News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to be More Widely Known?. Parent comment

Re:What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to be More Widely K... by m00n on Monday January 02, 2017 @05:28AM (#13300338)
Since the notion of curved path (maybe aside from circular arcs) is not discussed in basic geometry, the problem would be impossible to state.

If you assume given the notion of arc-length as the least-upper-bound on lengths of piecewise-linear paths between the two points, then the triangle inequality of basic geometry suffices. This seems not more hand-wavy a proof as something about "light-travelling-at-constant-speed" analogies.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to be More Widely K... by wfunction on Monday January 02, 2017 @05:46AM (#13300392)
> Since the notion of curved path (maybe aside from circular arcs) is not discussed in basic geometry, the problem would be impossible to state.

>> It's still not a basic geometry problem

seems we're in agreement?

[ Parent | on HN ]