Is the elements worth reading to learn geometry?

The digital versions of it may be flawed. I say, go for the original. Hopefuly, it's in a museum somewhere.

>reading it in the original ancient greek
I like to read Confucius in original ancient chinese, I also read Gilgamesh in Akkadian

i managed to read the whole thing. green's lion edition, not that faggot heath autist shit. it was good.

there are much better modern expositions of plane geometry,
the original is not always the greatest

Such as?

Understanding geometry in more than a superficial way requires an understanding of its development which starts with Euclid.

And it's basic fucking geometry and Greek number theory, no reason to not read it if you give a shit about math.

Euclid and Beyond
Geometry by Coxeter

Wrong. Euclid wrote the elements and attempted to prove statements about it and other things, but the concepts themselves had already existed for quite some time. He just compiled them.

shut the fuck up

the book was still used in schools up until around the 60s. The 1960s.

Math doesn't change.

[citation needed]

Literally any history book.

aka "my ass"

>Not until the 20th century, by which time its content was universally taught through other school textbooks, did it cease to be considered something all educated people had read.[5]

from the lead of the wiki article:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid's_Elements

Citation provided.

a very bad one, let me tell you. nothing but some comment made on an introduction to a book supporting the use of the elements in the first place.

Every educated person learned from the Elements up to the 20th century. They also all learned Latin and Greek. This is basic knowledge everyone knows.

you said 1960, now it's "20th century". I ask you for documentation and all you can give is hearsay. you notice why I'm skeptical, right?

are you more interested by the origins of mathematics or the geometry?

>but i'm not sure its a good idea
It's not.

1960 is in the 20th century buddy.

It is a seriously great book, you really should read it.

But have a look at some of the editions, they often differ substantially, I have the Edition by Byrne, which looks really nice and has a more uncommon approach when it comes to the graphics which may make it less suitable for people who know nothing about geometry.

Because it is an enormously important work which provides a lot of interesting Ideas and insight into mathematics.
Not only is it historically important and very valuable to read for any mathematician for that reason alone, but even to people who are not mathematicians it provides an extremely important view onto what mathematics really is.