314 MATHEMATICSMAGAZINE

the image of C. ThenAB < CD. Now rotateAABD aboutAB so thatthe image of D
is D' andAB = CD'. It follows thattetrahedron
ABCD'is isosceles.

Acknowledgment. The authorswould like to thank Paul Pontikis for the typing, JeanetteVarrentiand Marcel
Jacksonfor the electronicpicture.

REFERENCES
1. GrantCairns, MargaretMcIntyre,and John Strantzen,Geometricproofs of some recent results of Yang Lu,
this MAGAZINE 66:4 (October 1993), 263-265.
2. N. A. Court,ModernPure Solid Geometry,Chelsea PublishingCo., New York, 1964.
3. H. L. Davies, Packings of sphericaltriangles, Proceedings of The Colloquiumon Convexity,Copenhagen,
August 1965, pp. 42-51.
4. W. J. M'Clelland and T. Preston,A Treatiseon Spherical TrigonometrywithApplicationsto Spherical Geom-
etry Part I, MacmillanPublishingCo., New York, 1907, and Part II, 1909.
5. PatrickJ. Ryan, Euclideanand Non-EuclideanGeometry,An AnalyticApproach,CambridgeUniversityPress,
Cambridge,London,New York,New Rochelle, Melbourne,Sydney, 1986.
6. D. M. Y. Sommerville, Division of space by congruenttriangles and tetrahedra,Proceedings of The Royal
Society of Edinburgh,43 (1923) pp. 85-116.
7. I. Todhunterand J. G Leatham,Spherical Trigonometry,Macmillan and Co. Limited, St. Martin's Street,
London, 1943.
8. JeffreyR. Weeks, TheShape of Space, 2nd ed., MarcelDecker, Inc., New York,Basel, 2002.

A ButterflyTheoremfor Quadrilaterals
SIDNEY KUNG
University of North Florida
Jacksonville, FL32224
sidneykung@yahoo.com

One of the moreappealingtheoremsin planegeometryis the butterflytheorem:

BUTTERFLYTHEOREM.Through the midpoint I of a chord AC of a circle, two

other chords EF and HG are drawn. If EG and HF intersect AC at M and N, respec-
tively, then IM = IN.

Since 1815, whenthis theoremappearedas a proposedproblemin the Gentleman's

Diary (1815, pp. 39-40; see also [1, p. 195]) it has attractedmanylovers of mathe-
matics,some of whomhaveproducedsimpleandelegantproofs,while othersdevised
variousgeneralizations.In a delightfulandwell-documentedarticle,Bankoff[1] dis-
cusses the butterflytheoremfor circlesandsome variants.In particular,on p. 207 one
findsan "areamethod"appliedto provethatif I is a pointanywhereon the chordAC
(as in FIGURE1), IA = a, IC = c, IM = m, IN = n, then:

m
In this note, we give a similarproof of a butterflytheoremfor quadrilaterals.
Our
proofdependsprimarilyuponthe followingpropertiesfor areasof triangles:
P1 If K is the intersection of the lines XY and UV, V (FIGURE2a), then

where A(UXY) denotes the area of triangle UXY.

A(UXY)

Mathematical Association of America

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VOL. 78, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2005 315

E H

I N
AM C

G
F

Figure1 A variantof the butterflytheorem for circles

P2 GiventrianglesABCandXYZ,supposethat,as in FIGURE
2b, 2c, we have

A(ABC)
Fora proofof Pl, considerFIGURE 2a. We see thatthe two trianglesAUXYandAVXY
share base XY. Furthermore,their altitudesare in the same proportionas UK/VK.
Hence, so aretheirareas.In a similarmannerwe can easily establishP2.

U
A A

y X X
x
K'

V B=Y Z C Z B=Y C
(a) (b) (c)
Figure2 Proportionalareas in triangles

BUTTERFLY THEOREM FOR QUADRILATERALS. Through the intersection I of

the diagonals AC, BD of a convex quadrilateral ABCD, draw two lines EF and HG
that meet the sides of ABCD at E, F, G, H. If M = EG n AC, N = HF n AC, then

AM

B
e h
a mi N C
G F
D
Figure3 A butterflytheorem for quadrilaterals
316 MATHEMATICSMAGAZINE

Proof Referto FIGURE 3. We findthattherearetwelvepairsof triangles,eachpair

of which has a commonside or a commonangle (or two congruentangles one from
each triangleof the pair).ApplyingP1 andP2 on thesetriangleswe have

AM
Thus, if we let IA = a, IC = c, IM = m, IN = n, we get

a-m
which simplifiesto

1
Hencea butterflyinscribedin a quadrilateral
satisfiesthe samerelation(1) as a butterfly
inscribedin a circle.Equivalently,
the conclusionof the theoremindicatesthatthe ratio
of the ratios,(AM/IM)/(CN/IN),is the same as the ratioIA/IC, or thatthe harmonic
meanof IC andIM equalsthe harmonicmeanof IA andIN. In eithercase, if IC = IA,
we haveIM = IN therebythe analogof the usualbutterflytheoremfor quadrilaterals.

Acknowledgment. The authorwould like to thankthe referees for their helpful suggestions, and Joseph Kung
for preparationof the article.

REFERENCE
1. Leon Bankoff, The metamorphosisof the butterflyproblem,this MAGAZINE
60 (1987), 195-210.

Row RankEqualsColumn Rank

WILLIAM P. WARDLAW
U. S. Naval Academy
Annapolis, MD 21402-5000
wpw@usna.edu

Dedicatedto GeorgeMackiw,a goodfriendand an excellentmathematicalexpositor

The purpose of this note is to present a short (perhaps shortest?) proof that the row
rank of a matrix is equal to its column rank. The proof is elementary and accessi-
ble to students in a beginning linear algebra course. It requires only the definition of