# How to slice the cheese

I encounter a problem recently stated as below:

How many pieces of cheese we can obtain from a single thick piece by making five straight slices?(we can't move the cheese when slicing)If we wanna maximize the number of pieces which is denoted by P(n), is there any recurrence relation for P(n)?(n is number of slices)

Any hints will be highly appreciated and thank you all in advance!

Best regards.

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The first thing is that you don't have to worry too much about the shape of the cheese. If you can divide space into k pieces with n planes, then you can cut the cheese into that many pieces just by shrinking the diagram till all the intersections fit in the cheese. –  Oscar Cunningham Oct 15 '10 at 13:43

This is a special case of the problem of counting the number of regions $\mathbb{R}^n$ is divided into by $k$ hyperplanes in general position. The answer is $$\sum_{j=0}^n {k\choose j}.$$ This is mentioned in Richard Stanley's notes on hyperplane arrangements.