

Ask HN - Can any mathematicians help me out? - tren

I've created a site that allows people to post math and science problems for money, the problem is I don't have enough mathematicians to solve the problems. Here is an example of a question for $500 - http://zombal.com/zomb/scientific-calculation/relevance-equation-formula-for-comparing-objects . If anyone thinks they could answer this guy's question or knows of anyone who could, please take a look.
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revorad
See if you can advertise on <http://mathoverflow.net>

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tren
Thanks, I'll try that out

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cjg
This seems more like a computer science question to me.

It can be thought of as a k-nearest-neighbour problem. The exact details of
his problem could be expressed as a metric.

What he is asking for is naively trivial; compare the target to every object
and see which ones are closest. If you want decent performance with large
datasets, however, you would be better off using a more sophisticated
approach. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-nearest_neighbor_algorithm> for
more details.

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mooism2
It doesn't say $500 on the page you link to, it says Q500.

The site only pays out in USD, so I'm not interested. Try reposting when
America wakes up?

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muyyatin
The question looks extraordinarily vague. It doesn't seem to be written by
someone with a large amount of math knowledge, as they want a "variable that
allows us to change the weight given to either half of the equation." where
the weight nor the equation is described.

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tren
Yes it does seem quite vague, but I know he's legitimate as he's bought $500
worth of credits on the site. If you contact him or post a clarification I'm
sure he'll explain what he's after a bit further.

