Saturday, August 17, 2019

Missing Internet Mathematics Encyclopedia

Posted: 8/17/2019  Update: 10/7/2019

Update Of 10/7/2019

I was remiss not to mention what is perhaps the most extensive and most professional encyclopedia of mathematics on the Internet: https://www.encyclopediaofmath.org by Springer in collaboration with the European Mathematical Society. However, this encyclopedia is tough reading for non experts!

There is, of course, also the Wofram MathWorld. However, the entries are very terse and concise. It is excellent for a quick refresher or lookup, but not great for understanding. It is also quite challenging for math laypeople, I imagine.

Original Post

Ever wondered why there is still no great, exclusively focused Wikipedia of Math available on the Internet? Wikipedia articles on math subjects are, unfortunately, of very varying quality!

Math is so important for and to humanity that it certainly deserves a first class and high quality website on the Internet!

What would be some desirable properties of such a website (not in any particular order):
  1. Curated by some of the leading math societies and mathematicians of this planet
  2. Presenting math both in the usual abstract form and also practical with examples. All math should also then be explained in easily understandable layman terms
  3. Math should be made accessible through different means and approaches 
  4. Plenty of inviting self study curricula or topics should be available
  5. Very important would be the historical background and how math evolved over the centuries. The history of math should be well integrated into all aspects of the website. The historical background often helps to understand where we are now in math
  6. Math and statistics should be well integrated throughout the website

As far as I am concerned, I am suffering every day from the fact that there is no such website available as I have endeavored to study AI and machine learning on my own.

Caveat: An excellent math encyclopedia on the Internet may very well make lots of math professors and teachers unemployed. Well explained math is not only fun, but also not very difficult to understand. Like alchemists, the high priests of math (e.g. professors and teachers) have artificially cloaked math with their jargon into something so that  the uninitiated majority of people are to only marvel at math like the pyramids of Gizeh

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