MathDB
A city where the names of people are either A or B and 10 letters long

Source: BdMO 2022 Secondary P7

April 12, 2022
combinatorics

Problem Statement

Sabbir noticed one day that everyone in the city of BdMO has a distinct word of length 1010, where each letter is either AA or BB. 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 ABBABB is located consecutively, then these letters can be changed to BBABBA or if BBABBA is located somewhere in the word consecutively, then these letters can be changed to ABBABB (if wanted, the word can be kept as it is, without making this change.) For example AABBAAABBA can be transformed into AAABBAAABB (the opposite is also possible.) Now Sabbir made a team of NN citizens where no one is friends with anyone. What is the highest value of N.N.