Polya Problem

1. Understand the Problem

If you have a chain letter that requires you to send a letter to ten people then those ten each send

it to ten and it continues like that. How many people have it after Eight weeks and how many

weeks till the whole world, seven billion people have it?

2. Devise a plan

My plan is that you would times the first number by ten because they are sending it to ten people,

and then add them together and repeat with that number multiplying by ten and adding it to what

you have. You would repeat this until you had done it for the correct amount of weeks or until

you have reached a certain number. Like 1+10 week one +100 week two, and continue for each

week. You will be able to see how many weeks it takes to reach a certain number and how many

people have it after a certain amount of time.

3. Carry out the Plan

So to carry out the plan you really just multiply by ten and add them together.

1+10+100+1000+10000+100000+1000000+10000000+100000000=111111111

This would be the total number of people that have it after 8 weeks because you are adding the

people who sent it to the people getting it.

If you continue this pattern then next week you would have 1 billion people who have seen it and

by week 10 you would have given it to everyone in the world.

4. Look Back
This was not difficult for me I felt that the book gave plenty of information to do the problem

and adding the numbers and the weeks together was fairly easy I think that what I planned

worked and that everything worked smoothly this time.