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Direct & Indirect Proofs

You and your friend Rachel go to an art festival but find that you are the only ones there. Rachel says that if the festival was today there would be hundreds of people, so it can't be today. You check the tickets and see they are for tomorrow, confirming the festival is not today. Rachel used an indirect proof by assuming the opposite was true (the festival was today), reaching a contradiction (only you two were there), and concluding the original statement (the festival is not today) must be true. You used a direct proof by logically deducing the conclusion is true based on the tickets stating the date is tomorrow.

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Hazem Moda
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68 views

Direct & Indirect Proofs

You and your friend Rachel go to an art festival but find that you are the only ones there. Rachel says that if the festival was today there would be hundreds of people, so it can't be today. You check the tickets and see they are for tomorrow, confirming the festival is not today. Rachel used an indirect proof by assuming the opposite was true (the festival was today), reaching a contradiction (only you two were there), and concluding the original statement (the festival is not today) must be true. You used a direct proof by logically deducing the conclusion is true based on the tickets stating the date is tomorrow.

Uploaded by

Hazem Moda
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Direct & Indirect Proofs

Suppose you and your friend Rachel are going to an art festival. When you get there, you are
the only ones there. Rachel looks at you and says, ''If the art festival was today, there would be
hundreds of people here, so it can't be today.''
You take out your tickets, look at the date and say, ''The date on the tickets is for tomorrow, so
the art festival is not today.''
Notice that both you and Rachel came to the same conclusion, but you got to that conclusion in
different ways. As it turns out, your argument is an example of a direct proof, and Rachel's
argument is an example of an indirect proof.

 A direct proof assumes that the hypothesis of a conjecture is true, and then uses a
series of logical deductions to prove that the conclusion of the conjecture is true.

 An indirect proof relies on a contradiction to prove a given conjecture by assuming the


conjecture is not true, and then running into a contradiction proving that the conjecture
must be true.

Method of Direct Proofs


The definitions of direct and indirect proofs give way to the steps we follow to perform each type
of proof.
To perform a direct proof, we use the following steps:

1. Identify the hypothesis and conclusion of the conjecture you're trying to prove

2. Assume the hypothesis to be true

3. Use definitions, properties, theorems, etc. to make a series of deductions that eventually
prove the conclusion of the conjecture to be true

4. State that by direct proof, the conclusion of the statement must be true

Consider your arguments again. In your argument (direct proof), you use the fact that the tickets
say that the art festival is tomorrow to prove that the art festival can't be today. You use a direct
proof by using logical deductions to prove a conclusion.

Method of Indirect Proofs


But to perform an indirect proof, we use a different process which includes the following steps:

1. Assume the opposite of the conjecture, or assume that the conjecture is false

2. Try to prove your assumption directly until you run into a contradiction
3. Since we get a contradiction, it must be the case that the assumption that the opposite of
the hypothesis is true is false

4. State that by contradiction, the original conjecture must be true

In Rachel's argument (indirect proof), she starts by assuming the opposite of the original
conjecture, which is that the festival is not today. That is, she starts with ''If the art festival was
today'', then she says, ''there would be hundreds of people here.''
This is a contradiction, since you and Rachel are the only ones there. Lastly, she concludes that
''the art festival can't be today.'' All together, she uses in indirect proof by assuming the opposite
of the conjecture, identifying a contradiction, and stating that the original conjecture must be
true.

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