June 24, 2004

"Eric Weisstein's World of Science contains budding encyclopedias of astronomy, scientific biography, chemistry, and physics. This resource has been assembled over more than a decade by internet encyclopedist Eric W. Weisstein with assistance from the internet community." There's also Mathworld. I started with Conic Sections, and proceeded to get very lost.
posted by PF 20 years ago
  • I find (or rather found) the math repository indispensible. I hadn't realized how much until the site was taken down a few years back due to a dubious copyright violation claim. I haven't explored Weisstein's other treasure troves much, but I like the biography section. There is an amusing summary of my favorite hopeless mathematician, Evariste Galois. My only complaint with mathworld is indeed that most entries are 90% (if you're lucky) incomprehensible to normal humans. Not too good when your goal, apparently, is "to collect and make available detailed mathematical and scientific information in a way most accessible to laypeople". In general I'll take detailed over accessible, but how about some levels? I also want problem solutions for all the standard graduate-level math textbooks. Because info wants to be free. Yeah, that's it. Maybe I could join a cult club that protects everyone from the terrible secret of sqrt(2).
  • This is very rich, PF. [banana]
  • Hey, nice curves!
  • How did I miss this post first time round? Thanks PF! Very cool stuff.