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Erschienen in:
2009 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel
Without Loss of Generality
verfasst von : John Harrison
Erschienen in: Theorem Proving in Higher Order Logics
Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
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One sometimes reads in a mathematical proof that a certain assumption can be made ‘without loss of generality’ (WLOG). In other words, it is claimed that considering what first appears only a special case does nevertheless suffice to prove the general result. Typically the intuitive justification for this is that one can exploit symmetry in the problem. We examine how to formalize such ‘WLOG’ arguments in a mechanical theorem prover. Geometric reasoning is particularly rich in examples and we pay special attention to this area.