For the math nerds only...

[pokerfan]

Beats the heck out of Euclid's proof. Elegant animated proof of the Pythagorean Theorem:

[Orsino]

1. That is beautiful...

...in a completely nerdy way. Thanks!

[Dr. Strange]

2. Quick, which president came up with a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem?

[pokerfan]

3. Garfield?

going from memory.

[Dr. Strange]

4. That's right!

Right as a triangle with side lengths of 3, 4, and 5, baby!

:toast:

[pokerfan]

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?"

[eppur_se_muova]

25. Wait a minute ... it was U S Grant! nt

[chknltl]

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....

[pokerfan]

9. There's always my animated trebuchet

[electron_blue]

7. Ohhhhhhh that's beauuuutiful

[alphafemale]

8. A quote from my son when he was about 8. "Math is my favorite subject because they can't ....

"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.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

10. Did he read "1984?" -nt

[pokerfan]

12. 2 + 2 = 5?

[FloridaJudy]

15. Only holds true

For very large values of 2.

[pokerfan]

16. and small values of 5

[pokerfan]

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.

[racaulk]

13. Awesome!

Love it! :thumbsup:

[LynzM]

14. That's wicked cool

Thanks for sharing it! :)

[EstimatedProphet]

17. Majorly cool!

[Inchworm]

18. I can dig it

That's neat :)

:thumbsup:

[Squeech]

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!

[Dr. Strange]

22. Erdos rocked.

My Erods number is 4. Are you jealous?


Yeah, I didn't think so.

[Squeech]

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:

[Dr. Strange]

24. I think it just has to be a "peer-reviewed" publication...

so, um, I don't know. :shrug:

[pokerfan]

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.

[Westegg]

20. Great! PLUS, I can still call myself a math nerd...

...because I didn't have to answer an actual question. Cool!

[KitchenWitch]

21. That is FABULOUS!

:D

[DarkTirade]

26. Whoa...

that is rather nifty.