2009 AMC 12B Problems/Problem 21

Revision as of 01:33, 25 January 2016 by Rey25452 (talk | contribs) (Solution 1)

Problem

Ten women sit in $10$ seats in a line. All of the $10$ get up and then reseat themselves using all $10$ seats, each sitting in the seat she was in before or a seat next to the one she occupied before. In how many ways can the women be reseated?

$\textbf{(A)}\ 89\qquad \textbf{(B)}\ 90\qquad \textbf{(C)}\ 120\qquad \textbf{(D)}\ 2^{10}\qquad \textbf{(E)}\ 2^2 3^8$

Solution 1

Notice that either a woman stays in her own seat after the rearrangement, or two adjacent women swap places. Thus, our answer is counting the number of ways to arrange 1x1 and 2x1 blocks to form a 1x10 rectangle. This can be done via casework depending on the number of 2x1 blocks. The cases of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 2x1 blocks correspond to 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 0 1x1 blocks, and so the sum of the cases is \[\binom{10}{0} + \binom{9}{1} + \binom{8}{2} + \binom{7}{3} + \binom{6}{4} + \binom{5}{5} = 1 + 9 + 28 + 35 + 15 + 1 = 89.\] When we add the case where no one moves, that brings the total to is $\89+1=boxed{90}$ (Error compiling LaTeX. Unknown error_msg).

See Also

2009 AMC 12B (ProblemsAnswer KeyResources)
Preceded by
Problem 20
Followed by
Problem 22
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All AMC 12 Problems and Solutions

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