I have pieces of wooden planks 1.22m by 2.44m. I want to find the minimum number of planks required to construct a wooden surface of sides L length and W width.
The first intuition is that I can arrange the planks "horizontally" or "vertically" so I would calculate total number of planks N = (L/1.22 x W/2.44)
or (L/2.44 x W/1.22)
where the divisions needs to get rounded up to nearest integer. Since this is a simple case, I just calculate the two cases and get the minimum option.
For fun and interest, tried to express this in calculus but have failed. I don't know how to handle the discrete maths involved here. Anyone can advise or link to study material? Thanks.