Divine Proportions
by N J Wildberger · first published 2005
4mentions
2recommended by
3HN commenters
2023–2026first – last mentioned
67% recommend33% neutral
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Norman Wildberger takes this to the extreme with Rational Trigonometry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Proportions:_Rational_T... It eschews angles entirely, sticking to ratios. It avoids square roots by sticking to "quadrances" (squared distance; i.e. pythagoras/euclidean-distance without taking square roots). I…
on “Avoiding Trigonometry (2013)” ↗I presume he is the same one who authored "Divine Proportions: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/791022.Divine_Proportion...) so I suspect he is not misquoted. I actually quite liked "Divine Proportions". As far…
on “Mathematician solves algebra's oldest problem using intriguing number sequences” ↗I've been slowly going through Divine Proportions: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry, by Norman J. Wildberger. Wildberger is a mathematician, and a finitist. This means that he doesn't believe in infinity in the modern mathematical sense (I'm…
on “Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?” ↗…would like Norman J. Wildberger's work on rational trigonometry[0], which also argues that angles and unit circles are the wrong starting point for defining triangles. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Proportions:_Rational_T...
on “Stacking triangles for fun and profit” ↗