English

On the sum of the angles between three vectors

Metric Geometry 2025-09-23 v3

Abstract

For any three nonzero vectors a,b,ca,b,c in R2\mathbb R^2, we obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for the sum of the three pairwise angles between these vectors to equal 2π2\pi. As an easy consequence of this, a proof of Euclid's theorem that the sum of the interior angles of any triangle is π\pi is provided. So, the main result of this note can be considered a generalization of Euclid's theorem. To a large extent, the consideration is reduced almost immediately to a choice for the sum of three related angles among the three integer multiples 0,2π,4π0,2\pi,4\pi of π\pi. The rest of the consideration concerns only various betweenness relations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.04759,
  title  = {On the sum of the angles between three vectors},
  author = {Iosif Pinelis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.04759},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

5 pages; slight improvement of the proof of Property (iii); fixed a reference to [2]