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Ask HN - Can any mathematicians help me out?
I've created a site that allows people to post math and science problems for money, the problem is I don't have enough mathematicians to solve the problems. Here is an example of a question for $500 - http://zombal.com/zomb/scientific-calculation/relevance-equation-formula-for-comparing-objects . If anyone thinks they could answer this guy's question or knows of anyone who could, please take a look.
- muyyatin 15y agoThe question looks extraordinarily vague. It doesn't seem to be written by someone with a large amount of math knowledge, as they want a "variable that allows us to change the weight given to either half of the equation." where the weight nor the equation is described.
- tren 15y agoYes it does seem quite vague, but I know he's legitimate as he's bought $500 worth of credits on the site. If you contact him or post a clarification I'm sure he'll explain what he's after a bit further.
- mooism2 15y agoIt doesn't say $500 on the page you link to, it says Q500. The site only pays out in USD, so I'm not interested. Try reposting when America wakes up?
- revorad 15y agoSee if you can advertise on http://mathoverflow.net http://mathoverflow.net
- tren 15y agoThanks, I'll try that out
- cjg 15y agoThis seems more like a computer science question to me. It can be thought of as a k-nearest-neighbour problem. The exact details of his problem could be expressed as a metric. What he is asking for is naively trivial; compare the target to every object and see which ones are closest. If you want decent performance with large datasets, however, you would be better off using a more sophisticated approach. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-nearest_neighbor_algorithm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-nearest_neighbor_algorithm for more details.