Math Narcolepsy

 During a mathematics course at Columbia University, a student fell asleep in class.

When he woke up, he saw that the professor had written two problems on the whiteboard. He thought they were homework, so he noted them down in his notebook and took them home.

When he tried to solve those problems, he found them incredibly difficult. But he refused to give up. He spent hours in the library, studying through reference books, and finally, he managed to solve one problem, even though it was quite challenging.

In the next class, when the professor did not ask anything about the homework, he was surprised and stood up and asked, "Sir, why did you not ask anything about the assignment given in the last lecture?"

The professor replied, "Assignments? I just wrote them as examples of problems that scientists haven't been able to solve yet."

The student was astonished and said, "But I solved one of them! I even wrote four papers on it." His achievement was later recognized, and all four of his papers are still on display at Columbia University.

The most important thing about this story was that the student didn't hear that "there are no solutions to these problems." He simply recognized that these were difficult questions that needed to be solved, and he tried wholeheartedly to solve them—and succeeded.

This story reminds us – don't listen to those who say you can't do something. Today's generation is often surrounded by pessimism and negativity. Some people deliberately sow the seeds of failure and defeat within others.

But you have the strength to reach your goals, the power to overcome obstacles, and the courage to achieve your dreams. Just believe in yourself – and keep trying.

This student's name was George Dantzig, and this problem was taken from Math Stack Exchange.

"Dantzig proved that in the context of the Student's t-test, the only way we can create a hypothesis test that is independent of the standard deviation is to create a null test, which always rejects or accepts with equal probability, which is not practical."