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I quote a passage from Ted Sundstrom's Mathematical Reasoning: Writing and Proof:

A note about Definitions: Technically, a definition in Mathematics should almost always be written using "if and only if". It is not clear why, but the convention in mathematics is to replace the phrase "if and only if" with an "if" or an equivalent. Perhaps this is a bit of laziness or the "if and only if" phrase can be a bit cumbersome. In this text we will often use the phrase "provided that" instead

The author goes on to provide an example of a definition:

A nonzero integer $m$ divides an integer n provided that $(\exists q \in \mathbb Z)(n=m\cdot q)$

I have a couple of questions:

  • I don't really buy that the use of an equivalent to substitute "if and only if" is due to "a bit of laziness". Which one should it be for a formal (i.e. syntactically well defined/formal) definition?
  • How would I write the definition above symbolically using the appropriate syntax?
user32882
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