Analytics Magazine Analytics Magazine, March/April 2014 | Page 74

FIVE- M IN U T E A N A LYST When analyzing putting bricks in round cups, there are two approaches one may take: The first is to consider how many squares may be packed in a circle in any arrangement, which is known as Square Packing [1]. The other approach is to ask how many integer lattice points may be contained in a circle of radius r. We usually think of building Legos with a lattice because we want to build layers on top of layers, so we choose this method. It turns out that a similar problem was studied by Gauss and is known as Gauss’ Circle Problem [2]. The key idea is to realize that the number of lattice points insid HB