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In mathematics, the Pythagorean theorem or Pythagoras' theorem is a fundamental relation in Euclidean geometry between the three sides of a right triangle.It states that the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares on the other two sides.
Garfield's proof of the Pythagorean theorem is an original proof the Pythagorean theorem discovered by James A. Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881), the 20th president of the United States. The proof appeared in print in the New-England Journal of Education (Vol. 3, No.14, April 1, 1876).
The proof has been severely criticized by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer as being unnecessarily complicated, with construction lines drawn here and there and a long line of deductive steps. According to Schopenhauer, the proof is a "brilliant piece of perversity". [6] The basic idea of the Bride's Chair proof of the Pythagorean theorem
Proof without words of the Nicomachus theorem (Gulley (2010)) that the sum of the first n cubes is the square of the n th triangular number. In mathematics, a proof without words (or visual proof) is an illustration of an identity or mathematical statement which can be demonstrated as self-evident by a diagram without any accompanying explanatory text.
This proof is independent of the Pythagorean theorem, insofar as it is based only on the right-triangle definition of cosine and obtains squared side lengths algebraically. Other proofs typically invoke the Pythagorean theorem explicitly, and are more geometric, treating a cos γ as a label for the length of a certain line segment. [13]
Although not a formal proof, a visual demonstration of a mathematical theorem is sometimes called a "proof without words". The left-hand picture below is an example of a historic visual proof of the Pythagorean theorem in the case of the (3,4,5) triangle.
In this example, the triangle's side lengths and area are integers, making it a Heronian triangle. However, Heron's formula works equally well when the side lengths are real numbers . As long as they obey the strict triangle inequality , they define a triangle in the Euclidean plane whose area is a positive real number.
The theorem for which the greatest number of different proofs have been discovered is possibly the Pythagorean theorem, with hundreds of proofs being published up to date. [3] Another theorem that has been proved in many different ways is the theorem of quadratic reciprocity .