Sunshine7 wrote:
E.g., deriving Pythagoras' theorem with trigonometric functions. That's a derivation (or logical equivalence) because, strictly speaking, we derived the trigo functions from Pythagoras' theorem (both chronologically and algebraically speaking).
In some higher math texts, though, authors seem quite picky about using the words "proof" and "derivation", with the unspoken connotation that the former is more rigorous than the latter.
Both proofs and derivations are deductive arguments in which the results are inferred logically from the basic postulates of the theory and theorems previously proved. Derivations are more computational that proofs but both are deductive in nature.
ruveyn
25 Jan 2012, 12:27 pm
