Understanding math proofs

In his article on mathematical proofs, Marcus du Sautoy raises the issue of the acceptability to
mathematicians of computer-assisted proofs: "the possibility remains that a glitch is hiding somewhere
in the mass of computer code that could kill the proof" (26 August, p 41). The correctness of the proof
is the issue that is usually raised when custom-built programs are used to generate parts of proofs that
would otherwise be beyond human capacity. However, I don't think that this is the only, or even the
main, issue. The ability of humans to understand computer-generated proof steps is, in my opinion, far
more important. Mathematicians want to know not only that a theorem is true, but also why it is true;
they want to mine the proof for new methods that they can add to their own arsenal.

To address the negative reception to his computer-assisted proof of the Kepler conjecture, Thomas
Hales has recruited the assistance of the automatic theorem proving community (to find it, look up
"Flyspeck" on the web). By generating proof steps only via a small core of logical rule applications,
automatic theorem provers provide a high degree of assurance in the correctness of their proofs.
Hales's Flyspeck project is making steady progress. It will be interesting to see how well its computer-
generated proof is received by the mathematical community. Despite its almost certain correctness, it
will still be huge, making human understandability just as daunting a challenge.

Du Sautoy is wrong when he claims that mathematicians are used to 100 per cent certainty. At a 2004
Royal Society meeting on the nature of mathematical proof, Michael Aschbacher, an expert on the
classification of finite, simple groups, claimed that the probability of an error in the proof of this
classification was 1. This certainty of error has not persuaded Aschbacher, nor any of his colleagues,
to abandon this proof. In fact, a tolerance of minor or correctable errors is normal in mathematics. This
also suggests that it is not the correctness of computer proofs that is the main obstacle to their
acceptability.

A simple corrollary to the undecidability of provability suggests that there is no limit to the size of proof
that mathematicians must cope with, even if they limit themselves to short, simple theorems. So either
large areas of mathematics must be abandoned as beyond the scope of humans, or computers must
be enlisted to assist with the generation of huge proofs. This puts a premium on enlisting computer
science techniques for presenting such proofs in a way that humans can explore them and achieve
some level of understanding.