SAT Humorous Essay Prompt

<p>I saw this “prompt” written by v_enhance as part of a “mock SAT.” Pretty humorous essay topic. Just thought I’d like to share it with you all.</p>

<p>“It is impossible for a cube to be written as a sum of two cubes or a fourth power to be written as a sum of two fourth powers or, in general, for any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as a sum of two like powers. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too small to contain.” - Pierre de Fermat</p>

<p>Assignment: Do there exist nonzero integers x, y, z, and n > 2 such that</p>

<p>x^n + y^n = z^n?</p>

<p>Plan and write an essay in which you prove or disprove Fermat’s conjecture. Supplement your proof with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.</p>

<p>^haha saw that. It’s on AoPS right?</p>

<p>Essay:
Our proof begins with the tautology that either A or not A, which we shall denote by [A] to simplify notation.</p>

<p>Now there are 2 cases. Either Fermat’s Theorem holds true or it doesn’t (A or [A]). We make these our 2 cases:

  1. Fermat’s Last Theorem holds. Then we are done.
  2. Fermat’s Last Theorem does not hold. However, this contradicts the proof presented by Andrew Wiles using Horizontal Iwasawa theory. That proof is valid. Contradiction, thus this case is invalid.</p>

<p>By our earlier stated tautology, 1) must hold true. Thus we are done.</p>

<p>QED</p>

<p>Yeah, I think it’s on AoPS. Nice essay! lol</p>