Two New Proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem - Part II

Shirali, Shailesh (2023) Two New Proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem - Part II. At Right Angles. pp. 7-11. ISSN 2582-1873

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Abstract

In Part I of this article which appeared in the July 2023 issue of At Right Angles, we stated that “[the] Pythagorean theorem (‘PT’ for short) is easily the best known result in all of mathematics. What is less well-known is the fact that among all theorems in mathematics, it holds the ‘world record’ for the number of different proofs. There is no other theorem that even comes close! (See [2] and [3].) In the book The Pythagorean Proposition [1] (published in 1940), the author Elisha S. Loomis lists as many as 370 different proofs of the theorem. Since that time …more proofs have appeared.” Later in the article we presented a new and very novel proof of the PT by two high-school teenagers, Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson, both from New Orleans, USA (see [6], [7], [8] and [9]). Now in Part II we present an adaptation of a proof [4] by Professor Kaushik Basu, a well-known World Bank economist; he describes the proof as “new and very long” but gives a poetic and eloquent justification for adding this proof to the long list of existing proofs.

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Articles in APF Magazines

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Shirali, Shailesh

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