CMU professor: theorems proved in last 25 years with direct real-world impact are exceedingly rare

WesPegden · x · 2026-10-09

CMU professor Wes Pegden argues that theorems proved in the last 25 years with significant direct real-world impact are exceedingly rare — distinct from being about impactful topics — even within fields of math with "applied" in their name, especially outside TCS.
andrewprock counters with RRT optimality, PAC-Bayesian bounds, compressed sensing, and Fernandez-Granda's exact recovery as impactful theoretical results.
Pegden presses back: how many problems in OpenAI's latest math dump have any direct economic relevance — two or three out of hundreds?
He also notes the Socratic method works poorly on social media, while acknowledging possible differing definitions of "pure math."

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