[Math] How many ways can I put down two indistinguishable pieces on an ordinary $8 \times 8$ chessboard if they must either be in the same row or column

chessboardcombinatorics

I am a student in middle school and I was wondering if anyone could help me with the following problem:

How many ways can I put down two indistinguishable pieces on an ordinary $8\times 8$ chessboard, if the pieces must either be in the same row or be in the same column?

I think there would be 64 options for the first piece since it can go anywhere on the chessboard, but I'm not sure about the second piece.

Best Answer

First of all, let's choose one of the two possibilities: either the same row OR the same column. They can't be both because then the two pieces would be the same. There are $16$ total rows and columns.

Next, given a single row/column, we choose two squares out of that specific row/column.

There are 8 squares in that row/column, and we want two of them for a total of $\binom{8}{2}$ or $28$.

Thus, the final answer is $$\text{number of ways to choose a row/column}\times\text{number of ways to choose the squares} $$ $$= 28\cdot 16 = 448$$

Does this answer your question?