[etrevino]

While I was getting my PhD(in History), my advisor told me about meeting Lawrence Stone towards the end of his life (Dr. Stone died in 1999). Lawrence Stone had spent a great deal of his career investigating early modern and late medieval marriages. Grossly summed up, he argued that marriages and child bearing in this era were defined more by convenience than by love and it was only in the eighteenth century that love became the defining prerequisite for marriage (I'm being very broad here). My advisor very gently probed Dr. Stone on how he felt about new research that largely puts the lie to Stone's thesis. It was a big deal, because Dr. Stone's theories had defined how we think about marriage and the family for about a generation.

Dr. Stone said that "no quest for the truth is wasted." (that's a quote from my advisor, not Dr. Stone) And he's right! Even if we've got a far more nuanced view of marriage and the family now, he turned over new stones and raised questions that people had to address. His methodology made further research possible. Even if he was wrong (and he thought that he had gotten it wrong), he still made it possible for later historians to do great things.

All that's to say: I totally respect the attitude of having fun doing the math. (as I think parent does as well) This kind of effort is never wasted.