A Classic Joke Proof

While this may stretch the stated point of this blog, I’m ultimately the one in control, and I’ll decide what gets posted here. And I think it’s really funny and would be fun to write up.

I am nowhere near the first person who has ever told this joke.

For all , .

For real numbers , such that , suppose that . We have that .

By Fermat’s last theorem, we have are not both integers, and hence that cannot be rational (it obviously implies aren’t both integers, but how does it imply that they aren’t both rational? Think on this…).

Unfortunately, I have not yet read and understood Wiles’ proof of FLT, so I do not know if this is a circular argument.