{"id":277,"date":"2018-12-31T13:25:27","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T18:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/?p=277"},"modified":"2018-12-31T13:27:59","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T18:27:59","slug":"the-pythagorean-theorem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/2018\/12\/31\/the-pythagorean-theorem\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pythagorean Theorem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-276\" src=\"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Pythagorean-Theorem-Main-Fig.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"182\" \/>All too frequently I come across the usual statements questioning why non-technical folks should bother studying math. A typical example is the Pythagorean Theorem. People say, \u201cWhat good is that? I\u2019ll never use it. So why bother?\u201d Ah, the famous \u201cutility\u201d argument \u2013 as if everything worthwhile must be \u201cuseful.\u201d I thought I would take this \u201cuseless\u201d math example <em>par excellence<\/em> and show that, in fact, it harbors many of the best aspects of mathematics that anyone should find appealing. See the <a href=\"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Pythagorean-Theorem-170720.pdf\">Pythagorean Theorem<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All too frequently I come across the usual statements questioning why non-technical folks should bother studying math. A typical example is the Pythagorean Theorem. People say, \u201cWhat good is that? I\u2019ll never use it. So why bother?\u201d Ah, the famous \u201cutility\u201d argument \u2013 as if everything worthwhile must be \u201cuseful.\u201d I thought I would take [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12,13,30],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-curiosities-and-questions","tag-curvature","tag-plane-geometry","tag-pythagorean-theorem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions\/281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}