Scribd
Upload
317 views3 pages

Chords Regions

The document discusses how to determine the number of regions formed inside a circle when points are placed on the circumference and chords are drawn connecting each point. It first observes patterns for small numbers of points but realizes these patterns don't hold in general. It then provides two proofs to derive the actual formula for the number of regions as the number of points increases, which involves binomial coefficients.

Uploaded by

willygope
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
317 views3 pages

Chords Regions

The document discusses how to determine the number of regions formed inside a circle when points are placed on the circumference and chords are drawn connecting each point. It first observes patterns for small numbers of points but realizes these patterns don't hold in general. It then provides two proofs to derive the actual formula for the number of regions as the number of points increases, which involves binomial coefficients.

Uploaded by

willygope
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 3

www.arbelos.co.uk/papers.

html A K Jobbings 2008


Chords and regions
Andrew Jobbings
Place n points on a circle and draw all the chords which connect the points. Suppose that no
three chords meet inside the circle (that is, the chords are in general position). How many
regions are formed inside the circle?
Pattern spotting
For the rst few values of n we get the following gures.
Counting the regions, we obtain the following table.
Points Regions
1 1
2 2
3 4
4 8
5 16
Notice that the numbers of regions in the table are all powers of 2:
1 = 2
0
; 2 = 2
1
; 4 = 2
2
; 8 = 2
3
and 16 = 2
4
.
Having spotted this pattern, the temptation now is to declare that the number of regions is
always a power of 2, and to state that for n points there are 2
n1
regions. Unfortunately, there
are two diculties with this approach:
1
www.arbelos.co.uk/papers.html A K Jobbings 2008
1. The statements have not been justied. How do we know that the pattern will continue
for every value of n?
2. The statements are wrong!
Though the second of these points applies in this exampleshowing that spotting a pattern is
risky even when just trying to discover the form of a resultthe rst point is the more important
one. Whatever the context, pattern spotting alone can never prove anything, and such an
approach is never appropriate in a mathematical proof without some rigourous justication that
the pattern continues for ever.
To see that the proposed statements are incorrect, consider the case n = 6, shown on the left
above. There are 31 regions in the gure, whereas 2
61
= 2
5
= 32. The gure on the right
above veries that the problem continues when n = 7, where there are 57 regions.
The actual formula
To nd the actual formula for the number of regions we have to work harder.
Result The number of regions formed is
1 +
_
n
2
_
+
_
n
4
_
.
2
The two terms with brackets are binomial coecients, which means that
_
n
2
_
=
n(n 1)
2 1
and
_
n
4
_
=
n(n 1)(n 2)(n 3)
4 3 2 1
.
Using these expressions it is possible to nd a polynomial formula for the number of regions,
namely
1
24
_
n
4
6n
3
+ 23n
2
18n + 24
_
.
Instead, we shall give two proofs of the result by using the fact that the binomial coecient
_
n
r
_
is equal to the number of ways of choosing r objects from a set of n (dierent) objects.
Proof 1 We shall count the number of regions by considering drawing the chords one by one.
When it is drawn each new chord crosses a number of regions, dividing each of them into two.
The number of extra regions created is thus equal to the number of regions crossed, which
is one more than the number of chords crossed. Since the new chord cannot pass through a
previously drawn point of intersection, the number of chords crossed is equal to the number of
2
www.arbelos.co.uk/papers.html A K Jobbings 2008
interior points of intersection on the new chord. Hence the number of extra regions created is
one plus the number of interior points of intersection on the new chord
Therefore the total number of extra regions obtained by drawing all the chords is equal to
the number of chords (the total of the ones) added to the total number of interior points of
intersection.
How many chords are there? Each chord is determined by two points on the circle, and there
are
_
n
2
_
ways to choose two of these n points. Hence there are
_
n
2
_
chords.
How many points of intersection are there inside the circle? Each is determined by choosing
four of the n points on the circle, and there are
_
n
4
_
ways to do this. Hence there are
_
n
4
_
interior
points of intersection.
So the number of extra regions obtained by drawing all the chords is
_
n
2
_
+
_
n
4
_
. But there is one
region to start with (the interior of the circle), so that
the number of regions = 1 +
_
n
2
_
+
_
n
4
_
.

A more sophisticated proof uses Eulers formula to nd a relation between the number of
points, lines and regions in the diagram. To do this we consider the diagram to be a graph in
the plane, whose vertices are the original points together with the points of intersection of the
chords.
Eulers formula Let V be the number of vertices, E the number of edges and F the number of
faces of a planar graph. Then V E + F = 2.
2
Proof 2 (using Eulers formula) The number of faces is equal to the number of regions,
except that there is also a face formed by the region outside the circle.
To nd the number of vertices, we rst note that there are n on the circlethe original points.
As we found in the rst proof above there are
_
n
4
_
points of intersection inside the circle, so there
are n +
_
n
4
_
vertices altogether.
To nd the number of edges, rst note that there are n edges which are circular arcs. We count
the other edges by dealing separately with interior points and points on the circle.
Four edges meet at each of the
_
n
4
_
interior vertices, making 4
_
n
4
_
edges. There are
_
n
2
_
chords,
as shown in the rst proof above, and each chord corresponds to two edges meeting the circle,
making 2
_
n
2
_
edges. We have thus counted 2
_
n
2
_
+ 4
_
n
4
_
edges, but each of them has been counted
twice in this process, once for each of the vertices at its ends.
Hence there are n +
_
n
2
_
+ 2
_
n
4
_
edges altogether.
We now have expressions for the numbers of faces, vertices and edges. Substituting these
expressions into Eulers formula, we get
_
n +
_
n
4
__

_
n +
_
n
2
_
+ 2
_
n
4
__
+
_
the number of regions + 1
_
= 2,
which rearranges to give
the number of regions = 1 +
_
n
2
_
+
_
n
4
_
.

3

You might also like

pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy