Counting The Integers

1 How Many Stitches?

Counting is an essential mathematical skill taught to everyone at a young age. However,
counting does not cease to be an interesting or useful topic. It is a skill that regardless
of level or field we all continue to use. Problems involving counting can be an excellent
way to help students develop their skills at pattern recognition and can lead on to other
fascinating problems.

One way to contextualise a counting problem is something I call How Many Stitches?.
This is a problem that was developed to challenge students to problem solve, recognise
patterns, derive expressions/formulae and even practice proofs.

The problem is as follows, Figure 1 is a representation of a stitched blanket. Each line

represents a stitch and each layer is called a round. The question is how many stitches
is a blanket of n layers made up of ?

Figure 1: A Representation of a Stitched Blanket

The number of stitches in each round is

12, 24, 36, 48, . . .
The total number of stitches in the blanket begins
12, 36, 72, 120 . . .

1
This can also be expressed as
Round Total Total number of stitches Alternative representation
1 12 12 12(1)
2 36 12+24 12(1 + 2)
3 72 12+24+36 12(1 + 2 + 3)
4 120 12+24+36+48 12(1 + 2 + 3 + 4)
5 180 12 + 24+36+48+60 12(1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5)
.. .. .. ..
. . . .

From the table we can see the following general expression for n layers:

Definition 1.1
The number of stitches in the quilt after n rounds is

12(1 + 2 + · · · + n)

Example
For example, the number of stitches in the blanket after 70 rounds is

12(1 + 2 + 3 + · · · + 69 + 70) = 29820

Now that we have an expression for n layers we may ask ourselves could we find a formula?
After all this expression is fine for a blanket with a small number of rounds but what if
we wanted to know about a blanket with 500 rounds? It would be very tedious to add
the numbers from one to one hundred. This leads nicely to our next question can we
find a formula to add the first n consecutive numbers?

2
2 Adding the first n consecutive numbers
This problem has a nice history. Carl Friedrich Gauss is regarded by many as the greatest
mathematician of all time. Sometimes he is referred to as the “Prince of Mathematicians”.

Figure 2: Carl Freiedrich Gauss 1777 - 1855

His mathematical genius was apparent from an early age and he must have been quite a
handful for his teachers. Legend has it that when he was in primary school his teacher
told him to sit quietly and find the sum of the first 100 consecutive numbers. His teacher
apparently hoped that this would keep the young Gauss busy for some considerable time.
Unfortunately for the teacher Gauss was able to produce the answer in a few seconds.
He computed

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + · · · + 99 + 100 = 5050

How did Gauss do it?

Gauss realised that if he wrote the numbers 1 to 100 in a row and then wrote the numbers
from 100 to 1 underneath he could then add them all up to obtain 100 × 101 = 10100.
1 2 3 4 ... 99 100
100 99 98 97 . . . 2 1
Then all Gauss had to do was to divide the answer by 2 to obtain

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + · · · + 99 + 100 = 5050

In this way we obtained Gauss’ formula for the sum of the first n consecutive positive
numbers.

3
 Theorem 2.1
The sum of the first n consecutive positive numbers is

n(n + 1)
S=
2

Proof
In order to prove this theorem we must use proof by induction. If your students
are unfamiliar with this technique or it is beyond their current level you may wish
to exclude this section.

• For the base case n = 1 we have

(1)(2)
S= =1
2

• We will suppose the statement is true for n = k i.e.

k(k + 1)
S=
2

• Now for n = k + 1 we have

S = 1 + 2 + ... + k + k + 1
k(k + 1)
= +k+1
2
k(k + 1) 2(k + 1)
= +
2 2
k(k + 1) + 2(k + 1)
=
2
(k + 1)(k + 2)
=
2

Thus by induction we have proven Theorem 2.1 and can say for certain that

n(n + 1)
Sn =
2

Exercise
Can you now write our expression for the number of stitches in the quilt after n
rounds as a formula?

So we can see that starting with a relatively simple problem, counting stitches on a
blanket, can lead to some really great mathematics.