[AmishDude]

You guys remind me of a caveman. The mathematician is sitting around at his wheel store, and you walk by saying, "No thanks, I'll just invent it all over again. This hexagonal idea looks really promising."

[Right Wing Professor]

You know, often, when I've had a quantitative problem to solve, it's often occurred to me that some mathematician has already done so, and I've occasionally gone to find it in the mathematical literature, only to find that if it's there, it's been described in such a formal and arcane way it's effectively impossible to find without essentially learning the entire sub-field from scratch. And that means it's easier just to reinvent the wheel.

[grey_whiskers]

You guys remind me of a caveman. The mathematician is sitting around at his wheel store, and you walk by saying, "No thanks, I'll just invent it all over again. This hexagonal idea looks really promising."

That reminds me of another one about the rich man entering thoroughbred racing.

He commissions three technical types--a biologist, an engineer, and a physicist--to assist him.

He gives them each a bundle of money and asks them to report on their progress in a year.

The biologist reports first. "Well, sir, we have gone through extensive geneaologies, DNA studies, and after everything is done, we have found brown horses run the fastest, nothing else matters as much."

The engineer steps up. "We have done biomechanical studies, high-speed photography of the animals' stride, and we have found horses with thin, spindly legs run the fastest."

The physicist reports. "Well, we're not quite close enough for definite conclusions, so if you don't mind, we'd like to get funding for another year. But the case of the spherical horse has proved really interesting."

Cheers!