Chapter One: Recurrent Problems
Warmup
6. Some of the regions defined by n lines in the plane are infinite, while others are bounded. What's the maximum possible number of bounded regions?
Suppose there are n-1 lines in the plane, and there are at most f(n-1) bounded regions in the plane by n-1 lines. Now we lay down the nth line, and the nth line can be cut into n pieces at most. Of the n pieces are 2 rays and n-2 segments, and 2 rays added 2 unbounded regions, and n-2 segments added n-2 bounded regions. Thus there would be at most f(n-1)+n-2 bounded regions by n lines. We easilly get the recurrent formulation: f(n) = f(n-1)+n-2, where n >=2. f(1) = 0.
How to solve the above equation?
Let W(n-1) = f(1) + f(2) + ...... + f(n-1)
W(n) = f(1) + f(2) + ...... + f(n-1) + f(n)
By expanding W(n) with the recurrent formulation, we have:
W(n) = f(1) + [ f(1)