Ask HN: How to learn mathematical proofs from scratch?
by greymalik on Hacker News.
Where can I find an exceedingly gentle introduction to writing proofs? My math education is limited to non-AP high school classes many years ago. I’m now trying to relearn what I’ve forgotten (and then go beyond that) so I would like to grasp the underlying principles rather than only doing rote exercises to memorize techniques for getting answers without deeply understanding what’s behind those techniques. But I need to start with really, really simple proofs that explain the very basic techniques. For example, I know things like (ab)^c = abc, and that I can solve for x in x/a = b/c by cross multiplying so that xc = ab, but I can’t prove either of those things. How do I learn to develop their formal proofs? Any of the texts I’ve seen so far are much too advanced for me.