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by jw2013 4430 days ago
I think the author fails to realize whether saying 'easy' is okay or not really depends on what background your audiences have. For example, in the math class I find the professor saying 'it is trivial to get B from A' is quite okay if the proof of that deduction is something the students have learnt in the lower-level classes. I don't know another way to skip the easy proof without saying it is easy.

If you know how well the person you are talking to know the material you are talking about, then I don't find calling the thing 'easy' is humiliating at all, instead it is a effective way to say "no worries, just do XXX and you are good". A rule of thumb is when you are not sure if it is appropriate to call something easy, just ask the person you are talking to whether he knows that thing. Why stopping using the word 'easy' when we are sure all parties of the conversation gets what you are talking about and think it is indeed easy?
1 comments
npizzolato 4430 days ago
One of my most frustrating experiences in school was a math class with a textbook which would stop explaining examples halfway through because "the rest of this problem is trivial" or so it could be "an exercise for the reader".
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nickflees 4430 days ago
Agreed. I'm also extremely skeptical when classmates, instructors, or co-workers use similar tactics. I have found that, when pressed, they will often reveal that the rest is not nearly as trivial as advertised.
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sitkack 4430 days ago
That definition of trivial is not the one in regular usage.

> A common joke in the mathematical community is to say that "trivial" is synonymous with "proved" — that is, any theorem can be considered "trivial" once it is known to be true. Another joke concerns two mathematicians who are discussing a theorem; the first mathematician says that the theorem is "trivial". In response to the other's request for an explanation, he then proceeds with twenty minutes of exposition. At the end of the explanation, the second mathematician agrees that the theorem is trivial. These jokes point out the subjectivity of judgments about triviality.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triviality_(mathematics)

Trivial doesn't mean easy. Just that it has been shown before or that new information won't be derived in the proof.

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