2009 AMC 12B Problems/Problem 21

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 $\binom{10}{0} + \binom{9}{1} + \binom{8}{2} + \binom{7}{3} + \binom{6}{4} + \binom{5}{5} = 1 + 9 + 28 + 35 + 15 + 1 = \boxed{89}.$

Solution 2

Let $S_n$ be the number of possible seating arrangements with $n$ women. Consider $n \ge 3,$ and focus on the rightmost woman. If she returns back to her seat, then there are $S_{n-1}$ ways to seat the remaining $n-1$ women. If she sits in the second to last seat, then the woman who previously sat there must now sit at the rightmost seat. This gives us $S_{n-2}$ ways to seat the other $n-2$ women, so we obtain the recursion $S_n = S_{n-1}+S_{n-2}.$

Starting with $S_1=1$ and $S_2=2,$ we can calculate $S_{10}=\boxed{89}.$

2009 AMC 12B (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 20	Followed by Problem 22
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2009 AMC 12B Problems/Problem 21

Contents

Problem

Solution 1

Solution 2

See Also