Re:Ridiculous Math Problems
by IncRnd on Sunday July 05, 2020 @02:24PM
(#23740740)
The interesting part of thost problems is that once you learn how to answer one, you can answer almost all of them. Of course, that was the issue, the answer wouldn't be accepted. It was a shame these problems were used in that manner.
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> The interesting part of thost problems is that once you learn how to answer one, you can answer almost all of them.
I can't see how that would be true. How would you get the solutions to the others by knowing how to do one of them?
I think the parent comment meant to say that once you see the answer to one of the questions, the question seems easy and simple in retrospect (i.e. the questions are NP hard, in a certain respect).
That's the fact that is usually touted in regards to these questions.
Which is funny because we could say the same about competitions like Putnam, but that doesn't make Putnam any easier. But that's the problems with solutions, they are elegant and obvious, but only after the fact. Competition problems are explicitly created to be like that. These problems similarly, but because they could show a simple solution you can "justify" the racial exclusion.