## #Citations

Mathematicians are good at counting.  We can count the number of ways to roll  a 7 with two dice.  (Answer = 6.) We can count the number of ways to shuffle a deck of cards so that every card is not in its original position.  (Answer = $!52$ = 29672484407795138298279444403649511427278111361911893663894333196201.)  We can count the number of lines on a cubic surface in $\mathbf{CP}^3$. (Answer = 27.)   Sometimes we can count, but we don’t really know what the actual number is, such as when we count the minimum number of guests that must be invited so that at least $m$ will know each other or at least $n$ will not know each other.  (Answer = the Ramsey number $R(m, n)$.)  Many times, it is better to use an asymptotic estimate, such as Stirling’s formula.  When we can’t estimate, we can bound, such as Conrey’s result that more than two-fifths of the zeros of the Riemann zeta function are on the critical line.  Lately, we (along with our colleagues in other disciplines) have started counting citations.   Continue reading

## Things have changed

We have given MathSciNet some upgrades.

As of January 3rd, 2017, MathSciNet will be running on new software, which has allowed us to add some great new features, with more to come in February 2017.  This post provides some highlights of how MathSciNet is bigger, better, faster, more.

And please visit the AMS Booth at the JMM in Atlanta to see demonstrations of the new features of MathSciNet, as well as to meet some of the Editors from Mathematical Reviews.  There will be free access to MathSciNet at JMM!

Posted in Announcements | 15 Comments

## AMS Prizes and Awards – 2017

The AMS is announcing the winners of some of the major prizes that they will award at the upcoming Joint Mathematical Meetings in Atlanta (January 4-7, 2017).  The Joint Prize Session, where prizes from the various participating societies will be presented, takes place on Thursday, January 5 4:25 p.m.-5:25 p.m. in the Atrium Ballroom of the Marriott Marquis. Continue reading

## Twenty thousand reviewers!

As of November 12, Mathematical Reviews has over 20,000 active reviewers!  The input of researchers from around the world helps to make MathSciNet such a valuable tool.  We are truly grateful for your efforts.  Thank you! Continue reading

Posted in Announcements, General information | 1 Comment

## Links with the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive

One of the great – and oldest – resources for mathematics on the web is the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive.  Before there was Wikipedia, there was MacTutor.  It was founded by two mathematicians, John J. O’Connor and Edmund F. Robertson, both of whom are at the University of St. Andrews.   You can read the MacTutor origin story here.  I have been a fan of the archive for almost twenty years.  So I am especially happy that there is now linking between the MacTutor archive and MathSciNet.   Continue reading

Posted in Math on the web, Mathematicians | 4 Comments

## French Doctoral Theses from the Entre-deux-guerres Period

MathSciNet now has bibliographic information (metadata) for 263 French doctoral theses from the “Between Two Wars Period”: 1913-1947, courtesy of NUMDAM.  The data includes links to the full texts of these theses.  Some notable mathematicians are included in the collection.  Continue reading

## MathSciNet Demos at AMS Sectional Meetings

MathSciNet is full of metadata.  We create our own metadata.  We receive metadata from many of the publishers of the journals we cover.  So what are metadata?  (Or what is metadata?)  The simplest explanation of metadata is that they are a type of data that describes other data.  The classical example is the metadata found in card catalogs from libraries.

Lots of information is on the card.  Note that before the annotation, nothing is labeled. There are accepted rules that tell a librarian (or a patron) what each piece of data is.  For most pieces of this data, a non-librarian would be likely to figure out what everything meant. Continue reading