Question 114055
"A designer, attempting to arrange the characters of his artwork in the form of a square grid with equal number of row and columns, found that 24 characters were left out."
:
If x = number of characters in each row
we translate this statement as
x*x + 24 = total number of characters
which is:
x^2 + 24
:
"When he tried to add one more row and column, he found that he was short of 25 characters."
:
Now, the number of rows is "x + 1", and the number of columns is "x + 1", so we have
(x + 1)(x + 1) - 25 = total number of characters.
which is:
x^2 + 2x + 1 - 25
:
The two cases equal the same number characters
:
Add a row - 25 = original grid + 24
x^2 + 2x + 1 -25 = x^2 + 24
:
x^2 + 2x -24 = x^2 + 24
:
x^2 - x^2 + 2x - 24 - 24 = 0
:
2x - 48 = 0
:
2x = +48
:
x = 48/2
:
x = 24
:
Grid is 24 by 24 which contains 576 character + 24 left out = 600
:
Grid of 25 by 25 = 625 character so he would have 25 blanks
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