In tic tac toe, you draw 4 lines, 2 horizontal and vertical to create 9 boxes. What’s the maths for figuring out how many boxes or sections you’ll create by drawing a certain number of intersecting lines

Question

I hope that question makes sense. I’m an adult and maths may as well be a foreign language for me. This is my secret shame.

Anyway, let’s say I have a sheet of paper and I want to draw 4 vertical and 4 horizontal lines, how do I figure out that I will actually get 25 squares without counting?

In: Mathematics

Answer 1

(H+1)x(w+1)

You start with one unit. Each line adds one to that dimension. If you have 2 vertical lines you have 3 columns. 5 vertical lines is 6 columns. Etc. Just multiply columns times rows.