The Office - Logo Bouncing - Reflection – 2010

Use your paper work and python simulator to answer the following questions.
1. Describe how you found starting locations that lead to the logo hitting a corner.

2. Describe how you found starting locations that would never hit a corner.

3. Tell which strategy you prefer for this activity, and why it is superior to the others.
• Picking starting locations randomly
• Working backwards from corners
• (Another strategy of your own)

4. Describe how pattern recognition helped you in these activities.

5. Define the useful patterns to recognize

6. How did the software push your thinking forward?

7. Is there a rule that we can apply to all rectangular grids and starting locations? In other words, for a grid of
arbitrary dimensions (say 532 by 348) how can we tell if a given point will be a starting location that terminates
in a corner?1
• Back up your rule with any calculations and supporting evidence.

1 Hint: from a point say (35,38) can you tell how many steps it will take to reach the right wall? How many to the top wall?