A lot of mathematical "problems" are almost entirely pointless. Nobody genuinely cares about the moving sofa problem, or about square packing, or about the minimum number of colors needed to draw a map - it is the math that is developed during the solving process that is valuable!
An answer to a question like "what is the exact area of a unit circle" is a mere curiosity. Calculating a good-enough approximation is trivial, after all. But wanting an exact answer leads to developing calculus, which leads to most modern physics. Science was able to make a giant leap forwards due to the techniques developed, while the actual answer itself is mostly useless.
I couldn't disagree more.
A lot of mathematical "problems" are almost entirely pointless. Nobody genuinely cares about the moving sofa problem, or about square packing, or about the minimum number of colors needed to draw a map - it is the math that is developed during the solving process that is valuable!
An answer to a question like "what is the exact area of a unit circle" is a mere curiosity. Calculating a good-enough approximation is trivial, after all. But wanting an exact answer leads to developing calculus, which leads to most modern physics. Science was able to make a giant leap forwards due to the techniques developed, while the actual answer itself is mostly useless.