Solution to Problem 136



Congratulations to this week's winner

Jillian Martens

Further solutions were submitted by Philippe Fondanaiche, Nancy Schwarzkopf, Lou Cairoli, Al Zimmermann, Scott Powell, Rick Bischoff, Burkart Venzke, Steven McEwan, Dane Brooke, Sudipta Das, Tim Riehle, Paul Botham.



Since no three diagonals ever intersect in a point, each intersection in the interior of the n-sided polygon is uniquely detemined by two line segments whose endpoints are vertices of the polygon.  This gives a one-to-one correspondence between interior intersections and sets of four vertices of the polygon.  The answer is then given by the combinatorial number C(n,4) = n! / (4!(n-4)!) = n(n-1)(n-2)(n-3)/24.

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