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For four points in order around a circle, Ptolemy's inequality becomes an equality, known as Ptolemy's theorem: ¯ ¯ + ¯ ¯ = ¯ ¯. In the inversion-based proof of Ptolemy's inequality, transforming four co-circular points by an inversion centered at one of them causes the other three to become collinear, so the triangle equality for these three points (from which Ptolemy's inequality may ...
More generally, if the quadrilateral is a rectangle with sides a and b and diagonal d then Ptolemy's theorem reduces to the Pythagorean theorem. In this case the center of the circle coincides with the point of intersection of the diagonals. The product of the diagonals is then d 2, the right hand side of Ptolemy's relation is the sum a 2 + b 2.
Ptolemy's theorem states that the sum of the products of the lengths of opposite sides is equal to the product of the lengths of the diagonals. When those side-lengths are expressed in terms of the sin and cos values shown in the figure above, this yields the angle sum trigonometric identity for sine: sin( α + β ) = sin α cos β + cos α sin ...
In graph theory, a Ptolemaic graph is an undirected graph whose shortest path distances obey Ptolemy's inequality, which in turn was named after the Greek astronomer and mathematician Ptolemy. The Ptolemaic graphs are exactly the graphs that are both chordal and distance-hereditary ; they include the block graphs [ 1 ] and are a subclass of the ...
For points in metric spaces that are not Euclidean spaces, this inequality may not be true. Euclidean distance geometry studies properties of Euclidean distance such as Ptolemy's inequality, and their application in testing whether given sets of distances come from points in a Euclidean space. [13]
In the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy compiled a more extensive table of chords in his book on astronomy, giving the value of the chord for angles ranging from 1 / 2 to 180 degrees by increments of 1 / 2 degree. Ptolemy used a circle of diameter 120, and gave chord lengths accurate to two sexagesimal (base sixty) digits after the ...
Ptolemy's work the Almagest had wide and long-lasting acceptance and influence for over a millennium. He gave a geometrical lunar theory that improved on that of Hipparchus by providing for a second inequality of the Moon's motion, using a device that made the apparent apogee oscillate a little – prosneusis of the epicycle.
Euler also generalized Ptolemy's theorem, which is an equality in a cyclic quadrilateral, into an inequality for a convex quadrilateral. It states that + where there is equality if and only if the quadrilateral is cyclic. [24]: p.128–129 This is often called Ptolemy's inequality.