HOW TO PROVE IT

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 intimidation:
"Trivial."

proof by vigorous handwaving:
Works well in a classroom or seminar setting.

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 omission:
'The reader may easily supply the details'
"The other 253 cases are analogous"
"..."

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 funding:
How could three different government agencies be wrong?

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 picture:
A more convincing form of proof by example. Combines well with proof
by omission.

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 forward reference:
Reference is usually to a forthcoming paper of the author, which is
often not as forthcoming as at first.

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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