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Here’s how it Works:
- You write a short,
3-5 paragraph synopsis of the problem, identifying the technical field,
some of the background of how you came across the problem, and as
succinct a statement of the problem as you can manage. Tell me what YOU know about the
problem, NOT what you think a mathematician needs to know. Send it to dawes@wedomath.com.
- If your problem is
clearly out of my league, I’ll tell you so, and we’re done. Otherwise…
- I’ll respond with
some specific questions for you, and I’ll ask you to answer them and lay
out a more thorough problem statement.
I’ll also ask you to state your acceptance criteria (very
important!), so we’ll both know how to recognize a solution when we see
one. Depending on how much you
want to spend, I can provide just the formulas, equations &
derivations, or I can add software specifications, or I can write the
software in C++. But I don’t do
Windows, just console apps.
- If I can fairly
predict how long it will take me to solve your problem, I’ll quote you a
firm fixed price and ask you to pay me for time already spent – a
minimum of one hour at $200/hour – using your credit card in my C-infinity account at www.PayPal.com. When you pay, I start. NOTE: The largest job I’ll risk without
meeting you face-to-face at your place of business and receiving an
official work order is $5000 (25 hours).
- When I have a solution that meets your
acceptance criteria, I will disclose enough of it to you to convince
you, without giving away the work product, and when you pay the agreed
price then you will get the complete work product, including source code
if any, and all rights thereto.
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EXAMPLE:
Let’s say you want a data
filter that will enable you to buy stocks when the price is low and sell them
when the price is high. Your
acceptance criterion is that my solution must be causal (can’t require data
from the future) and it must correctly predict every local minimum and every
local maximum of the 10 day moving average of the data at least 5
days before it occurs, with an RMS error of +/- 2 days on a suite of test data that you supply only after I
claim to be done.
Of course, I would turn
this job down flat. (If I knew how to
do this, I wouldn’t need to work for a living.) But it is a perfectly well-posed problem with an objectively
defined acceptance criterion that can be applied before you pay up without me
risking getting stiffed. [NOTE: If you said you wanted your predictions at
least ONE day before the min or max occurs, I’d take the job. But you wouldn’t make much money in the
market. Do you see why?]
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