Can anyone clarify why induction method fails for this conjecture?
Why proof by induction fails for Goldbach's conjecture?
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elementary-number-theory
prime-numbers
conjectures
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0@Number Do you want to say that a proof via transfinite induction exists ? Or do I misunderstand your comment ? Or do you refer to Fermat with his last theorem ? – 2018-08-09
1 Answers
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Let's prove the conjecture by induction.
Claim: For every even number $n≥4$, there exist primes $p$ and $q$ such that $p+q=n$.
Base case: $n=4$. Let $p=q=2$.
Induction step: Say that we know that the claim is true for every even number $k ≤ n$. We would like to prove that it is true for $n+2$ as well.
We have available for each even number $k≤n$ two primes, $p(k)$ and $q(k)$, with $p(k)+q(k) = k$. We need to find prime numbers $p$ and $q$ with $p+q = n+2$.
At this point I do not know how to proceed. Please help me out. How can I construct the desired $p$ and $q$ here?
Perhaps it can be done. But as far as I know nobody has yet thought of a way to do it.
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1The induction hypothesis in my proof is that the conjecture is true for every even number **up to** $n$. You cannot immediately conclude from this that it is true for $n+2$ also. – 2018-11-07