As someone who failed his algebra 1 final twice and geometry once, can someone explain to me what is meant be “proving” Euclid’s postulate five? Like, the point of the postulate is two lines that cross another line will, at some point, meet if they’re angled toward each other. I get that.
What I don’t understand is why that needs to be ‘solved’ or ‘proven’. What were so many mathematicians trying to do? How would they go about ‘completing’ it? Why did it need to be completed?
In: Mathematics
they were trying to find a way to show that rule 5 isn’t needed and was a consequence or rules 1 – 4. perhaps it was intuition rule 5 is more complicated than the others maybe they just didn’t like it in the end rule 5 is a axiom but swapping it out is fruitful and is the basis for non euclidean geometries.
Latest Answers