this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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Science Memes

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submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Quick Proof: Let k be an even number, then (k +1) is odd.

(k +1) + (k+1) = k + 1 + k + 1 = 2k + 2 which will be even.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's if you add two of the same odd number. The more general proof is basically the same though: let n and m be integers, then 2n+1 and 2m+1 are odd. (2n+1) + (2m+1) = 2n + 2m + 2 = 2(n+m+1) which will be even.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

This is why I failed at uni. I'm struggling so hard to make sense of such proofs, even if I understand the underlying concepts.. :(

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Or you can just like, understand that an odd number is one more than an even number so if you add them together it's two more than an even number, hence even.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Definitely, that's how I'd explain it in words

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Which is the layman's terms of the proof... I don't get what your goal is.

Is it a building block for learning to read mathematical works? Yes, of course it is. Is this a ridiculous formalized statement? Yes, of course it is. But that's the point. We need to practice the trivial to build the scaffolding to tackle the exceptional.

I am not wont to draw conclusions with minimal evidence, but your post seems like you are a malicious reductionist that may be suffering from Dunning Kruger syndrome. I apologize in advance if I have miscategorized you based on this limited sample.

Edit: I am never happy with my formatting.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I just wanted to show you don't need any mathematics to understand why this is true.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The proof is exactly the same though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

never said it isn't

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To confirm, you are asserting that the foundation for your answer (mathematical reasoning) does not require any mathematics to understand why it is true.

It's very dangerous to take a reductionist approach and not be aware of the baked in assumptions you are using. For example, the terms even and odd (for this problem) are well defined as concepts for integers. Which means that your hand-wave statement is true as a result of definitions that were likely created to ensure this property held true.

The notion that "I don't need math to understand why this is true" is like saying "I made an observation on a phenomenon and I don't need science to know it's true." Which, as you are hopefully aware, is again reductionist and leads to a huge distrust of science from the science illiterate.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I don't understand what you are trying to say. I just wanted to provide an easier way to reason why it is true, so that people who don't do math as much as you do could also see the logic behind it. I don't see how an easy to understand reasoning can be a bad thing?