Q12 - No mathematician today would flatly refuse

[peg_city]

Is there anyway to break the wordy question down?

B and E were easy to rule out because it talked about non-mathematicians.

Thanks

[giladedelman]

Thanks for posting!

I think anytime you're having trouble understanding what you're reading, the key is to think small: start by breaking the passage or stimulus or whatever into its constituent pieces, and focus on understanding those.

Sentence 1: "No mathematician today would flatly refuse to accept" the results of a big calculation as proof of a theorem. In other words, nowadays, every mathematician is at least open to such a calculation being used to prove a theorem.

Sentence 2-3: In 1976, some mathematicians actually would flatly refuse to accept such proof.

Sentence 4: Some mathematicians still believe a simple theorem should have a short proof, but sometimes that's not the case.

So, what can we infer?

(A) is correct because we know from the first sentence that every mathematician today would at least consider accepting these results as proof of a theorem; whether or not they believe a proof should be short is irrelevant.

(B) is incorrect because just because some are mathematicians doesn't mean some are not.

(C) is incorrect because anyone who refuses to accept this kind of proof today would have to be a non-mathematician, and we have no idea what non-mathematicians believe based on the stimulus.

(D) is incorrect for a similar reason: we don't know anything about people who don't have this belief.

(E) has the same problem: we don't know what non-mathematicians think.

Does that help clear this up?

[loopvinny84]

thanks