Timeline for Is there any good reason to write "it is easy to see"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
6 events
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| May 14, 2019 at 10:45 | comment | added | Jakub Konieczny | @Arno - That's a very fair point. As a slight variation on the same theme, there are often situations there there is a very obvious way to try and prove something, with the caveat that at each step something could potentially go wrong and become difficult. In a case like that, "It's obvious" might mean: The obvious argument works, nothing breaks down along the way. | |
| May 14, 2019 at 10:38 | comment | added | Arno | @Ooker It can even mean "I get it" (if preceeded by 5sec pausing). In informal discussions with colleagues I certainly had it happen that upon being told that something was obvious I could immediately see that it was, indeed, obvious, which had not been obvious to me before I asked. | |
| May 14, 2019 at 10:23 | comment | added | Jakub Konieczny | @Ooker - It's not so much about doubting the speaker (after all, they are the expert on the subject and have presumably spent some time preparing the talk and making sure that what they say is correct). It's more about the desire to understand why X is true. What the speaker is effectively saying is "I assure you that this transition is correct and that if you had all the relevant ingredients at hand and maybe spent 5 minutes with a piece of paper, you would easily reproduce it; there's nothing deep or particularly interesting happening here.". | |
| May 14, 2019 at 8:36 | comment | added | Ooker | Just to clarify, the "OK, thanks" in the exchange does not mean "I get it", but more than "I trust you that you are right". When the audience does not get a thing, it's also natural to wonder if the speaker is really sure about that. Therefore, the beginning question "Why is X true?" really means "Are you sure that X is true?" | |
| May 14, 2019 at 0:33 | comment | added | ChocolateAndCheese | +1 for "Especially in mathematics, it is often helpful to let the Reader know what level of difficulty and/or complexity each step is." Sometimes it's difficult to know if the leap from one step to another is difficult or not. By saying "It's easy to see" you're letting the reader know that probably the first/simplest line of reasoning they attempt to bridge the gap is the correct one, and you therefore help the reader not waste too much mental energy in trying to determine the soundness of their ad-hoc reasoning, since it is most likely correct. | |
| May 12, 2019 at 18:32 | history | answered | Jakub Konieczny | CC BY-SA 4.0 |