The Direct proof reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Direct proof

In mathematics, a direct proof is a way of showing the truth or falsehood of a given statement by a straightforward combination of established facts, usually existing lemmas and theorems, without making any further assumptions. In contrast, an indirect proof begins with certain hypothetical scenarios and then proceed to eliminate the uncertainties in each of these scenarios until an inescapable conclusion is forced.

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