This is the first of three sessions by Dr Joel Feinstein on how and why we do proofs.

Dr Feinstein's blog is available at http://explainingmaths.wordpress.com/

The aim of this session is to motivate students to understand why we might want to do proofs, why proofs are important, and how they can help us. In particular, the student will learn the following: proofs can help you to really see WHY a result is true; problems that are easy to state can be hard to solve (Fermat's Last Theorem); so