Too many lines there!

There are n n straight lines in a plane such that no two of them are parallel and no three of them are concurrent. If the points of intersection of these lines are joined, then find the number of such new lines formed.

Notation :
( M N ) \dbinom MN denotes the binomial coefficient , ( M N ) = M ! N ! ( M N ) ! \dbinom MN = \dfrac{M!}{N!(M-N)!} .

3 ( n 2 ) \large3{n \choose 2} 3 ( n 3 ) \large3{n \choose 3} 2 ( n 3 ) \large2{n \choose 3} 4 ( n 3 ) \large4{n \choose 3} 3 ( n 4 ) \large3{n \choose 4} 4 ( n 4 ) \large4{n \choose 4}

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

2 solutions

Pawan Kumar
Apr 3, 2015

Total numbers of point formed by intersection of ' n n ' lines = ( n 2 ) = {n \choose 2}

A point, say p p , formed by intersection of two lines will be collinear with all the points that lie on these two lines. Each of these two lines will have ' n 2 n-2 ' points other than point p p .

\Rightarrow Number of points that are collinear with p = 2 n 4 p = 2n-4

\Rightarrow Number of points that are not collinear with p p = ( n 2 ) ( 2 n 4 ) 1 = {n \choose 2} - (2n-4) -1

= n × ( n 1 ) 2 2 n + 4 1 = \frac{n \times (n-1)}{2} - 2n + 4 -1

= n 2 5 n + 6 2 = \frac{n^2 - 5n + 6}{2}

= ( n 2 ) ( n 3 ) 2 = \frac{(n-2)(n-3)}{2}

Hence every point makes ( n 2 ) ( n 3 ) 2 \frac{(n-2)(n-3)}{2} new lines.

For all ( n 2 ) {n \choose 2} points, total number of new lines formed = =

1 2 × \frac{1}{2} \times Total number of points × \times New lines formed by every point = =

= 1 2 × ( n 2 ) × ( n 2 ) ( n 3 ) 2 = \frac{1}{2} \times {n \choose 2} \times \frac{(n-2)(n-3)}{2}

= 1 2 × n × ( n 1 ) 2 × ( n 2 ) ( n 3 ) 2 = \frac{1}{2} \times \frac{n \times (n-1)}{2} \times \frac{(n-2)(n-3)}{2}

= ( n ) ( n 1 ) ( n 2 ) ( n 3 ) 8 = \frac{(n)(n-1)(n-2)(n-3)}{8}

= 3 ( n 4 ) = 3 {n \choose 4}

Joe Mansley
Nov 2, 2018

Each line will be defined by a set of 4 points, and there are (n choose 4) such sets. These 4 points need to be paired off with each other, and there are 3 way of doing that.

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...