[SystemSafety] Faults in maths proofs

Olwen Morgan olwen at phaedsys.com
Fri Dec 11 17:20:18 CET 2020


I misapprehended your meaning but I still agree with you. :-)

There's no shortage of piss-poor mathematics to be found among the 
lumpenengineeriat. Even the modest example I gave has subtleties that 
most engineers will fail at first to notice.

At least I can personally test soap powder in my own washing machine.

Olwen


On 11/12/2020 16:05, Derek M Jones wrote:
> Olwen,
>
>> Another gem of scepticism from Derek. This time he is due unambiguous 
>> thanks. (There's condescension for you!)
>
> Skepticism of what?
>
> The maths taught as school and university has been around long enough for
> the obvious mistakes to have been detected and corrected.
>
> Having been exposed to maths that has been around long enough to have
> the obvious mistakes removed, some people have formed the incorrect
> view that anything done using maths must be correct.
>
> One end result is soap powder advertising masquerading as reality.
>
>> On 10/12/2020 15:54, Derek M Jones wrote:
>>> All,
>>>
>>> "What is Mathematics?"
>>> https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/avigad/meetings/fomm2020/slides/fomm_buzzard.pdf 
>>>
>>>
>>> A discussion involving recent examples of 'proofs'
>>> that may or may not be correct, starting at slide 5.
>>>
>>> There is some discussion of the use of programs to create proofs,
>>> and the problem that software contains faults, just like 
>>> mathematical proofs.
>>>
>>
>>
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>


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