I was excited to take discrete math. But now I know it is nothing but finding awkward ways to state obvious things.
We are currently doing “proofs” which are a complete joke. The idea of proving something is ok, but when you do it in this class, the process is almost always based on multiple assumptions and premises. So when you get to the end and say you “proved” something, well no you haven’t..
Example:
Lets prove I have a million dollars.
1) Assume I am a millionaire
2) millionaire implies someone has a million dollars
3) thus it follows that I have a million dollars.
The obvious issue is that while you “proved” I have a million dollars, it was all based on an assumption. The proof does not prove anything if its based on an unproven parameter. But in none of these problems do they prove the assumptions are true, they just assume it.
An example from the text book:
prove that the set (A intersect C) is not empty:
assume x is in set A and x is in set C
then x is in the intersection of A and C
Thus the intersection of A and C is not empty.
That does not fucking prove the intersection isn’t empty!!!! Because there is no evidence that there is any value ‘x’ that is in both sets. Set A could be all the negative numbers and C be all the positive. But hey, you just proved they overlap! way to fucking go! Since the whole thing was based on an assumption, the proof proves nothing. You would have to also prove that there is a value x that is shared by the sets which they don’t. If I can prove things by just making assumptions we may as well be talking about religion and not math. I apparently got the highest grade in the class on our exam. Don’t know how I feel about that, all it shows is that I have learned to re-create a bunch of useless incorrect crap. I hate that I am wasting my time doing this trash when I could be working on my senior project, writing code, or working on math that works in real life.
Mr. Stranton 