Proofs Without Words and Beyond

Overview

In this article we discuss the history and philosophy of the well known Proofs Without Words (PWWs) that have appeared in the MAA's Mathematics Magazine since 1975. We go on to present a new kind of PWW that uses open-source tools like GeoGebra, MathJax, JSXGraph and Processing to create more general, interactive PWWs. We finish with a proposal that Convergence create a regular Proofs Without Words 2.0 column to accommodate these constructions.

Contents

• Introduction
• A Brief History of Proofs Without Words
• Two Perspectives on PWWs as Mathematical Proofs
• Why We Write Proofs
• Proofs Without Words 2.0
• References, Acknowledgments, and About the Authors