Peter Shor's user avatar
Peter Shor's user avatar
Peter Shor's user avatar
Peter Shor
  • Member for 14 years, 4 months
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111 votes

What recent discoveries have amateur mathematicians made?

65 votes

If you break a stick at two points chosen uniformly, the probability the three resulting sticks form a triangle is 1/4. Is there a nice proof of this?

43 votes

Most intricate and most beautiful structures in mathematics

41 votes

Demonstrating that rigour is important

40 votes

How much reading do you do before you attack a problem?

40 votes
Accepted

Undecidability in Conway's Game of Life

37 votes

When should a result be made into a paper?

31 votes

Is there a version of inclusion/exclusion for vector spaces?

29 votes

Undergraduate math research

28 votes

Mathematical "urban legends"

28 votes

What are the big problems in probability theory?

28 votes
Accepted

Is #k-XORSAT #P-complete?

26 votes

Which mathematical ideas have done most to change history?

24 votes

Problems known to be in both NP and coNP, but not known to be in P

24 votes

Do names given to math concepts have a role in common mistakes by students?

23 votes

Noteworthy, but not so famous conjectures resolved recent years

21 votes
Accepted

Complete problems for randomized complexity classes

19 votes

Which math paper maximizes the ratio (importance)/(length)?

18 votes
Accepted

Why do statistical randomness tests seem so ad hoc?

18 votes
Accepted

Quantum PCP Theorem

16 votes

What are some slogans that express mathematical tricks?

15 votes
Accepted

Are there any known quantum algorithms that clearly fall outside a few narrow classes?

15 votes

How do professional mathematicians learn new things?

14 votes
Accepted

Secret Santa (expected no of cycles in a random permutation)

13 votes
Accepted

Is a given point in the interior of the convex hull of a given finite collection of points?

13 votes

Most 'obvious' open problems in complexity theory

12 votes

Covering a circle with red and blue arcs

12 votes

Examples of non-rigorous but efficient mathematical methods in physics

11 votes
Accepted

Existence of unknowable algorithms ?

11 votes

Relativistic Cellular Automata