Offering Authorship Prospects To Professors For MSc Thesis I am conducting research for my MSc thesis and there is a paper that I have been putting a lot of work into trying to understand and incorporate into my thesis. Theoretically I understand what's going on, but mechanically carrying out the concept is stumping me. As such, the problem that I am faced with is that I have hit a wall in my intellectual ability to perform a particular computation within the paper; by this, I mean that I simply cannot reproduce the method the author used. If I had somebody I could talk to about this paper then perhaps I could figure it out, but for now, assume that my supervisor is unable to assist and the author of this paper lives far enough away to make travelling not an option. 

My own research idea is dependent on being able to reproduce the results in the paper I am studying, and so if I cannot reproduce the results with my own data for myself, I cannot pursue my idea. So, what I was thinking of doing was reaching out to the author and asking if they would be willing to perform the computation for me in exchange for an authorship position on the paper if it can get published.

This is not ideal for me, because I would much rather just recreate the results and I feel that for an MSc thesis seeking external collaboration might be frowned upon, although I do not know for certain. However, I feel that I am at a point where this might be the best path forward to keep working on my original idea. If I cannot perform this computation on my own, would offering potential authorship to the author of the paper I am studying be a worthwhile path to pursue, given that I am doing this for my MSc?
Since you are tentative about whether this would be acceptable, I suggest that you put that idea off for a while, at least. Talk to your advisor about the issue. It might be that co-authorship of any kind might not get you to your degree. You need to find out about that. 

But the best option might be if you could work with someone with more math experience, even a professor, who could teach you the techniques you need. At a minimum they could offer advice about how the original paper was done so that you can reproduce the results. They might just be able to point you to a source for learning the needed technique. 

This might be considered different than helping you with your own paper and might not result in co-authorship, depending on the questions you ask and the help you get. An acknowledgement would be appropriate, of course. But if co-authorship is ok at your institution, then a local one might be better than one with the original authors.