Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.4 AIME, harder Find the answer

Example 11 Divide the sides of an equilateral triangle ABCABC into nn equal parts, and draw lines parallel to the sides through each division point within the triangle, thus forming a grid of equilateral triangles. Find the number of parallelograms in the equilateral triangle.

A number or a short expression. Spacing and $ signs are ignored.

Solution

Solution: First, as shown in Figure 30430-4, consider parallelograms whose sides are not parallel to BCB C. Clearly, such a parallelogram has its two pairs of opposite sides extended to intersect BCB^{\prime} C^{\prime} at four points i,j,k,li, j, k, l; conversely, any four points on BCB^{\prime} C^{\prime} correspond to one such parallelogram. Therefore, there is a 1-1 correspondence between the set of parallelograms whose sides are not parallel to BCB C and the set of all combinations of four points on BCB^{\prime} C^{\prime}. Thus, the number of parallelograms whose sides are not parallel to BCB C is Cn+24C_{n+2}^{4}. By symmetry, the total number of parallelograms in the triangular grid is 3Cn+243 C_{n+2}^{4}.

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.