Mathematics
A mathematician has spent ten years trying to prove the Riemann hypothesis. Finally, he decides to sell his soul to the devil in exchange for a proof. The devil promises to deliver a proof in the four weeks. Half a year later, the devil shows up again - in a rather gloomy mood. “I’m sorry”, he says. “I couldn’t prove the hypothesis either. But” - and his face lightens up - “I think I found a really interesting lemma…”
This is a one line proof… if we start sufficiently far to the left.
https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2025/making-any-integer-with-four-2s/:
Given exactly four instances of the digit 2 and some target natural number, use any mathematical operations to generate the target number with these 2s, using no other digits. […] this seems to have been a favorite pastime for mathematicians in the 1920s. Until Paul Dirac ruined it for everyone by finding a general solution for every number.
Working. Basically pondering a relevant math problem for the whole day with a coworker. Kind of crazy to think I get paid to do this.
This is one of those things that illustrates how math helps in life. I didn’t know or remember this problem or its solution at all, but I’ve always had intuition for it.
