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Questions designed to generate a "big list" of certain results, examples, conjectures, etc. via many individual answers, each contributing one or a few instances. Such a question should typically be in Community Wiki mode (CW); after asking, please, flag for moderators attention requesting the question to be made CW.

29 votes
21 answers
9k views

What are some mathematical concepts that were (pretty much) created from scratch and do not ...

Almost any mathematical concept has antecedents; it builds on, or is related to, previously known concepts. But are there concepts that owe little or nothing to previous work? The only example I know …
21 votes

What are some mathematical concepts that were (pretty much) created from scratch and do not ...

I wonder if Euler deducing the infinitude of primes from the divergence of the harmonic series or Riemann's work on the Riemann zeta function would be suitable examples?
3 votes

Quick proofs of hard theorems

The fundamental theorem of calculus; all the long and difficult proofs of Eudoxus and Archimedes became clear and simple. Similarly with co-ordinate geometry.
2 votes

Quick proofs of hard theorems

Power series. Both conceptually and computationally, in the 17th century they replaced a multitude of ad-hoc methods that had been used for millennia.