# 16-year old Iraqi solves Bernouilli numbers

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/16-year-old-iraqi-solves-bernouilli-numbers/498155>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [May 30, 2009, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/16-year-old-iraqi-solves-bernouilli-numbers/498155 "2009-05-30T13:06:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 6

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**Author:** ![Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7993a0/32.png) [@Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jamaika_a_jamaikaiake)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2009, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/16-year-old-iraqi-solves-bernouilli-numbers/498155/101 "2009-06-09T04:07:09Z")

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> [@Princhester](#):
>
> The problem is that it’s kind of like saying that looking for oil _here_ was useless because you found none, and that from now on you should only look for oil where you know it exists.
> 
> Many aspects of advancement of the understanding of pure math may never be any use for anything. Some are. Knowing which are going to turn out to be which would require a greater knowledge of the subject matter than we have. And we can only get that greater knowledge by chasing down every lead and seeing where they end up.

Yes, but the post I was responding to essentially asserted that every oil well will eventually yield oil. I never said that nonappliable math was not a good thing to study\*, just that there exists nonappliable math.  
\*otherwise I wouldn’t do what I do…

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