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I stopped using the word "just" in the meaning "only" when I took math courses at university. The lecturers were so good to use that term ("trivially", "eviden
by sshine 4y ago
I stopped using the word "just" in the meaning "only" when I took math courses at university.
The lecturers were so good to use that term ("trivially", "evidently", etc.) when it was anything but.
The smartest students were good to follow up.
Everyone else were quiet.
- BlueTemplar 4y agoAnd yet in the introductory classes teachers heavily insisted that "obvious","evident","trivial" shouldn't be part of your vocabulary (you would lose points) and when using a shortcut you should always reference it... until you got several levels above it (you wouldn't do it for basic arithmetic when doing calculus of course, OTOH in algebra commutativity is not to be assumed...) Of course teachers/researchers didn't always follow these best practices themselves...
- glitchc 4y ago"The proof is left as an exercise for the reader" is often short-hand for "I don't know how to prove it myself and will defer the question to someone with greater expertise."