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A classic question in philosophy asks whether mathematical proofs are analytic or synthetic. Kant, who introduced the analytic–synthetic distinction, believed mathematical proofs are synthetic, whereas Quine argued in his 1951 "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" that such a distinction is untenable. [13] Proofs may be admired for their mathematical ...
One of many examples from algebraic geometry in the first half of the 20th century: Severi (1946) claimed that a degree-n surface in 3-dimensional projective space has at most (n+2 3 )−4 nodes, B. Segre pointed out that this was wrong; for example, for degree 6 the maximum number of nodes is 65, achieved by the Barth sextic , which is more ...
Group (mathematics) Halting problem. insolubility of the halting problem; Harmonic series (mathematics) divergence of the (standard) harmonic series; Highly composite number; Area of hyperbolic sector, basis of hyperbolic angle; Infinite series. convergence of the geometric series with first term 1 and ratio 1/2; Integer partition; Irrational ...
One of the widely used types of impossibility proof is proof by contradiction.In this type of proof, it is shown that if a proposition, such as a solution to a particular class of equations, is assumed to hold, then via deduction two mutually contradictory things can be shown to hold, such as a number being both even and odd or both negative and positive.
Mathematical induction can be informally illustrated by reference to the sequential effect of falling dominoes. [1] [2]Mathematical induction is a method for proving that a statement () is true for every natural number, that is, that the infinitely many cases (), (), (), (), … all hold.
Convergence proof techniques are canonical patterns of mathematical proofs that sequences or functions converge to a finite limit when the argument tends to infinity.. There are many types of sequences and modes of convergence, and different proof techniques may be more appropriate than others for proving each type of convergence of each type of sequence.
Grothendieck's work on the foundations of algebraic geometry covers many thousands of pages. Although this is not a proof of a single theorem, there are several theorems in it whose proofs depend on hundreds of earlier pages. [dubious – discuss] 1974 N-group theorem.
We prove associativity by first fixing natural numbers a and b and applying induction on the natural number c. For the base case c = 0, (a + b) + 0 = a + b = a + (b + 0) Each equation follows by definition [A1]; the first with a + b, the second with b. Now, for the induction. We assume the induction hypothesis, namely we assume that for some ...