Maths Olympiad Prep

Track / Stage 5 / 200 of 400 #800 of 1964

Problem 800

AIME late
Combinatorics Difficulty 5.5 Find the answer

C5 (FIN) Find all finite sequences (x0,x1,,xn)\left(x_{0}, x_{1}, \ldots, x_{n}\right) such that for every j,0jn,xj, 0 \leq j \leq n, x, equals the number of times jj appears in the sequence.

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Official solution

11. Let (x0,x1,,xn)\left(x_{0}, x_{1}, \ldots, x_{n}\right) be any such sequence: its terms are clearly nonnegative integers. Also, x0=0x_{0}=0 yields a contradiction, so x0>0x_{0}>0. Let mm be the number of positive terms among x1,,xnx_{1}, \ldots, x_{n}. Since xix_{i} counts the terms equal to ii, the sum x1++xnx_{1}+\cdots+x_{n} counts the total number of positive terms in the sequence, which is known to be m+1m+1. Therefore among x1,,xnx_{1}, \ldots, x_{n} exactly m1m-1 terms are equal to 1 , one is equal to 2 , and the others are 0 . Only x0x_{0} can exceed 2 , and consequently at most one of x3,x4,x_{3}, x_{4}, \ldots can be positive. It follows that m3m \leq 3.
(i) m=1m=1 : Then x2=2x_{2}=2 (since x1=2x_{1}=2 is impossible), so x0=2x_{0}=2. The resulting sequence is (2,0,2,0)(2,0,2,0).
(ii) m=2m=2 : Either x1=2x_{1}=2 or x2=2x_{2}=2. These cases yield (1,2,1,0)(1,2,1,0) and (2,1,2,0,0)(2,1,2,0,0) respectively.
(iii) m=3m=3 : This means that xk>0x_{k}>0 for some k>2k>2. Hence x0=kx_{0}=k and xk=1x_{k}=1. Further, x1=1x_{1}=1 is impossible, so x1=2x_{1}=2 and x2=1x_{2}=1; there are no more positive terms in the sequence. The resulting sequence is (p,2,1,0,,0p3,1,0,0,0)(p, 2,1, \underbrace{0, \ldots, 0}_{p-3}, 1,0,0,0).

Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty, ordering) added by this project.