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Diversity in proof appraisal

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posted on 2016-09-21, 13:27 authored by Matthew InglisMatthew Inglis, Andrew Aberdein
We investigated whether mathematicians typically agree about the qualities of mathematical proofs. Between-mathematician consensus in proof appraisals is an implicit assumption of many arguments made by philosophers of mathematics, but to our knowledge the issue has not previously been empirically investigated. We asked a group of mathematicians to assess a specific proof on four dimensions, using the framework identified by Inglis and Aberdein (2014). We found widespread disagreement between our participants about the aesthetics, intricacy, precision and utility of the proof, suggesting that a priori assumptions about the consistency of mathematical proof appraisals are unreasonable.

History

School

  • Science

Department

  • Mathematics Education Centre

Published in

Mathematical Cultures: The London Meetings 2012-2014

Pages

163 - 180

Citation

INGLIS, M. and ABERDEIN, A., 2016. Diversity in proof appraisal. IN: Larvor, Brendan (Ed.). Mathematical Cultures: The London Meetings 2012-2014. Basel: Birkhäuser, pp. 163 - 180.

Publisher

Birkhäuser Basel © Springer International Publishing

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2016

Notes

Closed access. This is a chapter from the book, Mathematical Cultures: The London Meetings 2012-2014.

ISBN

978-3-319-28580-1

ISSN

2297-2951

Book series

Trends in the History of Science;

Language

  • en

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