
Ask HN: What's an unsolved problem in your field? - Nirvash
There might be several different categories of problems, from the literal &quot;unsolved&quot; (i.e. mathematics &#x2F; physics) to systemic (i.e. human resources &#x2F; advertising).<p>Some examples that come to mind:<p><pre><code>    Brand Influencer — &quot;The Algorithm&quot; prevents exposure, sales, etc.

    Customer Service — Explaining warranty status, other than &quot;because it&#x27;s the least we have to do legally&quot;.

    Mathematician — The length of pi is continually increasing, and there doesn&#x27;t appear to be an end.

    Software Engineering — Thoroughly understanding a codebase in a reasonable amount of time.
</code></pre>
Ideally, this would be less of a &quot;here&#x27;s why X field is bad&quot; thought exercise, and more of a &quot;that&#x27;s interesting, I wonder if X problem could be solved&quot; thought exercise.
======
ggambetta
> The length of pi is continually increasing, and there doesn't appear to be
> an end.

Huh? How is this an unsolved problem? It's _known_ that pi is an irrational
number, so it doesn't have an "end". We can always compute more digits. Or did
you mean something different?

~~~
m11a
Not sure on the customer service one either. The same logic means calling
privacy policies a problem because we legally have to follow privacy law?

Warranties are there for consumer protection. Most people know what they're
there for. Even if some people didn't understand it, businesses that treat
warranty as "something we legally have to do" probably don't consider the
confusion about warranty a problem, because clarifying it would make more
people exercise their warranty rights, and hence more costs for them.

Honestly, I don't see how any of the examples, except perhaps the software
engineering one, are problems experienced by businesses that they wish to
solve. Perhaps I'm greatly misunderstanding.

\----

Edit: I think the OP may mean businesses that wish to advertise their warranty
protection better explaining to users what that "end date" means, and what the
warranty offers them. Which I think can be done fairly easily: look at what
Apple does to advertise their warranty protection, or the warranty stickers on
every fridge/washing machine you've ever bought.

Although, Apple tries to upsell AppleCare rather than advertise their legally
mandated "Apple Limited Warranty" and consumer law warranties.

~~~
Nirvash
In regards to warranties, it can be difficult to explain that service will
cost money after a year for instance.

Especially when it's an issue a customer didn't directly cause (i.e.
spontaneous part failure).

------
laurentdc
Software development: creating web CRUD interfaces quickly. Here's the orders
table, here's the customers table, here's the products table. Join them,
present them with a nice UI that scales down to basic smartphones, make some
fields editable, some sortable, some filterable. Now take a subset of the
result and make that its own table with a search form, and so on.

Every solution I've tried is either too narrow (e.g. works on one table or
kind of data only), too broad (too much boilerplate), hard to plug into
existing data without massive ETL (SAP, Oracle APEX..) or cloud-based apps
which are fine for a mom and pop store but basically useless for scenarios
with millions of entries.

~~~
londons_explore
+1 to this.

Code has been written tens of thousands of times to take data from a webform,
put it in a database, and display it on a webpage.

It's about time someone could just put that in a standard, simple, easy to
use, yet extensive, library or service.

Simple things like defining a field on the frontend, in the server API, in the
data model, and again in the database schema should be a thing of the past.

~~~
asdfman123
Well, there's Wordpress, isn't there? You can make a basic web application
pretty quickly with no code.

And there's also MVC platforms that auto generate a lot of code. In ASP.NET
MVC (and many other platforms) you can just define the data fields and it will
generate views, models, controllers and DB scripts automatically.

Which is well and good until you have to process business logic, at which
point you need a developer.

------
pjc50
Mathematics is the best field for this because a list of unsolved problems is
kept, and many of them are relatively easy to explain:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_mathematics)

Chemistry/materials science: room-temperature superconductivity is probably
the big one. There are a whole host of problems in the energy space which
would benefit from improvement; while "electricity+CO2+water => fuel" is
_feasible_ at the moment it's uneconomic. Can it be done at close to the
theoretical minimum energy input in a plant that's scalable and cheap to
build?

IC design: is continually solving previously unsolved problems like EUV
lithography, but has struggled for years with trying to go "3D" to overcome
density issues. Also, is photonic computing feasible and would it achieve
lower energy usage?

~~~
londons_explore
> electricity+CO2+water => fuel

Considering fuel => electricity+CO2+water is financially viable today, the
reverse can never be financially viable unless the prices of the inputs and
outputs shift quite a bit...

~~~
pjc50
There are times and places where electricity has a negative price, and
potentially a carbon pricing scheme could subsidise taking it out of the air.
But a big factor in this is the cost of the plant; nobody's going to spend
£100m on a plant that runs 5% of the year. Hence the desire to simplify the
process.

The US navy also has a use for this: at-sea refuelling of planes and other
ships from the spare power from the nuclear aircraft carrier.

