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A comment on The Most Common Errors in Undergraduate Mathematics (2009). Parent comment

Re:The Most Common Errors in Undergraduate Mathematics (2009) by voxl on Thursday November 19, 2020 @12:55PM (#25152191)
Sure, that's fine, but to say that it is an invalid method of proof is wrong.

If I want to prove A, and I prove A <=> B for some proven statement B, then I have proven A! There is no question! Feels like crazy pills to think otherwise. This is a kind of backwards reasoning!

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Re:The Most Common Errors in Undergraduate Mathematics (2009) by grayclhn on Thursday November 19, 2020 @03:24PM (#25153924)
It is a kind of backwards reasoning that students empirically screw up all the time.

Edit: so much so, that I would definitely recommend students rewrite these proofs on assignments as an exerecise to make sure it's correct. By the time they reach a math PhD they probably don't need to do that anyomre. :)

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