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I am a third year math phd student who is just beginning research and I have a question about doing research in general.

I would like to work on some projects on my own on the side. I started reading some papers but some are not very new, let's say from the year 2000. Obviously, my goal is to have some ideas about these papers and make extensions, prove conjectures, etc. and publish some of my own.

My question is "If I start reading and thinking about these older papers will I waste alot of time relative to trying to pick papers that are newer due to

  1. The journal no longer being interested in that line of thought.
  2. Other people already picking up on those same ideas so I find out someone has already published the work I was trying to do (Naturally there should be a much greater chance of this for older papers since people had more time)

Or do you think the case is that 1 and 2 are negligible and I shouldn't bother restricting my study to new papers.

Thanks

Joe
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    The year 2000 is not old! You're making me feel like a dinosaur. But seriously, mathematics does not get outdated so quickly. There are plenty of 30 or 40 year old unsolved problems that are still worth pursuing and may now be more accessible because of newer results and techniques. Of course, before trying one of these you should search the literature to see if it has already been done. – Robert Israel Jun 30 '15 at 23:31
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    I don't want to say that it's old. I just want to know the answer to the following: Given two papers at random, 1 from 2015 and 1 from 2000 would the researcher expect to have more success working with the newer one. What do you think? – Joe Jun 30 '15 at 23:40
  • I would look at both papers. If the one from 2015 isn't plagiarism, there will be things in the 2000 paper that it doesn't have. – Matt Samuel Jun 30 '15 at 23:45
  • I don't mean that the papers are about the same thing. They could be from two completely different fields. I'm asking a question about the value of how new the paper is. Is it true that all things being equal one should read newer papers rather than older ones? – Joe Jun 30 '15 at 23:48
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    Also, the papers most relevant to my dissertation were written in the 70's and 80's, and I got my PhD last year. Math never becomes wrong, and it takes a loooooooong time to become out of date. – Matt Samuel Jun 30 '15 at 23:48
  • Ok thanks. So I guess you would say that the "newness" factor is very small. This is what I was looking for. – Joe Jun 30 '15 at 23:57
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    If you're worried about somebody having already solved something, ask around. I'd give the advice that "people are not as smart as you think." Yes, there are brilliant mathematicians, but it still takes them months or years to solve a problem. This leaves a lot of work undone. Math is hard and progress is slow. – Matt Samuel Jul 01 '15 at 00:00

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