Question

just thought id post something fun :)

Answer 1

the library had this on the shelf in the periodical section. Find the area :)

Answer 2

I has no idea

Answer 3

they had some fancy way of doing it in the book using number of vertices and what nots... me, i would have prolly ended up counting all the little grey squares :)

Answer 4

i scanned the image of the cover, i was expecting it to be biggerer

Answer 5

bigger image is here :
http://www.maa.org/pubs/mm-jun12.jpg

Answer 6

indeed :) much better

Answer 7

my idea was to take each row in define it in terms of total reds (or greys) depending on which color appears to show up the least; then do some calculations with those

Answer 8

i'm not sure i understand what's going on but looks like something that requires some thought, fun. wish i knew what the lattice means... oh well :) whoever wants to solve it, good luck lol :P

Answer 9

we need find closed curve first... then area occupied by it...

Answer 10

lattice refers to a discrete stucture such as the integer points in a graph

Answer 11

grey is the closed curve portion of it

Answer 12

so basically lattice = vertices?

Answer 13

the solutions page gave a left hand counterclockwise rule; and a lattice thrm

Answer 14

yes; lattice = vertices

Answer 15

in english, we're basically finding the area of the red portion? correct?

Answer 16

the grey portion, but yes

Answer 17

the solution is sneakly also the year of publication lol

Answer 18

2012?

Answer 19

yes, but thats just what i noticed from page 220 that contains the solution

Answer 20

the fun part would be in verifying that ;)

Answer 21

ok i have an idea, whatever the solution, it will definitely be less that 3900sq units. so that's one clue. so 2012 is a candidate for an answer :P

here's my idea, make a grid out of the diagram (might take a long time but whatever), then count the number of grey squares xD answer achieved, done! easy :) lol

Answer 22

that is one method yes

Answer 23

my idea is to do less counting (still alot of it but less)

Answer 24

each column fills a 1x60 area

60-red = grey area if there are fewer reds to count

and of course grey = grey if there are fewer greys to count

Answer 25

sounds good, but then you're going to do that 65 times... that's a lot less counting lol :) can we still find a way to be lazier? i hope

Answer 26

Pick method is mentioned in the book; but its still alot of counting to fill in the specifics

a = i + b/2 - 1

i = number of interior lattice points
b = number of lattice points in the exterior

id have to look up what defines an interior lattice point tho; they say i=0

and b=61*66

Answer 27

-1? what's that doing in that equation?