4 ms·

What really jazzes me here is this: > "(People learn this stuff via the number theory gossip grapevine apparently?)" With the panoply of dev-oriented social pla

What really jazzes me here is this: > "(People learn this stuff via the number theory gossip grapevine apparently?)" With the panoply of dev-oriented social platforms I find it curious that – to my knowledge – nobody who's studied Number Theory, Category Theory, Set Theory, etc. have established a kind of social network for sharing ideas formally. Between LaTeX for Markdown and the limitless Compsci-leaning Maths experts you'd think there would be a thriving online community out there! I only have an undergrad's (very limited) understanding of these topics but feel the ability to create a network for effective communication on these topics is 100% doable. (Isn't this the kindof thing the DAT and IPFS protocols were supposed to solve? P2P protocols/networks for bettering communication?)

benrbray 5y ago
I do wonder where all the mathematicians / academics hang out online. Now that I'm out of (compsci) grad school, I find myself without like-minded peers to study math with. Currently working my way through Riehl's category theory book, but it's a bit tough without anyone to talk to! I know there's MathOverflow, and some people in the FP community hang out on IRC. What's the academic equivalent of HN? GitHub? I'm guessing there must be quite a few hard-to-find Discords for specific research communities.
- williamstein 5y ago
  One answer to "What's the academic equivalent of HN?" is "going to week-long conferences and workshops", which often involves a bunch of presentations of papers (with Q&A) and discussions long into the night. Before the pandemic, an academic (such as me) could easily spend the entire summer just going from one conference to another. With the pandemic, there's now a lot of live video chat, and seminar series where everybody gets together in Zoom, there's a talk, and discussion afterwards. Here's an example of such a series for number theory: https://sites.google.com/view/vantageseminar https://sites.google.com/view/vantageseminar And, here's a massive list of mathematics (and related) online seminars: https://researchseminars.org/ https://researchseminars.org/ In math there's also a lot more "think deeply and send an email" that happens, rather than things like Hacker News.
  - bakuninsbart 5y ago
    > In math there's also a lot more "think deeply and send an email" that happens, rather than things like Hacker News. That would have been my guess, too. I shared an office for a while with a math professor, and he spent around half of his time in the office writing emails to colleagues.
  - uyt 5y ago
    The Lean community uses zulip which seems to be a nice compromise between chat and forum/email threads https://leanprover.zulipchat.com/login/ https://leanprover.zulipchat.com/login/
- renewiltord 5y ago
  An ex-girlfriend of mine is a mathematician. Mostly conferences and symposia. It’s a very meatspace activity. I haven’t kept in touch but the pandemic might have upended that. I’d speculate that it’s because it’s hard to understand much of mathematics without the back and forth of a lecture to help. But that could just be because I truly suffered through my Mathematics graduate degree and am glad a Masters is all I managed.
throwaway81523 5y ago
There is mathoverflow.net and its meta site as math researcher hangouts, plus ncatlab.org for category theory, and various sites, blogs, mailing lists etc. for other fields. You might also like Bill Thurston's famous article "On Proof and Progress in Mathematics", which says not so much that math is social, but that human mathematicians want personal understanding of mathematical truths. So black box computer-checked but human-incomprehensible proofs aren't of that much appeal. https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9404236 https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9404236
- linspace 5y ago
  A little offtopic: It's telling how you can tell the article was written by a mathematician, apart from the obvious fact that it's about mathematics. I'm talking about the structure. For example: "How do mathematicians prove theorems? This question introduces an interesting topic, but to start with it would be to project two hidden assumptions: (1) that there is uniform, objective and firmly established theory and practice of mathematical proof, and (2) that progress made by mathematicians consists of proving theorems" It reminds me of a joke I was told by my math teacher when I was at school about how mathematics shapes your thought (I may do a poor translation): An air balloon traveller encounters very dense mist and gets lost and so is forced to descend to the ground, where he finds a guy taking a walk. The traveller asks the guy "Excuse me sir, could you tell me where am I?" The guy, after a very long pause answers "You are on a balloon". The traveller smiles and says "You are obviously a mathematician". "How do you know?" asks the guy to which the traveller replies. "Easy, there are three very good reasons. The first one is that you took a long time to answer, obviously considering just the facts and proceeding with strict logic. The second one is because the precision of your answer. And last but not least because your answer is useless"
  - jjgreen 5y ago
    A little further off-topic. I knew (well) a mathematician who most of the department thought a bit odd, and he was. If you asked him "how are you?", he would take longer than is usual to respond. I fairly quickly realised it was because he considered that nicety as an actual question and gave a considered response.
z77dj3kl 5y ago
The social networks are offline. Universities are great at open collaboration, it's just not a kind of online collaboration where anybody can walk in and partake. People spend a lot of time on a different type of communication: going to conferences, attending seminars, and meeting one-on-one. Why should it be online? Also keep in mind that a lot of mathematicians are also older, less tech-savvy. This might change in the next decade or two!
- d0mine 5y ago
  > Why should it be online? Compare programming before and after Google or before and after StackOverflow. There is https://mathoverflow.net/ https://mathoverflow.net/

