Which of the following statements is true ?

The nature of mathematics is best understood as a living, logically structured discipline rather than a fixed body of facts. It grows through intuition and conjecture as much as through formal proof, it distinguishes conceptual and relational understanding from mere procedural computation, and its statements are typically framed as conditional propositions — a set of hypotheses that lead, by logical necessity, to a conclusion.

Testing each statement against this understanding of mathematics settles which one holds:

• Mathematics consists of all the theorems proved in mathematics books — false, because mathematics also includes definitions, axioms, unresolved conjectures and continuing enquiry; the printed theorems are only a record of what has been established so far, not the whole discipline.

• A person good in arithmetical computation is also good in Mathematics and vice-versa — false, because arithmetical computation is a mechanical, procedural skill, while mathematical ability rests on conceptual understanding and reasoning; the two abilities can and do come apart in either direction.

• Intuition has no role in generating mathematical knowledge — false, because mathematicians routinely use intuition and conjecture to anticipate a result well before a formal proof is constructed for it; intuition drives discovery even though rigorous argument is still needed to justify the result.

• Mathematical statements can be conditional — true, because mathematics is built from definitions, axioms and hypotheses, and most of its theorems are stated as implications: a given set of conditions leading to a conclusion.

A familiar example confirms this: the statement ‘If a triangle has two equal sides, then it has two equal angles’ is exactly an if–then proposition, and this conditional form recurs across geometry, arithmetic and algebra. The other three claims each fail on a single counter-example — an unsolved conjecture like the Riemann Hypothesis shows mathematics is not confined to proved theorems, a slow-calculating research mathematician shows computation and mathematical reasoning can separate, and intuition-led results (such as those of Srinivasa Ramanujan) show intuition’s central role in discovery.

Hence, among the given statements, the one about mathematical statements being conditional is the correct description of the nature of mathematics.