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Authored by: Wol on Thursday, July 12 2012 @ 06:02 PM EDT |
Well, every time I read about new discoveries in maths, the mathematicians seem
to use that word. And the example I am thinking of at the moment might even have
been when they announced the finding of the solution to Fermat.
Did they announce that they had solved Fermat? Or did they announce some
completely different wonderful proof and mention in passing that it happened to
solve Fermat as well?
Iirc it was the latter. And iirc they actually used the word "trivial"
to describe the Fermat proof.
And while I agree with your description of the common usage of the word, I think
any competent mathematician would describe any *discovered* proof as trivial.
Discovering the proof is the hard work - once it's been discovered, reproducing
it (for anyone "skilled in the art") should be a simple task.
Cheers,
Wol[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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