Head Tail Problem | AIME I, 1986 | Question 13

In a sequence of coin tosses, one can keep a record of instances in which a tail is immediately followed by a head , a head is immediately followed by ahead and etc. We denote these by TH, HH, and etc. For example in the sequence TTTHHTHTTTHHTTH of 15 coin tosses we observe that there are two HH, three HT, four TH and five TT subsequences. How many different sequences of 15 coin tosses will contain exactly two HH, three HT, four TH, and five TT subsequences?

Let us observe the sequences.

H switches to T three times, T switches to H four times.

There are 5 TT subsequences.

We are to add 5 T’s into, the string. There are already 4 T’s in the sequence.

We are to add 5 balls in 4 urns which is same as 3 dividers \({5+3 \choose 3}\)=56

We do the same with 2H’s to get \({2+3 \choose 3}\)=10

so, \(56 \times 10\)=560.

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