Ask HN - Can any mathematicians help me out?

20 points·tren··6 comments

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.

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See if you can advertise on http://mathoverflow.net

Thanks, I'll try that out

This 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 for more details.

It 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?

The 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.

Yes 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.

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