IMO 2019 Problem 5

The Bank of Bath issues coins with an $H$ on one side and a $T$ on the other. Harry has $n$ of these coins arranged in a line from left to right. He repeatedly performs the following operation: if there are exactly $k>0$ coins showing $H$ , then he turns over the $k$ th coin from the left; otherwise, all coins show $T$ and he stops. For example, if $n=3$ the process starting with the configuration $THT$ would be $THT \to HHT \to HTT \to TTT$ , which stops after three operations.

(a) Show that, for each initial configuration, Harry stops after a finite number of operations.

(b) For each initial configuration $C$ , let $L(C)$ be the number of operations before Harry stops. For example, $L(THT) = 3$ and $L(TTT) = 0$ . Determine the average value of $L(C)$ over all $2^n$ possible initial configurations $C$ .

Proposed by David Altizio, USA