4 ms·
It's sad how rare authoritative, free resources are on the web. It's cliche to say how incredible an opportunity the Internet presents to share the world's know
by hackuser 11y ago
It's sad how rare authoritative, free resources are on the web. It's cliche to say how incredible an opportunity the Internet presents to share the world's knowledge, but the most valuable knowledge, the serious scholarship, is effectively withheld from the public. Imagine how some debates would change if more authoritative resources were easily accessible (I don't want to exaggerate the value of 'authority', but it's a much better starting point than Wikipedia) and cited with a link, such as in HN discussions. Partly as a result the Internet is mostly rumor and popular notions, not knowledge.
I've even turned to SEP for mathematical concepts (to the extent it covers math), for example, because there is no free authoritative resource in that field.
- furyofantares 11y ago> I've even turned to SEP for mathematical concepts (to the extent it covers math), for example, because there is no free authoritative resource in that field. Does http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ not do the trick for what you were looking into?
- hackuser 11y agoI use MathWorld too but it's limited for my purposes, which includes conceptual understanding: Its articles tend toward strict definitions and not concepts, some terms I lookup are omitted, and unless you already are familiar with the term defined then it can be hard to comprehend. Compare, for example: * http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ModelTheory.html http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ModelTheory.html * http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/model-theory/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/model-theory/ EDIT: Replaced the examples with better ones
- brobdingnagian 11y agoScholarpedia is another good and authoritative source. The articles are typically written by the person who created the concept, or an active authority: http://www.scholarpedia.org http://www.scholarpedia.org
- kensai 11y agoIndeed, one of the most authoritative sources. They should expand the fields treated, imo.
- zkhalique 11y agoHow does mathworld stack up against wikipedia for Math? I often wondered this.
- hackuser 11y agoHere's a review of Wikipedia's math articles by a mathematician: http://wikipediocracy.com/2013/10/20/elementary-mathematics-on-wikipedia-2/ http://wikipediocracy.com/2013/10/20/elementary-mathematics-... If you don't already know what you are reading, you can't distinguish knowledge from nonsense.
- sanxiyn 11y agoI think a resource comparable to SEP for math is Princeton Companion to Mathematics. It would be indeed great if it were available on the web.
- turingbook 11y agoIt is a really great guide. I had a failed plan to translate into Chinese years ago. Fortunately, the companion website has Google Search feature: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8350.html http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8350.html