PlanetMath
Encyclopedia
PlanetMath is a free
, collaborative, online mathematics
encyclopedia
. The emphasis is on rigour, openness, pedagogy
, real-time content, interlinked content, and also community
of about 24,000 people with various maths interests. Intended to be comprehensive, the project is hosted by the Digital Library Research Lab at Virginia Tech. The site is owned by a US-based nonprofit corporation, "PlanetMath.org, Ltd."
PlanetMath was started when the popular free online mathematics encyclopedia MathWorld
was temporarily taken offline for 12 months by a court injunction as a result of the CRC Press
lawsuit against the Wolfram Research company and its employee (and MathWorld's author) Eric Weisstein.
entries, and some forum discussions.
In addition, the project hosts data about books, expositions and research-level (not necessarily published) papers. A system for semi-private messaging among users is also in place.
As of May 2009, the encyclopedia hosted about 8500 entries and over 14800 concepts (a concept may be for example a specific notion defined within a more general entry. An overview of the current PlanetMath contents is also available. About 300 Wikipedia entries incorporate text from PlanetMath articles :Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from PlanetMath.
An all-inclusive PlanetMaths "Free Encyclopedia" book of 2,300 pages is now available for the encyclopedia contents up to 2006 as a free download PDF file.
An author who starts a new article becomes its owner, that is the only person authorized to edit that article. Other users may add corrections and discuss improvements but the resulting modifications of the article, if any, are always made by the owner. However, if there are long lasting unresolved corrections, the ownership can be removed. More precisely, after 2 weeks the system starts to remind the owner by mail; at 6 weeks any user can "adopt" the article; at 8 weeks the ownership of the entry is completely removed (and such an entry is called "orphaned").
To make the development more smooth, the owner may also choose to grant editing rights to other individuals or groups.
The user can explicitly create links to other articles, and the system also automatically turns certain words into links to the defining articles. The topic area of every article is classified by the Mathematics Subject Classification
(MSC) of the American Mathematical Society
(AMS).
The site is supervised by the Content Committee. Its basic mission is to maintain the integrity and quality of the mathematical content and organization of PlanetMath. As defined in its Charter, the tasks of the Committee include
Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
All content is written in LaTeX
, a typesetting system popular among mathematician
s because of its support of the technical needs of mathematical typesetting and its high-quality output.
The software running PlanetMath is written in Perl
and runs on Linux
and the web server Apache. It is known as Noösphere and has been released under the free BSD License.
and AI
together with logical, categorical, ontological and mathematical foundations of computers and automata.
Free content
Free content, or free information, is any kind of functional work, artwork, or other creative content that meets the definition of a free cultural work...
, collaborative, online mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
. The emphasis is on rigour, openness, pedagogy
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
, real-time content, interlinked content, and also community
Community
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
of about 24,000 people with various maths interests. Intended to be comprehensive, the project is hosted by the Digital Library Research Lab at Virginia Tech. The site is owned by a US-based nonprofit corporation, "PlanetMath.org, Ltd."
PlanetMath was started when the popular free online mathematics encyclopedia MathWorld
MathWorld
MathWorld is an online mathematics reference work, created and largely written by Eric W. Weisstein. It is sponsored by and licensed to Wolfram Research, Inc. and was partially funded by the National Science Foundation's National Science Digital Library grant to the University of Illinois at...
was temporarily taken offline for 12 months by a court injunction as a result of the CRC Press
CRC Press
The CRC Press, LLC is a publishing group which specializes in producing technical books. While many of their books relate to engineering, science and mathematics, their scope also includes books on business, forensics and information technology...
lawsuit against the Wolfram Research company and its employee (and MathWorld's author) Eric Weisstein.
PlanetMath.org website contents
The main PlanetMath focus is on encyclopedicEncyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
entries, and some forum discussions.
In addition, the project hosts data about books, expositions and research-level (not necessarily published) papers. A system for semi-private messaging among users is also in place.
As of May 2009, the encyclopedia hosted about 8500 entries and over 14800 concepts (a concept may be for example a specific notion defined within a more general entry. An overview of the current PlanetMath contents is also available. About 300 Wikipedia entries incorporate text from PlanetMath articles :Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from PlanetMath.
An all-inclusive PlanetMaths "Free Encyclopedia" book of 2,300 pages is now available for the encyclopedia contents up to 2006 as a free download PDF file.
