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Post Made Community Wiki by Scott Morrison♦
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There's a famous problem posed by Erdos that has an easy 3-D solution, but a very difficult 2-D solution. The problem is to prove the following: Given a decomposition of an n-cube into finitely many n-cubes $Q_1, ... Q_k,$ $k > 1$, Q_k$ ($k>1$), prove that there exist two distinct cubes $Q_i, Q_{i'}, i \neq i'$Q_{i'}$, of equal size. The above statement is certainly true for $n=3$ (this is a simple exercise), but it is in fact untrue for $n=2$. I think this is known as the "Squared square" problem, and you can read more about it here. Below is the first counter-example, due to Sprague, to the problem. |
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There's a famous problem posed by Erdos that has an easy 3-D solution, but a very difficult 2-D solution. The problem is to prove the following: Given a decomposition of an n-cube into finitely many n-cubes $Q_1, ... Q_k,$ $k > 1$, prove that there exist two cubes $Q_i, Q_{i'}, i \neq i'$, of equal size. The above statement is certainly true for $n=3$ (this is a simple exercise), but it is in fact untrue for $n=2$. I think this is known as the "Squared square" problem, and you can read more about it here.
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