Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Intuition, Proof and Certainty
Intuition, Proof and Certainty
Intuition, Proof and Certainty
2
Intuition, Proof and Certainty
Specific Objective
At the end of the lesson, the student should be able to:
Discussion
A. Intuition
As a student, you can build and improve your intuition by doing the
following:
a. Be observant and see things visually towards with your critical
thinking.
b. Make your own manipulation on the things that you have noticed and
observed.
c. Do the right thinking and make a connections with it before doing the
solution.
Illustration
1. Based on the given picture below, which among of the two yellow
lines is longer? Is it the upper one or the lower one?
What are you going to do to be able to answer the question? Your own
intuition could help you to answer the question correctly and come up with a
correct conclusion. For sure, the first thing that you are going to do is to make a
keen observation in the figure and you will be asking yourself (starting to process
your critical thinking) which of these two yellow lines is longer compare to other
line or is it really the yellow line above is more longer than the yellow line below?
But what would be the correct explanation?
The figure above is called Ponzo illusion (1911). There are two identical
yellow lines drawn horizontally in a railway track. If you will be observing these
two yellow lines, your mind tells you that upper yellow line looks longer that the
below yellow line. But in reality, the two lines has equal length. For sure, you will
be using a ruler to be able to determine which of the two is longer than the other
one. The exact reasoning could goes like this. The upper yellow line looks longer
because of the converging sides of a railway. The farther the line, it seems look
line longer that the other yellow line below. Now, have you tried to use a ruler?
What have you noticed?
Self- Learning Activity
34 x 12 = ; 21 x 43 = ; 54 x 31=
3. Look at the figure below. Are two lines a straight line? . What is your
intuition?
B. Proof and Certainty
Another equally important lesson that the student should be learned is on how to
deal with mathematical proof and certainty. By definition, a proof is an inferential
argument for a mathematical statement while proofs are an example of
mathematical logical certainty.
A mathematical proof is a list of statements in which every statement is one
of the following:
(1) an axiom
(2) derived from previous statements by a rule of inference
(3) a previously derived theorem
There is a hierarchy of terminology that gives opinions about the importance
of derived truths:
(1) A proposition is a theorem of lesser generality or of lesser importance.
(2) A lemma is a theorem whose importance is mainly as a key step in
something deemed to be of greater significance.
(3) A corollary is a consequence of a theorem, usually one whose proof is much
easier than that of the theorem itself.
METHODS OF PROOF
In methods of proof, basically we need or we have to prove an existing
mathematical theorem to be able to determine if this theorem is true or false.
In addition, there is no need to prove any mathematical definition simply
because we assumed that this is already true or this is basically true.
Usually, a theorem is in the form of if-then statement. So, in a certain
theorem, it consists of hypothesis and conclusion.
Let us say P and Q are two propositions. In an if-then statement, proposition
P would be the hypothesis while the proposition Q would be our conclusion
denoted by:
PQ
Example:
If a triangle is a right triangle with sides a, b, and c as hypotenuse, then a 2 +
b2 = c2.
There are two ways on how to present a proof. One is with the use of an
outline form and the other one is in a paragraph form. Either of the two
presentations could be used by the student.
TWO WAYS ON HOW TO PRESENT THE PROOF
a. Outline Form
Proposition: If P then Q.
1. Suppose/Assume P
2. Statement
3. Statement
.
.
. Statement
Therefore Q .
b. Paragraph Form
Proposition: If P then Q.
Assume/Suppose P. . . .
... . . .
Therefore Q.
Let us have a very simple and basic example on how to prove a certain
mathematical statement.
Illustration 1: Prove (in outline form) that “If x is a number with 5x + 3 = 33,
then x = 6”
Proof:
PROOF) DEFINITION:
Assume/Suppose Q is true.
.
.
.
Therefore P is true.
Proof:
1. Assume x is not divisible by 3.
2. Then x 3k for all k Z
3.It follows that x (2m)(3) for all m Z
4.So, x 6m for all m Z
5. Therefore, x is not divisible by 6.
So, the original statement would become “If x is odd, then x2 is odd”.
Proof:
1. Assume x is odd.
2. Then x = 2k + 1 for some k Z
3. It follows that x2 =(2k + 1)2 = 4k2 + 4k + 1 = 2(2k2 + 2k) + 1
where q = 2k2 + 2k
4. So, x2 = 2q + 1
5. Therefore, x2 is odd.
Again, it is your turn to prove the following propositions with the use
of indirect or contrapositive proof.
3. Proof by Counter Example (Disproving Universal Statements)
∀x ∈ S,P(x).
Note that the negation of this would be “For some n Z, the integer
f(n) = n2 – n + 1 is composite.
We all know that a prime number is a number whose factors are 1 and
the number itself, thus if p is prime number then p = (p)(1) where p Z
n 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
f(n) 11 11 13 17 23 31 41 53 67 83 101 ?
In every case, f (n) is prime, so you may begin to suspect that the
conjecture is true. Before attempting a proof, let’s try one more n.
Unfortunately, f (11) = 112−11+11 = 112 is not prime. The conjecture is false
because n = 11 is a counterexample.
We summarize our disproof as follows:
4. Proof by Contradiction
Another method of proving is what we called “Proving by Contradiction”.
This method works by assuming your implication is not true, then deriving
a contradiction.
Recall that if p is false then p q is always true, thus the only way our
implication can be false is if p is true and q is false.
So, if we let p q be a theorem, a proof by contradiction is given by this
way;
1. Assume p is true.
2. Suppose that q is also true.
3. Try to arrive at a contradiction.
4. Therefore q is true
So, in practice then, we assume our premise is true but our conclusion is
false and use these assumptions to derive a contradiction.
This contradiction may be a violation of a law or a previously established
result. Having derived the contradiction you can then conclude that your
assumption (that p q is false) was false and so the implication is true.
Be careful with this method: make sure that the contradiction arise because
of your original assumptions, not because of a mistake in method. Also, if you end
up proving ~p then you could have used proof by contraposition.
Example 1: Prove by contradiction that “If x + x = x, then x = 0.
Proof:
1. Assume that x + x = x.
2. Suppose that x 0.
3. Now, x + x = x, so 2x = x and since x 0, we could multiply
both sides of the equation by the reciprocal of x, i.e., 1/x.
4. Multiplying by the reciprocal of x, it follows that 2 = 1 which
is a contradiction.
5. Therefore, the original implication is proven to be true.