Study math for long enough and you will likely have cursed Pythagoras’s name, or said “praise be to Pythagoras” if you’re a bit of a fan of triangles.
But while Pythagoras was an important historical figure in the development of mathematics, he did not figure out the equation most associated with him (a2 + b2 = c2). In fact, there is an ancient Babylonian tablet (by the catchy name of IM 67118) which uses the Pythagorean theorem to solve the length of a diagonal inside a rectangle. The tablet, likely used for teaching, dates from 1770 BCE – centuries before Pythagoras was born in around 570 BCE.
I searched in my app for Pythagoras and I didn’t see it posted. I wouldn’t have posted it if I had known it had been posted two days ago. In the grand scheme of things it isn’t that horrible a transgression.
I don’t blame you. Here’s the one from 2 days ago. (New to lemmy. I’m guessing there’s a better way to link posts, but I don’t know it.)
As you can see, the only way you’d be likely to find it is if you searched for “trigonometry” or “babylonian”. That’s why it’s so important to have the most specific keywords in the post, for searching. “Babylonian” and “trigonometry” are really good for this, but it feels like “Pythagoras” or “Pythagorean” is essential.
I actually remember seeing that article but I didn’t click on it. Oh well. I really want lemmy to survive. I used to love Google+ and it was sad to see it die a slow death. For a while it was, in my opinion, the best photography community on the web. I figure if people see the same content over as over again they’ll just leave. So I’m trying to post frequently but not just pure crap.
The paper this article is based on is from 2009. I’d argue that’s against rule 5.