Discrtete math proof by contradiction problem I have the following problem that I must prove by CONTRADICTION:
"Show that if you pick three socks from a drawer containing just blue socks and black socks, you must get either a pair of blue socks or a pair of black socks."
I started to solve it writing 2 propositions:
p: I pick three socks from a drawer containing just blue socks and black socks.
q: I get either a pair of blue socks or a pair of black socks.
The normal conditional statement can be: p -> q.
Now, to prove by contradiction I have to start from: (not p -> q)
My book says that in order to negate a proposition (p in this case) I should write: "It is not the case that I pick three socks from a drawer containing just blue socks and black socks." Or I can also write "I do not pick three socks from a drawer containing just blue socks and black socks". I see that if I do not pick 3 socks then I can pick less than 3 or more than 3 or none at all.
How can I interpret this new statement? 
How can I start the solution?
 A: To begin by contradiction of the statement "if $P$ then $Q$," you suppose $P$ and not $Q$ and show there's something wrong with that. 
From a formal logic perspective, you take as a temporary premise $P$ and then as a temporary premise $\lnot Q$, and arrive at a contradiction. Once you're at a contradiction, you can dismiss $\lnot Q$ in favor of $Q$, and then close your conditional as if $P$ then $Q$. 
In this case, you say "Suppose I pick three socks out of the drawer, and I get neither a blue pair nor a black pair."
From there, can you argue that you must have some kind of contradiction?
A: The proof is of the form P -> Q, where P is 'Pick 3 socks from drawer' and Q is 'pair of blue socks OR pair of black socks '. Now we can use contra positive to prove notQ -> notP.
notQ - 'number of blue socks <=1 AND number of black socks <=1'
since drawer only contains blue and black socks, we can only pick blue+black socks, but 
blue + black <= 2.
therefore we can't pick 3 socks from drawer , which is notP.
therefore notQ -> notP or in other words P -> Q
A: We can prove this using the method of contradiction.
We assume that we neither get a pair of blue socks nor do we get a pair of black socks, i.e., the number of blue socks we get is less than or equal 1 and the number of black socks is also less than or equal to 2.
If a is the number of blue socks and b is the number of black socks that we get, a<=1 and b<=1.
Since there are only two types of socks, adding the two we get:
a + b <= 2.
The maximum number of socks we can pick to get a<=1 and b<=1 is 2.
But since we pick three socks, three is not less than or equal to 2. Therefore our supposition was wrong, and the proof by contradiction is complete.
A: With a proof by contradiction, we assume that the statement is false, and show that this leads to a contradiction (i.e. something that is false). In your case, we want to prove the statement: $\textbf{If}$ I pick three socks from a drawer that contains only blue and black socks $\textbf{then}$ I get either a blue or a black pair. The negation of this statement is that there is a way to pick three socks such that that are no (blue or black) pairs. If we assume that this is true, then we can have at most one black and at most one blue sock. That we have at most one black sock implies that we have at least two blue socks, which is a contradiction with the statement that we only have at most one blue sock.
A: Hopefully this is helpful - if it gets down voted would appreciate how I could improve it. 
Let $n = x +y $ and $n$ be of the domain socks, $x$ be of the domain blue socks, $y$ be of the domain black socks, and $P(n)$ represent number of socks picked from a drawer. The statement could be represented as:
$$P(n) \to \exists x \exists y(x>(n-2) \lor y>(n-2))$$
To prove by contradiction would need to show that $p \land \lnot q \equiv \mathbf F$
Let $p = P(n)$ and $\lnot q =\forall x \forall y(x\le (n-2) \land y \le (n-2))$ you can prove $\lnot q \equiv \mathbf F$ by substituting $y = n-x$
$\lnot q =\forall x \forall y(x\le (n-2) \land (n-x \le n-2))$
Simplified to
$\lnot q =\forall x \forall y(x\le (n-2) \land x \ge 2)$ 
Substituting for $n=3$ means that $\lnot q =\forall x \forall y(x\le 1 \land x \ge 2) \equiv \mathbf F$ as $x$ cannot be both less than or equal to 1, and greater than or equal to 2. 
