Why Ruler and Compass?

In this fifth and final guest video, Ben Syversen discusses a question anyone who has done ruler and compass constructions for a geometry class may have wondered: What’s the point?

There is a lot about Euclid’s Elements that is easily misunderstood. Arguments that seem to have logical gaps, some constructions that seem pointless, others that seem needlessly convoluted. But each of these actually provides a window into how the ancient Greeks thought about math, and the philosophical role that geometry played.