benrbray 5y ago

I do wonder where all the mathematicians / academics hang out online. Now that I'm out of (compsci) grad school, I find myself without like-minded peers to study math with. Currently working my way through Riehl's category theory book, but it's a bit tough without anyone to talk to! I know there's MathOverflow, and some people in the FP community hang out on IRC. What's the academic equivalent of HN? GitHub? I'm guessing there must be quite a few hard-to-find Discords for specific research communities.

williamstein 5y ago
One answer to "What's the academic equivalent of HN?" is "going to week-long conferences and workshops", which often involves a bunch of presentations of papers (with Q&A) and discussions long into the night. Before the pandemic, an academic (such as me) could easily spend the entire summer just going from one conference to another. With the pandemic, there's now a lot of live video chat, and seminar series where everybody gets together in Zoom, there's a talk, and discussion afterwards. Here's an example of such a series for number theory: https://sites.google.com/view/vantageseminar https://sites.google.com/view/vantageseminar And, here's a massive list of mathematics (and related) online seminars: https://researchseminars.org/ https://researchseminars.org/ In math there's also a lot more "think deeply and send an email" that happens, rather than things like Hacker News.
- bakuninsbart 5y ago
  > In math there's also a lot more "think deeply and send an email" that happens, rather than things like Hacker News. That would have been my guess, too. I shared an office for a while with a math professor, and he spent around half of his time in the office writing emails to colleagues.
- uyt 5y ago
  The Lean community uses zulip which seems to be a nice compromise between chat and forum/email threads https://leanprover.zulipchat.com/login/ https://leanprover.zulipchat.com/login/
renewiltord 5y ago
An ex-girlfriend of mine is a mathematician. Mostly conferences and symposia. It’s a very meatspace activity. I haven’t kept in touch but the pandemic might have upended that. I’d speculate that it’s because it’s hard to understand much of mathematics without the back and forth of a lecture to help. But that could just be because I truly suffered through my Mathematics graduate degree and am glad a Masters is all I managed.

throwaway81523 5y ago

There is mathoverflow.net and its meta site as math researcher hangouts, plus ncatlab.org for category theory, and various sites, blogs, mailing lists etc. for other fields. You might also like Bill Thurston's famous article "On Proof and Progress in Mathematics", which says not so much that math is social, but that human mathematicians want personal understanding of mathematical truths. So black box computer-checked but human-incomprehensible proofs aren't of that much appeal. https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9404236 https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9404236

linspace 5y ago
A little offtopic: It's telling how you can tell the article was written by a mathematician, apart from the obvious fact that it's about mathematics. I'm talking about the structure. For example: "How do mathematicians prove theorems? This question introduces an interesting topic, but to start with it would be to project two hidden assumptions: (1) that there is uniform, objective and firmly established theory and practice of mathematical proof, and (2) that progress made by mathematicians consists of proving theorems" It reminds me of a joke I was told by my math teacher when I was at school about how mathematics shapes your thought (I may do a poor translation): An air balloon traveller encounters very dense mist and gets lost and so is forced to descend to the ground, where he finds a guy taking a walk. The traveller asks the guy "Excuse me sir, could you tell me where am I?" The guy, after a very long pause answers "You are on a balloon". The traveller smiles and says "You are obviously a mathematician". "How do you know?" asks the guy to which the traveller replies. "Easy, there are three very good reasons. The first one is that you took a long time to answer, obviously considering just the facts and proceeding with strict logic. The second one is because the precision of your answer. And last but not least because your answer is useless"
- jjgreen 5y ago
  A little further off-topic. I knew (well) a mathematician who most of the department thought a bit odd, and he was. If you asked him "how are you?", he would take longer than is usual to respond. I fairly quickly realised it was because he considered that nicety as an actual question and gave a considered response.

z77dj3kl 5y ago

The social networks are offline. Universities are great at open collaboration, it's just not a kind of online collaboration where anybody can walk in and partake. People spend a lot of time on a different type of communication: going to conferences, attending seminars, and meeting one-on-one. Why should it be online? Also keep in mind that a lot of mathematicians are also older, less tech-savvy. This might change in the next decade or two!

d0mine 5y ago
> Why should it be online? Compare programming before and after Google or before and after StackOverflow. There is https://mathoverflow.net/ https://mathoverflow.net/