Student: "Hey, a shortcut! Let me first just walk around the long way so I can measure the length of the other two sides, multiply those lengths by themselves, add them together, and find out how much extra walking I've saved myself by taking the shortcut. Boy, this shortcut sure is saving me a lot of effort. Hooray Pythagoras!"
There's a college in Chicago, i think it's IIT maybe, that used aerial photography to map out the student cow paths, then they redid all the sidewalks to incorporate those paths.
Edit: they ended up adding a building in a grassy area and maintained all the hall/walkways of the building in line with the sidewalks/cowpaths. Kinda neat.
I wish I was taught about the usefulness of maths growing up. When I did A-level with differentition and integration I quickly forgot as I didn't see a point in it.
At about 35 someone mentioned diff and int are useful for loan repayment calculations, savings and mortgages.
Blew my fucking mind cos those are useful!
One of my favourite names for anything is these being called 'desire lines'. It's so whimsical.
Idk, this really doesn't have to do anything with Pythagora's Theorem
That footpath looks like a brachistochrone curve. Interesting.
all the student needs to know is c<a+b, not the actual formula or theory behind it
I think this is more a case of the triangle inequality in metric spaces, as you don't have to calculate any particular edge to see the shortcut, as well as that it applies to any even non-rectangular triangle.
Triangle Inequality also!
Now, I'm wondering if we have a thriving Desire Paths (that's what these paths are called) community somewhere on here.
this is actually the one thing i am glad to have learned in math class. saves me a lot of guesswork sometimes.
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