B.5.QD:8 - Common Anti-Patterns and How to Avoid Them

Failure	Repair
Appending exceptions until a refuted claim survives, while losing the original use.	Follow the counterexample’s failed relation; formulate the condition or obstruction that helps answer the working question.
Treating a failed lemma as a refutation of the main conjecture.	Recover which argument used the lemma and what remains undecided; investigate an alternative step where useful.
Generating many syntactic variants and counting them as progress.	Work a variation that changes an available construction, an answer or a useful distinction.
Asking for a unique prediction from information shared by physically different continuations.	Exhibit the differing cases; obtain sufficient state information or return a useful bound.
Discarding a successful operation after it gives the requested number.	Recover its relation to inputs and outputs when another use could benefit, as with cumulative totals.
Making proof of eventual usefulness a prerequisite for exploration.	Identify the nearer inquiry or construction the question can enable and compare that contribution with its present cost.