Timeline for Tags that encourage off-topic questions
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 30, 2013 at 11:18 | comment | added | fedja | My meaning of "hard problem" is "being hard+being a problem" (the latter means that either someone else should be really interested in it, or it should have enough intrinsic beauty to attract me). I just oppose the default meaning of "interesting", which nowadays seems to be "fitting my field and motivated by something related to my research". As to "random polynomials", if you pose it as "Given a reasonable distribution on the set of polynomials, what is the probability that the random system of $n$ Diophantine equations has a solution?", I do not see why it is "not interesting". | |
| Aug 30, 2013 at 8:22 | comment | added | Tobias Kildetoft | After the addition of the tag excerpt, I too agree that this tag should not be deleted (I can't change my vote without editing the answer, and I didn't feel like bumping this thread for it). @fedja Are you claiming that being hard does imply being of interest to research mathematicians? It is easy to come up with hard problems by taking some random collection of integer polynomials, adding one or more parameters and asking when integral solutions exist, but unless one does this carefully, I doubt people will find it interesting. | |
| Aug 26, 2013 at 23:12 | comment | added | François G. Dorais Mod | This reminds me of someone I met a few weeks ago who told me that he preferred his math to be boring and easy rather than exciting and challenging. À chacun chacun son goût... | |
| Aug 26, 2013 at 21:34 | comment | added | fedja | @Tobias Kildetoft. I disagree with both the main and the parenthesized parts of your second sentence. For me recreational math. is just everything that just doesn't fit into any "big theory" or "grand scheme". 80% of Joseph O'Rourke's questions are like that (though he seldom uses this tag himself) and I'm not the only one enjoying his "jeux de l'esprit" here. | |
| Aug 26, 2013 at 19:12 | comment | added | Tobias Kildetoft | @FrançoisG.Dorais In that case the tag is in desperate need of a wiki and tag excerpt, as that is not the meaning most people would associate with the term. | |
| Aug 26, 2013 at 12:03 | comment | added | François G. Dorais Mod | @Tobias: Maybe you don't understand what the tag means: recreational mathematics is the application of mathematics to the design of games and puzzles. | |
| Aug 26, 2013 at 9:11 | comment | added | Tobias Kildetoft | I am a bit curious about the downvotes. The very definition of this tag pretty much makes any question tagged with it off-topic (after all, hard does not imply being of interest to research mathematicians). I would like to see the questions tagged with this which are interesting be redirected to MSE, where they are more clearly on topic. | |
| Aug 26, 2013 at 2:39 | comment | added | François G. Dorais Mod | (This request was formerly for the recreational which was since renamed to recreational-mathematics.) | |
| Aug 26, 2013 at 2:38 | history | edited | François G. DoraisMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
updated tag name
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| S Aug 25, 2013 at 22:54 | history | answered | Stefan KohlMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 | |
| S Aug 25, 2013 at 22:54 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Stefan KohlMod |