I recently saw this Math Wiki posted in one of the comments section of Digg (which itself is a Web 2.0 website where people share news stories and comment on the stories with an innovative ratings section). I have referred to some articles in this site before in some of my classes but never bothered to check the actual website (thanks to Google cache - never have to actually go to the website!). The website is a wiki dedicated to only Math! There are all kinds of entries from basic math to topology and advanced calculus! I find this breadth of knowledge really intriguing! I have been reading a lot about wikis through my group members' excellent posts and seeing an actual math wiki in place (not the math entires in wikipedia, but an actual math wiki) has been a real eye opener! One might comment that Wikipedia has all the similar entries but I would like to stress the importance of having a Math Wiki managed by the people who made Mathematica. This wiki is well indexed and has animated gifs as well as applets to help in learning (maybe they can collaborate with the people who created the applets I talked about in the last blog entry!)
I see this as a great resource when people come into the Math Lab to get tutored. Since the Calculus textbook at UF costs around $120 or so, it is hard for us to keep more than 2 books on reserve so students/tutors sometimes do not have textbooks to refer to. Now we do have internet access and quite a few laptops to check out to students or tutors. Students can then refer to MathWorld while they work on their homeworks if the tutors are busy helping out other students. Tutors themselves can refer to MathWorld to give examples and show animated gifs or applets to help students understand the material better!
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4 comments:
I will be sure to bookmark this for my 10th grade daughter. I never knew there could be so much information about math. There must be 500 entries just for a circle... I thought my kindergartener's definition was quite sufficient.
I don't know if I missed it.. but how is this a wiki? I couldn't find any place to edit it. Terrific resource - I will share with all colleagues.
Vickie,
I first thought the same thing.. how is this a wiki when you cannot edit and add. But after clicking on the comments link, it gives you detailed instructions on how you can become a contributor to MathWorld - you can edit, send suggestions, add new entries. The entries are moderated by the team at MathWorld to ensure correctness. Here is the link that describes it : http://mathworld.wolfram.com/contact/
Hi there,
I thought it was interesting what you said about using something and not looking at what it actually is. I do that myself. Google allows us to find the same thing over and over by just typing in the same search words. I often wonder if we all always have the same sources because we always use the same search engine to find these sources. This does not seem to be the case though, because I am always hearing of new sources from oter people.
I am really off your topic here, but it was something that came to mind while I was reading your blog. :)
I too wondered if this site could really be classified as a wiki, but after doing a little more exploring I found the instructions on how to post. I think this is a great example of a collaborative wiki that has quality control of its content through membership requirements. This site deals with one of the main problems often associated with wikis, the idea that wikis can be edited by anyone, so the reliability of the content is called into question. This is a great example of how to deal with that issue. I will definitely share this wiki with the math teachers and tutors at my school. Thanks for the great resource.
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