As practiced, a proof is expressed in natural language and is a rigorous argument intended to convince the audience of the truth of a statement. The standard of rigor is not absolute and has varied throughout history. A proof can be presented differently depending on the intended audience. In order to gain acceptance, a proof has to meet communal statements of rigor; an argument considered vague or incomplete may be rejected.

The concept of a proof is formalized in the field of mathematical logic. A formal proof is written in a formal language instead of a natural language. A formal proof is defined as sequence of formulas in a formal language, in which each formula is a logical consequence of preceding formulas. Having a definition of formal proof makes the concept of proof amenable to study. Indeed, the field of proof theory studies formal proofs and their properties, for example, the property that a statement has a formal proof. An application of proof theory is to show that certain undecidable statements are not provable.

The definition of a formal proof is intended to capture the concept of proofs as written in the practice of mathematics. The soundness of this definition amounts to the belief that a published proof can, in principle, be converted into a formal proof. However, outside the field of automated proof assistants, this is rarely done in practice. A classic question in philosophy asks whether mathematical proofs are analytic or synthetic. Kant, who introduced the analytic–synthetic distinction, believed mathematical proofs are synthetic.

Proofs may be viewed as aesthetic objects, admired for their mathematical beauty. The mathematician Paul Erdős was known for describing proofs he found particularly elegant as coming from "The Book", a hypothetical tome containing the most beautiful method(s) of proving each theorem. The book "Proofs from THE BOOK", published in 2003, is devoted to presenting 32 proofs its editors find particularly pleasing.

Inductive logic proofs and Bayesian analysis
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