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Proofs Without Words

Proofs Without Words

8 comments

·June 14, 2025

ViscountPenguin

I've never really been a fan of proofs without words; they've always felt way too slippery to me, for lack of a better term. A well worded proof with nice explanatory diagrams hits the spot for me instead.

fiforpg

Nice. There's an entire book like this for geometric statements. Every picture is a fact, proofs are supplied by the reader:

https://users.mccme.ru/akopyan/papers/EnGeoFigures.pdf

Caution: proofs of some of the statements in it are difficult.

JadeNB

I think that is rather different. The traditional meaning of "proofs without words" is that the picture is the proof, or at least, if you believe that a proof can only be in words, that the picture should convey the idea so transparently that anyone with reasonable mathematical skill can routinely translate it into words.

jupitr

and also how to lie with visual proofs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYQVlVoWoPY

vismit2000

There is also this youtube channel called 'Mathematical Visual Proofs' on similar theme: https://www.youtube.com/@MathVisualProofs

downboots

Another great site is https://theoremoftheday.org/ with a neat one-pager overview of each theorem

vonnik

Anyone who enjoys this should read David Bessis’s Mathematica.

brianberns

I made a game out of creating proofs without words: https://brianberns.github.io/Tactix/