Brooke Sturgis

Mr. Harris
Algebra 2
11/7/17

Problem Statement
Playing checkers has always been a game that requires thought about your every move
with the checker piece. John and Mark on the other hand, decided to think about what’s
underneath the checker piece and determine how many squares make up the board. The task is to
solve this question that arose, and figure out how many squares there really are on the
checkerboard. The problem that is set up is working to figure out this problem with a 9x9
checkerboard. My strategy to solve this problem set was to take a piece of paper that resembled
an 8x8 square on the graph and see how many combinations I could make.

Solution
I lied the piece of paper on top of the grid, and slid it across, counting how many times it
could make a square in that specific dimension. I started with an 8x8 piece of paper that fit
accordingly, and folded it as it decreased in dimensions. Once I did this for every pattern from
9x9-6x6, I realized that you add a number that is increased by two from the number you added to
the set before it. For example, you start off with 1 combination for 9x9, then for 8x8 you add two
to one, and end up with three, therefore there are three combinations for 8x8. Next, you add two
to three, which gives you five, which is the amount of combinations for 7x7. This pattern
continues until you get to 1x1, which is 81 combinations. After adding up the number of
combinations, you end up with a conclusion of 285 squares. The algebraic equation for this is
n+2.