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Can anyone suggest a way to develop an intuitive grasp of theorem proving? Especially inductive proofs for regular expressions. I'm having a great deal of dif
by 13ren 18y ago
Can anyone suggest a way to develop an intuitive grasp of theorem proving? Especially inductive proofs for regular expressions.
I'm having a great deal of difficulty. It's as if I'm missing some key skills, as discussed in the article (I'm not especially stupid in general).
- biohacker42 18y agoPractice practice practice. I had a great deal of difficulty as well and only after a SHIT tone of practice did I realize that long term memory of theorems and doing proofs is 90% of it.
- 13ren 18y agoThanks. That makes sense, like learning a language. Can you recommend a source of theorems/proofs that are interesting/inspiring to work through?
- andreyf 18y agoA good professor explained this to me in 2 minutes after I had struggled with it several times. Losing a lot by not doing this in person, but what he said, pretty much, was: Prove that something is true for 1. Prove that if it's true for 1, it must be true for 1+1. Then it's true for 2. Recycle the proof to prove that it's true for 2+1. Then it's true for 3. Generalize the proof so that it's true for (anything it's true for)+1. Then it's true for any finite number, by induction. Drawing a number line on the board helps, or a bunch of lines connected by dots. Questions?