I have received several responses to my request for proof techniques,
some with pointers, and some with actual "proofs."  But credit goes to
Greg Satz, who dug out of his jokes archive the list that I had in
mind.  The original author is someone named Dana Angluin, for whom no
professional association was given.

  [Johî McCarthy reports that Dana Angluin is now in the Computer Science
  Department at Yale, but probably compiled this list while a graduate
  student at UCB.  -- KIL]

There were a couple of references to the following work:

    Dunmore, Paul V., "The Uses of Fallacy", in R. L. Weber,
    @i{A Random Walk in Science}.  New York: Crane, Russak, & Co. Inc.,
    1973, p. 29.

This contains a similar list of proof techniques.  I haven't looked it
up yet, but I'll report if I find anything of interest.

Here is Dana Angluin's list.
=======================================================================
Proof by example:
  The author gives only the case n=2 and suggests that it contains most
  of the ideas of the general proof.

Proof by intimidation:
  'Trivial.'

Proof by vigorous handwaving:
  Works well in a classroom or seminar setting.

Proof by cumbersome notation:
  Best done with access to at least four alphabets and special symbols.

Proof by exhaustion:
  An issue or two of a journal devoted to your proof is useful.

Proof by omission:
  'The reader may easily supply the details.'
  'The other 253 cases are analogous.'
  '...'

Proof by obfuscation:
  A long plotless sequence of true and/or meaningless syntactically related
  statements.

Proof by wishful citation:
  The author cites the negation, converse, or generalization of a theorem
  from the literature to support his claims.

Proof by funding:
  How could three different government agencies be wrong?

Proof by eminent authority:
  'I saw Karp in the elevator and he said it was probably NP-complete.'

Proof by personal communication:
  'Eight-dimensional colored cycle stripping is NP-complete' [Karp, personal
  commmunication].

Proof by reduction to the wrong problem:
  'To see that infinite-dimensional colored cycle stripping is decidable,
  we reduce it to the halting problem.'

Proof by reference to inaccessible literature:
  The author cites a simple corollary of a theorem to be found in a privately
  circulated memoir of the Slovenian Philological Society, 1883.

Proof by importance:
  A large body of useful consequences all follow from the proposition in
  question.

Proof by accumulated evidence:
  Long and diligent search has not revealed a counterexample.

Proof by cosmology:
  The negation of the proposition is unimaginable or meaningless.  Popular
  for proofs of the existence of God.

Proof by mutual reference:
  In reference A, Theorem 5 is said to follow from Theorem 3 in reference B,
  which is shown to follow from Corollary 6.2 in reference C, which is an
  easy consequence of Theorem 5 in reference A.

Proof by metaproof:
  A method is given to construct the desired proof.  The correctness of the
  method is proved by any of these techniques.

Proof by picture:
  A more convincing form of proof by example.  Combines well with proof by
  omission.

Proof by vehement assertion:
  It is useful to have some kind of authority relation to the audience.

Proof by ghost reference:
  Nothing even remotely resembling the cited theorem appears in the reference
  given.

Proof by forward reference:
  Reference is usually to a forthcoming paper of the author, which is often
  not as forthcoming as at first.

Proof by semantic shift:
  Some standard but inconvenient definitions are changed for the statement
  of the result.

Proof by appeal to intuition:
  Cloud-shaped drawings frequently help here.

------------------------------

Date: 20 Nov 85  2304 PST
Don Woods <DON@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Proof Methodologies

  [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]


The list of proof methodologies also appeared in SIGACT News, v15 #1
(Spring '83).  Incidentally, it omits the one I first heard from RPG, who
suggested the following as the generic form of proof methodology used in
some theological argument or other:

Proof by elimination of the counterexample:
  'Assume for the moment that the hypothesis is true.  Now, let's suppose
  we find a counterexample.  So what?  QED.'

------------------------------

Date: 22 Nov 1985 9:37-PST
From: Soon Yau Kong <soon@su-whitney.ARPA>
Subject: addendum to list of proof methodologies

         [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]


"For the last century no one acquainted with the facts has disputed ...

- An equivalent statement is "I didn't look up the actual facts but
since most people I know think this way,it follows that everyone else
does too".

Also called proof by assumption

-Soon


  [This was in reference to a bboard discussion on evolution.  -- KIL]