US teens say they have new proof for 2,000-year-old mathematical theorem
'New Orleans students Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson recently presented their findings on the Pythagorean theorem'
#mathematics #maths #math
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/24/new-orleans-pythagoras-theorem-trigonometry-prove
'New Orleans students Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson recently presented their findings on the Pythagorean theorem'
#mathematics #maths #math
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/24/new-orleans-pythagoras-theorem-trigonometry-prove
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That headline really buries the lede. "A new proof for the Pythagorean theorem" in itself is pretty boring. We've got a lot of proofs for that. So what's so special about this one? What's interesting about this one is that the proof is in a form that mathematicians previously thought to be impossible. What's interesting isn't yet-another-proof for an old theorem. It's that these high school students have done what millennia of mathematicians have assumed couldn't be done.
Link to source
Garry Knight likes this.
@hubert
For me, one of the things that's special about it is that these are teenagers, people that society often denigrates or ignores, proving themselves smarter and more educated than most of their elders.
For me, one of the things that's special about it is that these are teenagers, people that society often denigrates or ignores, proving themselves smarter and more educated than most of their elders.
Hubert Chathi likes this.
Along similar lines is how everyone used to "know" that you couldn't fold a piece of paper in half more than 8 times, until a high school student figured out the requirements for folding n times, and then proceeded to fold a (very, very long and thin) piece of paper 12 times. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/494571-most-times-to-fold-a-piece-of-paper
Garry Knight likes this.
@hubert
I read that you couldn't fold a piece of paper 14 times. Probably from someone who wasn't leaving anything to chance.
I read that you couldn't fold a piece of paper 14 times. Probably from someone who wasn't leaving anything to chance.