Talk:Menelaus' theorem
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[edit] Article title
This title was chosen after doing a google count of variations:
- Theorem of Menelaus: 185 hits
- Menelaus theorem: 2180 hits
- Menelaus' theorem: 2180 hits
- Menelaus's theorem: 552 hits
Update: actually, it seems like Google does not distinguish between "Menelaus' theorem" and "Menelaus theorem", so item 2 above probably includes counts of Menelaus' as well. Now I think "Menelaus' theorem" is a better title since it has consistency with how theorems are generally named.--Tokek 06:44, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Update2: it seems like one query can also count other results, e.g. searching for "menelaus theorem" results in also counting "menelaus's theorem" so the google way isn't a very good way of finding out what is the most popular. I will create redirects for now of the four that I think are reasonable titles.
[edit] About the equation
According to the Chinese Wikipedia and my math textbook, the right-hand side of the equation should be 1, instead of -1. The common assumption in school(the high school I attend, at least)is that length measurements are restricted to being a positive value, which in turn restricts the value of the right-hand side to 1. The idea that a length value can be negative is a bit confusing. Please correct me if I am mistaken. Thomas Yen 14:18, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
- Well, you cannot simply change the formula without changing the rest of the text, including the explanation of what negative lengths mean in this context. I changed the article so that it allows both formulations. I hope that the current version agrees with your textbook, in which case I would be grateful if you could add it as a reference. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 14:40, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
