Prize Memes

Nothing says "get rich quick" like dedicating your entire life to problems that have stumped humanity's brightest minds for centuries. The Millennium Prize Problems offer a cool million bucks each—which, after taxes and decades of unpaid research, works out to roughly minimum wage. But wait, there's more! The Myriad Problems promise a prize of TREE(3), a number so incomprehensibly massive it makes the number of atoms in the universe look like pocket change. Too bad you can't buy groceries with abstract mathematical concepts. The real kicker? One problem is already solved (Poincaré Conjecture), and Grigori Perelman turned down the million dollars AND the Fields Medal because apparently mathematical purity pays better than rent. Meanwhile, the rest of us are still trying to figure out P vs NP while our student loans compound at rates that would make the Riemann Hypothesis jealous. Pro tip: If you're looking to make a billion dollars, maybe just start a tech company that sells user data instead. Way easier than proving the Hodge Conjecture, and you won't need to understand fluid dynamics equations that make grown mathematicians cry.