Month: December 2012

Sal Khan from Khan Academy goes through several proofs of the Pythagorean theorem. What I particularly love about all of these is how geometric and visual they are. It might even be possible to do Bhaskara’s proof with a couple of squares of paper and some scissors, making it accessible to little kids with no concept of algebra.

President James Garfield’s proof using trapezoids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EINpkcphsPQ

Bhaskara’s proof
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ul8g55dYA4

Proof using similarity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrS5_l-gk94

Visual proof using parallelograms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcBaqkGp7CA