In the olden days, when I was in school, the textbooks in mathematics teemed with statements that proofs were either trivial or non-trivial. The non-trivial proofs were of things like Fermat's Last Theorem or Tarsky's 7 Test Problems, all open problems, conjectures that had not yet been proved at that time. The ones called trivial were any, no matter how complex the proof, that were left as exercises for the student.
-----Original Message----- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Phil Smith III Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2006 5:51 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: writing color enhanced messes from rexx execs "Wakser, David" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >I believe you meant: NOT trivial - not non-trivial! Um, no...if I'd meant "NOT trivial" I would have written that. "Non-trivial" is a litotes, and as such makes the case more strongly. ...phsiii
