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I just saw another question with the limit of $(1 + 1/n)^n.$

A few months ago, somebody asked some other multiple repeat question, I wrote to check any of the last 137 times it had been asked. he assumed I was joking, and I had indeed made up the number 137.

Feature request: along with individual favorites lists, could we have (maybe as an FAQ choice?) links more precise than keywords, of questions that are really about the same thing, in the judgement of senior users i suppose. Maybe a list is kept, 10K people add links/question numbers to it, when it passes 100 questions it becomes visible to all users. Again, 10K users propose new topics that seem to be repeated often. I suspect this can be done within the existing software, and it does not need to come down on the moderators.

My temptation is to blame the kids asking, but there is enough variety in wording, and enough difficulty searching with Latex, that a people-powered list of hugely repeated questions seems worthwhile.

Apparently this is at least the fifth time this was asked. Sigh. I don't see this as likely to be a divisive issue; nothing about whether these questions are good or bad, no mention of closing.

It's different on MO. Searching actually works there, as people know enough to use the standard terminology for a topic. Kids wanting help with homework use idiosyncratic language, forget hypotheses, and so on.

added: let's see, sometimes the wish is to make a set of really good canonical answers for repeat questions. I think there you do have some potential disagreements, plus there really is tremendous variety in what the kids are able to read and understand, despite the possible similarity of the questions. So I am emphasizing a list of questions/answers that had already happened in the ordinary course of MSE use.

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    $\begingroup$ Another one that appears constantly is a question on how to prove by induction that $n^2<2^n$ for $n\ge5$. $\endgroup$
    – Andrés E. Caicedo
    Jan 7 '14 at 21:58
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    $\begingroup$ @AndresCaicedo, yes. I am guessing on the threshold 100; maybe 75 would be better. I stopped answering "how do you use quaternions to do computer graphics" after about my tenth time. $\endgroup$
    – Will Jagy
    Jan 7 '14 at 22:01
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    $\begingroup$ We already have such a list: meta.math.stackexchange.com/q/1868/4583. Of course, it's far from complete. $\endgroup$
    – Ayman Hourieh
    Jan 7 '14 at 22:08
  • $\begingroup$ For the particular question you found: meta.math.stackexchange.com/a/11492/23353 $\endgroup$
    – apnorton
    Jan 8 '14 at 0:05
  • $\begingroup$ Apart from the lists created by users (as in the link mentioned above), it is sometimes useful to have a look on the frequent tab of the relevant tag. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jan 8 '14 at 6:32
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    $\begingroup$ These two questions seem related, too: How do you search for specific questions? and How do you search for duplicates. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jan 8 '14 at 6:33
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    $\begingroup$ I think in most cases only a human can identify these repeats. $\endgroup$
    – GEdgar
    Jan 8 '14 at 14:44
  • $\begingroup$ @GEdgar, that was my thinking. Another aspect is the totality of effort per person need not be high. Well, it was an idea. $\endgroup$
    – Will Jagy
    Jan 8 '14 at 20:52
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    $\begingroup$ We need to call the teacher's association and tell them to be a little more creative on their programmes. That'll solve things for sure. $\endgroup$
    – Pedro Tamaroff Mod
    Jan 8 '14 at 21:15
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    $\begingroup$ @PedroTamaroff, that is certainly a part of it, homework out of the same texts at multiple schools. An awful lot of users think that's fine, so I was just looking for a way to say, quickly and without much new effort, "Oh, that question, see the 153 instances of that on MSE, collected at this link as sublinks, LINK" $\endgroup$
    – Will Jagy
    Jan 8 '14 at 21:45
  • $\begingroup$ I don't know why this is giving you all fits? Its actually a fairly easy solution. First person post the thread it duplicates and move on. Everyone else should just see that the OP has been directed to the answer and move on w/o answer or comment. $\endgroup$
    – Chris
    Feb 3 '14 at 15:19

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