Math News

[Doctor Q]

It's not often that there's major math news that's likely to be of interest to the general public. Maybe this news story qualifies, since we all learned about the Pythagorean Theorem in school.

Pythagorean Theorem Found On Clay Tablet 1,000 Years Older Than Pythagoras

Pythagoras lived from 570 BCE to 495 BCE, and his famous theorem about the diagonal of a right triangle was shared and spread by his followers, but a Babylonian tablet from about 1770 BCE exhibited knowledge of how to compute the diagonal of a rectangle, which is same as the diagonal of the right triangle formed by two of its adjacent sides.

Maybe we should call it the Babylonian Theorem from now on!

 

[Apple fanboy]

It's not often that there's major math news that's likely to be of interest to the general public. Maybe this news story qualifies, since we all learned about the Pythagorean Theorem in school.

Pythagorean Theorem Found On Clay Tablet 1,000 Years Older Than Pythagoras

Pythagoras lived from 570 BCE to 495 BCE, and his famous theorem about the diagonal of a right triangle was shared and spread by his followers, but a Babylonian tablet from about 1770 BCE exhibited knowledge of how to compute the diagonal of a rectangle, which is same as the diagonal of the right triangle formed by two of its adjacent sides.

Maybe we should call it the Babylonian Theorem from now on!

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I remember this from school. Now all these decades later still waiting for a real world application in my life.

But that is interesting that they new about it all those years ago.

BTW what OS was that Babylonian tablet running? 😝

 

[Doctor Q]

BTW what OS was that Babylonian tablet running? 😝

I don't know, but they programmed it in BASIC (BAbylonian Symbolic Instruction Code).

 

[Herdfan]

I remember this from school. Now all these decades later still waiting for a real world application in my life.

I agree we all learned a bunch of stuff we never needed to know, but this is one thing I have used regularly.

 

[rhett7660]

What is funny... is my father-in-law who is a retired home builder general construction type guy, showed me how to find a right angle on the ground when you are laying something out, for example a kitchen island. He showed me the 3-4-5 rule. I was like hot damn... some folks do use this stuff! LOL

 

[Gregg2]

I used to use trigonometry in my work. It was great having a calculator that could do SIN, COS, etc. Then CAD came along, making knowledge of trig unnecessary.

 

[Mousse]

I remember this from school. Now all these decades later still waiting for a real world application in my life.

I use it all the time when helping my contractor brother build stuff. We always measure 3, 4 and 5 to make sure whatever we're building is square. If the numbers of off, the wall/door/shelf/whatever isn't square.