Amazing what you can learn in your sleep

[rolanni]

From windrose

You paid attention during 86% of high school!

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high! Good show, old chap!

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...so how do you find the area of a right angle triangle, anyway?

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

.5bh

[od-mind.livejournal.com]

Correct. It's irrelevant that you were given a right triangle; the formula works for any triangle, so long as you measure 'base' and 'height' at right angles to each other.

Which, in Queen Maggie terms, says that *every* triangle is half the area of the rectangle that shares one side with the triangle and passes through the triangle's opposite corner. This works even if you call the hypotenuse the 'base': b = 5, and h = (shortest distance from the hypotenuse to the opposite corner) = 12/5.

Which we knew anyway because we all remember that the altitude from the hypotenuse of a 3-4-5 right triangle splits it into two smaller triangles with the same proportions, right? So if the altitude from the hypotenuse has length X, then
X is to 3 as 4 is to 5
and
X is to 4 as as 3 is to 5.

X/3 = 4/5 means X = 12/5
and
X/4 = 3/5 means X = 12/5

(Whew; good thing they all came out the same...)

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

In a minor feat of cosmic congruence, your userpic ties in with my earworm-du-jour, "Man of la Mancha." There are worse things to have wandering through my brain.

[od-mind.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it sure beats my own recent earbug (or 'pepsi', as Alfred Bester memorably called them in The Demolished Man):

The theme from the original "Dating Game" TV show.

Ewwwwwwww.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Truth-in-advertising forces me to add that I do _not_ remember this from high school geometry. That would be rather more than 40 years ago -- how much more, we will not disclose. However, I happen to be, in the day job, one of the small percentage of the human race that actually _uses_ that bit of esoterica on a regular basis...