Deadline

Now that it's August, it's crunch time for my projects. I gave myself until the end of this month to finish my summer projects. If I don't finish any of them, I'll shelve them till I graduate.

A few weeks ago, my order for Euclid's Elements arrived, and I went to work trying out the constructions for myself. It's very enlightening to see the way Euclid worded certain things. One of the biggest realizations I had was that Euclid's text is not as rigorous as I first expected.

When I read Proposition 4 in Book I, for example, he says that if the three sides of one triangle are the same length as the three sides on another triangle, then the two triangles are equal. Now that sounds a lot like the SSS Postulate, doesn't it? But the SSS Postulate is a postulate, not a theorem to be proved. So I looked at how Euclid proved his proposition, and surprise! he says something to the effect of, "Well, look at them! If you lined them up they'd match up."

So with this in mind I continue to try out the propositions, thinking, "So hey, we've gotten better at this stuff over time." What's stopping me from doing the same?

Thanks for reading.

Song in my head: Jamie Foxx feat. T-Pain, "Blame It".