Imagine some angle θ. As shown below, use it to mark a “slice” of a circle centered at O. After reflecting the diagram over OA (shown farther below), BB′ will hit OA at point M, drawing the right triangle OBM. Note that the length of BM depends on the radius […]
Tag: Math History Column
A Conversation with Mrs. Bailey
Why and when did you begin to teach for TPS? What was your background before that? I actually was a student with TPS when I was in high school, which is how I heard about it. I took English classes, Psychology classes, Math classes, and Government classes, and I absolutely […]
Polygons, Products, and Pi
Math lovers widely celebrate March 14 as Pi Day. Written as 3/14, the date matches the first three digits of pi—the constant ratio between a circle’s circumference and its diameter. One can go even further on that day, celebrating by the minute (3/14, 1:59) or the second (3/14, 1:59:26) to […]
Forgotten Algebra of the Babylonians
The trilingual Rosetta stone is justly famous for enabling the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics. But its story is far from unique to the 19th century. Hundreds of thousands of clay tablets, written with cuneiform scripts in languages such as Hittite and Persian, also became readable for the first time in […]
A Bottomless Night and a New World
Euclid’s Elements is undoubtedly the most famous single mathematical work, renowned since the 3rd century BC as a model of logical reasoning. Much of this fame comes from its five simple postulates, from which all subsequent theorems are derived. (Modern mathematicians tend to use the term axiom for fundamental premises […]