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magic square (Definition)

A magic square of order $n$ is an $n\times n$ array using each one of the numbers $1,2,3,\ldots,n^2$ once and such that the sum of the numbers in each row, column or main diagonal is the same.

Example: \begin{equation*} \begin{pmatrix} 8 & 1 & 6\\ 3 & 5 & 7\\ 4 & 9 & 2 \end{pmatrix} \end{equation*} It's easy to prove that the sum is always $\frac{1}{2}n(n^2+1)$ So in the example with $n=3$ the sum is always $\frac{1}{2}(3\times 10)=15$

One way to generalize this concept is to allow any numbers in the entries, instead of $1,2,\ldots,n$




"magic square" is owned by drini. [ owner history (1) ]
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Attachments:
Franklin magic square (Example) by PrimeFan
magic constant (Definition) by PrimeFan
construction of magic square of odd length (Algorithm) by PrimeFan
prime magic square (Definition) by PrimeFan
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Cross-references: diagonal, column, row, sum, numbers, order
There are 11 references to this entry.

This is version 2 of magic square, born on 2002-01-31, modified 2005-03-03.
Object id is 1626, canonical name is MagicSquare.
Accessed 3668 times total.

Classification:
AMS MSC05B15 (Combinatorics :: Designs and configurations :: Orthogonal arrays, Latin squares, Room squares)

Pending Errata and Addenda
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Separate article for magic constant or put in here? by CompositeFan on 2006-11-16 10:16:53
Both Mathworld and Wikipedia have separate articles for magic constant. Should PlanetMath also have a separate magic constant entry (as a child object of magic square) or should this be added to this entry, perhaps as a section?
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