# How to ask a popular question

Problem. Today I saw a question that gathered more than $500$ views less than in $10$ hours. It gives some privilege to the asking person since different people can look at your question from different angles. Usually my questions gather at most $100$ views. So what is the clue? Can somebody explain?

My attempt. Probably all of high-viewed questions are from the number theory field and they are usually easy for understanding.

Thanks a lot at least for reading!

• Ask questions that everyone can understand, give it a "catchy" (not sure what the right word is) title, and don't use mathjax in the title so that it can be featured in the "hot network questions" list. Compare "what is 1+1?" with "how to compute the Hochschild homology of $S(x,y,z)/(y^2=xz)$". – Najib Idrissi Nov 23 '14 at 14:39
• Those views come from Hot Network List and have little relation to "different angles": it's programmers with passing interest in math stopping by to read and upvote. – user147263 Nov 23 '14 at 16:22

## 1 Answer

If you ask Questions that genuinely interest you, then in the long run you will at least have the benefit of replies and comments that expand your understanding.

Good questions are not easy to come by in mathematics, to some extent being rarer than good answers. The right question can open up a new field of study, though this depends to some extent on getting the topic in front of people with a unique insight.

If (elementary) number theory is interesting to you, then I encourage you to post problems with that tag (after trying yourself, of course, to obtain solutions). There are many who share that interest.

On the other hand many Questions posted here are not of genuine interest to their poster. While they may benefit in the short term from help with a class assignment, it is not likely to open a door to a lasting enthusiasm!