And you thought your homework was hard

[siddharth]

I just came across the biography of George Dantzig.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dantzig"

Near the beginning of a class that Dantzig was late for, professor Jerzy Neyman wrote two examples of famously unsolved statistics problems on the blackboard. When Dantzig later arrived, he assumed that the two problems were a homework assignment and wrote them down. According to Dantzig, the problems "seemed to be a little harder than usual", but a few days later he handed in completed solutions for both, still believing that they were an assignment that was past due.

Six weeks later, Dantzig received a visit from an excited professor Neyman, who had prepared one of Dantzig's solutions for publication in a mathematical journal. Years later another researcher, Abraham Wald, was preparing to publish a paper which arrived at a conclusion for the second problem, and included Dantzig as its co-author when he learned of the earlier solution.

Gosh!

 

[Just some guy]

Haha, that's gold.

 

[Gokul43201]

I've heard (some form of) this story too (I think, in an Operation Research class). I believe the solution that Dantzig came up with was the Simplex Algorithm !

 

[franznietzsche]

That's awesome.

 

[moose]

I think that this is a direct quote from the book, A Beautiful Mind... unless I am mistaken...