Think about a plane:
● One straight line can divide a plane into two regions.
● Two lines can divide a plane into at most four regions.
● Three lines can divide a plane into at most seven regions.
● And so on...
Now we have some figure constructed with two parallel rays in the same direction, joined by two straight segments. It looks like a character “M”. You are given N such “M”s. What is the maximum number of regions that these “M”s can divide a plane ?