ABSTRACT
Mathematics (as defined in this book) is the search for and study of patterns. I want to begin this chapter with a reasonably simple pattern that is interesting because it can be looked at in two different ways: geometrically and algebraically. Let’s go back to the time of the Pythagoreans, a school of Greek mathematicians led by Pythagoras in southern Italy prior to 500 B.C.; among the numbers that held a special significance for them were the square numbers, illustrated in Figure 10.1, cf., [357, p. 13].
