[leggomylibro]

I had a math teacher in primary school who used to shout with an exaggerated accent, "simple is not the same as easy!" She really wanted to drill the idea into our heads that just because you know exactly how to do something, doesn't mean that it will be quick or easy to accomplish.

Like, for a schoolchild, long division. The rules are simple, but given big enough numbers you'll probably mess up at least once. And then the same thing turns out to be true with algebra, geometry, derivation/integration, and on. It's not a bad mantra.

[Ma8ee]

"It is straightforward to show that..." means that you could probably do it with your current knowledge, but it will take 6 dense pages, four false starts and about a week of focused work.

[bitwize]

I used to joke that when a solution was known to exist the problem was "trivial"; when a solution was not known to exist it was "nontrivial". A problem that's bloody well impossible is "decidedly nontrivial".

[andreareina]

If you were Feynman you'd even call it "elementary"

https://mavenroundtable.io/originalpath/path-helpers/feynman...

[hinkley]

'You' being personified here, rather than the general you.

Straightforward tends to suggest we don't have to have a bunch of meetings about it, because the right person either has the knowledge or we know precisely where to get it.

[Ma8ee]

It depends on the context. I had the math professor lecturing her students in mind.

[MaxBarraclough]

Like the joke about writing math textbooks.

Forgotten the proof? Not a problem. The proof of this is elementary and is left as an exercise for the reader.

[amboo7]

https://arxiv.org/abs/0707.4166 is nice

[mumblemumble]

> I had a math teacher in primary school who used to shout with an exaggerated accent, "simple is not the same as easy!"

I can imagine no more poetic description of the experience of reading Wolfram's A New Kind of Science.

[paggle]

Can you elaborate?