News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:What's your favorite math proof? by pmiller2 on Tuesday December 08, 2009 @04:45AM (#983366)
It's similar to the proof that all horses are the same color.

Suppose we have $n$ horses. It suffices to show they are all the same color. We do so by induction on $n$.

If $n=0$ or $n=1$, then, certainly all $n$ horses are the same color, so the base case holds.

For the inductive hypothesis, assume we've shown that all the horses in any group of $n-1$ or fewer horses are the same color, and suppose we are faced with a group of $n$ horses. Choose some horse arbitrarily and remove it, leaving a group of $n-1$ horses for our consideration. By the induction hypothesis, these horses are all the same color. Replace the horse we removed and then remove a different horse from the group. Likewise, these horses are all the same color. This then implies that all $n$ horses are the same color. Since $n$ is arbitrary, this shows that all horses are the same color.

Re:What's your favorite math proof? by Fizzley on Tuesday December 08, 2009 @06:04AM (#983432)
Cute.

I know it's a joke, but the inductive step fails for n = 2. Each of the two groups of 1 horses being the same colour does not imply that all the horses are the same colour.

:)

Re:What's your favorite math proof? by pmiller2 on Tuesday December 08, 2009 @08:37AM (#983635)
Yeah, but it's still hella fun to throw at a class of undergrads on a Friday afternoon. :-)