The lost theorem
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: The lost theorem
zbMATH Open document ID: 0915.05024
DOI: 10.1007/BF03024415
published in: The Mathematical Intelligencer
publication date: 1999-07-05T00:00:00Z
review text: While working on a problem on magic squares posed by Martin Gardner, the author devised a correspondence between parallelograms drawn on the plane and equivalence classes of eight complex \(3\times 3\) magic squares. This correspondence explains the presence of the eight 3-term arithmetic progressions that can be formed from the nine numbers in a magic square in light of the geometry of the parallelogram. The author also discusses the Chinese magic square known as \textit{Lo shu} that dates back at least to the fourth century BC, and finds it not quite as aesthetically pleasing as the symmetry of the magic square formed from the Gaussian integers in the set \(\{0, \pm 1, \pm{\mathbf i}, \pm 1\pm{\mathbf i}\}\).
reviewed by: Chester J. Salwach
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 05B15
zbMATH DE Number: 1233983
zbMATH Keywords: complex numbers
zbMATH Keywords: magic squares
zbMATH Keywords: parallelogram
Wikidata QID: Q56091517
author: Lee C. F. Sallows
MaRDI profile type: Publication
cites work: Q3285611
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1233983