The next seminar...
Thursday, 23th of February 2012, 4pm, Theatre C
Ursula Martin
(Queen Mary University of London, SICSA Distinguished Visitor, University of Edinburgh)
1377 questions and counting - what can we learn from online math?
Online blogs, question answering systems and distributed proofs provide a rich new resource for understanding what mathematicians really do, and hence devising better tools for supporting mathematical advance.
In this talk we discuss the first steps in such a research programme, looking at two examples using the tools of qualitative sociology, to see what we can learn about mathematical practice, and whether the reality of mathematical practice supports the theories of researchers such as Polya and Lakatos.
Polymath provides structured way for a number of people to work on a proof simultaneously: we analyse a polymath proof of a math olympiad problem to see what kinds of techniques the participants use. Mathoverflow supports asking and answering research level mathematical questions: we look at a sample of questions about group theory, and provide a typology of the kinds of questions asked, and consider the features of the discussions and answers they generate.
Finally we outline a programme of further work, and consider what our results tell us about opportunities for further computational support for proof and question answering.