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Math Genius Has Come Up With a Wildly Simple New Way to Solve Quadratic Equations:
If you studied algebra in high school (or you're learning it right now), there's a good chance you're familiar with the quadratic formula. If not, it's possible you repressed it.
By this point, billions of us have had to learn, memorise, and implement this unwieldy algorithm in order to solve quadratic equations, but according to mathematician Po-Shen Loh from Carnegie Mellon University, there's actually been an easier and better way all along, although it's remained almost entirely hidden for thousands of years.
In a 2019 research paper, Loh celebrates the quadratic formula as a "remarkable triumph of early mathematicians" dating back to the beginnings of the Old Babylonian Period around 2000 BCE, but also freely acknowledges some of its ancient shortcomings.
"It is unfortunate that for billions of people worldwide, the quadratic formula is also their first (and perhaps only) experience of a rather complicated formula which they must memorise," Loh writes.
[...] We still don't know how this escaped wider notice for millennia, but if Loh's instincts are right, maths textbooks could be on the verge of a historic rewriting - and we don't take textbook-changing discoveries lightly.
"I wanted to share it as widely as possible with the world," Loh says, "because it can demystify a complicated part of maths that makes many people feel that maybe maths is not for them."
The research paper is available at pre-print website arXiv.org, and you can read Po-Shen Loh's generalised explanation of the simple proof here.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2020, @03:39PM (1 child)
Clickbait title, a page-long summary full of airy prelude and zero meat.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 06 2020, @05:54PM
This could give us a real reason to change the math books for the next school year.
A reason that is much better than the usual reason college math books are rewritten and reprinted. Specifically, to ensure that the previous year's textbooks cannot be used in this year's class, and thus you must purchase a NEW textbook, and old textbooks have no re-sail value.
Or maybe, math books are rewritten every year because of all of the changes to the cosine function or how square roots work this year vs last year.
Maybe the English literature books are rewritten to keep up with all of the changes Shakespeare makes to his text.
Maybe the History books are rewritten because we have always been at war with . . .
NO CARRIER
It's interesting that high school textbooks, in the very same subject areas, but usually paid for by taxpayers, do not get rewritten every year.
It's just one of those things.
Which things?
Don't bother me with details, just one of those things. You know.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.