Sangaku, Harold Jacobs, and Geometer's Sketchpad

As I mentioned at the time, I delivered a talk at the New England Section of the Mathematical Association of America meeting in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, in November. I decided that it would be good to make the talk available online. The talk was about my adventures in trying to prove a difficult theorem mentioned in Harold Jacobs' Geometry. After finding a proof with the aid of Geometer's Sketchpad I happened to discover through Wikipedia that the theorem has a name: The Japanese Theorem For Quadrilaterals. Then Peter Renz, one of Jacobs' editors, suggested I look at the book Sacred Geometry: Japanese Temple Geometry by Fukagawa Hidetoshi and Tony Rothman, which allowed me to place the theorem in a rich cultural and mathematical context.

The talk is at http://www.scribd.com/doc/129968316/NES-MAA-Presentation. This consists of the slides that I used, put in portrait page orientation, but otherwise unchanged. It is a bit terse, but I hope some find it interesting.