h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Your section on 'proof by induction' outlines what mathematicians call proof by induction - but a logician will tell you that that's entirely deductive. Proof by induction according to philosophers (and thus logicians) is something very different.

Good job this entry introduces itself by saying it's about mathematical and scientific proofs, then, Ben.



We can easily rename this to include 'mathematical' in the title if you want to cover logical proofs in your Uni project...

Then surely it should already say 'Basic methods of mathematical and scientific proof'.

And of course this makes more sense now it's a 'Maths and logic' page, since 'Numbers and logic' would be entirely a logician's domain...

Why scientific proofs? The scientific method doesn't, as I get reminded too many times, prove stuff - it just brings sufficiently stupid quantities of evidence to bear that only an idiot would disagree... though you might call that "scientific proof".

All the stuff here seems, to me, to be about mathematical proof - induction and suchlike - I might venture to humbly suggest that the second line would be more accurate starting: "Mathematical proofs (as opposed to other proofs<footnote: legal, scientific, philosophical&gt"...

Or I might not venture, and decide that it's too late now, cos I'd only get told off for daring to criticise...

declare procedure path_of_least_resistance() {

change(title) = "Basic Methods of Mathematical Proof";

set_line(1,2) = "Mathematical proofsAs opposed to legal, scientific or philosophical proofs. have to be rigorous.";

}

avoid(responsiblity);



(And no pedantry about the syntax, right? This is written in M++, where I make up the rules. )

That's great. Thanks Mrak.

And of *course* we won't be pedantic.... pedantry refers only to the derivation of words, anything else is simply pernickitiness...

Mark, have you read about C+-? [URL Removed by moderator]

I wish I would have caught up with this thread a month ago...

Oh, using C++ for such a simple problem would be complete overkill, no?