3 edited tags

One of the things that MO does best is provide clear, concise answers to specific mathematical questions. I have picked up ideas from areas of mathematics I normally wouldn't touch, simply because someone posted an eye-catching answer on MO.

In particular, there have been some really elegant and surprising proofs. For example, this one by villemoes, when the questioner asked for a simple proof that there are uncountably many permutations of $\mathbb{N}$.

The fact that any conditionally convergent series [and that such exists] can be rearranged to converge to any given real number x proves that there is an injection P from the reals to the permutations of $\mathbb{N}$.

Or this one by André Henriques, when the questioner asked whether the Cantor set is the zero set of a continuous function:

The continuous function is very easy to construct: it's the distance to the closed set.

There must many such proofs that most of us have missed, so I'd like to see a list, an MO Greatest Hits if you will. Please include a link to the answer, so that the author gets credit (and maybe a few more rep points), but also copy the proof, as it would nice to see the proofs without having to move away from the page.

(If anyone knows the best way to copy text with preservation of LaTeX, please advise.)

I realize that one person's surprise may be another person's old hat, so that's why I'm asking for proofs that you learned from MO. You don't have to guarantee that the proof is original.

# What are the most elegant proofs that you have learned from MO?

One of the things that MO does best is provide clear, concise answers to specific mathematical questions. I have picked up ideas from areas of mathematics I normally wouldn't touch, simply because someone posted an eye-catching answer on MO.

In particular, there have been some really elegant and surprising proofs. For example, this one by villemoes, when the questioner asked for a simple proof that there are uncountably many permutations of $\mathbb{N}$.

The fact that any conditionally convergent series [and that such exists] can be rearranged to converge to any given real number x proves that there is an injection P from the reals to the permutations of $\mathbb{N}$.

Or this one by André Henriques, when the questioner asked whether the Cantor set is the zero set of a continuous function:

The continuous function is very easy to construct: it's the distance to the closed set.

There must many such proofs that most of us have missed, so I'd like to see a list, an MO Greatest Hits if you will. Please include a link to the answer, so that the author gets credit (and maybe a few more rep points), but also copy the proof, as it would nice to see the proofs without having to move away from the page.

(If anyone knows the best way to copy text with preservation of LaTeX, please advise.)

I realize that one person's surprise may be another person's old hat, so that's why I'm asking for proofs that you learned from MO. You don't have to guarantee that the proof is original.