In 2022, high school classmates Ne’Kiya Jackson and Calcea Johnson discovered a new way to prove the Pythagorean theorem using trigonometry after joining a math combination at their New Orleans high school.
On Monday, Johnson and Jackson continued that feat and published a new peer-reviewed paper in American Mathematical Monthly. The paper presents five new ways of proving Pythagoras’s Theorem via trigonometry and details a new method for finding proofs that yield at least five more.
“I was pretty surprised to be published,” said Jackson per Science Daily. “I didn’t think it would go this far.”
“To have a paper published at such a young age — it’s really mind-blowing,” agreed Johnson.
“It’s very exciting for me because I know when I was growing up, STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] wasn’t really a cool thing. So the fact that all these people actually are interested in STEM and mathematics really warms my heart and makes me really excited for how far STEM has come.”
Pythagoras’ famous 2,000-year-old theorem, summarized neatly as a2+ b2= c2, means that one can work out the length of any side of a right triangle as long as one knows the length of the other two sides. Essentially, the square of the hypotenuse (the longest side) is equal to the squares of the two shorter sides added together.
Several mathematicians have proved the theorem using algebra and geometry. Using trigonometry was thought to be impossible.
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The New Orleans teens solved the math problem independently of each other. In March 2023, they collaborated to share their work at a regional meeting of the American Mathematical Society in Atlanta before submitting their paper for peer review.
According to CBS, neither of the teen girls is pursuing a career in math now that they are in college. Jackson is a pharmacy student at Xavier University, and Johnson is studying environmental engineering at Louisiana State University.
“I am very proud that we are both able to be such a positive influence in showing that young women and women of color can do these things, and to let other young women know that they are able to do whatever they want to do. So that makes me very proud to be able to be in that position,” Johnson said.
