If two line segments are congruent, then their midpoints

PERSPECTIVE ON HISTORY The Development of Geometry One of the first written accounts of geometric knowledge appears in the Rhind papyrus, a collection of documents that date back to more than 1000 years before Christ. In this document, Ahmes an Egyptian scribe describes how north- south and east-west lines were redrawn following the overflow of the Nile River. Astronomy was used to lay out the north-south line. The rest was done by people known as “rope-fasteners.” By tying knots in a rope, it was possible to separate the rope into segments with lengths that were in the ratio 3 to 4 to 5. The knots were fastened at stakes in such a way that a right triangle would be formed. In Figure 1.69, the right angle is formed so that one side of length 4, as shown lies in the north-south line, and the second side of length 3, as shown lies in the east-west line. The principle that was used by the rope-fasteners is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. However, we also know that the ancient Chinese were aware of this relationship. That is, the Pythagorean Theorem was known and applied many centuries before the time of Pythagoras the Greek mathematician for whom the theorem is named. Ahmes describes other facts of geometry that were known to the Egyptians. Perhaps the most impressive of these facts was that their approximation of ␲ was 3.1604. To four decimal places of accuracy, we know today that the correct value of ␲ is 3.1416. Like the Egyptians, the Chinese treated geometry in a very practical way. In their constructions and designs, the Chinese used the rule ruler, the square, the compass, and the level. Unlike the Egyptians and the Chinese, the Greeks formalized and expanded the knowledge base of geometry by pursuing geometry as an intellectual endeavor. According to the Greek scribe Proclus about 50 B . C ., Thales 625–547 B . C . first established deductive proofs for several of the known theorems of geometry. Proclus also notes that it was Euclid 330–275 B . C . who collected, summarized, ordered, and verified the vast quantity of knowledge of geometry in his time. Euclid’s work Elements was the first textbook of geometry. Much of what was found in Elements is the core knowledge of geometry and thus can be found in this textbook as well. N S E W Figure 1.69 PERSPECTIVE ON APPLICATION Patterns In much of the study of mathematics, we seek patterns related to the set of counting numbers N = {1,2,3,4,5, . . .}. Some of these patterns are geometric and are given special names that reflect the configuration of sets of points. For instance, the set of square numbers are shown geometrically in Figure 1.70 and, of course, correspond to the numbers 1, 4, 9, 16, . . . . EXAMPLE 1 Find the fourth number in the pattern of triangular numbers shown in Figure 1.71a. Figure 1.70 Figure 1.71a 1 1 point 3 3 points 6 6 points ? ? points