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Pythagorean Theorem Found On Clay Tablet 1,000 Years Older Than Pythagoras (www.iflscience.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (7 children)

It always seemed weird to me that it would be formally developed so late. Like I've taken multiple trigonometry courses and can't even define trigonometry let alone make sense of most of it, but the Pythagorean theorem is a purely intuitive thing everyone does regularly. The first person to take a diagonal shortcut while walking understood it. It should have been the first thing mathematics codified after basic arithmetic.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

There is lots of evidence of the Pythagorean theorem before Pythagoras. The attribution of the rule to him comes centuries after he lived. So likely he worked on codifying and proving the relationship using the Greek deductive and axiomatic system.

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