Proof Symbol Analysis

CLAIRE: […] You wrote this incredible thing and you didn’t tell anyone?

CATHERINE: I’m telling you both now. After I dropped out of school I had nothing to do. I was depressed, really depressed, but at a certain point I decided, Fuck it, I don’t need them. It’s just math, I can do it on my own. So I kept working here. I worked at night, after Dad had gone to sleep. It was hard but I did it. […]

CLAIRE: Catherine, I’m sorry but I just find this very hard to believe.

HAL: I’ll tell them we’ve found something, something potentially major, we’re not sure about the authorship; I’ll sit done with them. We’ll go through the thing carefully […] and figure out exactly what we’ve got. It would only take a couple of days, probably, and then we’d have a lot more information. […]

CATHERINE: You can’t take it …] You don’t waste any time, do you? No hesitation. You can’t wait to show them your brilliant discovery.

HAL: I’m trying to determine what this is.

CATHERINE: I’m telling you what it is.

HAL: You don’t know!

CATHERINE: I wrote it.

HAL: I’m a mathematician […] I know how hard it would be to come up with something like this. I mean it’s impossible. You’d have to be…you’d have to be your dad, basically. Your dad at the peak of his powers.

CATHERINE: I’m a mathematician too.

HAL: Not like your dad.

CATHERINE: Oh, he’s the only one who could have done this?

HAL: The only one I know.

HAL: […] Your dad dated everything. Even his most incoherent entries he dated. There are no dates in this.

CATHERINE: The handwriting—

HAL: —looks like your dad’s. Parents and children sometimes have similar handwriting, especially if they’ve spent a lot of time together.

HAL: Come on, Catherine. I’m trying to correct things.

CATHERINE: You can’t. Do you hear me?

You think you’ve figured something out? You run over here so pleased with yourself because you changed your mind. Now you’re certain. You’re so…sloppy. You don’t know anything. The book, the math, the dates, the writing, all that stuff you decided with your buddies, it’s just evidence. It doesn’t finish the job. It doesn’t prove anything.

HAL: Okay, what would?

CATHERINE: Nothing.

You should have trusted me.