The next time your child complains about math, maybe you should bring this up.
Team Cracks Century Old Math Problem
Here’s the opening sentence:
PALO ALTO, Calif. Mar 21, 2007 (AP)— An international team of mathematicians says it has cracked a 120-year-old puzzle that researchers say is so complicated that its handwritten solution would cover the island of Manhattan.
Now I think math is useful and necessary in life, and it can occasionally be fun. However, I prefer word play over math play. While others are going crazy over Sudoku, I have no interest in even trying it. So I tip my hat to those who would spend four years working on a math problem. I just can’t wrap my mind around that.
The best part of the story, as far as I’m concerned, is the final sentence.
The calculation does not have any obvious practical applications but could help advance theoretical physics and geometry, researchers said.
Um, yeah. Researchers validate the age old question, “When are we ever going to use this?”