Árpád Kurusa mathematician, associate professor Department of Geometry Bolyai Institute Faculty of Science University of Szeged

## Humorous New Year!

Of course by math :-)

These are taken from Calculus Humor but I did the translation... :-)

### Dictionary of Definitions of Terms Commonly Used in Math Lectures

CLEARLY
I don't want to write down all the "in- between" steps.

TRIVIAL
If I have to show you how to do this, you're in the wrong class.

OBVIOUSLY
I hope you weren't sleeping when we discussed this earlier, because I refuse to repeat it.

RECALL
I shouldn't have to tell you this, but for those of you who erase your memory tapes after every test...

WLOG (Without Loss Of Generality)
I'm not about to do all the possible cases, so I'll do one and let you figure out the rest.

CHECK or CHECK FOR YOURSELF
This is the boring part of the proof, so you can do it on your own time.

SKETCH OF A PROOF
I couldn't verify all the details, so I'll break it down into the parts I couldn't prove.

HINT
The hardest of several possible ways to do a proof.

SOFT PROOF
One third less filling (of the page) than your regular proof, but it requires two extra years of course work just to understand the terms.

ELEGANT PROOFELEGÁNS BIZONYÍTÁS
Requires no previous knowledge of the subject matter and is less than ten lines long.

SIMILARLY
At least one line of the proof of this case is the same as before.

CANONICAL FORM
Four out of five mathematicians surveyed recommended this as the final form for their students who choose to finish.

BY A PREVIOUS THEOREM
I don't remember how it goes (come to think of it I'm not really sure we did this at all), but if I stated it right (or at all), then the rest of this follows.

TWO LINE PROOF
I'll leave out everything but the conclusion, you can't question 'em if you can't see 'em.

BRIEFLY
I'm running out of time, so I'll just write and talk faster.

LET'S TALK THROUGH IT
I don't want to write it on the board lest I make a mistake.

PROCEED FORMALLY
Manipulate symbols by the rules without any hint of their true meaning (popular in pure math courses).

QUANTIFY
I can't find anything wrong with your proof except that it won't work if $x$ is a moon of Jupiter.

PROOF OMITTED
Trust me, It's true.