

About MathWorld - brudgers
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/about/

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furyofantares
Sometime in the early 2000s I found myself reading MathWorld the way some
people read Wikipedia -- just start on some random article, and follow links
to anything I don't understand. It helped to rekindle my love of mathematics
and I eventually went back to school and got a math degree, which is one of
the most satisfying things I've done.

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dang
Coolest comment I've read today. Way to go!

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raverbashing
And why is this being posted now?

MathWorld is great, but there was the CRC Press fiasco
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathWorld#CRC_lawsuit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathWorld#CRC_lawsuit)

MathWorld was more important before Wikipedia came, today you can find similar
content in both sites

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brudgers
I posted it because:

1\. MathWorld is informative and useful.

2\. I think it's cool how Weisstein followed his passion and found a way to
share it with others around the world.

3\. My personal opinion is that its better written and better cross referenced
than Wikipedia. I believe the consistency is the result of one person taking
responsibility, the project having direct funding due to it's relationship to
Wolfram Research's commercial interests, and it's narrow domain focus.

The _CRC Encyclopedia of Mathematics_ is $450. I'm curious as to why someone
would consider resolving the lawsuit in a way that allowed MathWorld to stay
online a fiasco?

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raverbashing
Oh I'm not attributing the fiasco to Eric, and I it seems that something
happened, I didn't see the copyright notice on the site

Mathworld is a great resource, I just think that Wikipedia took the lead for
most (less deep) topics, but your point n.3 stands.

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kleiba
I think this page could serve as a textbook example for how _not_ to write an
about page. I didn't know MathWorld before, but the first paragraph is so
high-level that after reading it, I had a very vague idea at best.

Then follow three paragraphs about how MathWorld came about -- for someone
like me who'd just like to know _what the heck this is_ a complete waste of
space.

Then finally, in the middle of the page, you get the bullet points that
contain concrete information.

And then, in paragraph five, you get some technical background in that it is
based on Mathematica. Okay, perhaps the URL could have let me guess that ;-)

One a positive note, they do invite feedback, so I may contact them with a
similar note to this one (perhaps more politely phrased).

The last paragraph of the page, I could do without. It really doesn't contain
any "about" information anyway.

