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Question at a mathematical seminar: "Isn't it obvious that [...]?", the speaker turns to blackboard, writes furiously for 5 minutes muttering to himself, then r

Question at a mathematical seminar: "Isn't it obvious that [...]?", the speaker turns to blackboard, writes furiously for 5 minutes muttering to himself, then replies "Yes it is!"

ben_w 4y ago
Sounds about right; any code I could write in 5 minutes is necessarily trivial, so I assume similar for other professions that don't have hard time limits.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Writing for for 5 minutes is much easier than thinking for 5 minutes. "Obvious" means you know it without thinking.
  - defrost 4y ago
    In a math lecture context obvious is intuitively true, five minutes on the blackboard is "trust (your gut) but verify". Not everything pans out the way even the best think - and the very best are notorious for "knowing" results in a flash .. but having to diddle about to produce a logical chain that "proves" that flash for minute, hours, days and sometimes years or a century after their death..
    - kzrdude 4y ago
      That get us to the obvious theorems that are actually false https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/820686/obvious-theorems-that-are-actually-false https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/820686/obvious-theo...
      - defrost 4y ago
        To be fair many of those "obvious truths" are rapidly discounted by the kinds of teenagers that go on to become university core math students. Fractal surface areas, the re-order of terms in an infinte series, infinite hotel questions, etc. were all high school puzzles in the 80s in my part of remote Australia so I can't imagine them stumping or confusing a university math lecturer.