[throw-the-towel]

To borrow a common wisdom about marketing, half of all mathematics is a waste of time, but you can't know which half.

[tsunamifury]

But the issues is you have the ratios wrong. 99% of math theory is useless and maybe 1% has value.

[throw-the-towel]

Maybe so! My point was not about the exact percentages, just the fact that you can't predict which avenues of research will yield practical results.