Talk:Theodorus of Cyrene

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Philosophy: Philosophers / Ancient Low‑importance

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according to carl sagan, theodorus was credited for being the inventor of the ruler and key among other stuff. he said so on 'cosmos'.

here's a link for you to verify

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NijiYIGdIyQ&NR=1

carl sagan the pioneers of science — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.230.67.241 (talk) 09:44, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I just watched the vid you posted and I swear to god that it sounded like Agent Smith was giving me a science lesson. — Eric Herboso 21:52, 22 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 04:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

extremely poor wording

In what has to be the worst wording of a math concept I've ever seen, the article currently states: "His pupil Theaetetus made the generalization that the side of any square, represented by a surd, was incommensurable with the linear unit." For god's sake, why not just say what he did in plain english? Theaetetus showed that the ratio of an irrational to a rational can never be as the ratio of a rational to a rational, and vice versa. In particular, he is credited by Euclid for Elements book 10 #9.

But, perhaps more to the point, if you're just going to list a single thing that Theodorus' pupil Theaetetus is known for, why not just mention that he was the guy who discovered the last two platonic solids? That certainly seems like a bigger deal to me, since no one talks about commensurability anymore, but everyone knows the platonic solids. — Eric Herboso 07:30, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SOFIXIT. Dicklyon (talk) 08:01, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

People know the solids, but people know of Theordorus' mathematcal work from this particular issue: The irrationality of the roots of non-square integers from 3 through 17 inclusive, and the fanciful attempts to explain what his approach must have been. But adding to it would be great. I'm indifferent about the "surd" language--it's linked, and incommensurable probably should be linked to irrationality or something too. JJL (talk) 12:51, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

square root of 17

This article (and quadratic irrational) seem confused over whether Theodorus proved the irrationality of roots up to and including 17 or up to but not including 17. First a list of roots is given, including 17, but then the article cites speculation that he may have used a method that breaks down at 17, which (if true) would make the list incorrect. Finally, the way the "spiral triangles" argument is worded sounds like he did prove the irrationality of root-17, but the quadratic irrational page says he didn't. Can someone who knows the actual truth correct both articles? 91.105.7.172 (talk) 12:52, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The reference to Plato's Theaetetus is in error. The page reference is 147 D. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 175.34.174.132 (talk) 02:50, 12 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]