> at the very least we should expect that from the average publication, and be suspicious of any experimental paper that does not include some description of th

> at the very least we should expect that from the average publication, and be suspicious of any experimental paper that does not include some description of the blind alleys. In mathematics, being suspicious might be a bit much, but it's a very valuable (for your audience) habit to have. For example, the book Introduction to the Theory of Computation by Michael Sipser does this a lot: it often explores avenues that lead to dead ends before arriving at the correct proof. This is the way mathematicians work, and it's usually hidden from papers or other textbooks. I'm guessing that this is either for economy or because authors want to look like the first thing they tried was the right one.