I'm preparing a talk for school children (9th year and older) where I would like to explain why proofs are necessary in math. I like to show something that seems "obvious" or can at least be confirmed "without reasonable doubt" with lots of (numerical) examples but is still wrong. My main workhorse for this task is the Mertens conjecture. It is a good example, but maybe it's a tad too complicated and takes too much time to explain. Any ideas for simpler ones? It doesn't have to be number theory but it should be something that doesn't need much background knowledge. Maybe something from graph theory?
2026-04-01 01:58:53.1775008733
"Obvious" but nevertheless wrong?
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