B.5.QD:4.5 - Choose an attainable inquiry

Compare the few questions that remain serious candidates. Ask what each answer would enable and where work could begin with the available capabilities, collaborators and resources. Include the cost of learning or obtaining a missing operation when it affects the choice.

A worthwhile first question may be narrower than the eventual aim: establish a limiting case, find one witness, recover a missing lemma or test a proposed connection. Explain how that result would contribute to the larger question. If the contribution is already available, use it and select the next unresolved step.

E.10.INT helps distinguish useful interest from novelty, surprise or a local scoring heuristic. A question can be worth pursuing because it opens further constructions, changes what can be explained or makes another question approachable. Its eventual practical destination may remain unknown. When problems and ways of solving them must develop together, use C.40; retain a promising alternative when its prospective use justifies doing so.

Continue with the chosen question, its first attempt and the dependency that attempt is meant to resolve. A short explanation in the work can carry this result. Stop when the current need is answered, or when another inquiry is the better use of the available effort.