[pks016]

> Funding a few PhDs for a year costs orders of magnitude more than it did to solve this problem in inference costs.

I don't think PhD students are sitting around and solving one problem for a year. Also PhD students are way cheaper

[hodgehog11]

How many math PhD students do you have? If you set the problem right, something like this per year on average is a good pace.

How are they cheaper? Your average grant where I am can pay for a couple of PhD students. I could afford to pay for inference costs out of my own salary, no grant needed. Completely different economic scales here. I like students better of course, but funding is drying up these days.

[pks016]

I was saying generally. I don't work in maths. PhD students do lots of other things than research. If we ask a PhD student to just solve these kinds of problems and nothing else, the student would do it without much difficulty.

I guess it's different in somewhere like Europe. But in Canada, most of the PhD students are paid for doing TAships, not primarily through grant. Average salary is 25k/year. Take 6-10k out for tuition, that's 15-19k/year. You get a student doing so many things for less pay. I guess, if your job only requires research then you can do it.