> Math that isn't communicated is valueless - by definition.
That is quite a bold claim.
Math can always be used as a tool just to achieve results. This can include even novel math. Due to the maturity of the field it is just becoming more and more unlikely that somebody will come up with something novel without realizing the significance.
One example: Quicksort was almost not published because Tony Hoare initially considered the idea behind the algorithm trivial. In the end, all he wanted to do was to sort some numbers.
Maybe there is a polynomial time SAT solver running somewhere just because some overworked engineer implemented it for a completely different problem. And he was just annoyed that all existing libraries were so slow and he doesn't realize that he is sitting on a proof that P=NP. Who knows.
That is quite a bold claim.
Math can always be used as a tool just to achieve results. This can include even novel math. Due to the maturity of the field it is just becoming more and more unlikely that somebody will come up with something novel without realizing the significance.
One example: Quicksort was almost not published because Tony Hoare initially considered the idea behind the algorithm trivial. In the end, all he wanted to do was to sort some numbers.
Maybe there is a polynomial time SAT solver running somewhere just because some overworked engineer implemented it for a completely different problem. And he was just annoyed that all existing libraries were so slow and he doesn't realize that he is sitting on a proof that P=NP. Who knows.