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jmc

counting and probability senior

Problem

A scanning code consists of a grid of squares, with some of its squares colored black and the rest colored white. There must be at least one square of each color in this grid of squares. A scanning code is called if its look does not change when the entire square is rotated by a multiple of counterclockwise around its center, nor when it is reflected across a line joining opposite corners or a line joining midpoints of opposite sides. What is the total number of possible symmetric scanning codes?
Solution
Draw a square. Start from the center and label all protruding cells symmetrically. (Note that "I" is left out of this labelling, so there are only 10 labels, not 11, as ending in K would suggest!) More specifically, since there are given lines of symmetry ( diagonals, vertical, horizontal) and they split the plot into equivalent sections, we can take just one-eighth and study it in particular. Each of these sections has distinct sub-squares, whether partially or in full. So since each can be colored either white or black, we choose but then subtract the cases where all are white or all are black. That leaves us with .
Final answer
1022