Proof Methods:

    Proof by vigorous handwaving:
        Works well in a classroom or seminar setting.
    Proof by forward reference:
        Reference is usually to a forthcoming paper of the author, which is
        often not as forthcoming as at first.
    Proof by funding:
        How could three different government agencies be wrong?
    Proof by example:
        The author gives only the case n = 2 and suggests that it contains most
        of the ideas of the general proof.
    Proof by omission:
        "The reader may easily supply the details" or "The other 253 cases are
        analogous"
    Proof by deferral:
        "We'll prove this later in the course".
    Proof by picture:
        A more convincing form of proof by example. Combines well with proof by
        omission.
    Proof by intimidation:
        "Trivial."
    Proof by adverb:
        "As is quite clear, the elementary aforementioned statement is
        obviously valid."
    Proof by seduction:
        "Convince yourself that this is true!"
    Proof by cumbersome notation:
        Best done with access to at least four alphabets and special symbols.
    Proof by exhaustion:
        An issue or two of a journal devoted to your proof is useful.
    Proof by obfuscation:
        A long plotless sequence of true and/or meaningless syntactically
        related statements.
    Proof by wishful citation:
        The author cites the negation, converse, or generalization of a theorem
        from the literature to support his claims.
    Proof by eminent authority:
        "I saw Karp in the elevator and he said it was probably NP-complete."
    Proof by personal communication:
        "Eight-dimensional colored cycle stripping is NP-complete [Karp,
        personal communication]."
    Proof by reduction to the wrong problem:
        "To see that infinite-dimensional colored cycle stripping is decidable,
        we reduce it to the halting problem."
    Proof by reference to inaccessible literature:
        The author cites a simple corollary of a theorem to be found in a
        privately circulated memoir of the Slovenian Philological Society, 1883.
    Proof by importance:
        A large body of useful consequences all follow from the proposition in
        question.
    Proof by accumulated evidence:
        Long and diligent search has not revealed a counterexample.
    Proof by cosmology:
        The negation of the proposition is unimaginable or meaningless. Popular
        for proofs of the existence of God.
    Proof by mutual reference:
        In reference A, Theorem 5 is said to follow from Theorem 3 in reference
        B, which is shown to follow from Corollary 6.2 in reference C, which is
        an easy consequence of Theorem 5 in reference A.
    Proof by metaproof:
        A method is given to construct the desired proof. The correctness of
        the method is proved by any of these techniques.
    Proof by vehement assertion:
        It is useful to have some kind of authority relation to the audience.
    Proof by ghost reference:
        Nothing even remotely resembling the cited theorem appears in the
        reference given.
    Proof by semantic shift:
        Some of the standard but inconvenient definitions are changed for the
        statement of the result.
    Proof by appeal to intuition:
        Cloud-shaped drawings frequently help here.

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