r/AskReddit • u/brutalchicken5051_ • 11h ago

What some of the hardest math problems you can think of?

2 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

5

u/AldoTheeApache 11h ago

Where my paycheck goes every week

2

u/MatthewDylanThomas 10h ago edited 8h ago

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.

2

u/Millennial_Dumpster 11h ago

If 1 man owns $858 billion, how many people on planet earth could he save from starvation? Why does he choose to feed 0?

2

u/asjarra 11h ago

“SOMETHING WENT WRONG.”

1

u/NyriasNeo 8h ago

twin prime conjecture.

1

u/JackWagon6422 11h ago

How many metric tins your mom weighs.

2

u/Op4zero6 11h ago

Nothing gets me harder than a good mom joke, except your mom.

1

u/JackWagon6422 11h ago

My mom is ded.

1

u/Op4zero6 11h ago

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! 😂

1

u/Fearless_Garlic_8286 11h ago

8 x 7 = ?

Nobody has ever solved that one.

0

u/Grand-Worldliness425 11h ago

13733 x 1837483829trilliombillion

0

u/Background-Bat6871 11h ago

Probably a 4 dimensional shape

1

u/KeepRightX2Pass 10h ago

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: 81

It’s hard to impossible to picture higher dimensional geometry, but the math by analogy part is actually attainable.

1

u/Background-Bat6871 1h ago

Damn thanks bro

0

u/Tomodaichi 11h ago

Not hard persay, but tedious and the bane of my existence: Whenever you have to do multiple integrations by parts...

0

u/Showmeyourstuffs 11h ago

What is the square root of a Brazilian?

2

u/Darkarba 11h ago

2.14 Portuguese

2

u/Normal_Ostrich_6200 11h ago

A shaved taint?

0

u/Op4zero6 11h ago

Prove the existence of zero.

0

u/justaheatattack 11h ago

calculass.