Lazy Caterer's Sequence

Lazy Caterer's Sequence

The lazy caterer's sequence, more formally known as the central polygonal numbers, describes the maximum number of pieces of a circle (a pancake or pizza is usually used to describe the situation) that can be made with a given number of straight cuts. For example, three cuts across a pancake will produce six pieces if the cuts all meet at a common point, but seven if they do not. This problem can be formalized mathematically as one of counting the cells in an arrangement of lines; for generalizations to higher dimensions, see arrangement of hyperplanes.

The analogue of this sequence in 3 dimensions is the cake number.

Read more about Lazy Caterer's Sequence:  Formula and Sequence, Proof

Famous quotes containing the words lazy and/or sequence:

    Take us generally as a people, we are neither lazy nor idle; and considering how little we have to excite or stimulate us, I am almost astonished that there are so many industrious and ambitious ones to be found; although I acknowledge, with extreme sorrow, that there are some who never were and never will be serviceable to society. And have you not a similar class among yourselves?
    Maria Stewart (1803–1879)

    It isn’t that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history’s meaning.
    Philip Roth (b. 1933)