Student: “Hey, a shortcut! Let me first just walk around the long way so I can measure the length of the other two sides, multiply those lengths by themselves, add them together, and find out how much extra walking I’ve saved myself by taking the shortcut. Boy, this shortcut sure is saving me a lot of effort. Hooray Pythagoras!”
Student: “Hey, a shortcut! Let me first just walk around the long way so I can measure the length of the other two sides, multiply those lengths by themselves, add them together, and find out how much extra walking I’ve saved myself by taking the shortcut. Boy, this shortcut sure is saving me a lot of effort. Hooray Pythagoras!”
The hypotnuse is shorter than the other two sides combined. That is the usage here though
“the shortest distance between two points is a straight line” is what is being used here. It forming a triangle is incidental.
Just because you do something so crazy fast in your head it seems obvious, doesn’t mean you didn’t do the thing you did with the thing.