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Non-surveyable proof

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In the philosophy of mathematics, a non-surveyable proof is a mathematical proof that is considered infeasible for a human mathematician to verify and so of controversial validity. The term was coined by Thomas Tymoczko in 1979 in criticism of Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken's computer-assisted proof of the four color theorem, and has since been applied to other arguments, mainly those with excessive case splitting and/or with portions dispatched by a difficult-to-verify computer program. Surveyability remains an important consideration in computational mathematics.