ALGEBRA Count

Strategies and Hints

ALGEBRA is written 128 times. Since it is possible to go two ways at each letter, we can determine the answer by calculating 2 to the (n - 1) power. In this example, n is 7 since ALGEBRA has 7 letters. Thus, the answer for the top triangle is 64. Some people may have difficulty determining the number of times a word is written in an inverted triangle. It actually does not matter whether the triangle has one point at the top or one point at the bottom. The paths drawn are the same. Therefore, the answer to this problem is 64 x 2 or 128.