This suggested to Hawkins that the hoaxer (or hoaxers) had to know a lot of old-fashioned geometry. Hawkins himself had had the kind of British grammar-school education that years ago had instilled a healthy respect for Euclidean geometry. “We started at the age of 12 with this sort of stuff, so it became part of one’s life and thinking,” Hawkins said. That generally doesn’t happen nowadays.

[…]

Did Chorley and Bower have the mathematical sophistication to depict novel Euclidean theorems in the wheat? Not likely. The persons responsible for this old-fashioned type of mathematical ingenuity remain at large. Their handiwork flaunts an uncommon facility with Euclidean geometry and signals an astonishing ability to enter fields undetected, to bend living plants without cracking stalks, and to trace complex, precise patterns, presumably using little more than pegs and ropes, all under cover of darkness.

Full Story: Science News.

(via Robot Wisdom).

I don’t know much about crop circles. This came out in 2003, does anyone know if anyone’s explained this yet? It seems that crop circle makers wouldn’t really need to understand the maths here in order to make the circles.