The Pythagorean states that when you take the two legs and square them and add them together, you get the same value as squaring the hypotenuse.
[tex]a^2 + b^2 = c^2[/tex]
Where a and b are the legs and c is the hypotenuse.
The Pythagorean theorem is useful when finding a missing side of a right triangle.
For example, say we have a right triangle with the legs of 3 and 4.
But we do not the length of the hypotenuse.
Plugging in the values we do know, we can get the length of the hypotenuse.
[tex]3^2 + 4^2 = c^2 \\ 9 + 16 = c^2 \\ 25 = c^2 \\ \sqrt{25} = \sqrt{c^2} \\ 5 = c [/tex]
So, the length of the hypotenuse would be 5.
