Math Genius Has Come Up With a Wildly Simple New Way to Solve Quadratic Equations
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Math Genius Has Come Up With a Wildly Simple New Way to Solve Quadratic Equations:
If you studied algebra in high school (or you're learning it right now), there's a good chance you're familiar with the quadratic formula. If not, it's possible you repressed it.
By this point, billions of us have had to learn, memorise, and implement this unwieldy algorithm in order to solve quadratic equations, but according to mathematician Po-Shen Loh from Carnegie Mellon University, there's actually been an easier and better way all along, although it's remained almost entirely hidden for thousands of years.
In a 2019 research paper, Loh celebrates the quadratic formula as a "remarkable triumph of early mathematicians" dating back to the beginnings of the Old Babylonian Period around 2000 BCE, but also freely acknowledges some of its ancient shortcomings.
"It is unfortunate that for billions of people worldwide, the quadratic formula is also their first (and perhaps only) experience of a rather complicated formula which they must memorise," Loh writes.
[...] We still don't know how this escaped wider notice for millennia, but if Loh's instincts are right, maths textbooks could be on the verge of a historic rewriting - and we don't take textbook-changing discoveries lightly.
"I wanted to share it as widely as possible with the world," Loh says, "because it can demystify a complicated part of maths that makes many people feel that maybe maths is not for them."
The research paper is available at pre-print website arXiv.org, and you can read Po-Shen Loh's generalised explanation of the simple proof here.
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