Timeline for Story where professor claims a step in a proof "is obvious" when it is far from obvious
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
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| Aug 16, 2022 at 13:35 | history | edited | Peter Shor | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Aug 16, 2022 at 4:13 | comment | added | Kevin | @Kimball: I once had a professor encourage the class to conjecture that a certain number theory statement was true for all n. He then tried it on the board for n=6 and it didn't work, so he walked over to the conjecture written earlier and hastily added "except n=6," and we all had a laugh. He then informed us that the modified statement was actually true! | |
| Aug 15, 2022 at 12:47 | history | edited | Peter Shor | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Aug 15, 2022 at 4:46 | comment | added | equin0x80 | This doesn't actually address my question regarding where it came from. But then I thought "the name is familiar", and recalled Shor's algorithm. Wow. It's a small world. | |
| Aug 14, 2022 at 10:05 | comment | added | Kimball | What an actual mathematician would most likely have done is explain why the fact was true - Well, I once had an instructor who would say "This is so easy, I can't even prove it!" Amusing, but it didn't instill confidence, because he didn't prove it. | |
| Aug 14, 2022 at 0:47 | comment | added | Andreas Blass | I agree that mathematical papers often say "it is obvious that ..." when it isn't actually obvious at all. But the situation is even worse; the allegedly obvious statement might not even be true. In fact, another common joke (or proverb?) among mathematicians is that, if you want to find a mistake in a paper, just look at th sentences that begin with "Clearly". | |
| Aug 13, 2022 at 21:36 | comment | added | Ángel | "I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain." | |
| Aug 13, 2022 at 18:05 | comment | added | Jörg W Mittag | "The proof is left as an exercise to the reader" is another common phrase in the same vein. | |
| Aug 13, 2022 at 17:22 | history | edited | Peter Shor | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Aug 13, 2022 at 17:16 | history | edited | Peter Shor | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Aug 13, 2022 at 17:09 | history | edited | Peter Shor | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Aug 13, 2022 at 14:14 | history | edited | user14111 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Aug 13, 2022 at 13:57 | history | edited | Peter Shor | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Aug 13, 2022 at 13:50 | history | edited | Peter Shor | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Aug 13, 2022 at 13:43 | history | answered | Peter Shor | CC BY-SA 4.0 |