3 ms·
Good guide, but IMO it is missing one crucial recommendation: Use prose only to provide motivation, connect ideas, and guide the first-time reader. Any definiti
by codethief 2y ago
Good guide, but IMO it is missing one crucial recommendation: Use prose only to provide motivation, connect ideas, and guide the first-time reader. Any definitions, lemmas, theorems, corollaries, and proofs belong in typographically clearly separated sections and, most importantly, they should be fully self-contained and mention all assumptions! There should be no implicit context, no implicit assumptions from 5 pages before, no "drive-by" definitions and proofs in the prose.
Math papers written like contiguous novels are absolute hell to read & understand & use as reference. (Is the author assuming the same properties here as in the other argument on the previous page? What is that symbol again? Am I looking at an example here or is this already the proof of the the general theorem from the previous page? Etc.)