Olympiad Maths Prep

Track / Stage 3 / 90 of 260 #90 of 2000

Problem 90

AMC 10/12, early questions
Combinatorics Difficulty 3.2 Find the answer

Call a set of integers spacy if it contains no more than one out of any three consecutive integers. How many subsets of {1,2,3,,12},\{1,2,3,\ldots,12\}, including the empty set, are spacy?
(A) 121(B) 123(C) 125(D) 127(E) 129\mathrm{(A)}\ 121 \qquad \mathrm{(B)}\ 123 \qquad \mathrm{(C)}\ 125 \qquad \mathrm{(D)}\ 127 \qquad \mathrm{(E)}\ 129

Official solution

Let SnS_{n} denote the number of spacy subsets of {1,2,...n}\{ 1, 2, ... n \}. We have S0=1,S1=2,S2=3S_{0} = 1, S_{1} = 2, S_{2} = 3.
The spacy subsets of Sn+1S_{n + 1} can be divided into two groups:

A=A = those not containing n+1n + 1. Clearly A=Sn|A|=S_{n}.
B=B = those containing n+1n + 1. We have B=Sn2|B|=S_{n - 2}, since removing n+1n + 1 from any set in BB produces a spacy set with all elements at most equal to n2,n - 2, and each such spacy set can be constructed from exactly one spacy set in BB.
Hence,

Sn+1=Sn+Sn2S_{n + 1} = S_{n} + S_{n - 2}
From this recursion, we find that

S(0)S(0)
S(1)S(1)
S(2)S(2)
S(3)S(3)
S(4)S(4)
S(5)S(5)
S(6)S(6)
S(7)S(7)
S(8)S(8)
S(9)S(9)
S(10)S(10)
S(11)S(11)
S(12)S(12)

1
2
3
4
6
9
13
19
28
41
60
88
129

And so the answer is (E)129\boxed{\textbf{(E)}129}.

Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic, difficulty and ordering added by this site.