In his paper The Strong Law of Small Numbers Richard Guy states "There aren't enough small numbers to meet the demands made of them."

It's a great list of 35 examples where the pattern noted early on may or may not continue. Unfortunately, if you read it, you will give away a series of around 10 puzzles I plan to create from it.

Before trying the problem "note your opinion as to whether the observed pattern is known to continue, known not to continue, or not known at all."

Place n points around a circle so that no three of the C(n,2) chords joining them are concurrent. Count the number of regions into which the chords partition the circle.

n=0, 1 region
n=1, 2 regions (a single chord)
n=2, 4 regions (the chords form a triangle)
n=3, 8 regions
n=4, 16 regions

A pattern has emerged. Does it continue?

(In reply to re: Huh?......ehe by Ady TZIDON)

The puzzle specifically says n is the number of points and C(n,2) is the number of chords. It does look like the values of n are off by 1. Note that when n=2 it says the chords form a triangle, not an X. That should be n=3, for 3 points that are vertices of a triangle.

Posted by Charlie on 2017-09-13 10:44:18