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Can someone explain the purpose of this database? The page doesn't give any hints. (I get it's math-related, but what is it useful for?)
by hcarvalhoalves 11y ago
Can someone explain the purpose of this database? The page doesn't give any hints.
(I get it's math-related, but what is it useful for?)
- jdabbs 11y agoThe motivating use case is: I'm doing some topology research, and exploring a new property P. I've determined how it relates to some well-studied properties A,B and C (say A => P, P => B, and P => not C). I'd like a list of example spaces that I can examine where P is interesting (spaces satisfying B, not C and not A in this case). In general the hope is to streamline what is currently a pretty tedious literature search, and to encourage researchers to better pool their knowledge. The other main use case now is educational - I definitely would have liked a site like this when I was taking my intro to topology class and grappling with examples to get my head 'round things, and I know of a seminar that ran using the db as a hook to get students being self-directed, exploring, and contributing more than undergrad mathematics usually allows. Admittedly, that may not seem "useful" unless you're a topologist.
- habitmelon 11y agoIt looks similar to the OEIS (Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences). Any time a problem comes up whose solution involves topology, this is a good place to go and avoid re-discovering a space that might already be known and well studied.