for all 1i201 \leq i \leq 20. Therefore, from stars and bars, we find that there are \binom{25}{6} ways to select the dominoes and thus the subset SS. Surprisingly, \binom{25}{6} is not too hard to compute and is just 177100.

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