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There’s really a lot more to it than that. There is a notion of “polite mathematics” which is independent of the difficulty of the proof. If every step clearly
by User23 2y ago
There’s really a lot more to it than that. There is a notion of “polite mathematics” which is independent of the difficulty of the proof.
If every step clearly follows from the prior steps it’s rather immaterial how long the proof is. Similarly a short proof with enough rabbits can achieve a kind of incomprehensibility.
- lupire 2y agoWhat is "polite mathematics"? That sounds like "logic". What's a "rabbit"?
- User23 2y agoA rabbit is when the mathematician presents the next step in a proof as a magician pulls a rabbit from a hat; leaving his reader to puzzle out how the trick was performed. For shorter proofs this can be delightful, but for longer ones it becomes tedious or even unmanageable.