WebMath: Re: Finding and Sharing on-line Math Resources

[Alan Cooper]

For anyone who is interested in the "Math Metadata" issue, the working group I
referred to has an archive at the Math Forum of their on-line discussions,
including reports from past meetings, and have just posted a report of their
recent meeting at Berkeley.
(see   http://forum.swarthmore.edu/discussions/math_metadata/     )

Alan Cooper wrote (in part):

> One problem with combining resources from all these sources - even 'by hand'
> with a human brain available to resolve ambiguities - is the lack of a common
> set of topic identifiers. So even if a computer could, if it wanted, easily
> combine 'Mathematical concepts' and 'Mathematical Concepts', it  might miss
> adding a resource to its category
> 'Calculus/RatesOfChange/Average&Instantaneous' if that resource was listed in
> another service under 'Derivatives/Motivation/Secants&Tangents'. There may be
> little reason to prefer one or the other, but unless we can develop and adopt
> a common approach, quite soon we will not be able to take full advantage of
> the possibilities that this medium could provide if we let it.
>
> There are various groups working on these issues. One is meeting, as we
> 'speak', in Berkeley (as a pre-event to the ACM Digital Library conference)
> and their proceedings are reported in one of the MathForum discussion groups.
> But it may be worthwhile to have a similar discussion on this list, and
> whether or not we focus on the issues of 'metadata' and standardized topic
> descriptors, ......

--
======================================================================
Alan Cooper (acooper at langara.bc.ca , http://www.langara.bc.ca/~acooper)
Dep't of Mathematics and Statistics (http://www.langara.bc.ca/mathstats)
Langara College        (http://www.langara.bc.ca )
100 W 49th Ave. Vancouver BC
Canada    V5Y2Z6       Tel(604)323-5676,Fax(604)323-5555
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