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Richard Walker

A Dotty Puzzle for the New Year

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On this 10 x 10 square grid I have drawn some rectangles with their corners on points of the grid and their sides parallel to the sides of the square. The colours have no particular significance I just used them to make the picture more interesting.

There are obviously many other rectangles that can be drawn on this grid. Can you work out how many there are altogether? Answer on Tuesday.

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Steven McDonald

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A physicist's solution (relying more on algebra than geometry):

An m multiplication n rectangle can be placed in left parenthesis 10 minus m right parenthesis times left parenthesis 10 minus n right parenthesis possible locations, and we have space for any rectangle size from one multiplication one to nine multiplication nine . So we can write the total number of rectangles cap n as

cap n equals n ary summation from m equals one to nine over n ary summation from n equals one to nine over left parenthesis 10 minus m right parenthesis times left parenthesis 10 minus n right parenthesis .

Multiplying out the brackets,

cap n equals n ary summation over m comma n over 100 minus 10 times n ary summation over m comma n over m minus 10 times n ary summation over m comma n over n plus n ary summation over m over m times n ary summation over n over n .

Now we can use the fact that n ary summation from i equals one to nine over j equals nine times j of i not equals j and n ary summation from i equals one to nine over i equals 45 (both of which can be calculated easily by hand) to write

cap n equals nine multiplication nine multiplication 100 minus 10 multiplication nine multiplication 45 minus 10 multiplication nine multiplication 45 plus 45 multiplication 45 .

All terms but the last cancel, and we are left with

equation sequence part 1 cap n equals part 2 45 squared equals part 3 2025 .

Richard Walker

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Great answer Steven, there are indeed 2025 possible rectangles, which I thought was rather neat!

This is also the sum of the cubes 13 + 23 +... + 93, another fun fact.