"Everybody should understand concepts like prime numbers, graph theory or differential equations. They are of fundamental importance in technology and for understanding of the universe we live in, and they are incredible exciting and beautiful. Mathematics is an essential part of our culture, just like Mozart and Shakespeare."[1]<p>This is the key point, I think. Most of my non-technical friends have only vague ideas or know nothing about these topics. Actually working with differential equations might be hard, but most people should at least have an understanding of their use cases and why they are important or beautiful. And this way of presenting math is of course much more compelling than any high school math book I ever saw.<p>[1] <a href="http://mathigon.org/about" rel="nofollow">http://mathigon.org/about</a>
Took almost a minute to load. At first I thought HN effect, but then I realized it preloaded a lot more than just the front page.<p>Edit: I played with it for a bit, and wow. This is so cool. All the cool technology they use meshes seamlessly with content. Added this to my special bookmarks folder along with Statistics Done Wrong and Experimental Design (Norvig).
I have recommended this site to my friends on a specialized Facebook group for discussion of interesting popular topics in mathematics. But I had to pass on the warning about load times. The author should use part of his mathematical acumen to figure out how to improve the page-loading on his site, and could well use some other tips on usability.
This is awesome. Mathematics struggles a lot from bad presentation, but this does an excellent job of taking well-known and interesting problems and explaining them (and their solution). Problem solving is a lot more fun than simply reading mathematical truths.<p>For the areas of math that I know well, the content is exactly what I would expect -- i.e. it's exactly what I would say to my non-math friends if they asked me what I was doing in, for example, my graph theory class.
I'm thinking of switching majors. I'm currently pursuing a masters in occupational therapy, but after a semester, I'm realizing it is just not for me. I did my undergrad in math and chemistry, and I've always regretted not doing at least a masters degree in math. Anyways, anyone else here a math guy? I've been out of math for almost 15 years. I'm kind of scared about going to grad school for math.
It is shiny but unusable for me :( It would be if it would display the normal html pages instead of this dynamic window-inside thingies for which no normal controls like page down work the way they are expected to work.<p>For some aspects, pity the energy invested. I'd still love to see a normal HTML site and then we can discuss the content, not just the shininess.
Awesome site!<p>I'm no mathematician, but my gut tells me that advancing mathematics is not the clinical, uninspired, technical process that the "mathematician" stereotype implies. Instead, it seems to be fueled as much by creativity, imagination and mental flexibility as any purely artistic endeavor. Like art, it also requires significant discipline to master its technical underpinnings, is a gamble that pays off in years (if ever), and produces works that have the power to completely alter human understanding.<p>So it's a bummer it has not developed a rebellious and disruptive image, the way pop art careers have. As a result, the field is not benefited by creative, motivated youth with ambitions of changing the world. One can only hope improvements in math education (more conceptual techniques, higher teacher pay, less corporate influence, etc) can make it more accessible and catalyze an eventual change in its perception.
Excellent content and presentation. Happy to see interactive formulas in the book, like proposed by Brett Victor [1].<p>[1] <a href="http://worrydream.com" rel="nofollow">http://worrydream.com</a>
I had a look at the group theory page. This is definitely something that should be taught more in basic math so I was glad to see it there. But I must admit i was disappointed at the notation: yes it's colourful, but totally useless for doing calculations. And why use the plus sign for combining transformations? That seems a bit shortsighted.. John Conway's books are still much better than this somewhat chaotic webpage. It's super hard to present mathematical ideas, cool widgets are not enough.
Most of these concepts are things I try to squeeze in for my Calculus students when we have extra time. If I got to choose the curriculum, this would all be standard.<p>Looks beautiful, wish it would load well.
Amazing site. Bookmarked, and I will go through it properly when I get the chance. As someone who has a poor grounding in many areas of maths in general, but deep understanding of specific areas, this resource seems excellent for catching up.<p>I did not experience the slow loading times others did. Maybe the slowness was from the site experiencing a HN hit.<p>Feedback: when I click the Facebook like button, it tries to fit a text box in the area assigned to the button, and simply does not fit.
On this topic I heartily recommend the YouTube channel Numberphile (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/numberphile" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/user/numberphile</a> and <a href="http://www.numberphile.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.numberphile.com/</a>). Along with its sister channels Computerphile, Sixty Symbols etc., they're a great source of accessible, intelligent content.
Where can I submit corrections? There's a typo here: <a href="http://world.mathigon.org/Polygons_and_Polyhedra" rel="nofollow">http://world.mathigon.org/Polygons_and_Polyhedra</a><p>> <i>But in the 1970s, the English mathematician Sir Roger Penrose (</i>1931) made an amazing discover.*<p>Should be "discovery", unless it's some weird semi-nounization like "ask" or "spend".
I am interested in learning Math, particularly for now Calculus, and combine it with programming execises, like the approach used in "The Haskell road to logic, maths and programming" book.
I believe it may add more fun and helps really learn Math, not just get feeling of understanding concepts.
I was also eager to try using Julia for exercises.<p>Has anyone tried similar approach?
This is great. The animations and interactive content is greatly needed in mathematics.<p>One of my favorite parts of math is puzzling over problems and coming up with solutions myself (even if the solution has been known for thousands of years prior.) I wish this book would set up problems I could puzzle over, rather than just give me the solutions before I knew there was a problem!
I'd love to contribute to a project like this. Visualizing mathematical formulas and operations has always been a great pastime of mine because it really exercises the mind.<p>The colors in this are absolutely fantastic. It's an incredibly well polished product save the lack of content. I can't wait to see this evolve.
Horizontal web layouts are awesome. A petty how difficult they are to achieve, this one does it well. It is beautiful, both the layout and the contents. The only thing, I wished down scroll would take me left, since thats the intuitive continuation direction.
Brilliant. Reminds me of a similar site, though this one's more about demonstrating particular problems, rather than general concepts.<p><a href="http://www.cut-the-knot.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cut-the-knot.org/</a>
it's unfortunate that he is promoting the fractal image compression hoax.<p><a href="http://world.mathigon.org/Fractals" rel="nofollow">http://world.mathigon.org/Fractals</a>