Subject: finding equation for area

Name: Laura
Who is asking: Other
Level: Middle

Question:
Yesterday, me teacher stumped me with a question. He talked to us about square units. He told us an area of 1 square unit produces 1 shape, an area of 2 sq.units produces 1 shape, an area of 3 sq.units produces 2 different shapes, an area of four square units produces 5 different shapes, and an area od five sq.units produces 12 different shapes. He left us there. He said we had to find how many different shapes an area of 1 sq. unit produces through how many different shapes an area of 15 sq.units produces. He said we could complete this "chart" by finding an equation. But, I can't find the equation. I think it may be a quadratic of some sort. My teacher told us to use the area(in sq.units) as X and the # of different shapes produced as Y. Now, what really is stumping me is I would have to have an equation so when X is Y, Y is 1 and when X is 2, Y is 1. I have also tried to see if I can complete a patter or something. The pattern I saw was 1,1,2,5,12. I can't make much sense of that pattern.

Hi Laura,

I don't see anything obvious, but try this. Construct a table with the values for X and Y that you have and then add some other columns to see if anything interesting shows up. For example:

XYY - XY + XY + X - 1
11   
21   
32   
45   
512   
Cheers,
Penny
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