CBS’ “60 Minutes” is under fire for allegedly pretending two black college students solved an “impossible” theorem.
According to the latest “60 Minutes” episode, students Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson of St. Mary’s Academy in New Orleans discovered that the famous Pythagorean Theorem can be solved using trigonometry.
Watch:
Two high school seniors solved a mathematical puzzle that was thought to be impossible for 2,000 years. @BillWhitakerCBS reports, Sunday. https://t.co/mEN4CWeXMW pic.twitter.com/iPhsZiERsc
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) May 2, 2024
But critics say, though it’s not clear if they’re correct, that the Pythagorean Theorem was already solved using trigonometry by a “white man” sometime around 15 years ago.
Critics also alleged that the only reason “60 Minutes” ran with this story is because of the two girls’ skin color.
Look:
I guess when white people solve something nearly two decades prior it doesn’t count? Hmm. Math doesn’t work that way.
— Haywood (@MaddestNachos) May 5, 2024
I studied physics and this isn’t a discovery, it was published in a paper over 15 years ago, they’ve just expressed the same method differently by using a more inefficient method.
— Lord Miles (@real_lord_miles) May 4, 2024
Congratulations, you just accomplished something that was already accomplished.
Remember when 60 Minutes used to be about journalism and not DEI…
— Cowboy Philosopher (@CowboyPhilosph1) May 4, 2024
No they did not do something that was ever thought impossible and what they did has been done differently a bunch of times. This is only newsworthy because they’re black women
— Do Not @ Me, PhD (@UsingLyft) May 3, 2024
This is misleading because the Pythagorean Theorem has already been proven a few hundred times already over the past 2,000 years.
There is actually a published book that shows 370+ ways to prove it.
— Pretty Damned Hot (@PrettyDamnedHot) May 3, 2024
I think it’s cool for high school students to be interested in this, but for the record, this is not the first non-circular trigonometric proof of the Pythagorean theorem. Below is a 2009 article giving such a proof and dispelling its “impossibility.”https://t.co/ndgjVLdvBE https://t.co/80UpmbrAFb pic.twitter.com/VyfL2MzsNL
— Inquisitive Bird (@Scientific_Bird) May 3, 2024
Of course, none of this is to downplay Johnson and Jackson’s intelligence or suggest they did anything wrong because they certainly didn’t. In fact, the two were already stars before Sunday.
Indeed, last March the two delivered a presentation to the American Mathematical Society’s Annual Southeastern Conference about their solution to the Pythagorean Theorem.
Interestingly, the AMS has also touted the narrative that the two girls’ solution is somehow unique.
“In the 2000 years since trigonometry was discovered it’s always been assumed that any alleged proof of Pythagoras’s Theorem based on trigonometry must be circular,” AMS’ website reads.
“In fact, in the book containing the largest known collection of proofs (The Pythagorean Proposition by Elisha Loomis) the author flatly states that ‘There are no trigonometric proofs, because all the fundamental formulae of trigonometry are themselves based upon the truth of the Pythagorean Theorem,’” it continues.
“But that isn’t quite true: in our lecture, we present a new proof of Pythagoras’s Theorem which is based on a fundamental result in trigonometry—the Law of Sines—and we show that the proof is independent of the Pythagorean trig identity,” it concludes.
To its credit, Scientific American, a usually left-wing magazine, at least had the decency to admit the truth about the two girls.
“If verified, Johnson and Jackson’s proof would contradict mathematician and educator Elisha Loomis, who stated in his 1927 book The Pythagorean Proposition that no trigonometric proof of the Pythagorean theorem could be correct,” an article from last year reads.
Here’s the key: “Their work joins a handful of other trigonometric proofs that were added to the mathematical archives over the years. Each sidestepped ‘circular logic’ to prove the pivotal theorem.”
Two high school students in New Orleans have proved the Pythagorean theorem in a way that one early 20th-century mathematician thought was impossible: using trigonometry. https://t.co/QRcIYFnMF8
— Scientific American (@sciam) April 11, 2023
All this comes amid a wider debate about so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI. Proponents of DEI basically argue that skin color comes first, and that a just society is one in which minorities are always propped up above the majority, regardless of merit.
Critics say what happened with Johnson and Jackson is a perfect example of DEI, because they’re being credited for something they never achieved, and they’re being credited for it solely because they’re black.
Again, none of this is to say that the two young ladies aren’t brilliant and exceptionally talented in math.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Vivek Saxena
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://americanwirenews.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.