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To: megatherium
there are no obvious mistakes

No and there is nothing obviously new either. His "fundamental" laws are just the law of sines and law of cosines reexpresed in an arcane manner to obscure the simplicity of the trigonometric concepts.

There is nothing at all elegant about this. He surplants simple and easily grasped concepts with concepts that are not intuitive. Everyone understands distance, despite is unfounded assertion to the contrary - like in it is a 15 minute walk to school or the modern version - Mom, you expect me to walk all that way to school ?!. And angle is easily grasped, just as easily as spread, which is merely an analog of the sine of the included angle.

This is pure and utter sophistry - and dangerous sophistry.

105 posted on 09/18/2005 10:39:56 AM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: AndyJackson
which is merely an analog of the sine of the included angle.

Right you are.

The only (slight) advantage I look for (as a programmer by trade) is maybe something that will work in a computer program a little easier than the sin function. Maybe his stuff would be relevant in doing something useful with fewer computer cycles.

118 posted on 09/18/2005 11:07:49 AM PDT by Sundog (Cheers)
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To: AndyJackson
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's dangerous sophistry, but on second blush, you're right, it's just trig in drag. His "spread" function is actually nothing more than the square of the sine of the angle.

Yet Wildberger is a very good mathematician. I suspect there might be something interesting going on there if one were patient enough to read more of his book. He refers to some sophisticated mathematical ideas, such as orthogonal polynomials, that might be impacted by his ideas. But perhaps it's just as likely he's let himself be captured by an idea that seems very pretty, but is actually very thin. I know the feeling myself, as a scientist; one should always be skeptical, most of all of one's own work.

125 posted on 09/18/2005 11:12:44 AM PDT by megatherium
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