Timeline for Is there any good reason to write "it is easy to see"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
17 events
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| May 14, 2019 at 16:50 | comment | added | Buffy | @emory, it might not be "truly obvious". It need only be an argument standard enough that the expected audience can be expected to fill in the details without undue hardship. Focus the paper on the important ideas and provide a path through them. Don't let the big ideas get lost in the minutia. But the reader wants a hint that an argument is needed as mentioned by other commenters here. A sequence of unconnected sentences is usually unsatisfying. Make your papers beautiful and a joy to read. Not a slog through unnecessary detail. | |
| May 14, 2019 at 16:28 | comment | added | emory | @Buffy if it is truly obvious then it need not be mentioned at all. | |
| May 14, 2019 at 16:26 | comment | added | Buffy | @emory, it would be a waste of time and effort as well as a distraction for most readers. Math papers aren't written for novices, so novices need to work harder - which makes them non-novices eventually. Most of the time the mathematically adept will just nod and move on. It isn't a problem. Don't say things in your papers that need not be said. If you have to state that the fundamental theorem of calculus is the link between one sentence and the next then you are insulting your reader. The basic concepts and techniques are known. Well known. | |
| May 14, 2019 at 16:17 | comment | added | emory | @Buffy why could you not write a technical report with the complete argument and reference the technical report. "It is easy to see ..." becomes "Our technical report shows ..." | |
| May 14, 2019 at 14:29 | comment | added | Max Williams | I think of "it's easy to see" as the writer saying "Wake up! You need to do a little bit of work here, so I can make sure you're following me properly." | |
| May 13, 2019 at 12:58 | comment | added | user87850 | @JairTaylor I've also noticed students (and who knows, maybe professors) use it as code for "I'm skipping some steps because I'm sure this is supposed to be the answer but can't figure out how to get there!". You can usually tell this is the case if they skip over important arguments. | |
| May 12, 2019 at 20:34 | comment | added | Jair Taylor | @ErelSegal-Halevi "It is easy to see X" is code for "I am skipping some steps, but X follows." I very much appreciate if authors let me know when they skip a few steps so that I won't try to find them in the text. | |
| May 12, 2019 at 20:24 | history | edited | Buffy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 12, 2019 at 17:00 | comment | added | Lee Mosher | I usually interpret "It is easy to see X" as an ever so slight shortening of "it easily follows that X" (it's 5 characters shorter, counting spaces), which in itself can be read as "The preceding assertion implies X". | |
| May 12, 2019 at 15:01 | comment | added | Especially Lime | Yes, +1 for distinguishing it from an unsupported - or even apparently unsupported - statement. In a math paper, if I come across what appears to be an unsupported statement in the flow of a proof, a common explanation is that it's something that was shown earlier in the paper that I've forgotten about. "It is easy to see" stops me going back and looking for it. | |
| May 12, 2019 at 13:31 | comment | added | Dave L Renfro | and which author assertions were simply assertions of the FYI variety. Regarding your answer, besides alerting the reader to the fact that an assertion is intended to be deducible by the reader, saying "it is easy to see that" (when used correctly) assists the reader in what to consider and how deep to go. For an analogy, I used to play chess a lot when I was young (mostly before high school), and it was MUCH easier to win over a weaker opponent if I KNEW the opponent was weak, because then I could go for higher risk moves that lead to quick capture of pieces. | |
| May 12, 2019 at 13:24 | history | edited | Buffy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 12, 2019 at 13:22 | comment | added | Dave L Renfro | +1 for and isn't just an unsupported statement inserted into the flow. One of the things I used to find so frustrating when reading physics texts (and worse yet, engineering, chemistry, etc.; in the case of the many social science texts I had to read for required "elective courses", it was actually not much of a concern, since pretty much everything in those texts was clearly non-deductive) was in trying to determine which author assertions were statements whose validity I was supposed to be able to determine based on prior material in the text (continued) | |
| May 12, 2019 at 12:52 | history | edited | Buffy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 12, 2019 at 12:47 | comment | added | Buffy | One wants to indicate that X flows from the previous and isn't just an unsupported statement inserted into the flow. The alternative (longer) is to include the complete argument. | |
| May 12, 2019 at 12:45 | comment | added | Erel Segal-Halevi | "The alternative is longer" - why? Instead of writing "It is easy to see X", you can shorten the paper by writing just "X". | |
| May 12, 2019 at 12:37 | history | answered | Buffy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |