# Boxing Pythagoras

## On the Pythagorean Theorem

In right-angled triangles, the square on the side subtending the right-angle is equal to the (sum of the) squares on the sides containing the right-angle.

Euclid’s Elements, Book 1, Proposition 47 (R. Fitzpatrick, trans.)

Figure 1: A right triangle with squares on its sides

The Pythagorean Theorem is my favorite math problem of all time. I feel so strongly about this particular bit of geometry that I have the theorem tattooed on my chest. Over my heart. In the original Greek. Yeah, I’m that kind of nerd. Most people have some vague recollection from their high school math classes that the Pythagorean Theorem is $a^2+b^2=c^2$; and a few even remember that the in that equation refers to the hypotenuse of a right triangle, while the a and b refer to the other two legs. However, most of the time, people were just taught to memorize this theorem– they weren’t taught how to prove that it was actually true. Now, the Internet is full of all kinds of really clever visual proofs involving rearranging copies of the triangle in order to form the different squares, but I’m not really a huge fan of these. They make it very easy to see that the Pythagorean Theorem is true, but they don’t really make it easy to see why the Pythagorean Theorem is true. So, today, I wanted to discuss my favorite proof for the Pythagorean Theorem, which comes to us by way of Euclid’s Elements, which was the standard textbook for math in the West for around 2000 years.