Problem

Source: Ukraine TST 2012 p5

Tags: Combinatorics of words, combinatorics



There are only two letters in the Mumu tribe alphabet: M and $U$. The word in the Mumu language is any sequence of letters $M$ and $U$, in which next to each letter $M$ there is a letter $U$ (for example, $UUU$ and $UMMUM$ are words and $MMU$ is not). Let $f(m,u)$ denote the number of words in the Mumu language which have $m$ times the letter $M$ and $u$ times the letter $U$. Prove that $f (m, u) - f (2u - m + 1, u) = f (m, u - 1) - f (2u - m + 1, u - 1)$ for any $u \ge 2,3 \le m \le 2u$.