Category Archives: Publishing in Math

The arXiv, Curated

The arXiv: a mathematician’s favorite preprint server and semiproductive procrastination enabler. Don’t get a morning newspaper? You can enjoy your breakfast over the arXiv submissions for your favorite area of math. Stuck on that lemma? Might as well surf on … Continue reading

Posted in Publishing in Math | Tagged , | Comments Off on The arXiv, Curated

Some Stories of Journals Behaving Badly

Hoax papers have a long and time-honored history. Ten years ago a group of students from MIT wrote a program that randomly generated totally nonsensical computer science papers. One of their bogus papers was accepted by a conference and it … Continue reading

Posted in Issues in Higher Education, Publishing in Math, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Happy Birthday, Dear arXiv

On August 14, the beloved preprint server arXiv.org turned 25. For many mathematicians, including me, it’s almost impossible to imagine doing or reading research without it or the over a million papers it lovingly collects and stores for us. Physicist … Continue reading

Posted in Publishing in Math | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Meta Blogs on Math Blogs

Blogging about math blogs is an inherently meta activity, and today it’s going to get even more meta because I’m writing about the Carnival of Mathematics, which Anna and I will be hosting here on this very blog next month. The … Continue reading

Posted in Publishing in Math | Tagged | Comments Off on Meta Blogs on Math Blogs

That Time Terence Tao Won $500 From Paul Erdős

Suppose you have some arbitrary sequence of 1 and -1, something like this 1, 1, -1, -1, -1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, -1, -1, …. And suppose you start plucking entries from fixed intervals and adding them together. For … Continue reading

Posted in Number Theory, people in math, Publishing in Math | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Cheap Alternative To Pricey Journals

I’ve written before about the Elsevier boycott and the current shift in community feelings about the traditional journal model. Namely, that it stinks. The traditional journal model, that is. This morning while perusing my Monday morning blogroll I found something … Continue reading

Posted in Publishing in Math, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Caring For The Community

As academic mathematicians, we spend a great deal of our days performing deeds of service to the mathematical community. Editing papers, organizing workshops, contributing to open-source software initiatives. One could even argue that it is out of sheer benevolence to … Continue reading

Posted in Publishing in Math | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Caring For The Community

Mathematician Presents Flawed Proof – in a work of fiction

Following Evelyn’s last post about the new Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, I will now discuss the opposite of wild mathematical success. Depending on how excited you are about public speaking, the moments before giving a talk at a math conference may be … Continue reading

Posted in History of Mathematics, Mathematics and the Arts, people in math, Publishing in Math, Recreational Mathematics, Theoretical Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

The best math in life is free? Help gather the data!

Over at the Secret Blogging Seminar , Scott Morrison is championing a new project to analyze this year’s mathematics publications and draw attention to freely accessible papers.  The Mathematics Literature Project  is looking for your help in categorizing published articles … Continue reading

Posted in Publishing in Math, Statistics | 1 Comment

Mathematicians Talk (Really, they do)

We all know the joke: “What is the difference between an extroverted mathematician and an introverted one? The extroverted one looks at your shoes, rather than at his own shoes.” Well, the interviews on Math Tango go a long ways … Continue reading

Posted in people in math, Publishing in Math, Recreational Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments