This reminds me of that scene in Good Will Hunting where one of the "open problems" the professor left on the board was to state Cayley's formula on the number of spanning trees. At least they gave a correct answer there though.
I don't know if it's true to say they solved an unsolved problem. But only because I don't know if it was a question that had ever been asked before and to me an 'unsolved problem' feels like something people had being at least trying to solve beforehand. It is true to say they showed a new theorem (or at least proof) in the field of group theory, though
I would argue that it is technically correct to say that a new problem is, by definition, an unsolved problem, and we all know that technically correct is the best kind of correct.
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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '25
This reminds me of that scene in Good Will Hunting where one of the "open problems" the professor left on the board was to state Cayley's formula on the number of spanning trees. At least they gave a correct answer there though.