What does "not suitable" mean? [for a mathematics journal]

[Vanadium 50]

People are trying to be polite, but the message isn't getting through. Let me be more direct.

"Not suitable for publication" means bad. Really, really bad. It means that it is so bad that the associate editor didn't need to send it out for review to find out exactly how bad it was. You sent this out to the community for their judgment, and that's what came back. You don't have to worry about someone stealing this. You shouldn't be worried about what you are going to teach this professor now that you have 'taught' him the Cauchy-Riemann equations.

Russ and ZapperZ have given you good advice. You will go farther taking this advice than not.

 

[cgk]

Are you all sure that you are not overdoing it? I knew plenty of people in my teens who solved previously unsolved problems routinely. And he is not exactly claiming to have proven the Riemann hypothesis.

For all we know, he might have a very elegant and novel proof for a particular problem, and simply failed to write it up properly. While I agree that "not suitable" means "really, really bad", I think it is mandatory to note that the "really, really bad" applies to its qualities as an academic research article. And there are many reasons why a writeup could be a horrible academic article while still describing an interesting solution to a particular problem. I have seen plenty of bad articles written by high ranking academics, and these people had decades of experience in producing them. A 16 year old who does not know how a research article is supposed to look is almost guaranteed to produce something which is "not suitable", no matter what the content of the article actually is.

@OP: De facto the only chance you have of publishing your result at this point in time, if it should indeed be correct and useful, is to team up with a professor and have it published together (probably after he/she completely replaces your text by new text, if it should happen). Your chances of getting the style, references, formats, submission, etc. right by yourself are virtually non-existent, even if the math is good. Of course you can also just publish your proof on the web, if your goal is only to get your name on it.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Are you all sure that you are not overdoing it? I knew plenty of people in my teens who solved previously unsolved problems routinely. And he is not exactly claiming to have proven the Riemann hypothesis.

I don't think so. This problem is listed in the Wikipedia entry "List of unsolved problems in mathematics", which means its one of the ~200 most interesting/challenging/difficult (pick your favorite word here) problems. This problem has remained unsolved for over a century, and despite making some headway was unsolved by Ramanujan and Eordos. Do you know plenty of people in their teens who have solved such problems? That seems somewhat improbable.

For the OP to progress, he needs to have an accurate picture of where he is. Possibility A: he's another Ramanujan, someone who has made a great deal of progress without formal education. Indeed, he's better than Ramanujan, because he's done in 16 years what Ramanujan failed to do in 32. This is a person who can "explain" mathematics to professors who have studied this material for years or even decades. Possibility B: we have someone who is excited, but hasn't gone through the decade-long process to become a mathematician, and as such has made an error that he doesn't see.

What are the odds of Possibility A? Well, there have been perhaps 100 billion people who ever lived, and the number of people who are better mathematicians than Ramanujan might be around ten. On the other hand, the number of people who have made a mistake in mathematics is close to that 100 billion, so a sensible Baysean prior might be 10^-10 or so. Now, we have one piece of evidence: the response of the journal. How often do journal editors make mistakes of this magnitude? Surely not 10% of the time - they'd be fired. Probably 0.1%, but let's be generous and say 1%. That gets is to P of about 10^-12.

So, with P = 0.0000000001% , the OP is justified in pushing ahead.
On the other hand, with P = 99.99999999999% he has made a mistake and should devote his energies to learning more mathematics. In short, to listen more and to read more. I mentioned earlier than scientific journals are a dialog and publishing in a journal you don't read is tantamount to talking without wanting to listen. That's a strategy that is valid - impolite, but valid - 0.0000000001% of the time. The other 99.99999999999% it's still impolite, but no longer valid.

 

[IGU]

Sigh. A couple of days ago my first paper got rejected...

Forget journals. Publish it on arXiv and then you have it timestamped and owned by you. Then you can forget your worries about people stealing your work and easily point others to it to review. If anybody takes an interest, you'll quickly discover why it sucks or that it doesn't. You might be good, you might not, but complaining about others not willing to give you a chance is just a waste of time. Remember that Ramanujan got a chance only because he was persistent and got lucky in that Hardy followed up. Note that if he had sent Hardy nothing for fear that he would steal it, Ramanujan would have gotten nowhere.

If you don't feel comfortable posting the link to the arXiv posting here, send it to people directly.

 

[Orodruin]

Forget journals. Publish it on arXiv and then you have it timestamped and owned by you.

Since a few years back (apparently 10 ... time flies), arXiv has adopted an endorsement system. In order to submit in a category, you will need to be endorsed for doing so by someone who is a regular submitter. See http://arxiv.org/help/endorsement. Typically, an endorser will want to at least see a draft of what you are planning to submit. An option is being automatically endorsed by affiliation to a known academic institution, but I am guessing this will not be applicable in this case.