Aristarchus's inequality

Aristarchus's inequality (after the Greek astronomer and mathematician Aristarchus of Samos; c. 310 – c. 230 BCE) is a law of trigonometry which states that if α and β are acute angles (i.e. between 0 and a right angle) and β < α then

Ptolemy used the first of these inequalities while constructing his table of chords.[1]

Proof

The proof is a consequence of the more known inequalities , and .

Proof of the first inequality

Using these inequalities we can first prove that

We first note that the inequality is equivalent to which itself can be rewritten as

We now want show that

The second inequality is simply . The first one is true because

Proof of the second inequality

Now we want to show the second inequality, i.e. that:

We first note that due to the initial inequalities we have that:

Consequently, using that in the previous equation (replacing by ) we obtain:

We conclude that

Notes and references

  1. Toomer, G. J. (1998), Ptolemy's Almagest, Princeton University Press, p. 54, ISBN 0-691-00260-6
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