- #1
Bleys
- 74
- 0
Hey,
I'm sure this must have been asked before, but I couldn't really find anything specific using the search tool;
I'm a second year maths major and I love maths and would really like to pursue a career in mathematics. My problem is, often I can understand a proof (whether easily or not depends on the proof and tools used); what I find frustrating is that I very often could probably never contruct such proofs! And I heard somewhere or read on these forums that I should be trying and most importantly be able to prove theorems, corollaries, lemmas and such already. Now ofcourse I try to prove things I come across, but I very often find I have trouble with it. Some books like set theory or discrete maths ones have preliminary chapters explaining proof strategies and such; and while they certainly provide some practice, it still remains mind-boggling when I try to go about a proof myself in other theorems which require more abtract thinking (so I'm not talking about trivial proofs of the kind where you easily use the definitions used and logically deduce the conclusion; like even no+even no=even no; or proving identities or properties like vector product).
Should I be worried that I find I have trouble with proofs at my level and should just give up on this too ambitious dream? Or should I become comfortable enough once I've explored more maths?
I'm sure this must have been asked before, but I couldn't really find anything specific using the search tool;
I'm a second year maths major and I love maths and would really like to pursue a career in mathematics. My problem is, often I can understand a proof (whether easily or not depends on the proof and tools used); what I find frustrating is that I very often could probably never contruct such proofs! And I heard somewhere or read on these forums that I should be trying and most importantly be able to prove theorems, corollaries, lemmas and such already. Now ofcourse I try to prove things I come across, but I very often find I have trouble with it. Some books like set theory or discrete maths ones have preliminary chapters explaining proof strategies and such; and while they certainly provide some practice, it still remains mind-boggling when I try to go about a proof myself in other theorems which require more abtract thinking (so I'm not talking about trivial proofs of the kind where you easily use the definitions used and logically deduce the conclusion; like even no+even no=even no; or proving identities or properties like vector product).
Should I be worried that I find I have trouble with proofs at my level and should just give up on this too ambitious dream? Or should I become comfortable enough once I've explored more maths?