Hosted by The Math Forum

Problem of the Week 964

A Bullet-Riddled Stop Sign Riddle

_____________________________________________
MacPoW Home ||  Forum PoWs ||  Teachers' Place ||  Student Center ||  Search MacPoW
 _____________________________________________

Alice: Take a look at that bullet-riddled stop sign. There are 16 bullet holes in it and they are arranged so that any triangle whose vertices are three of the vertices of the octagon contains a hole in its interior.

Bob: Very observant! But surely that could be achieved with fewer than 16 bullets.

Help our duo out by finding the smallest number of points in the interior of a regular octagon so that each triangle has one in its interior.

Source: The American Mathematical Monthly (#10936 by A Lukacs and A Szilard)

© Copyright 2002 Stan Wagon. Reproduced with permission.

[Privacy Policy] [Terms of Use]

_____________________________________
Home || The Math Library || Quick Reference || Search || Help 
_____________________________________

© 1994- Drexel University. All rights reserved.
http://mathforum.org/
 The Math Forum is a research and educational enterprise of the Drexel University School of Education.The Math Forum is a research and educational enterprise of the Drexel University School of Education.


17 September 2002