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Danijel
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Does a proof by counterexample belong to direct or indirect type of proof?
Wow, an excellent answer! Thank you...StoneTemplePython said:Something less abstract may help.
Suppose you're a great mathematician at the end of the 1800s and you show any polynomial with a single variable and real nonnegative coefficients can be written as a sum of squares. You conjecture, what about said polynomial except 2 variables or 3 or ... i.e. is it true that multivariate non-negative polynomial can always be written as a sum of squares?
Hilbert answered this as definitively "no" in 1888 using a lot of powerful analytical machinery but bit he didn't give an example.
About 80 years later Motzkin gave the first (very simple) example of a 2 variable non-negative polynomial that can't be written as a sum of squares. (The proof merely needs ##GM \leq AM##.) People would generally say he directly showed the conjecture to be false by a single example, whereas Hilbert's approach was indirect.
Put differently:
Hilbert showed that these 'rule breaker' polynomials must exist. (Indirect.)
Motzkin directly proved they do exist with a simple example. (Direct.)
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