Content development model
PlanetMath implements a specific content creation system called authority model. This is a set of rules determining who can add, modify or remove content. Only registered users can create or edit entries.An author who starts a new article becomes its owner, that is the only person authorized to edit that article. Other users may add corrections and discuss improvements but the resulting modifications of the article, if any, are always made by the owner. However, if there are long lasting unresolved corrections, the ownership can be removed. More precisely, after 2 weeks the system starts to remind the owner by mail; at 6 weeks any user can "adopt" the article; at 8 weeks the ownership of the entry is completely removed (and such an entry is called "orphaned").
To make the development more smooth, the owner may also choose to grant editing rights to other individuals or groups.
The user can explicitly create links to other articles, and the system also automatically turns certain words into links to the defining articles. The topic area of every article is classified by the Mathematics Subject Classification
Mathematics Subject Classification
The Mathematics Subject Classification is an alphanumerical classification scheme collaboratively produced by staff of and based on the coverage of the two major mathematical reviewing databases, Mathematical Reviews and Zentralblatt MATH...
(MSC) of the American Mathematical Society
American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, which it does with various publications and conferences as well as annual monetary awards and prizes to mathematicians.The society is one of the...
(AMS).
The site is supervised by the Content Committee. Its basic mission is to maintain the integrity and quality of the mathematical content and organization of PlanetMath. As defined in its Charter, the tasks of the Committee include
- Developing/maintaining the standards for PlanetMath content
- Improving individual PlanetMath entries in its Encyclopedia, Book, Paper, and Exposition)
- Developing topic areas
- Developing/improving site and user documentation
- Managing the PlanetMath Request list and Unproved Theorems list
- Improving categorization and other meta-attributes of entries.
- Developing software recommendations for improved content authoring and editorial functions.
Technical details
PlanetMath content is licensed under the copyleftCopyleft
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...
Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
All content is written in LaTeX
LaTeX
LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...
, a typesetting system popular among mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
s because of its support of the technical needs of mathematical typesetting and its high-quality output.
The software running PlanetMath is written in Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
and runs on Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
and the web server Apache. It is known as Noösphere and has been released under the free BSD License.
Related projects
Encyclopedic content and bibliographic materials related to physics, mathematics and mathematical physics are developed by PlanetPhysics. The site, launched in 2005, uses similar software (Noosphere), but a significantly different moderation model with emphasis on current research in physics and peer review. Additionally, a PlanetComputing project is envisaged that would also include Computational PhysicsComputational physics
Computational physics is the study and implementation of numerical algorithms to solve problems in physics for which a quantitative theory already exists...
and AI
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
together with logical, categorical, ontological and mathematical foundations of computers and automata.
See also
- MathWorldMathWorldMathWorld is an online mathematics reference work, created and largely written by Eric W. Weisstein. It is sponsored by and licensed to Wolfram Research, Inc. and was partially funded by the National Science Foundation's National Science Digital Library grant to the University of Illinois at...
- arXivArXivThe arXiv |Chi]], χ) is an archive for electronic preprints of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, and quantitative finance which can be accessed online. In many fields of mathematics and physics, almost all...
- CogPrintsCogPrintsCogPrints is an electronic archive in which authors can self-archive papers in any area of Cognitive Science, including Psychology, Neuroscience, and Linguistics, and many areas of Computer Science , Philosophy , Biology CogPrints is an electronic archive in which authors can self-archive papers in...
- List of online encyclopedias
- MathOverflow
External links
- PlanetMath
- PlanetPhysics
- Aaron E. Klemm, "Motivation and value of free resources: Wikipedia and Planetmath show the way"
- http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/308/5729/1721c.pdfArticle on PlanetMath in the science magazine of the AAASAmerican Association for the Advancement of ScienceThe American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...
] - Christoph Lange, SWiM – A Semantic Wiki for Mathematical Knowledge Management, Technical Report, Jacobs University Bremen, 2007 (compares PlanetMath to other free and non-free mathematics encyclopedias)
- Robert Milson, Aaron Krowne, Adapting CBPP platforms for instructional use
- Alex M. Andrew, "Archives, mathematics encyclopaedia, dancing robots, ASC", Kybernetes 2008 v. 37: 9/10 pp. 1466 – 1468.