

The unsolved math problem - edw519
http://www.snopes.com/college/homework/unsolvable.asp?

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aneesh
Indeed, students and younger academics are often the ones making the
breakthroughs, simply because they don't know what's "unsolvable".

~~~
rguzman
This is true in some instances, but not generally. I think most advances are
made gradually by very experienced people who understand exactly why things
are "unsolvable" and what paths may be more fruitful.

Secondly, it is doubtful that a student will solve a millennium problem or
make any other advance of that caliber.

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edw519
Reminds me a little of the story of the fleas. They can normally jump 3 ft,
but when the are put in an 18" high container with a lid, they can never jump
more that 18" for the rest of their lives, even when the lid is removed.

Sometimes I wonder how much I let the rest of the world turn me into a flea.

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agentbleu
ignorance is truly bliss

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huhtenberg
How is this relevant to Hacker News ?

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gruseom
Let me see... it's a classic story about a fascinating event in the history of
a field that many people here find interesting and/or have studied. It's about
a creative breakthrough that came about in an unanticipated, nonstandard way -
something very much in the hacker ethos. It's information that many of us
would never have run across if it hadn't been posted here (if it was posted
before, I missed it). It even has a cameo by Knuth!

The story is in fact so relevant to Hacker News that it would be hard to
imagine anything _more_ in the spirit of the site.

The only thing lame about it is the title. The problems were obviously not
unsolvable.

Edit: while I'm at it, a lot of people here are students, or were recently
students, or are lifelong students. Many have spent time in the academic
milieu described in the story and are familiar with this kind of folklore. The
meme of the math professor assigning unsolved problems as homework is a
familiar one.

~~~
huhtenberg
Sure, yeah, there's a Ferma's last theorem as an "extra hard exercise" in
Knuth, a story of Huffman and his codes, device for thin shaving IC for the
purpose of cloning them, etc, etc

It's all part of a standard CompSci folklore package. If you dig into Math or
Physics folklore, there's even more stories. In fact, there are thick books
filled with them. But do you seriously want to see them on a front page ? I
can assure you many of them inspiring and a lot of them are far more "in the
spirit of the site" than this one.

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palish
Yes. I want to see them on the front page.

~~~
poronski
Yes, but not on this site.

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gruseom
From <http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html>: "The focus of Hacker News is
going to be anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes a
lot more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

I can only speak for myself. This story appeals to my intellectual curiosity
an order of magnitude more than the mediocre blogs and transient tech-du-jour
articles that constitute the bulk of what gets posted even here (a site which
is well above average). I would love to see more high-quality historical
material and it boggles my mind how anyone could _not_ find it interesting.

~~~
poronski
There's a lot of things that are interesting. All needs to be taken in
moderation or this place will end up chokeful of Digg-style news.

TOP 10 BESTEST HISTORICAL MATIREAL

OMG .. THE MOST AMAZING URBAN LEGEND YOU READ TODAY !!

etc etc

There's nothing wrong with the orginal story, but if you are after _quality_
anecdotes, then scooping them from an urban legends site should be your last
option.

