2 HS students from NOLA shake up the world of math in a huge way...

livefromDC said

You're really struggling with that analogy. Read it again, that's exactly what I said. Of course it's not what they did or what they were setting out to do. You criticized them for doing a proof using trig by comparing it to the people who proved the theorem without using trig.

Based on your earlier post, it seems you're just catching on to that fact and trying to change your tune. At any rate, I have no faith you will correctly interpret their proof.

Click to expand...

That wasn't the main thrust of the criticism. That point there was that I don't see how using more complex concepts (trig) to prove simpler ones (Pythagorean identity) gives you a whole lot of insight.

I suspect they still have the Pythagorean theorem embedded in their assumptions, but I believe involves a degree of high level of geometric formalism as I was alluding to in Part I. In the paper they provide an alternative definition of the sien and cosine function based on the unit circle. Now the problem is do you define circle as a set of points equidistance from a point, which requires a definition of distance ...