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pokerfan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 07:23 AM
Original message
For the math nerds only...
Beats the heck out of Euclid's proof. Elegant animated proof of the Pythagorean Theorem:



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Orsino Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 08:41 AM
Response to Original message
1. That is beautiful...
...in a completely nerdy way. Thanks!
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Dr. Strange Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 09:27 AM
Response to Original message
2. Quick, which president came up with a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem?
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pokerfan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 09:32 AM
Response to Reply #2
3. Garfield?
going from memory.

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Dr. Strange Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 09:39 AM
Response to Reply #3
4. That's right!
Right as a triangle with side lengths of 3, 4, and 5, baby!

:toast:
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pokerfan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 09:42 AM
Response to Reply #4
5. Or as I like to say
Right as a triangle with side lengths of 48, 55, and 73!

And then people usually say, "what?"

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eppur_se_muova Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 08:56 PM
Response to Reply #2
25. Wait a minute ... it was U S Grant! nt
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chknltl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 09:56 AM
Response to Original message
6. Do you know what I find beautiful about this?
The fact that I was just thinking that the in the very near future, DU threads would be full of animations...not just smiley animations but all kinds of cartoons and ....well whatever we can think up of course. I am not sure but yours may be the first I have seen. Sure it is a simple one not much more than a smiley but I suspect soon enough these threads will be chock full of animated responses.


btw: I hate math because math was designed to baffle folks like me....
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pokerfan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 10:14 AM
Response to Reply #6
9. There's always my animated trebuchet


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electron_blue Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 09:59 AM
Response to Original message
7. Ohhhhhhh that's beauuuutiful
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alphafemale Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 10:11 AM
Response to Original message
8. A quote from my son when he was about 8. "Math is my favorite subject because they can't ....
Edited on Thu Jan-24-08 10:12 AM by alphafemale
"change the right answer."

:rofl:

I think he had already had clued in to how fluid history can be, and how subjective reading a story can be.


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Commie Pinko Dirtbag Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 10:30 AM
Response to Reply #8
10. Did he read "1984?" -nt
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pokerfan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 10:40 AM
Response to Reply #10
12. 2 + 2 = 5?
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FloridaJudy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 11:24 AM
Response to Reply #12
15. Only holds true
For very large values of 2.
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pokerfan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 11:44 AM
Response to Reply #15
16. and small values of 5
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pokerfan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 10:39 AM
Response to Reply #8
11. That's what I've always liked about the subject
Except they can even manage to screw that up at times. I recall reading Richard Feynman's autobiography ("Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!") where he was asked to review textbooks for the state Board of Education.

Ah, the story is online:
http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

There are several horror stories but the one that I remembered was the math problem where the student is asked calculate the "total temperature" of some stars seen by two individuals. Feynman said his head exploded and that he understood that they were just trying to get the kid to add some numbers. But it makes no sense to add a bunch of temperatures together (maybe as a first step in calculating the average). "Total" temperature is meaningless.

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racaulk Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 11:02 AM
Response to Original message
13. Awesome!
Love it! :thumbsup:
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LynzM Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 11:06 AM
Response to Original message
14. That's wicked cool
Thanks for sharing it! :)
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EstimatedProphet Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 12:31 PM
Response to Original message
17. Majorly cool!
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Inchworm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 12:33 PM
Response to Original message
18. I can dig it
That's neat :)

:thumbsup:
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Squeech Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 02:28 PM
Response to Original message
19. Artwork or obsession?
Just read a book called The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, a biography of Paul Erdos, the mathematician with the most published papers since Euler. He used to speak of "The Book" wherein God wrote all the best proofs, not only exemplifying the clarity of logic that mathematicians call "elegance," but also demonstrating the inner workings of why the world behaves that way.

That animation IMHO comes right out of The Book. Two thumbs up!
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Dr. Strange Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 03:34 PM
Response to Reply #19
22. Erdos rocked.
My Erods number is 4. Are you jealous?


Yeah, I didn't think so.
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Squeech Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 04:21 PM
Response to Reply #22
23. Yup
I'll never have an Erdos number. I don't collaborate. (Also I can never prove anything to my own satisfaction-- never good enough for The Book.)

Uh, also, what I do isn't math, but I don't think that's a requirement for an Erdos number.

Hey, if I write and record a song with somebody who has an Erdos number, is that good enough to get me an Erdos number? :bounce:
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Dr. Strange Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 05:00 PM
Response to Reply #23
24. I think it just has to be a "peer-reviewed" publication...
so, um, I don't know. :shrug:
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pokerfan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-25-08 12:16 PM
Response to Reply #19
27. Very cool!
I will have to check out that book.

Math is so much easier for me to grasp when I can see a picture.

For example, squaring a binomial. Most of us can probably take (a+b)^2 and do the multiplication and come up with a^2+b^2+2ab. But what does it "mean?" What's the significance of 2ab, if any?

Borrowing from Pythagoras again gives us the following picture:



And we can easily see the two squares a^2 and b^2 (yellow and green) plus the two blue ab rectangles. Presto.



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Westegg Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 02:51 PM
Response to Original message
20. Great! PLUS, I can still call myself a math nerd...
...because I didn't have to answer an actual question. Cool!
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KitchenWitch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 03:05 PM
Response to Original message
21. That is FABULOUS!
:D
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DarkTirade Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-24-08 09:07 PM
Response to Original message
26. Whoa...
that is rather nifty.
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