The 23 Toughest Math Questions 340
coondoggie sends in a Network World post that begins "It sounds like a math phobic's worst nightmare or perhaps Good Will Hunting for the ages. Those wacky folks at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency have put out a research request it calls Mathematical Challenges, that has the mighty goal of 'dramatically revolutionizing mathematics and thereby strengthening DoD's scientific and technological capabilities.' The challenges are in fact 23 questions that, if answered, would offer a high potential for major mathematical breakthroughs, DARPA said." Some of the questions overlap with the Millennium Prize Problems of the Clay Mathematics Institute, which each carry a $1M prize.
The answer (Score:5, Funny)
42
Like high school all over again. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Here's a tough one. (Score:5, Funny)
How did the mathematician solve for constipation?
He worked it out with his pencil!
Re:The answer (Score:3, Funny)
I'm rather unhappy that I only got 11 of the 23 right.... guess my math skills are getting rusty.
Re:Come together right now (Score:4, Funny)
Or are we not as smart as we say we are?
Maybe you not smart. Me think good.
Re:Like high school all over again. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The answer (Score:5, Funny)
If you think you're unhappy.... I got 35 of the 23 questions right and I don't even know how I did that.
Re:Here's a toughy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Here's a tough one. (Score:5, Funny)
Why?
"Because calculators are a pain in the ass."
Re:I have a challenge for the DoD: (Score:3, Funny)
What ads? Or are you some sort of IE user?
Re:I have a challenge for the DoD: (Score:1, Funny)
luckily they encoded the file with ASCII so Linux users can decode it with ...
strings DARPA-BAA-08-65.doc | less
Re:Here's a tough one. (Score:4, Funny)
Not as much as using logs.
Re:no (Score:1, Funny)
2+3=5
Hail Eris! All hail Discordia!
Re:Come together right now (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Come together right now (Score:2, Funny)
Surely there are enough nerds on slashdot to figure these out. Or are we not as smart as we say we are?
You must be new here.
Re:no (Score:4, Funny)
Re:They missed one (Score:5, Funny)
Oooh, I remember that one. If a train leaves Chicago at 8:30 headed for Denver traveling at 45 MPH, and at 8:45 it's parent company declares bankruptcy because Congress refused to bail out the bank that owned a controlling stake in them, and it's going the wrong direction due to a glitch in one of the two data centers that handle the entire nations routing, and the train derails in Pennsylvania at 9:00 due to track damage that was never repaired from the last hurricane, killing most of the people on board, where do they bury the survivors?
I can't believe they left that off the list!
Cool! (Score:4, Funny)
Now I know what to do this evening.
Re:Did they get any of my favorites? (Score:3, Funny)
The best I've heard is:
If Carol has 5 oranges, and
Ted has 7 apples, and
Sue has 3 bananas, then
(wait for it)....
How many nuts does Bill have?
Re:Benefits the NSA (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Come together right now (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The answer (Score:3, Funny)
wrong (Score:5, Funny)
For any result greater than 3 the answer is 'A suffusion of yellow'
Re:Like high school all over again. (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, except we won't get paid this time.
Don't you mean we won't get beat up if we don't?
Re:Come together right now (Score:3, Funny)
We need things that make us go!
Can you make us go?
Then we strong. And smart! *huhuhuhuhu*
Re:Come together right now (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Come together right now (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah right, Pierre. You have no idea how much confusion your little joke is going to cause, do you?
This sentence... wow. (Score:3, Funny)
So if you have ever wanted to settle the Riemann Hypothesis, which I won't begin to describe but it is one of the great unanswered questions in math history, experts say. Or perhaps you've always had a theory about Dark Energy, which in a nutshell holds that the universe is ever-expanding, this may be your calling.
I can't really call it a sentence, because somehow it turned into two of them... and it doesn't really work like that.
The Real Answer (Score:2, Funny)