Example 3. Divide each side of a triangle into equal parts, and connect the points of division with line segments parallel to each side. How many parallelograms can be formed in the triangle?
Solution
Solve: First, consider parallelograms whose sides are not parallel to side . Extend the sides of these parallelograms, and they will intersect with side . Therefore, these parallelograms correspond to four points or three points on side (one vertex is on ). Extend sides and by , to get . Thus, the parallelograms inside with sides not parallel to correspond to four points on .
Conversely, for any four points on , draw lines parallel to through the first two points (closer to ) and lines parallel to through the last two points (closer to ). These lines intersect to form a unique parallelogram.
Thus, we can establish a correspondence: any parallelogram with sides not parallel to corresponds to four points on , and the correspondence rule is:
in the set , a four-element ordered tuple.
The number of parallelograms is .
Therefore, the total number of parallelograms is .