A guide to reading advanced mathematics

When you rst see texts on advanced mathematics, it can be intimidating. The style of writing is quite dierent from school maths books, and most of what you see is under headings such as Denition, Lemma, Proof, Theorem, etc. The purpose of this sheet is to explain to you why this happens and what all the jargon means. Mathematics sets itself the most exacting standards imaginable. In religion, a statement may be accepted on the basis of faith. In science, a statement may be accepted on the basis of available evidence. In mathematics, a statement is only accepted if it has been proved. A proof is an argument that is absolutely watertight: it is a chain of reasoning in which each link is indisputable. A 100-page proof that contains even one error is no proof at all. Without this standard of total certainty, mathematics would collapse. For this reason, mathematicians have adopted a style of writing designed to make any errors as obvious as possible. (Its the equivalent of doctors wearing white.) There is no owery prose in which unjustied assumptions or dubious logic can hide. Instead, the language is stripped-down and minimal. Every new piece of terminology must be dened precisely, and every statement must be backed up with a proof. Here are some of the headings youll come across: Denition If the author wants to use a word or phrase that you may not have heard before, they must tell you exactly what they mean by it. E.g. Denition. A prime number is a positive integer n such that n has exactly two divisors. (The author is assuming that you know what divisor means, unless they dened it earlier.) Proof See above. The end of a proof is often marked by a box, like this. 2 Theorem A true statement, usually an important one. A theorem is usually followed by its proof (otherwise no one can be expected to believe it). Proposition Like a theorem, but not as important. Usually the word theorem is reserved for the most crucial results in the subject being written about. 1

Lemma Often it takes a lot of work to prove a theorem, and one needs to prove minor, preparatory results along the way. These are called lemmas. (Think of lemmas as base camp and the theorem as the summit.) Corollary Once your theorem or proposition is proved, other results may follow with little or no further work. These are called Corollaries. For example, someone might ask you if there is any prime number bigger than 1 000 000. In response, you might prove the theorem that there are innitely many prime numbers, then state the corollary that there is some prime number bigger than 1 000 000. (Depending on how expansive you were feeling, you might or might not write down the proof of the corollary, namely: since there are innitely many primes, there are more than 1 000 000 of them, so at least one of them is bigger than 1 000 000.)

Lemma

Proposition

Theorem
Corollary