[rhelz]

Yet another example of the power of Prizes....the authors mention that they were motivated by a $500 prize offered to students by a math volunteer at their high school.

What is so counter-intuitive to me is that if the authors had wanted to earn $500 (or $250 after splitting it) they could have just got a job at McDonalds. They would have earned that money with far less time and effort.

I'm kinda glad that nobody pointed that out to them though :-)

But Prize-awards seems to put us into an entirely different economic frame. You can't say they did it just for the recognition, because if the prize wasn't there they wouldn't have bothered. But you also can't say that they did it for the money, because the money was ludicrously low--even when valued at the rate of unskilled labor.

[8bitsrule]

>They would have earned that money with far less time and effort.

Prize or not, time 'invested' in reasoning out an original solution will very likely 'pay off' in the future much better than investing in flipping burgers. In satisfaction and fulfillment for sure. What's life for? No doubt Erdos and Euler, and certainly van Gogh, might have made more at McDonalds as well.

[sitkack]

If you haven't you should watch the video I linked. I think money did have something to do with, but their school is also extremely high performing. People tend to do better when better is the norm.

[khafra]

People want to do challenging things that are worthwhile. The $500 prize is necessary to prove that it's a worthwhile challenge.

It's easy for anybody to see that, say climbing a mountain with a death rate of >1% is challenging, or completing an ultramarathon; so no prizes need to be offered. Offering a monetary prize for illegible things like new math proofs creates common knowledge that those things are challenging and worthwhile.

[thewarpaint]

> a job at McDonalds

> far less time and effort

Pick one

[1024core]

Another example: the X-Prize (now named something else, I think)