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On “compilation errors” in mathematical reading, and how to resolve them | What's new

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Updates on my research and expository papers, discussion of open problems, and other maths-related topics. By Terence Tao It is also good to keep in mind that no author is infallible, and that in some cases, the simplest explanation for incomprehension is that there is a typo in the text. For instance, suppose a paper states that “Since is true, is true”, but when one works things out, one cannot quite deduce from , but instead can only achieve a slightly different conclusion . A bit later on in the text, the paper states that “Since is true, then is true”, but again one has difficulty deducing from . Here, the most likely diagnosis is that the author actually meant to write instead of in both places. In a similar spirit, if the paper contains a cryptic comment which you didn’t quite understand, but chose to ignore in order to move on, and then two lines later you find a deduction of a conclusion which you don’t see to be a consequence of the previous statements, then one shoul

On “compilation errors” in mathematical reading, and how to resolve them | What's new What's new Updates on my research and expository papers, discussion of open problems, and other maths-related topics. By Terence Tao Home About Career advice On writing Books Mastodon+ Applets Subscribe to feed On “compilation errors” in mathematical reading, and how to resolve them Computers are notorious for interpreting language in an overly literal fashion; a single misplaced parenthesis in an otherwise flawless piece of software code can cause a computer to halt in utter

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