Quote:
Originally Posted by Damian
One think that surprised me was to read that Gauss gave 6 different proofs of the fundamental theorem of algebra. Wasn't one good enough?
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One proof was good enough to show that the result was true, but it's common to produce alternate proofs. They may be more elegant, or they may show connections that were obscure in the original.
There are hundreds of proofs of quadratic reciprocity, half a dozen or more due to Gauss.
