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A mathematician uses first person plural in proofs to suggest to the reader that they are on a journey together. This is not dissimilar to Virgil guiding Dante through the Inferno.
Paradise awaits.
@masonporter But we have to meet Beatrice first.
Would kinda prefer Statius guiding us through Purgatory, or better yet Beatrice guiding us through Paradiso.
(she/her) @ProfKinyon sharing this with my physics grad student kiddo
"I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost."
@johncarlosbaez @ProfKinyon Just take the Fourier transform and work in spectrum space.
@ProfKinyon yeah, remember my “Analysis I” lecturer being like “now, we’d like to proof that…” and I’m like “whoever that we is, it doesn’t include me!”
@mb21 @ProfKinyon Or, "of course I'd like to prove that, but right now I'm tired enough to just take your word for any proposition that sounds plausible".
In Analysis I, everything sounds kinda plausible. But I remember reading the original works of Euler and getting surprised how sloppy their proofs at the time often were. "Uniform convergence? Never heard of it."
@ProfKinyon ricky loves ricky
@ProfKinyon as one can easily see...
@ProfKinyon Video game streamers do this and I fucking hate it. Some of them even show a live picture-in-picture of their cat, yet they still haven't figured out what academia has known for ages …
@ProfKinyon Did you the know of the Poul Anderson Novel 'Operation Chaos' in which the protagonists are led through a literal non-Euclidean version of hell by the spirits of the mathematicians Bolyai and Lobachevsky?
Huh, I always thought of this usage of "we" being akin to how "you" and "they" can be either singular or plural, while I, he, she, it, and thou are strictly singular.
@ProfKinyon What are you saying about my proofs?
I’ve always interpreted that style of writing like:
‘The author sternly looks the reader in the eye and says “Doctor Black and I have concluded…”’
@ProfKinyon Wiles proof of Fermat's Last Theorem representing all nine circles?
@ProfKinyon technically, all scientists, and not only for that (pluralis modestiae), but I like this explanation.