Luke Garbin

Mr. Harris
Pre-Calc/Trigonometry
11/8/17
The question being set at hand is how many squares are there in the checkerboard. John

and Mark grew tired of playing checkers one day and started looking at the checkerboard. They

do not agree on the total number of squares in the checkerboard. The checker board is 9 by 9,

making there 81 little squares. However, you need to not only find the number of 1 by 1 squares,

but 2 by 2 squares, 3 by 3 squares, etc. It will be a very difficult problem to figure out, and will

require an equation.

The process I did was first count all the one by one squares, in which there were 81. I

then counted the total square in the middle which got me to 82. I then found out that you could

move the different squares around. At first I thought there were only 215 squares, however I

realized you could move them around, and it would create a new square. For example, if you

have a 2 by 2 square in one spot, you can translate it to the right 1 unit, and it creates a different

square. So I basically did the same process translating it up and down, and left to right for 2 by 2

squares, 3 by 3 squares, etc.

The final answer I got in finding how many squares are in the checker board is 286. I

figured it out with the process that I stated above. At first, I thought there were only 215 squares,

however I realized you could move them around, and it would create a new square. The

equation I got to solve this problem is 12, 22 , etc, and the answer I got again was 286.