What is math blogging?

Felix Breuer

28.1.2011

Social Media and Mathematics

• Social media
  • "a blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value" (wikipedia)
  • examples: Wikipedia, Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
  • role in math? wide open!
• What's new?
• Communication is
  • focused on dialogue
  • informal
  • distributed
  • open

Outline

What is out there?

• wikis (briefly)
• mathoverflow
• blogging in other sciences
• blogging in math
• mathblogging.org
• a few examples
• polymath

Wikis

• encyclopedias
  • Wikipedia
  • Open Problem Garden
  • Tricki (proof methods)
  • Complexity Zoo (complexity classes)
  • ...
• libraries/databases
  • On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
  • Electronic Geometry Models
  • Stanford 3D Scanning Repository
  • ...
• collaboration
  • Polymath Wiki

Mathoverflow

• based on stackoverflow
  • Q&A + comments
  • community moderated
  • points for reputation and moderator priviliges
• mathoverflow.net
  • research level questions
  • strict on protocol more
  • correct answer vs. community wiki
• cstheory.stackexchange.com
  • computer science and complexity theory
• math.stackexchange.com
  • undergraduate level

Blogging in other sciences

• very large community
• a few examples
  • post on own papers
  • post on others' papers
  • ...with an attitude
  • what does not fit in a paper
• large blogging networks
  • LabSpaces
  • PLoS Blogs (public institution)
  • Lambda the Ultimate (narrow topic)
• useful aggregators
  • Research Blogging
  • Science Blogging

Blogging in mathematics

• comparatively small community (~150 blogs)
• who?
  • fields medalists
  • PhD students
  • undergrads
• what?
  • everything
  • plus ideas, videos, lecture notes, ...
  • relatively rare: comments on papers
• group blogs
  • two examples
  • members take turns writing posts
  • read and comment on each other's blogs

Mathblogging.org

• where to start exploring?
• www.mathblogging.org
• features
  • index of 149 math blogs
  • posts listed by date
  • blogs listed by category
  • a selection of favourites
• open source project
  • beta started January 1st
  • by Peter Krautzberger, Fred von Heymann and myself
• tell us about your blog!
• feedback about our site is welcome!

Writing blogs

• motivations for blogging see scienceofblogging.com
  • present your work
  • network
  • learn about math
  • keep a journal of your work
  • experiment with writing styles or media
  • reach the general public
  • stimulate discussion (see group blogs)
• issues
  • math blogosphere still too small?
  • how to find blogs that interest you?
  • how to attract readers to your blog?
  • writing about ongoing work? credit for ideas?

Polymath project

• "crowd-sourcing" proofs
• principles
  • develop a proof collaboratively
  • everyone shares their ideas
  • ...in short, readable comments
  • ...even if they are undeveloped or likely "wrong"
  • publicity against plagiarism
• organization
  • discussion takes place in blogs
  • wiki used for summarizing discussion
• prominent role in checking Deolalikar's P/=NP proof attempt
  • discussion via blogs 1 2 and wiki pages 3 4

Conclusion

• online math is still developing
• math blogging has a lot of potential
• to really take off, the math blogosphere has to grow
• so start reading and writing blogs!

PS: A Note on Technology

• reading blogs
  • blogs generally feature an RSS/Atom feed
  • these can be subscribed to using a feed reader
• writing blogs
  • some commercial blogging networks such as wordpress support LaTeX markup
  • you can also roll your own, as described here
    • use MathJax to render LaTeX markup
    • use disqus to handle comments
    • use static site generators such as Jekyll
    • upload your static site to a free hosting service
  • to experiment with writing LaTeX markup for use in webbrowsers, try TiddlyWiki with a suiteable plugin