Conference hydra::dejavu

950.0. "PROOF" by SCOPE::PAINTER (Dark Ages, Middle Ages, New Age) Fri Jan 13 1989 12:21

Given the recent, shall we say, _discussions_, I thought this might
be enjoyed by those of you who are into this sort of thing.  (;^)

Cindy

=====================================================================

Source unknown...from somewhere on the USENET:

			HOW TO PROVE IT
			--------------- 
proof by example:
	The author gives only the case n = 2 and suggests that it 
	contains most of the ideas of the general proof.
 
proof by intimidation:
	'Trivial'.
 
proof by vigorous handwaving:
	Works well in a classroom or seminar setting.
 
proof by cumbersome notation:
	Best done with access to at least four alphabets and special
	symbols.
 
proof by exhaustion:
	An issue or two of a journal devoted to your proof is useful.
 
proof by omission:
	'The reader may easily supply the details'
	'The other 253 cases are analogous'
	'...' 
 
proof by obfuscation:
	A long plotless sequence of true and/or meaningless 
	syntactically related statements.
 
proof by wishful citation:
	The author cites the negation, converse, or generalization of 
	a theorem from the literature to support his claims.
 
proof by funding:
	How could three different government agencies be wrong?
 
proof by eminent authority:
	'I saw Karp in the elevator and he said it was probably NP-
	complete.' 
 
proof by personal communication:
	'Eight-dimensional colored cycle stripping is NP-complete 
	[Karp, personal communication].' 
 
proof by reduction to the wrong problem:
	'To see that infinite-dimensional colored cycle stripping is 
	decidable, we reduce it to the halting problem.' 
 
proof by reference to inaccessible literature:
	The author cites a simple corollary of a theorem to be found 
	in a privately circulated memoir of the Slovenian 
	Philological Society, 1883.
 
proof by importance:
	A large body of useful consequences all follow from the 
	proposition in question.
 
proof by accumulated evidence:
	Long and diligent search has not revealed a counterexample.
 
proof by cosmology:
	The negation of the proposition is unimaginable or 
	meaningless. Popular for proofs of the existence of God.
 
proof by mutual reference:
	In reference A, Theorem 5 is said to follow from Theorem 3 in 
	reference B, which is shown to follow from Corollary 6.2 in 
	reference C, which is an easy consequence of Theorem 5 in 
	reference A.
 
proof by metaproof:
	A method is given to construct the desired proof. The 
	correctness of the method is proved by any of these 
	techniques.
 
proof by picture:
	A more convincing form of proof by example. Combines well 
	with proof by omission.
 
proof by vehement assertion:
	It is useful to have some kind of authority relation to the 
	audience.
 
proof by ghost reference:
	Nothing even remotely resembling the cited theorem appears in 
	the reference given.
 
proof by forward reference:
	Reference is usually to a forthcoming paper of the author, 
	which is often not as forthcoming as at first.
 
proof by semantic shift:
	Some of the standard but inconvenient definitions are changed 
	for the statement of the result.
 
proof by appeal to intuition:
	Cloud-shaped drawings frequently help here.
 

    My favorite proof is about 90.
    
    Bruce

    
     Dave Barry for Feb 10'th (from his calendar)
    
     Nobody knows how transmissions work, or even where they come from. 
     They just arrive at car factories in unmarked crates, and the workers
     put them into cars. Many people believe transmissions are created by 
     beings from other solar systems. There is evidence to support this 
     theory, namely transmission manuals, which contain bizarre diagrams
     and deranged alien commands.