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by ericol 197 days ago
That's not a fucking triangle.

(It's Friday night people it's a joke and I have no idea what the article is talking about just looked at the picture)

2 comments

I had to reason with my brain before it would accept it as a triangle. It has 3 sides and 3 corners so...
It's one of those things where it's technically correct but the headline is misleading. When you say "a triangle" without any qualification as the headline does, people are going to interpret that as a good old fashioned triangle. Using the term without clarification that you mean spherical geometry is kind of underhanded writing, imo.
The title attribute of the article is <title>A hyperbolic triangle with three cusps</title>
It's a mild form of clickbait.
I think it's just a normal ages-old pattern for writing headlines that pique people's curiosity. It's super common in popular math in particular, because math is always about generalizing. There's a fine line between that and actual clickbait meant to actively mislead.
Sides are half spheres but yeah it is not an euclidean triangle.