Question

a softball league has 13 teams, if every team must play every other team in the first round of league play, how many games must be scheduled

Answer 1

78 games

Explanation:

Think of it this way. Let's name the teams Team 1 through Team 13. Team 1 needs to have 12 games to play each other team. Once those are scheduled, Team 2 needs to have 11 games scheduled to play all the other teams (remember their game against Team 1 was already scheduled). Team 3 needs to have 10 games scheduled to play all the other teams (remember their games against Team 1 and Team 2 have already been scheduled). This patten continues until you schedule a single game between Team 12 and Team 13. So the total number of games that need to be scheduled are:

12 + 11 + 10 + 9 + 8 + 7 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 78

I don't know if the concept of triangular numbers has been touched on in your class, but if so, there is a much simpler way to calculate this using the triangular number formula with n = 12. The formula is:

T = (n * (n + 1)) / 2

So in this case:

(12 * (12 + 1)) / 2 = (12 * 13) / 2 = 6 * 13 = 78