And I’m not talking about the fact that he was a math cult leader. The Pythagorean Theorem is a tough one to teach in a “student-driven” or “discovery” fashion. It’s not very intuitive. It’s not like a high school student will be walking along one day, see a ladder propped up against a building and go,
Aha! A²+B²=C²!
This is ironic considering how widely used it and its parent, the Law of Cosines may be applied. So under the suggestion of a colleague, we’ll be looking at Pythagorean Theorem explicitly for the next couple posts. If you have any awesome ideas or stuff that your students have enjoyed in the past, please comment below or email me.
emergent math 