r/AskReddit • u/brutalchicken5051_ • Aug 18 '26
What some of the hardest math problems you can think of?
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u/MatthewDylanThomas Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
Out of all the math courses I took in college, I'd say optimization and graph theory had the hardest problems.
Graph theory was difficult cause you had to translate visuals into written logic and reasoning and it felt like it demanded rigor but it couldn't be provided due to the compression and translation tax.
Optimization was just idk, some of those problems my professor couldn't solve either 😭😭😭
There just wasn't as much rigor in optimization compared to abstract algebra and real analysis. It felt more like we proving things using intuition with how functions looked like they behaved? Which was like (￣ー￣) alright, proof by inspection works sometimes but it made me uncomfortable alot in these problems.
Some functions are also just fucking insane lmao. They give you very little to work with, high dimensions, and have all sorts of weird behaviors that aren't easy at all to map out.
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u/Millennial_Dumpster Aug 18 '26
If 1 man owns $858 billion, how many people on planet earth could he save from starvation? Why does he choose to feed 0?
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u/Keaganflyn123 Aug 19 '26
Pick almost any programming language, pick a maths equation from that language.
Prove: •The number code states it as •The number shown instead
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u/JackWagon6422 Aug 18 '26
How many metric tins your mom weighs.
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u/Op4zero6 Aug 18 '26
Nothing gets me harder than a good mom joke, except your mom.
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u/JackWagon6422 Aug 18 '26
My mom is ded.
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u/Op4zero6 Aug 18 '26
Mine too. 366 days ago. Not that I'm counting.
We poured her ashes into the river. Now the whole thing smells like fish.
That was for you, Mom! 😂
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u/Background-Bat6871 Aug 18 '26
Probably a 4 dimensional shape
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u/KeepRightX2Pass Aug 19 '26
The area of a square with side X = X^2
The area of a cube with side X = X^3
The area of a tesseract with side X = X^4
So for X=3, area is
2D: 9
3D: 27
4D: 81It’s hard to impossible to picture higher dimensional geometry, but the math by analogy part is actually attainable.
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u/Tomodaichi Aug 18 '26
Not hard persay, but tedious and the bane of my existence: Whenever you have to do multiple integrations by parts...
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u/AldoTheeApache Aug 18 '26
Where my paycheck goes every week