6 February 2015

Chessboard puzzle

Here is a simple or complex – depending upon your perspective – puzzle. It is complex if you try to enumerate all possibilities. There is a very simple and elegant way though.

As always, if you are reading this on FB, do not post your answer on Comments section. Sent me a message.

Question: In a simple 8 by 8 chessboard, how many rectangles are there?

As you can imagine a rectangle can be one square by one square – and there are 64 of them – (squares are rectangles) or two squares by one square (and there are quite a few of them) or three squares by five squares and such….

30 January 2015

Puzzle from India

I was enroute from India to USA when I got a call from one of my nephews with the following math problem he was stuck with. I am posting that as the puzzle of this week.

There is a jar with 50 pieces of paper written “1” thru “50” in them. You pick 5 of them at random and lay them out in increasing sequence. What is the probability that the middle number is 30?