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Re:What's your favorite math proof? by pmiller2 on Monday December 07, 2009 @06:03PM (#982445)
My favorite proof is Fuerstenberg's proof of the infinitude of primes, seen here: http://primes.utm.edu/notes/proofs/infinite/topproof.html
Re:What's your favorite math proof? by RiderOfGiraffes on Monday December 07, 2009 @06:23PM (#982506)
That's brilliant! I up-voted you - no idea why it didn't stick.
Re:What's your favorite math proof? by pmiller2 on Monday December 07, 2009 @06:42PM (#982545)
The real reason it works is actually deep magic. Dirichlet's theorem states: given any two positive coprime integers $a$ and $d$, there are infinitely many primes of the form $a + nd$ where $n$ is a positive integer.

This result is one of the deeper facts of analytic number theory. I have no clue in hell how to prove it other than "look it up in Hardy and Littlewood."

Re:What's your favorite math proof? by dissonant on Sunday December 13, 2009 @06:50AM (#992667)
Haha. Actually, Hardy and Littlewood in 'An Introduction...' don't prove this result, stating that it is too difficult!

They do prove some subcases, though!