About my blog

Hey there!

I decided to start this blog because I love math.  I love doing math, learning about math, and especially telling other people interesting things about math.  I will try to do approximately daily posts, but I am not going to promise anything better than once a week.

 Overall, this is going to consist of a combination of (what I consider) cool math facts, lessons in topics that people are either unlikely to have learned or likely to struggle with (but ought to be able to understand if I explain well), and stories from the history of math.  If there is something specific you would like to hear about, let me know.

And if you're curious about the title: Pythagoras (best known for the Pythogorean Theorem, which deals with the relationship between the sides of a right triangle (a² + b² = c²)) was more than just some old Greek guy.  He was a really eccentric man, who founded a school/cult where he taught mathematics.  His students/followers had strict dietary rules (vegetarian, with more rules on top of that (they couldn't eat beans because Pythagoras believed that a bit of your soul escapes when you fart)), could not share what they learned at school with outsiders, and spent their time attempting to understand the world around them through numbers (a concept that is still with us today).  Before Pythagoras, no one really studied math for its own sake, and they certainly didn't feel the need to prove that their methods worked.  Pythagoras was one of the first to recognize the importance of proving your assertions, which is why the aforementioned theorem takes his name; even though it was commonly known and widely used well before his time, he is considered the first to actually prove it.  Between his eccentricity and his importance to mathematical history, he is one of my favorite mathematicians.  Add to that a rumor (probably started by him) that a river was cried out "Hail Pythagoras!" as he passed, and it seemed too good a name to pass up.