My History with Pythagoras
When I was in grade school, I remember learning about the
Pythagorean Theorem, how great it was, and of course, like all other math
formulas, how much I would be using it in real life. At that age, I cared about as much about the
hypotenuse of a triangle as I cared about the documentaries my dad watched on
TV. UNINTERESTED.
Now I find myself feeling old because I do use it all of the
time. I’m in the real world now. I’m not doing derivatives all day, I even had
a hard time spelling derivative for this blog.
But, I do find myself using that dang Pythagorean Theorem on a regular
basis.
It’s not like the story problems that we had where you had
to find the height of a building or a tree, but its there, plain as day, in
front of my face. Almost every day, I
use it in my daily job, and at home.
This became painfully obvious when I was visiting a customer
of mine for a field test on a machine. I
design and sell mechanical and hydraulic systems for heavy machinery for
construction, mining and military applications.
A lot of these machines are very large and heavy.
A Quick Reality Check Courtesy of the Pythagorean Theorem
We were doing a grade test. Not as in “ABCDF”, but as in grade of slope. Apparently the customer wanted to be sure their machine could climb up a hill, or on to a trailer. We had to fill out forms with all of the data for the test and of course, I was using the Pythagorean Theorem to figure out some of the lengths of the test field. I used others, but I really cringed when I thought of my teacher telling us how useful this was going to be, and here I was.
Maybe that example was pretty specific to my work, but not
applicable to “everyday” usage of the theorem.
It just stuck out in my mind because only a few days before that, I was
using the same math when I was working on the roof and I was trying to
calculate how many rows of shingles I would need to roof my shed.
I’m sure there are other examples, but I
think I’ve made my point.
