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You are referring to https://hrmacbeth.github.io/math2001/01_Proofs_by_Calculatio...

That's hilarious. It's the brick joke, in math. https://plantsarethestrangestpeople.blogspot.com/2012/01/bri... It's a great example, made terrible (for teaching) because the punchline is never explained.

Your excerpt left out key information, which is the secondary hypothesis that am+bn=1

Hint: what are a and b? I won't wait for you to find values that satisfy the hypotheses.

It's the same flavor as: assume a=b+1, and b=a+1. Then a-b=b-a You can prove that p=>q, sometimes, even if p is false. (Especially if p is false!)

A later chapter provides the punchline.

https://hrmacbeth.github.io/math2001/07_Number_Theory.html#t...

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