Mathematics Wiki

Wikipedia described the essence of the Wiki concept as follows:

• A wiki invites all users to edit any page or to create new pages within the wiki Web site, using only a plain-vanilla Web browser without any extra add-ons.
• Wiki promotes meaningful topic associations between different pages by making page link creation almost intuitively easy and showing whether an intended target page exists or not.
• A wiki is not a carefully crafted site for casual visitors. Instead, it seeks to involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the Web site landscape.

Now there are some wiki projects dedicated to mathematics which I would like to share:

1. Tricki (http://www.tricki.org/) : This was started by Tim Gowers in 2008, but now it is dead.
2. PlanetMath (http://planetmath.org/) : Due to advent of Wikipedia its popularity came down but still new articles keep coming.
3. MathOverflow (http://mathoverflow.net/) : One of may successful and useful StackExchange projects.
4. The n-Category cafe (https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/) : Not exactly a wiki but a “group blog”

Hall of Shame

In India a lot of time we are alleged to not serving society, blah, blah, blah,… But nobody understands that society is so lazy to cooperate and major part of energy of a person who wants to serve goes in making society cooperative and hence the motivation goes down exponentially.

Here is story of the school where I studied for 11 years and you will find its name in my CV.

My School

I tried to spread awareness about true sense of mathematics thrice but failed:

1. In class X asked Principal to organize NMTC (organized by AMTI, Chennai) : He refused by giving reason that they are already organizing SOF Math Olympiad
2. In Class XII I somehow convinced school to participate for Group Mathematics Olympiad (Regional Mathematics Olympiad for CBSE Schools) but on the day of exam participants refused to go and our Principal remarked that “None of you will be able to clear the Olympiad, don’t waste time and better concentrate on IIT-JEE exam.”
3. In my 2nd Semester of Integrated MSc. I wrote following letter to Principal:

The planned talks were:

He replied: “Oh sure we will be glad to have your talk.” I was very happy. The next day I asked him to send me an email giving ioficial confirmation, and then they said “Sorry, it would not be possible to organize this in Summer Vacations, students without teacher would break the things in the school.”

FAQ in Mathematics

Today I discovered this awesome page titled “Frequently Asked Questions in Mathematics” which was created when I was 2 year old. Has lots of interesting stuff regarding mathematics.

Questions and Answers Edited and Compiled by:

Alejandro (Alex) López-Ortiz

Alex Lopez-Ortiz alopez-o@unb.ca
Faculty of Computer Science University of New Brusnwick
Fredericton, New Brunswick Canada