NPTEL Course on Discrete Mathematics

Lecture 9 : Proof Strategies II

Dr. Ashish Choudhury

IIIT Bangalore
 Lecture Overview
 Various proof strategies
 Proofs involving quantified statements
 Disproving Universally Quantified Statements
 How to disprove that is False ?
 By counter-example --- an element from the domain such that is False

 Every positive integer can be expressed as the sum of squares of two integers
 A universally quantified statement

 Will be false even if the statement is false for some element

 Ex: The integer 3

 Caution : there is nothing called proof by example for proving

universally quantified statements
 Proof by Cases (Exhaustive Proof)
 [] [() () … () ], where

 Ex: For all , if is an integer then

𝑝 𝑞
 Case I: Statement is true if

 Case II: Statement is true if

 Case III: Statement is true if

 Without Loss of Generality
 If are integers and both and are even then both are even
 Proof by contrapositive :
 If ( or is odd) ( is odd OR is odd)
 Proof by cases :
Exactly
 Case I: is odd, isone of is odd --- without loss of general., let it be
even
o , for some integers and
o --- even
o --- Odd

  Case
CaseII:II:Both
is even,
and isare
oddodd --- symmetric to case I
 Proving Existentially Quantified Statement
 Two variants :
 Constructive proof (proof by example)
 Show a concrete witness from the domain for which the statement is true

 Ex: There exists a positive Integer that

can be written as the sum of cubes of
positive integers in two different ways
 Proof: 1729 in one such number
1729 =
1729 =
 Proving Existentially Quantified Statement
 Non-constructive Proof:
 Logically argue about the existence of a witness without showing any
concrete witness

 There exist irrational numbers and , such that is rational

 Let = --- already proved that it is irrational

 What can we say about ?

 Case I: If is rational  Case II: If is irrational

 = and =  and=
 Backward Reasoning
 Goal: to prove that a statement is true
 Proof strategy: Find a true statement , such that is true

 Show that for every distinct real number AM() GM ()

 For AM() GM () to be true  Actual proof :
 ()/2 has to be true 𝑞 For distinct
2
 has to be true ⇒ ( 𝑥+ 𝑦 ) >4 𝑥𝑦


⇒ ( 𝑥+ 𝑦 )/2 > √ 𝑥𝑦
has to be true
⇒ AM ( 𝑥 , 𝑦 ) >GM ( 𝑥 , 𝑦 )
 is always true, for any distinct
𝑝
References for Today’s Lecture