Math Estimated at 90%

By Isaac Krone

April 20, 2014

Prominent mathematician Dr. Ernest Poyevski shocked the mathematics world yesterday when he presented a paper, to be published in Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, which estimates the proportion of math that has been completed. His assessment of mathematical completeness asserts that, astonishingly, only about 10 percent of mathematics remains to be solved, leading to extreme implications for the future of the purest science.

Dr. Poyevski claims his analysis is “too complex” to be fully understood without delving into deep mathematics, but he has offered an explanation of his methods that laymen can understand. “What I have done here is taken mathematics, summed it, and compared it to a reasonable projection of future work. The estimate shows thatmost of math is now behind us.” To better understand how much math that is, Poyevski offers the analogy, “If you think of mathematics as a smallish dolphin, this analysis tells us that only the head of that dolphin has yet to be discovered. All of the legs and other important dolphin parts are there.” Dr. Poyevski informed The Dealer that the last 10 percent of math was “pretty hard,” but that he was sure that “turbulent areas of mathematics, like the Navier-Stokes equations, should be smoothed out pretty soon.”

Other mathematicians are not so sure. Judith Hornby of MIT says that she questions whether mathematics can be estimated at all . She explains “If you look at a dolphin, you can see that there is an outer bound to its body. But mathematics, unlike dolphins, does not necessarily have an outer bound. Its body could be much more expanded than we currently can imagine. ” Princeton’s Yen Chu agrees that math is finite, but hesitates to estimate its exact size. “Math,” said Dr. Chu, “is a lot like a crime scene. All we have are some loose scales and maybe an antenna, and it’s hard to tell how big the dolphin was with so little to work with.” Stephen Hawking was unavailable for comment.

When asked what he would turn his attention to if mathematics were finished within his lifetime, Poyevski replied, “I’ve given this some thought, and I think I would go into philosophy. It would be a good change of pace for me to move from a field where all problems have been rigorously solved to one where no problems are ever solved whatsoever.”