Timeline for Proofs without words
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 21, 2021 at 23:42 | comment | added | lukeuser | @DavePritchard That just blew my mind, thanks! | |
| Nov 22, 2017 at 1:51 | comment | added | Dave Pritchard | There's another really elegant proof of the Pythagorean theorem that involves basically drawing a single line. See Frank Wilczek who attributes it to Einstein, "A Polished Jewel": frankwilczek.com/2013/pythagorasTwo(Einstein)WithFigure.pdf | |
| Mar 10, 2017 at 9:42 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://upload.wikimedia.org/ with https://upload.wikimedia.org/
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| Nov 13, 2011 at 10:38 | comment | added | Anton Fetisov | A typical fake refutation. You don't need to define Lebesgue measure to do manipulations in geometry. All operations can be defined geometrically if I associate a number X with the segment of length X, and define $X \mapsto X^2$ as a function, mapping a segment to a square with such side. In fact, even many of infinite summations can be done geometrically, using the obvious topology and metric on shapes. Thanks to this formalistic tradition it took 100 years of pain to get from non-trivial Lebesgue construction to much more natural motivic integration. | |
| Jul 8, 2011 at 3:17 | history | edited | Kim Morrison | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 31 characters in body
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| Nov 30, 2010 at 20:26 | comment | added | Anton Petrunin | A typical fake proof --- a simple statement as Pythagorean theorem is proved using much more advanced theorem on existence of area... | |
| Jul 11, 2010 at 3:22 | comment | added | muad | Paul Siegel: That sounds very familiar to Bhaskara's "Behold!", which was a slightly different proof that the one displayed here. | |
| May 15, 2010 at 13:58 | comment | added | Paul Siegel | I was told about an Indian mathematician who included the diagram on the right in his book about geometry. His proof of the Pythagorean theorem then consisted of just one word: "See?" | |
| Mar 6, 2010 at 3:23 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @HB: Um, Thomas Jefferson? | |
| Dec 15, 2009 at 3:23 | comment | added | Harrison Brown | The 20th President of the US, James Garfield, independently discovered the proof obtained by halving the right-hand diagram along a diagonal of the square of side length c. It requires you to write down an equation, though. That's my favorite proof, but mostly because of the corollary that B. Obama isn't the first geeky POTUS. | |
| Dec 14, 2009 at 20:58 | comment | added | Harald Hanche-Olsen | Pythagoras' theorem is trivial? I had no idea … Seriously, I don't necessarily think that the existence of a very simple proof implies triviality. Such proofs are, after all, not so easily discovered. Anyway, this is my favourite proof of the theorem. | |
| Dec 14, 2009 at 15:40 | comment | added | Steve Flammia | oops! didn't see the word "non-trivial" in there... | |
| Dec 14, 2009 at 15:35 | history | answered | Steve Flammia | CC BY-SA 2.5 |