Pythagoreanism to have survived as part of, or deeply influenced, the Bacchic cults and Orphism. Pythagoras was already in ancient times well known for the mathematical achievement of the Pythagorean theorem. Although the Babylonians had used this formula for centuries, Pythagoras had discovered that "in a right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the squares of the other two sides". In ancient times Pythagoras was also noted for his discovery that music had mathematical foundations. Antique sources that credit Pythagoras as the philosopher who first discovered music intervals also credit him as the inventor of the monochord, a
Missing square puzzle Missing square puzzle The missing square puzzle is an optical illusion used in mathematics classes to help students reason about geometrical figures; or rather to teach them not to reason using figures, but to use only textual descriptions and the axioms of geometry. It depicts two arrangements made of similar shapes in slightly different configurations. Each apparently forms a 13×5 right-angled triangle, but one has a 1×1 hole in it. The key to the puzzle is the fact that neither of the 13×5 "triangles" is truly a triangle, because what appears to be the hypotenuse is bent. In other words,