The idea is awesome, but it sort of loses its usefulness to people who aren't math experts. It's very clear by looking at the website that it's _not_ meant to be a Wikipedia for math. That's definitely not a bad thing, but I think that this website leaves an opening for something conceptually similar (but different in its implementation) that would be a sort of digital pathway through as many math concepts as possible -- for example, you can start on a page formalizing the idea of numbers and click links to navigate to addition, and then later on to multiplication, etc. allowing one to study math from the ground up. Or, you could start at a high-level concept and work your way down to the simple math. The purpose wouldn't be for researchers to better connect math, but for students trying to learn how math comes together in a broader sense. I think that a site like that could serve the same general purpose we see here of collecting math into a big catalog, just in a way that's more friendly to newcomers.
<i>Edit: Link since the link in the article is missing the protocol: <a href="http://www.lmfdb.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.lmfdb.org</a> .</i><p>This is somewhat similar to (and significantly more detailed than) something I've wanted for a long time:<p><pre><code> Feb. 26, 2009
-------------
What the world really needs is a poster that teachers
can hang in their classrooms with a map of the world
of math. It would essentially be a directed acyclic
graph, with nodes representing mathematical concepts,
and arrows linking those concepts to the next level
of concepts one can learn, as well as real-life
problems that can be solved with that level of math.
For example, the chart would start with basic
arithmetic, with addition and subtraction leading to
multiplication and division. The related tasks
possible with addition would be things like grocery
shopping, subtraction would be figuring change from a
purchase or determining how much time remains before
some event. Multiplication would allow one to make
simple designs, calculate taxes and tips, etc. The
arrows would then go through the concepts of algebra,
geometry, calculus, and on to things like the Fourier
transform. The things one can do at a particular
level could be represented as a bubble, with more
math leading to a bigger bubble (and, if necessary to
convince the kids, more money).
This would also be beneficial to college students
trying to convince their brains to remember all the
seemingly-useless things they are learning in one
class because they need to understand the concepts
for next semester's classes. In fact, such roadmaps
would make life a lot easier in general. "Want to
become a $140000/year contractor? These are the
steps you follow."</code></pre>
The link to the atlas in the article isn't working. You can visit the atlas via: <a href="http://www.lmfdb.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.lmfdb.org</a>
I would say that «a mathematical universe» would be more correct here, because they just cover some of the areas; for example searching for «Ramsey» will yield no results; «probability» will yield just one result where an algebraic construction happens to be useful for calculating some probabilities.
This was discussed at <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11667487" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11667487</a>, but since the article gives more background, we won't treat the post as a dupe.<p>(Submitted title was "Scientists Launched an Enormous Atlas of the Mathematical Universe", which was arguably editorialized and rather baity—please don't do that. We replaced it with a representative phrase from the article.)
Might be related, are there any websites where you can learn knowledge/skills like a Skill Tree/Perk Tree in games?<p>I knew Duolingo had a design like that.
As a catalog of mathematical objects, it should be comparable to Metamath: <a href="http://de.metamath.org/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://de.metamath.org/index.html</a><p>But this project seems to be specific to number theory, and not really concerned with proofs at all.<p>Where can I find the webcast mentioned?