Let be a nonnegative integer. Determine the number of ways that one can choose sets , for integers with , such that:
for all , the set has elements; and
whenever and .
Solution
Note that there are ways to choose , because there are ways to choose which number is, ways to choose which number to append to make , ways to choose which number to append to make , etc. After that, note that contains the in and 1 other element chosen from the 2 elements in not in so there are 2 ways for . By the same logic there are 2 ways for as well so total ways for all , so doing the same thing more times yields a final answer of .
-Stormersyle
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