High school students may have just discovered an 'impossible' proof to the 2,000-year-old Pythagorean theorem

[admin]

Two high school seniors have presented their proof of the Pythagorean theorem using trigonometry — which mathematicians thought to be impossible — at an American Mathematical Society meeting.

High school students may have just discovered an 'impossible' proof to the 2,000-year-old Pythagorean theorem : Read more

 

[Yury Schwarzman]

Unfortunately, the mathematical typesetting for the trigonometric formula used in the text has been lost: the identity reads cos^2x + sin^2x=1 (that is, cosine squared and sine squared, rather than cosine and sine of the doubled angle, respectively).

 

[George Kosinski]

It's weird how logic - combined with numerous examples - tells us the Pythagorean theorem must be true for every right angle, and yet, at the same time, it's so hard to prove that it is.

 

[Clue-Anon]

Simple HTML tags in a comment maybe won't make it through, but it should look like this: cos

<sup>

2

</sup>

x + sin

<sup>

2

</sup>

x = 1

I hate to rain on the parade, but this is just a trivial restatement of the theorem.

 

[laudahwiz]

Simple HTML tags in a comment maybe won't make it through, but it should look like this: cos

<sup>

2

</sup>

x + sin

<sup>

2

</sup>

x = 1

I hate to rain on the parade, but this is just a trivial restatement of the theorem.

Read more carefully - they said their proof works independently of the equation you quoted.

 

[jayaram1961]

They have used infinite series solution. I have a much simpler and better trigonometry proof without infinite series solution.