Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if you're primed to see that.
Don't you think this discussion is tangental to the topic?
Do you assume a point exists?
Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)
91–100 of 248 posts
Re: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)
#92Diogenes said that Pythagoras hated beans: “One should abstain from fava beans, since they are full of wind and take part in the soul, and if one abstains from them one’s stomach will be less noisy and one’s dreams will be less oppressive and calmer.”
Maybe Pythagoras had a G6PD deficiency. It is more common in males and people with a Mediterranean background[0].
Re: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)
#93Every group who ever managed to build a building with a rectangular foundation figured out the relation between the side lengths and the diagonal. The Egyptians used Pythagorean triples to measure right angles way before the birth of Pythagoras. But that's not a theorem, just an observation. It becomes a theorem when you prove (i.e. explain why) this relationship always holds, based on more evident things. The Babylo…
> Every group who ever managed to build a building with a rectangular foundation figured out the relation between the side lengths and the diagonal. I don't see why that was necessary. You can get pretty far with eyeballing it and custom cutting to fit.
Ancient Mesopotamian laws sometimes flayed people alive for incompetent or corrupt work. Those types of mild punishments are good incentive to use the right angles. Pun intended.
Re: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if you're primed to see that.
Don't you think this discussion is tangental to the topic?
I think that's hyperbolic. It seems like a natural digression. I think you're just being negative.
Put another way, this discussion certainly has more than an infinitesimal relation to the original link.
Re: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is this different from seeing a fuzzy video of some lights in the sky and then coming to the conclusion that it is definitely a UFO? If you're so convinced that this carving definitely proves that the carver was intending to express the Pythagorean formula, then what is the evidence? Some people's definition of "evidence" is different from my own. If somebody really wants to believe something, then just about any…
… because those “squiggles” are just “words” in a “language” you can’t “read”? And if you could read it, you would find it contains a lot of relevant things, concluding with: > … 1.414213, which is nothing other than the decimal value of the square root of 2, accurate to the nearest one hundred thousandth. You might then think to yourself: > The conclusion is inescapable. The Babylonians knew the relation between the…
You sound very confused.
Re: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)
#96So many red flags in the abstract alone. It's no surprise that the article itself looks like a middle school project.
Re: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)
#97Actual paper from 2009: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/jt.2009.16 Link above is clickbait blogspam (like most things on IFLScience)
Thanks! We've changed to that from https://www.iflscience.com/pythagorean-theorem-found-on-clay... above.
Would it make sense to add (2009) to the title? I came here thinking that people discovered something new.
Re: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)
#98I have a curiousity. Is there a theorem or conjecture like this ? "For any irrational number, like square root of 2, we can always find the approximation of at most 3 rational numbers with just +,-,* and /" ?
Continued fractions can be used to find best rational approximations. But you can also just use floor(x*10^n)/10^n.
Re: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every group who ever managed to build a building with a rectangular foundation figured out the relation between the side lengths and the diagonal. I don't see why that was necessary. You can get pretty far with eyeballing it and custom cutting to fit.
> I don't see why that was necessary. You can get pretty far with eyeballing it and custom cutting to fit. i'm not saying at all that I know the answer, but eyeballing and cutting is good for a patio, but on a ziggurat or pyramid scale it seems you don't do so much eyeballing or cutting, and more planning how much material and how many slaves you're going to need for how long, and where to put the doors so the passag…
Please, stop this slave nonsense. Pyramids were built by highly skilled workers, it was prestigious job.
Re: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)
#100As a side note Dijkstra has a wonderful generalization and it has a nice proof at https://www.cut-the-knot.org/pythagoras/Stevens.shtml and I was wondering whether this is old as well.