Saturday, August 4, 2018

logic - Proving that a square can be divided into n smaller squares for nge6



I'm trying to prove that for all natural numbers n6, a square can be divided into n smaller squares.



The smaller squares do not need to be of the same size.




So for induction, the base case is P(6), which is that a square can be broken into 6 squares (I can draw a picture to prove this).


Answer



Hint: You only need to do it for 6, 7, and 8. For these, you need to produce explicit splittings.



But after that, anything differs by 3 from an earlier case. and adding 3 squares is easy, we just do the natural splitting of an existing square.



If one wants to do a formal induction, let n>8. Suppose the result is true for all i such that 6i<n. We want to show it holds at n. By the induction assumption, it holds at n3. Split one of the squares of the splitting into n3 squares into 4 squares. That gives us a splitting into n squares.


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