# You Discovered a New Math Relation.  Now What?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-discovered-a-new-math-relation-now-what/601791>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 3, 2011, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-discovered-a-new-math-relation-now-what/601791 "2011-11-03T23:20:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-discovered-a-new-math-relation-now-what/601791/21 "2011-11-06T01:03:53Z")

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> [@ZenBeam](#):
>
> That’s not that big of a bar, though, and I actually talked someone into endorsing me there a few years back, and put a couple papers up. Crickets chirped. Maybe they sucked, or maybe they just didn’t get read because there are so many other papers posted, and mathematically, I’m a nobody, so who would bother. Either way, no feedback.

Well, of course, no one (or, almost no one) just browses the arXiv at random, reading random papers. You still have to do some work to get people actually interested in looking at your paper.

So I’m not proposing **Jinx** posting his work online, on a blog or here on the SDMB or wherever, will automatically gain him interested eyes. It’s just presumably the first step he should take. As for the second step, getting anyone to look at it, well, hell, though I may soon enough regret it, at this point I’m willing to hear what it’s all about. It will most likely go one of a few ways (accurate but already known, mistaken in a readily acknowledged way, or crankery), and I’m happy enough to try and provide that initial assessment filter, though of course I’m out of here the moment things turn crankish.

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**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-discovered-a-new-math-relation-now-what/601791/22 "2011-11-06T03:50:05Z")

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> [@Chronos](#):
>
> One other point: I have no difficulty at all in believing that the OP has discovered some interesting mathematical relationship. The part that’s highly unlikely is that it’s a _new_ mathematical relationship. Many’s the layman who has, all unknowing, stumbled across some theorem which has been known to mathematicians for centuries.

This is definitely much more likely, but even if the OP has discovered something new, there’s a question of whether it’s interesting. Not everything true is equally valuable.

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