How to use “proof by contradiction” in an induction proof

inductionlogic

I am wondering how I can show the second statement as a proof by contradiction:
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Do I have something like

$(\begin{align}\forall n\geq n_{0}:A(n)\implies A(n+1)\end{align})\iff(\forall n\geq n_{0}:A(n)\land\neg A(n+1))$

or is it

$(\begin{align}\forall n\geq n_{0}:A(n)\implies A(n+1)\end{align})\iff(\exists n_{1}<n_{0}\in\mathbb{N}:A(n)\land\neg A(n+1))$?

I am not sure how to negate the statment. Many thanks in advance!

Best Answer

I like to think of proof by induction as a proof by contradiction that the set of counterexamples of our statement must be empty. Assume the set of counterexamples of $A(n): C= \{n \in \Bbb N \mid \lnot A(n) \}$ is non-empty. Then $C$ is a non-empty set of non-negative integers, so it has to have a smallest element, $k$.

We prove directly that $A(0)$ is true so we know that $0$ can't be the least element of $C$; i.e., $k \neq 0$. Therefore $k$ must have the form $m+1$ for some $m \in \Bbb N$. Since $m \notin C$ (because by assumption $k=m+1$ is the least element of $C$ and $m \lt m+1$), we know that $A(m)$ holds. But in our inductive step we've proved that $A(m) \Rightarrow A(m+1)$, so since we know $A(m)$ holds, the proof of the inductive step tells us that $A(m+1)$ also holds. But that contradicts $m+1=k \in C$.

Therefore, our initial assumption that $C \neq \varnothing$ must be false and our set of counterexamples must be empty; in other words, $A(n)$ holds $\forall n \in \Bbb N$.