Pancake-Cutting Problem

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The pancake-cutting problem is to determine the maximum number of pieces into which a pancake can be divided by
straight cuts with a knife. The existing
cuts divide a new cut into
segments, each of which divides an existing piece into two pieces. Therefore,
, with initial condition
. Using Mathematica’s RSolve function, we see that the number of pancake pieces after
cuts is
.
Contributed by: Robert Dickau (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Snapshots
Details
M. Gardner, Martin Gardner’s New Mathematical Diversions from Scientific American, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966, pp. 235–239.
F. S. Roberts, Applied Combinatorics, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1984, pp. 198–200.
Permanent Citation
"Pancake-Cutting Problem"
http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/PancakeCuttingProblem/
Wolfram Demonstrations Project
Published: March 7 2011