Elements of Euclid

What Hacker News says

1. formalsystemOct 2019
   If you enjoyed this post, you'll probably love "The Elements of Euclid"[1] by Byrne which provides entirely visual proof for ALL the basic proofs of euclidean geometry.

   I actually first came across the book when I saw it mentioned in Beautiful Explanations by Tufte. The beauty of the images is just on another level, the book will just make you feel good when you stare at it and after staring at it you'll absorb a proof accidentally with barely any effort on your part.

   There is a mistaken belief that visual proofs are less serious than algebraic ones but I believe this is mostly due to a lack of imagination when it comes coming up with good visual proofs. Byrne's book will help you see just how powerful pictures can be. There's lots of good work happening in the Category Theory community to turn diagrams into first class objects in constructing proofs so I'm very optimistic about a boom in visual proof construction.

   [1] https://www.amazon.com/Byrne-Six-Books-Euclid-Multilingual/d...

   Show morethread
2. justforasingleMar 2024
   I bought a copy of TASCHEN's "The Elements of Euclid" with illustrations by Oliver Byrne from his book in 1847. As I was working through a lot of the later problems I could see myself causing these sorts of errors due to a skill issue. For example as I dragged the pencil vertically down a ruler the wooden side of the pencil (above the lead) rested on the ruler. As I dragged the pencil down my arm lowered and my wrist changed orientation so that the lead of the pencil was now resting against the ruler as I completed the line. It was honestly so frustrating to see the corners and arcs of my diagram look like abstract dog shit because I was too much of a dumbass to use a ruler correctly.
   Show morethread
3. skydeAug 2023
   this is crazy. I wish they explained better how they solve the constraint to find the new point position.

   Regardless this would be an awesome tool for Math Visualization. The book "THE ELEMENTS OF EUCLID" [1] had a website with java applet but this is now dead since browser have dropped.

   [1] https://www.c82.net/euclid/#books

   thread
4. kmt-lnhFeb 2023
   In April 2021 I started to read 4 pages a day from big books I always wanted to read, but never had time for it. 4 pages and stop even if I get into the flow, 4 pages even if I'm falling asleep because it's so boring.

   Not even 2 years in, I've already read the Bible, the Elements of Euclid, Zeldovich's Intro to Higher Math, and am in the middle of Das Kapital. The Great Books canon never looked more approachable.

   Just 4 pages a day. It really adds up.

   Show morethread
5. qwertyuiop_Dec 2021
   Did the ancient Greeks have factcheckers ? I always wondered how they debated without “fact-checking” and muzzling the crap out of other side, yet produce wisdom that stood test of time

   > Boyer 1991, p. 119 notes, "The Elements of Euclid not only was the earliest major Greek mathematical work to come down to us, but also the most influential textbook of all times. [...]The first printed versions of the Elements appeared at Venice in 1482, one of the very earliest of mathematical books to be set in type; it has been estimated that since then at least a thousand editions have been published. Perhaps no book other than the Bible can boast so many editions, and certainly no mathematical work has had an influence comparable with that of Euclid's Elements".

   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid's_Elements#cite_note-...

   Show morethread
6. nsajkoJun 2020
   The Byrne they mention is Oliver Byrne, who made a book of Elements of Euclid including colored graphics for the geometry.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Byrne_(mathematician)

   Archive.org, print: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11628606

   In TeX: https://github.com/jemmybutton/byrne-euclid

   thread