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Is the majority of conjectures confirmed or rejected?

As a layperson I can think of several cases when conjecture was confirmed but none when it was rejected. For instance

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/math-whiz-solves-a-master-s-riddle/

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiles%27_proof_of_Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem

Both cases are newsworthy regardless if the conjecture was confirmed or rejected.

How do I improve my question to be more specific?

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As formulated, your question is impossible to answer. There is no "central repository" of conjectures, and no way to determine how large a percentage that gets either confirmed or refuted.

(In one sense, the answer is probably that most conjectures are refuted, if you count temporary ideas held by one or a few researchers in their line of work, but I assume that's not what you meant.)

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  • $\begingroup$ Not a central repository but maybe a statistical study or interesting article. I bet I am not the first to wonder about this. $\endgroup$ – daniel.sedlacek Sep 29 '15 at 10:48
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    $\begingroup$ @daniel.sedlacek The OP's parenthesis points the difficulty of circumscribing a canonical list of conjectures. Unless you make this point much more precise, I fail to see which kind of statistical study could exist. $\endgroup$ – Did Sep 29 '15 at 11:21

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