------
btbuildem
Software development: how to make realistic estimates, and deliver a solution
on time.

~~~
Taek
Only possible if you don't do anything novel. If you are building a website
that's got all the same patterns as the previous 5 websites you've built, then
you can provide a solid estimate and deliver on time.

If you're building something that nobody has ever made before, you've got
unknown unknowns, and your best bet is intuition, which is inevitably going to
miss the mark a bit.

~~~
deepsun
And if you repeat something 5 times, you probably already started automating
that anyway.

------
linguae
Here is a problem that I've been thinking about for some time: suppose I
express using some type of logic that I want the shortest path between two
vertices of a graph. Given this logical description of the problem, is it
possible for a computer program to emit Dijkstra's algorithm or some other
efficient algorithm? One of the things that have interested me lately is logic
programming, but I'm wondering if there has been any research done on using
logic programming as a means of algorithmic discovery? What are the
theoretical limitations of doing this? It took bright minds to come up with
the various graph algorithms that we use today, and so I'm assuming there's a
fundamental limitation that makes it difficult to convert declarative
expressions of a problem into specific efficient algorithms.

~~~
kawzeg
I remember minikanren being able to generate expressions that evaluate to a
value.

In general, I guess the search space of all algorithms that might or might not
solve a problem is simply extremely huge, so you'd need some good heuristics
to find an interesting algorithm.

I can't think of any reason why there would be a theoretical limit on this,
but I'm no expert in this.

------
azhenley
CS Education - Virtually everything is unsolved. How do we teach people how to
code? What is the progression? Do we teach them how to "think" algorithmically
first or just dive into a specific language? How do we assess their learning?
Which skills are transferable?

~~~
asdfman123
Is CS education a problem to be solved or is it an art? I think techies get
spoiled by how clean mathematics and technical solutions can be. But people
are complex and perhaps the only solution is intuition developed over years of
experience.

I'm not saying some ways of teaching aren't preferable to others -- obviously,
lectures and hands on teaching is better than just throwing high school
students a Dennis Ritchie book and telling them to come back in a year. Just
that there's no "one size fits all" answer. (Unless I misunderstand what
you're asking.)

~~~
azhenley
I would say it is as solvable as most areas of psychology. The goal isn't to
unveil a "one size fits all" answer, but rather to understand what works
better in what situations and why. The progression of knowledge is generally
from a craft to an evidence-based science.

------
volodymyrs
Physics: Quantum Gravity - Quantum Field Theory does not combine well with
General Relativity

Physics/Astrophysics/Cosmology: Dark Matter and Dark Energy - are clearly
observed, no satisfactory explanation exists.

Astrophysics (and Science in general?): very knowledgable specialized domain
experts have issues learning from each other: too many different concepts,
relations, methods. Even if universe is shared, representations are not easy
to map on it at once. Astrophysics is especially bad in this.

------
my_username_is_
Mechanical Engineering - Navier Stokes equation in 3D. This is the equation
that governs fluid flow, so finding a solution in 3 dimensions should allow
models & simulations to become far more accurate.

This is our version of P=NP, and similarly, there's a $1M prize for finding a
solution.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier–Stokes_existence_and_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier–Stokes_existence_and_smoothness)

------
Balgair
Optics: Closing the computation to hardware gap. Yes, it is a 'solved'
science, very much so, decades in fact. We still struggle mightily in making
anything practical out of the equations. It's a bit backwards from most
engineering. With bridges and milk-jugs we can get pretty close on paper to
the actual product. With optics, we kinda get the theory after we've built it
and made the light/photons go all wiggly. It's tough stuff, but would be very
useful.

Mathematics: A generalized solution to n-order partial differential equations.
Laplace, Chebyshev, Hamilton, Wave equations, sure, ok, yes. But I mean _any_
n-order partial differential, not the 'lucky' cases. You get that, and you've
solved a great deal of the outstanding problems in other fields
(hydrodynamics, optics, economics, turbulence). I'm not sure up to date on
this, and it may have been proved that a general solution is actually
impossible, but I'm not sure.

Physics: Braver grad students. Quantum Gravity is a long was off, we need
_much_ bigger machines or a constellation of satellites that use the sky as
the particle accelerator. As such, having these brilliant minds labor on
obscure portions on some niche interpretation of physics, well, it's useless
really. The data will make it all clear as day, whenever the data gets here.
Until then, the grad students need to be braver and strike out on their own,
leaving the golden age behind. We need them to work on other things. I know
that's tough as nails, but I think it's what is needed. Great work has been
done in neuroscience by physicists (despite their best efforts :P), and the
quants on Wall Street are a meme now. More of that, but in, I dunno, weaving
or something.

------
hexadec
Information Security: getting people to classify data properly. Everything
ends up as the default classification or set to public so they can send
privileged data over email.

Also, having some agreement on code scanning. Every time security settles on a
code scanning tool, engineering gets a million findings. This results in
arguing about whether potential risks are actually vulnerabilities rather than
improving security.

------
superhuzza
User Research - What's the best way to deal with loads of qualitative data?
There are different approaches but all of them have problems.

