2023 AIME I Problems/Problem 11

Unofficial problem statement: Let $S$ be the set $\{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10\}$ . How many subsets of $S$ have exactly one pair of consecutive elements? (Ex: $\{1, 2, 6, 10\}$ )

Solution

Define $f(x)$ to be the number of subsets of $\{1, 2, 3, 4, \ldots x\}$ that have $0$ consecutive element pairs, and $f'(x)$ to be the number of subsets that have $1$ consecutive pair.

Using casework on where the consecutive pair is, it is easy to see that $f'(10) = 2f(7) + 2f(6) + 2f(1)f(5) + 2f(2)f(4) + 2f(3)^2$ .

We see that $f(1) = 2$ , $f(2) = 3$ , and $f(n) = f(n-1) + f(n-2)$ . This is because if the element $1$ is included in our subset, then there are $f(n-2)$ possibilities, and otherwise there are $f(n-1)$ possibilities. Thus, by induction, $f(x)$ is the $n+1$ th Fibonacci number.

This means that $f'(10) = 2(34) + 2(21) + 2(2)(13) + 2(3)(8) + 5^2 = \boxed{235}$ .

~mathboy100

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2023 AIME I Problems/Problem 11

Solution