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
Special right triangle than 256: Isosceles right-angled triangles cannot have sides with integer values, because the ratio of the hypotenuse to either other side is , but cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers. However, infinitely many "almost-isosceles" right triangles do exist. These are right-angled triangles with integral sides for which the lengths of the non-hypotenuse edges differ by one. Such almost-isosceles right-angled triangles can be obtained recursively, "a" is length of hypotenuse, "n" = 1, 2, 3, ... Equivalently, where {"x", "y"} are the solutions to the Pell equation , with the hypotenuse "y" being the odd terms of the