~~~
jayp
I’ve recently started working on documenting (still very, very early) on
“measuring” user feedback at
[https://datadriventeam.org](https://datadriventeam.org) after having 50+
conversations about it with various startup founders/leaders. It is backed by
an open source GitHub repo and I hope people would contribute once I’ve gotten
the initial version ironed out.

~~~
superhuzza
Right, what you're describing there is basically a framework to do content
analysis ( with quotes as units of meaning, and tags instead of codes).

It's definitely an appropriate strategy in a lot of cases. But sometimes it
just doesn't capture what matters (e.g. the pure counts of how often an issue
comes up =/= the severity of the issues).

To have a better sense of how people feel, you could do thematic analysis. But
then you sort of lose the counts. Or you can pick and choose the most
important situations and start writing scenarios. I guess my point is that
content analysis is just one of many strategies, in the same way that boiling
potatoes is just one way to prepare them.

Anyways I'm not trying to put down your work, I think the website could help
people feel more at ease with qualitative data. I'd be eager to contribute
once you're ready for other contributors. Feel free to send me a message and
I'll happily write some stuff up.

------
dustingetz
Programmer here, nothing is solved.

------
Nextgrid
Getting non-technical people to pay for software.

~~~
asdfman123
There's a solution to that: build something that clearly solves a real problem
that they're facing.

~~~
Nextgrid
Let's take a real example: a friend is reusing the same stupid & insecure
password everywhere, tweaks it with random numbers and letters to pass
password strength requirements and of course forgets it minutes later, so she
has to go through the password recovery flow every single time.

1Password is ~30$ _a year_ , and yet there's no way to convince her of paying
for it. This is a person that's employed full time and that otherwise spends
unreasonable amounts of money on hoarding clothing she's not even wearing so
it's not like money is an issue.

------
dschadd
I work in logistics building a transportation management system. Our
unsolvable question is not technical - how do you get trucking companies to
use technology? It is more unsolvable than the 7 Bridges of Koningsberg.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
You show them that they can make more money by using technology. Out of
several thousand trucking companies, a few will try it. _If it pays off for
them_ , then some more will try it.

And, really, if it doesn't pay off for the few that try it, why should the
rest use it?

------
austincheney
Here are some that come to mind:

* Professional Software Developer Certification. Software developers do not have an industry recognized certification or accreditation program. Every other professional industry has this. Truck drives have this. Here are some specialized subcategories.
    
    
        - Web Development
        - Security Remediation
        - Operating Systems and Systems Automation
        - Applied Mathematics Applications
        - Data Management
    

* Heat Energy as Electricity. We waste and expend so much energy in the form of heat that could, if captured and stored, be converted to electricity.

* Energy Efficient Hydrogen Capture from Water. Currently it takes more energy the shatter a water molecule than you would gain from burning the resulting hydrogen. Liquefied hydrogen is a wonder fuel whose energy efficient combustion yields water as its waste product and could power spacecraft deep in space.

* Obesity. Obesity is caused by a combination of 3 things: insufficient exercise, preference for carbs over fats as the primary energy source, and unhealthy fat sources. The third one can be solved with a combination of science, agriculture, and economics.

* Mental Health Therapy. There are a tremendous number of people who need mental healthy medicine but never get it (for many reasons). By tremendous I mean an utterly astonishingly significant percentage of the population. Those who do get medicine are often prescribed drugs instead of therapy when therapy is generally more effective and doesn't have negative side effects. Also the sheer quantity of mental health medications is detectable in the public water supply.

* Rapid Oil Metabolism. Oil is a necessary part of the modern economy. Crude oil is refined to make plastics, and so it will be with us well into the future. Oil spills are nasty though. It would be nice if there were micro-organisms that could consume oil so that oil pools could be removed organically in months instead of decades/centuries.

* Space Entry. We are currently limited to using rockets to enter space (or exit Earth). That is horribly fuel inefficient. Any alternative would most certainly be cleaner and more energy efficient, but there aren't alternatives yet.

