<h3>Some facts</h3>
<p>The rate at which questions are answered here has been dropping for years.  When we left beta in early 2011 the answer:question ratio was around 1.6:1.  It has steadily declined: in November 2012 it dropped below 1:1 and at present it is around 0.75:1.  I believe this is due to a greater rate of increase in the rate at which questions are asked compared to the increase in community members who are active and qualified to answer questions.  During this time the answering rate has tripled but the asking rate has gone up sixfold.</p>
<h3>Nuances in the comparisons</h3>
<p>Although comparing the rate of unanswered questions to the rates at other SE sites looks disturbing, it has benign explanations.  SO fields programming questions that tend to be routine and solvable.  Math fields a very large number of (easily answered) homework questions.  Here, we get a great number of questions that not only are related to research, but cannot immediately be answered by anybody: they would require considerable work to answer.  In that regard we are perhaps most comparable to MO (19.2% unanswered) or TCS (21.6% unanswered), which focus on research-level questions.  Another informative comparison to make is with GIS, which is a kind of hybrid of SO (most questions nowadays are about programming) and CV (because a huge variety of specialized platforms are covered on GIS and very few qualified people are around to answer many of them).  On GIS there are 23.3% unanswered questions.</p>
<h3>What we can do</h3>
<p>Notwithstanding such comparisons, it would be good to leave fewer questions unanswered here.  The only significant way that can be addressed is to grow the number of people who are (a) qualified to give good answers and (b) excited enough about our site to be regularly active.  Thus, what I would suggest is that once we feel we understand <em>why</em> our rate of unanswered questions is so high, we should turn to discussing <em>what to do about it</em>--and I think that conversation ought to look for ideas on how to attract active, qualified people into our community.</p>
