Reading, Writing, and Proving

You are probably about to teach or take a “?rst course in proof techniques,” or maybe you just want to learn more about mathem- ics. No matter what the reason, a student who wishes to learn the material in this book likes mathematics, and we hope to keep it that way. At this point, students have an intuitive sense of why things are true, but not the exposure to the detailed and critical thinking necessary to survive in the mathematical world. We have written this book to bridge this gap. In our