This is a list of resources available on the web for research mathematicians, which used to be updated regularly. The first version was published May 5, 2012. The last update was on March 12, 2015, marked by [UPDATE 15-03-12]. It is now no longer actively maintained.

Continue reading «Mathematics Resources»

Today I'm attending the second Workshop on Personal Knowledge Management (PKM2010) at the Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) conference "Mensch und Computer" in Duisburg (Germany).

I have absolutely no idea what to expect, so I expect to be surprised.

UPDATE: Now that the workshop is almost over (coffee break right now), maybe the most important for me:

It was fun!

Continue reading «2nd Workshop on Personal Knowledge Management»

If you manage your (scientific) references, such as journal articles, arXiv papers and textbooks within some reference management system that uses BibTex as storage/export format, and you have local copies of your files, then the following might be of interest:

I wrote a JabRef export filter that takes a BibTex file with file links (so, BibTex fields of the form file={somefile.pdf}) and writes a linux shell script to rename the files systematically according to the scheme [bibtexkey] - [authors] - [title].[extension]. Then JabRef can find the file again via its automatic file association mechanism. I use lower-case bibtexkeys but the export filter is easily adaptable, read about it on the JabRef custom export filter documentation page.

Just create (or download) a file named "renamer.layout" and fill in this line:
\begin{file}mv "\format[FileLink]{\file}" "\format[ToLowerCase,FormatChars]{\bibtexkey} - \format[AuthorNatBib,ToLowerCase,FormatChars,RemoveBrackets]{\author} - \format[FormatChars,RemoveBrackets,ToLowerCase]{\title}.\format[Replace(.*:,),ToLowerCase]{\file}"\end{file}
then open JabRef and go to the menu entry Options->Manage custom exports->Add new where you enter (for example) "renamer" as Export name, the full path to your renamer.layout file in the Main layout file field and "sh" as File extension.

Then open your BibTex file (.bib) with JabRef and then select the menu entry File->Export and select in the drop-down-menu Files of Type your newly created export filter renamer (*.sh). This gives you a shell script which, if executed, renames all files linked from the BibTex document into a standardised format (and moves all into the directory from where you execute the script).

Continue reading «Mass renaming papers with BibTex+JabRef export filters»

I just found this very nice paper on cryptography & complexity theory on the arXiv:

Jörg Rothe: "Some Facets of Complexity Theory and Cryptography: A Five-Lectures Tutorial"
Continue reading «Found nice introductory paper on cryptography & complexity»

Here is the second part of my walk-through to Voevodskys A¹-homotopy theory:

On page 48, the first Lemma is shown. Without proof - so I will try to illuminate things a little bit by giving the proof. This lemma isn't used until section 3, so you can skip it, if you want to. I suggest not to do so, if you are intimidated by the diagram, because it isn't that hard, and it's a nice exercise to get the concepts in your head right.

Continue reading «Walk-through to Morel-Voevodsky A¹-homotopy theory part II (page 48, Lemma 1.1)»

On Math Overflow, someone asked for "A single paper everyone should read?"
and some answers were particularly nice to read for me, so I repeat it for you, ordered by how much math is needed (from none up to little):

• Paul Lockhart: "A Mathematician's Lament" shares my opinion about the math eduction disaster in schools. I think you should read this if you disliked your math classes in school or if you will ever have children (who will have to take a math class, then).
• Terry Tao: "What is good mathematics?" which is a short (10 pages) paper about the benefit we have from mathematicians different tastes and approaches. I recommend to every scientist reading the first 3 pages (the other 7 pages are only understandable with some background in mathematics).
• Freeman Dyson: "Birds and Frogs" which is a must-read for anyone interested in history and/or progress of mathematics.
• Misha Gromov: "Spaces and Questions" which is readable with almost no background, although might be funnier if you know basic differential geometry. It tells a dense story of geometric ideas and their development in history. And it doesn't take much time to read/skim it.
• Timothy Chow: A beginner's guide to forcing is a really gentle introduction to forcing.

Math Overflow is a new community website where mathematicians can discuss research problems. It is based on Stack Exchange, the software powering Stack Overflow, which does the same for computer science.