History of mathematical notation back to any school or period before that of the Ionian Greeks, but the subsequent history may be divided into periods, the distinctions between which are tolerably well marked. Greek mathematics, which originated with the study of geometry, tended from its commencement to be deductive and scientific. Since the fourth century AD, Pythagoras has commonly been given credit for discovering the Pythagorean theorem, a theorem in geometry that states that in a right-angled triangle the area of the square on the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares of
Altitude (triangle) barycentric coordinates are zero for a vertex point, the barycentric coordinates given for the orthocenter show that the orthocenter is in an acute triangle's interior, on the right-angled vertex of a right triangle, and exterior to an obtuse triangle. In the complex plane, let the points and represent the numbers formula_5, formula_6 and, respectively, formula_7 and assume that the circumcenter of triangle is located at the origin of the plane. Then, the complex number is represented by the point , namely the orthocenter of triangle . From this, the following characterizations of the orthocenter by means of free vectors can