On: Dimension 126 Contains Twisted Shapes, Mathematicians Prove

[tomhow → _factor]

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43900231 and marked it offtopic.

Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[klysm → _factor]

I assume you mean the Pythagorean theorem, and by description you mean equation?

[_factor → klysm]

I was trying to be vague to see how pedantic the audience here is when the meaning of a statement can be easily inferred from context. Seems very.

[klysm → _factor]

I think there’s probably already enough information out there to see how pedantic the typical audience is here ;)

[TomJansen → _factor]

"I was only pretending to be stupid!"

[_factor → TomJansen]

Being vague/ambiguous and sounding stupid are two different things.

[thaumasiotes → _factor]

What? "The longest side of a triangle" isn't a challenging concept to understand or describe.

[hugh-avherald → thaumasiotes]

(from the nearby toilet cubicle) "That's a right triangle, ya idiot!"

[thejazzman → hugh-avherald]

D'oh!

[john-h-k → thaumasiotes]

[remarkably incorrect answer misunderstanding the above comments]

[thaumasiotes → john-h-k]

Who are you talking about? The entire claim was "there was no reasonable description for hypotenuse length before the theorem"; I assume the Pythagorean theorem is intended. But that claim is crazy. You just contradicted it yourself.

I should note that hypotenuses look no different in 126 dimensions than they do in 2 - three points determine a plane, regardless of how big the space containing the plane might be - but that's not really relevant to anything here.

[john-h-k → thaumasiotes]

Sorry, yes, that was a major misunderstanding of the previous comment by me. I am utterly wrong!

[janalsncm → thaumasiotes]

(The longest side of a right triangle)

[thaumasiotes → janalsncm]

If you believe that you can only subtend a 90 degree angle, sure.

("Subtend" is a direct part-for-part translation of the verb which also gives us the name "hypotenuse".)