[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by renormalised

The hypotenuse is the side of the triangle which is the longest...e.g. think of a right angled triangle...the two lines which are at right angles to one another, are the adjacent and opposite lines. The line running between to two ends of those lines is the hypotenuse.

"Once upon a time in an Indian village, there lived three squaws. Two squaws had young sons who were very overweight. The first squaw, whose son weighed 150 pounds, always placed her son on a bear hide near a pine grove; the second squaw, whose son also weighed 150 pounds, put her son on a moose hide in the shade of a large oak tree; but the third squaw, who was expecting the birth of her first son, always rested on a hippopotamus hide beside a bubbling brook. Her weight? 300 pounds! To this day, mathematicians give credit to these women and their children for proving the Pythagorean Theorem, because you see: The squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides."

This version taken from http://www.trottermath.net/humor/jokes.html