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Is this question acceptable?: Who is not a descendant of Gauss or Euler?

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    This is a discussion thread for question 38610, which has two votes to reopen.

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    Definitely should stay closed.

    I would also lump http://mathoverflow.net/questions/38652/collaboration-graph in with this.

    But let me make it clear that I also find the genealogy graph (and collaboration graph) fascinating - as anyone who visited Sheffield a couple of years ago will know! Indeed, from my graph: http://www.math.ntnu.no/~stacey/HowDidIDoThat/Random/sheffield.html, it's clear that there are several who do not go back to Gauss or Euler. Some, it's true, may be due to a lack of knowledge but some are confirmed.

    I did a similar graph with the department collaborations. That is more reliable since one can use MathSciNet as a definitive source of information. I haven't written up all the details, but of course anyone who actually wants to produce such a graph is welcome to contact me.

    • CommentAuthorDougy
    • CommentTimeSep 14th 2010
     
    Careful, MathSciNet doesn't include some neighbouring disciplines: e.g. Bioinformatics (http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/) where it is not uncommon for mathematicians to publish.
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    Here's a random test for "good"ness of an MO question. It'd be interesting to hear what other people think. The test is this: if a question can be answered by a non-mathematician, it is perhaps not suitable for MO. This question can be answered by non-mathematicians, by just playing around at the genealogy web pages. So my gut feeling is that it's not for MO: if the OP really wanted to know the answer they could find it out themselves, or ask people with nothing better to do :-) rather than asking the maths research community.
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    Kevin brings up a side question. Since I have no great interest in the question itself, I find this side question more interesting. So here goes...

    Back in the old days (i.e. a few months ago) a litmus test for MO questions was:

    Is this of interest to research mathematicians?

    These days, the litmus test has changed to:

    Is this of interest to research mathematics?

    There are many reasons for the change, not the least of which is the existence of our cousin site math.SE. This is an example of a question which might pass the first test but not the second. What do we think of this gradual change? Are there still people who use the old litmus test?

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    For quite some time, I've interpreted "Is this of interest to research mathematicians?" to mean "Is this of interest to mathematicians when they are doing research?" so for me the change happened a long time ago. And it's my understanding that that's been Anton's interpretation all along.

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