~~~
simonw
Truck driving doesn't change a great deal. Software development still changes
on an annual basis. As such, it feels to me that certification would go out of
date extremely quickly.

~~~
austincheney
Law and pharmaceuticals change substantially faster than technology does, so
that strikes me as a weak counter-argument.

Contrarily the bed rock of most web technology standards were solidified
1998-2001 and yet most web developers have no idea how these things work
without a mountain of abstraction to do it for them. This indicates speed of
change isn't a considerable barrier in that example.

------
simonw
In Python education: Getting new language learners to a functional local
development environment as quickly and painlessly as possible.

"Just use Anaconda/pipenv/the-Python-installer/Docker/etc" isn't a great
answer, because they probably tried one of those six months ago, got into a
weird state and can't remember what it did or where it put things.

Obligatory XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/1987/](https://xkcd.com/1987/)

~~~
oauea
Let their first lesson be that they are responsible for their own machine. If
they installed crap without being able to fix it or even remembering what they
did, then they'll have to reformat and start over. Suggest they keep notes
this time around.

~~~
simonw
Learning to program is intimidating enough already without telling people
they'll have to reformat!

------
TomGullen
Perhaps in software sales, why customers didn't choose to buy. It's a lot
easier to poll customers on why they chose to buy once they did as you have
their contact info.

------
syockit
Energy simulation: whether a convolution using kernel A on top of a
thresholded convolution using kernel B can be represented using just one
convolution using kernel C.

i.e. with H as Heaviside operator, T the threshold, and * the convolution
operator, prove that the following can hold for some kernels A,B,C and signal
D:

A * H[B * D-T] = C*D

~~~
FiatLuxDave
Not C * (D-T)? If the idea is to combine the thresholding and the kernel
wouldn't it be easier to start with combining B and T first? E.g. B * D-T = B'
* D?

Once you have two kernels (no thresholding), combining them is fairly
straightforward, I think (assuming no singularities). However, I primarily
work with straight convolutions for signal processing, not thresholded
convolutions, so maybe I am missing something. If so, I'd be happy to learn
more!

~~~
syockit
The notation B * D - T is simply there to denote the threshold, but
nevertheless combining B * D - T can done. A convolution with a constant
yields another constant[1]. You can find another constant T' such that T' * D
= T, and with the linearity of convolution operator, you get B' = B - T'.

Combining two kernels is straightforward indeed. You just convolve them
together. This is possible because convolution is commutative.

The problem is when the thresholding operation is introduced. This makes the
whole thing nonlinear. So far, the best way to calculate it (now I'm talking
about 2D convolution) get a derivative form out of the kernel in order to
apply Kelvin-Stokes theorem by tracing along the contour of the thresholded
convolution.

[1]
[https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1054165/convolution...](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1054165/convolution-
theorem-involving-a-constant)

------
jasonpeacock
Fair, effective, and efficient technical interviews.

IMO, the best solution is probationary hiring (e.g. 3mo contract-to-hire), but
that means you have to leave your current job first and then spend the next
year bouncing through a number of "temp" jobs until you find a good fit.

------
ace32229
Credit modelling: How to predict if someone will pay us back or not (probably
an unsolvable problem)

~~~
oli5679
I have some experience working on this problem.

These Kaggle kernels contain interesting feature engineering and tuning
strategies [https://www.kaggle.com/c/home-credit-default-
risk](https://www.kaggle.com/c/home-credit-default-risk).

This is nice if you have a single feature that rank-orders well and you would
like to calibrate
[https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2020/isotonic_python_pack...](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2020/isotonic_python_package.html)

As long as you have collected data on outcomes that contains more than 100
defaults, with covariates that would allow an informed expert to distinguish
between higher and lower risk transactions, it's often possible to be more
accurate than an informed expert on this problem.

------
krapp
Replacing the few human employees remaining with robots. Or possibly some sort
of genetically engineered ape/dog hybrid. Whichever is cheaper, and has less
legal red tape.

------
clircle
Statistics: How do we quantify evidence for a hypothesis from data?

Examples: p-values, Bayes Factors, credible regions, a likelihood ratio. These
are all quite different!

------
23B1
IT - easy automated governance for non-technical folks

------
architrathi
With so many data privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA, etc) propping up across
geographies, how do i make sure that my company is in legal compliance and
doing right by our customers data.

~~~
m11a
There's a lot of GDPR consultants milking your company's cash for this.

Also probably a lot of articles on privacy law across the world, available
free. For sales tax/VAT around the world, for example, avalara.com has
comprehensive information and monthly newsletters for free.

Generally, you can't go wrong by just doing the right thing. GDPR is nothing
excessive. Businesses that weren't being awful before GDPR are probably in the
clear after GDPR too; they just need to update their privacy policies.

Not to mention: if you can't afford a consultant, you probably aren't large
enough to be targeted by the regulators on tiny bits either. If you're acting
in good faith, at least the European regulators will cut you a break and just
tell you what to improve, without penalty, if you're ever flagged.

------
lavoiems
Can systematic compositionality be achieved by a connectionist approach?

------
earthboundkid
How to earn money as a publisher with online advertising.

------
faehnrich
printers

~~~
pjc50
Easier to make a whole society paperless than fix the printers.

------
pinkfoot
Accounts receivable.

