Who Actually Discovered the Formula for the Area of a Triangle?

[Shark]

Greg - You gave someone else the point for saying Heron - but Heron did not discover the formula for the area of a triangle.

Heron's name is indeed imbedded in the formula name, but he was not the first.

Archimededes, in about the year 250 B.C., was working on the properties of the circle, and was investigating the number pi.

In his process he created the formula for the area of a triangle which helped him in his understanding of circles - as is witnessed by calculus properties of the circle and trig functions.

 

[Shark]

I am not trying to start an argument...

..Greg's response was there was no proof Archimedes did it.

Greg, I urge you to see the following page:

http://www.ugrad.math.ubc.ca/coursedoc/math101/notes/integration/archimedes.html

This page is from the university of mathetmatics of British Columbia.

They attribute it to Archimedes.

I am not going to attempt to take credit - I do however want you and others to understand that Heron did NOT discover the formula first.

 

[Shark]

Also - I could provide you with some VERY challenging simple answer questions.

 

[Matt]

I'm not going to pass judgments until I dissect this question, so let's do it here:

"Who discovered the formula for finding the area of a triangle?"

-Initial Research Hit @ Google under "first formula of area of triangle"

Hit titles suggest Heron...We enter one website...

http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath196.htm

-When at web page you hit Crtl F, and type "Heron" - Scan the sentence with that name.

We've hit a jackpot, as the sentence incorporates the two figures in question:

"For example, some people think it was known to
Archimedes. However, the first definite reference we have to this
formula is Heron's."

Based on the fact that many search hits immediately brought up the name Heron and that also this sentence suggests Heron is the correct answer, we can make our preliminary post as Heron being the first.

The only flaw I see in this question is its wording - something to the extent of "first definite" would have made things clearer. However, with deduction we can make the educated guess that the person making the question inferred that Heron was the right answer.

 

[maximus]

greg, you should also have philosophical questions, like riddles.

and logical puzzles like the one i posted here a while back entitled "the hardest puzzle"