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on Apr 18th 2000, 08:15:18, Ciccan wrote the following about 'mathematics'
> However, Mathematicians have no respect whatsoever for Computer Science.
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The Mathematicians often have the, sometimes all-too-true, opinion that they're the only ones who care about actual rigor.
Most people don't care whether there's a complicated constructed counterexample to their general claim, whether their definitions are clear and capture what they intend, or whether they have a proof rather than just something that makes the claim seem highly likely. Mathematicians don't allow themselves this kind of pragmatism. If their efforts have any value at all, it lies in their nearly obsessive intellectual rigor, which allows no guesswork or »close enough«.
However, even mathematicians make use of handwaving in their practical work. They are not at the top of the chain when it comes to rigor. If you feel like it and want to see something nearby the top, visit »Metamath«. There, you can inspect mathematical proofs that make every single step, no matter how trivial, explicit.
Every step has actually been checked by a computer, actually by more than one computer.
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