Pythagorean Triples

You will be familiar with Pythagoras Theorem for right angled triangles:What you may not realise is that it is possible to derive simple expressions to generate all the sets of integer solutionsIt has been known for a long time that it was possible to generate a sequence of triples using formulae. The Pythagoreans were the first to produce such formulae:

Later Euclid gave a formula for producing all triples, withandwhereare positive numbers withandhave no common factors andis odd,is even or vice versa. Theis included as a factor because a right angled triangle can scale up while still remaining a right angled triangle.

Some sets of Pythagorean triples are given below

3

4

5

8

6

10

15

8

17

24

10

26

I chose the above sets for a reason. For each of a, b and c we can find the rule that generates the sequence:

andwith

5

12

13

12

16

20

21

20

29

32

24

40

For the table aboveandwith

By continuing like this we can derive the general formulaeand and includingas the scaling factor gives the formulae above attributed to Euclid.

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