Freely Available Web-Based Mathematics Reference?

HomeySmurf asks: "I am wondering if anyone is interested in a free mathematical reference document in hypertext similar to the now unavailable Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics (Slashdot article about its demise here). I know that the body of this work was by Eric Weisstein, but the information itself is fundamentally open, and it is a horrible shame that there is not another similar document project in mathematics. Or at least I haven't been able to find one. Many of the math world submissions and corrections were by various knowledgeable individuals, much like an open source project. I know there is a GPL-like license for documentation, and that it could really come into use here. I would certainly like to be involved in such a project, and there are many different directions this could take." I remember reading about Mathworld when we talked about its demise. It would be interesting to see if a group of people could come up with something similar. Any volunteers?

Re:How to do it...

[jekk]

Starting it as a Wiki seems like a good idea (and easy to get off the ground)... so long as we leave room for changing the content, presentation, and even the medium later by EXPLICITLY stating that contributors are placing their contribution under some kind of free (libre) liscense. (Public domain would be pretty good as far as I'm concerned!)

I am not a mathematician (IANAM?), but I would really welcome the existence of a site like this, and I would work to help make it happen. As a matter of fact, it just so happens that last week I started putting some mathematically inclined musings on WardsWiki (but I don't think that's the place for THIS project). So if someone else is planning to work on replacing Mathworld, please contact me, and I'll help out! [e-mail]

-- Michael Chermside

Complete and correct?

[Stephen]

Interested in reading it or writing it? Of course, lots of people would be interested in being able to consult it. The problem with trying to write it in a "bazaar" (not bizarre :) way would be to make it authoritative, i.e. have good coverage and be accurate. Even a few errors could seriously undermine the community's confidence in it.

Interested in working on this

[HomeySmurf]

I'd be interested in working to develop it. I think that it is possible to have a moderation scheme like /. or maybe reader voting like www.kuro5hin.org [kuro5hin.org]. There could be a trust metric like that used by advogato or sourceforge as well to allow for evaluation of the evaluators. This would turn it into a peer review type process. If anyone is interested, please email me: HomeySmurf at hotmail dot com.

One Math Reference

[MrBlic]

When I was looking for a way to compute algorithms of arbitrary bases... when the scripting language I had only did natural Log... I fonud this: http://forum.swarthmore.edu/dr.math/ [swarthmore.edu]

I see the whole web as one big math reference... a search on Google can answer most mathematics questions.

-Jim

Re:Complete and correct?

[refactored]

Tut. Tut. Still haven't worked out how the Bazaar works eh?

So there are errors in several of the major published Text and reference books.

Those errors are still there.

Nobody knows about them. Except perhaps the Author and one or two readers who have found them. The errors in the dead tree books are not going to go away.

In a "Bazaar", people can find out about the errors and fixed them and the next reader (that day) gets the fixed edition.

advanced rtfm how-to

[NateKid]

Sometimes I get asked a question I can't answer, or have a hankering to fill in some blanks, so I search the web. Obviously google [google.com] is my primary tool but I've realized a few tricks for using it. I use the "show 100 results" option in the advanced section (to filter out the porn) and add in the additional term "lecture notes". I usually wind up with a few postscript documents that serve quite nicely. For example, I just typed in "algorithms lecture notes" and the first result generated was Collection of Lecture Notes, Survey Papers, etc. [uni-paderborn.de], including a few great booklets by Laszlo Lovasz. In fact, I think I'm going to be up for another 10 hours...

How to do it...

[refactored]

The biggest hold back has been lack of good MathML like facilities on the web.

Yes LaTeX2HTML is good. A kludge, but a good kludge none the less. However it remains a kludge.

So, the prequisite for something like this to gather steam is a MathML browser. Another killer reason to get the Moz Lizard. [mozilla.org]

Then there are structuring issues.

A mad sprawl as generated by a Wiki [c2.com]? Why not, Wiki's tend to self reorganised themselves.

Or a highly scholarly arrangement of committees and subcommittees etc. etc.

I think there is room for both...

Who will host it? Source Forge? [sourceforge.org]

Please someone, start up the ultimate Free Math Site as a Wiki!

Numerical Recipes

[nuggz]

Not really a math resource site but
http://www.nr.com
has the book Numerical Recipes online, found it nice when I needed to understand a Fourier Transform. (coded an evily slow one too)
I'll probaly buy the book since I haven't heard of any others that are as nice.

I think books are underrated as a resource, everyone wants it for free off the net. A good book has all the information, examples and it is all together, you don't have to spend hours searching for a half assed reference. That alone is worth the $100 to me.