Sabbir noticed one day that everyone in the city of BdMO has a distinct word of length $10$, where each letter is either $A$ or $B$. Sabbir saw that two citizens are friends if one of their words can be altered a few times using a special rule and transformed into the other ones word. The rule is, if somewhere in the word $ABB$ is located consecutively, then these letters can be changed to $BBA$ or if $BBA$ is located somewhere in the word consecutively, then these letters can be changed to $ABB$ (if wanted, the word can be kept as it is, without making this change.) For example $AABBA$ can be transformed into $AAABB$ (the opposite is also possible.) Now Sabbir made a team of $N$ citizens where no one is friends with anyone. What is the highest value of $N.$
Problem
Source: BdMO 2022 Secondary P7
Tags: combinatorics
08.02.2023 12:30
Isn't the answer 9?
08.02.2023 16:53
The sequence and the rest(mod 2) of A won't change,maybe one sequence can show the only man.
10.02.2023 12:44
If you have 2 same consecutive letters you can "move" them around if you get what i mean. So it suffices to find how many words are there with some number of pairs and some number of isolated letter B (if there are 2k+1 letters in a row then it is as if you have k pairs and one isolated b). Im on my phone right now but that is the main idea pretty much, i think. Also sorry for my English.
06.05.2023 15:00
Arrange them in all possible ways AAAAABBBBB BBBBBAAAAA ABABABABAB BABABABABA AABBAABBAA BBAABBAABB AAAABBBBAA BBBBAAAABB AAABBBAAAB BBBAAABBBA AAAAAABBBB BBBBBBAAAA AAAAAAABBB BBBBBBBAAA AAAAAAAABB BBBBBBBBBAA AAAAAAAAAB BBBBBBBBBA THEREFORE,highest value of N is 9