Timeline for Value of "of course" in the mathematical literature
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 5, 2013 at 8:40 | comment | added | few_reps | Found in the book "Julia, Fatou, Montel : le grand prix" by Michèle Audin (note 21 p.113) : "il y a un résumé de démonstration [] contenant un trou, signalé par un « on démontre aisément que » " | |
| Dec 5, 2013 at 0:05 | comment | added | Todd Trimble | Definitely those "easy to see"s, "clearly"s, etc. are good things for referees to zero in on when evaluating a paper. So often those are the critical weak points of a paper. | |
| Sep 19, 2010 at 19:46 | comment | added | Andrew D. King | I think anybody who has graded undergraduate analysis assignments has said that at least once. | |
| Feb 24, 2010 at 17:21 | comment | added | Harry Gindi | Certainly if a point is trivial, it wouldn't hurt to at least sketch an argument. | |
| Feb 24, 2010 at 13:00 | comment | added | Charles Siegel | I got something like that from most of my profs at some point...and I warn my students that if they use "of course", "trivial" or "obvious" in their homework, they lose points unless it REALLY is, like addition...in which case I mark on their paper that they don't need to point it out. | |
| Feb 24, 2010 at 12:52 | comment | added | Marty | Nope - not from you or Preiss. But perhaps there is a common ancestor? And I agree with the comments, that this applies not only to math papers, but to student work and my own! | |
| Feb 24, 2010 at 12:31 | comment | added | gowers | Was it by any chance me? Probably not, but it is something I have often said. But I didn't think it up for myself -- I got it from David Preiss. It's useful not just for evaluating the work of others, but also one's own work. That is, if you've just written a proof of something but don't feel quite secure about it, look for the bits where you didn't give full detail. | |
| Feb 24, 2010 at 10:41 | comment | added | Konrad Swanepoel | I have often found a mistake at exactly the "it is obvious that" places. There could be (at least) two reasons for this: 1) the author mistakenly believes something that is false, while thinking it is clearly true (this happens more often than we'd like to have); 2) the author has tried very hard to clearly spell out a proof of this step, which looks so obvious, but has given up (which is somewhat dishonest, because then it's obviously not obvious). | |
| Feb 24, 2010 at 9:48 | comment | added | Harry Gindi | "By a theorem of Euler..." | |
| Feb 24, 2010 at 9:24 | comment | added | Douglas S. Stones | That's a brilliant tactic! | |
| Feb 24, 2010 at 6:14 | comment | added | Reid Barton | This also holds for grading proofs on exams. And it makes sense: if you the student don't know how to do a step in the proof, you might as well hope it's obvious to the grader! | |
| Feb 24, 2010 at 1:39 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Ben Webster♦ | ||
| Feb 23, 2010 at 22:22 | history | answered | Marty | CC BY-SA 2.5 |