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A005670 Mrs. Perkins's quilt: smallest coprime dissection of n X n square.
(Formerly M3267)
3
1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 11, 11, 11, 11, 12, 12, 12, 12, 13, 13, 13, 13, 13, 13, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 16, 15, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17 (list; graph; refs; listen; history; internal format)
OFFSET

1,2

COMMENTS

The problem is to dissect an n X n square into smaller integer squares, the gcd of whose sides is 1, using the smallest number of squares. The gcd condition exclude dissecting a 6 X 6 into four 3 X 3 squares.

The name "Mrs Perkins's Quilt" comes from a problem in one of Dudeney's books, wherein he gives the answer for n = 13. I gave the answers for low n and an upper bound of order n^(1/3) for general n, which Trustrum improved to order log(n). There's an obvious logarithmic lower bound. - J. H. Conway, Oct 11, 2003

REFERENCES

J. H. Conway, Mrs. Perkins's quilt, Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc., 60 (1964), 363-368.

H. T. Croft, K. J. Falconer and R. K. Guy, Unsolved Problems in Geometry, C3.

N. J. A. Sloane and Simon Plouffe, The Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, Academic Press, 1995 (includes this sequence).

Trustrum, G. B., Mrs Perkins's quilt, Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc., 61 1965 7-11.

LINKS

A. J. W. Duijvestijn, Table I

A. J. W. Duijvestijn, Table II

Ed Pegg, Jr., Mrs Perkin's Quilt

Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics, Link to a section of The World of Mathematics.

Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics, Mrs. Perkins's Quilt

EXAMPLE

Illustrating a(7) = 9: a dissection of a 7 X 7 square into 9 pieces, courtesy of Ed. Pegg, Jr.:

.___.___.___.___.___.___.___

|...........|.......|.......|

|...........|.......|.......|

|...........|.......|.......|

|...........|___.___|___.___|

|...........|...|...|.......|

|___.___.___|___|___|.......|

|...............|...|.......|

|...............|___|___.___|

|...............|...........|

|...............|...........|

|...............|...........|

|...............|...........|

|...............|...........|

|___.___.___.___|___.___.___|

The Duijvestijn code for this is {{3,2,2},{1,1,2},{4,1},{3}}

Solutions for n=1..10:

1 {{1}}

2 {{1,1},{1,1}}

3 {{2,1},{1},{1,1,1}}

4 {{2,2},{2,1,1},{1,1}}

5 {{3,2},{1,1},{2,1,2},{1}}

6 {{3,3},{3,2,1},{1},{1,1,1}}

7 {{4,3},{1,2},{3,1,1},{2,2}}

8 {{4,4},{4,2,2},{2,1,1},{1,1}}

9 {{5,4},{1,1,2},{4,2,1},{3},{2}}

10 {{5,5},{5,3,2},{1,1},{2,1,2},{1}}

CROSSREFS

Cf. A005842, A089046, A089047.

Sequence in context: A006185 A169788 A021876 * A123860 A122817 A074764

Adjacent sequences:  A005667 A005668 A005669 * A005671 A005672 A005673

KEYWORD

nonn,nice

AUTHOR

N. J. A. Sloane (njas(AT)research.att.com).

EXTENSIONS

Extended using values from Ed Pegg's web site.

It is not clear how many of these terms have been proved to be correct and how many are just conjectures. To be safe, regard all the entries in this sequences as conjectures, unless stated otherwise.

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Last modified February 12 16:49 EST 2012. Contains 205432 sequences.