Wikibooks:WikiProject Mathematics

Scope
This WikiProject aims to organize books in the area of mathematics.


 * Provide community support for writing individual mathematics texts.
 * For example links to tools and resources, links to templates, information on producing mathematical images using gnuplot and other software and mathematical formulas using wikified TeX


 * Discuss our approach for mathematics books in general on wikibooks.
 * For example coming to decisions on merging and splitting books, consistent approach to appendices, examples, exercises. Monographs versus textbooks.

To join this project, add your name to the list of participants and the line onto your user page.

Soon to be Active in 2017-2018
User:Merbst MediaWiki extension developer & Mathematics hobbyist with a reader-oriented Glossarizing extension under development. User:Tsirel Retired professor of mathematics.

Active in 2011

 * 1) Adrignola (discuss • contribs) - High school: Trigonometry, Geometry, Calculus, Probability and Statistics - (transcriptions)
 * 2) Wisden (discuss • contribs) - Trigonometry, A-level Mathematics/Edexcel/Core 1
 * 3) JamesCrook (discuss • contribs) - Trigonometry, Modular Arithmetic
 * 4) Nfgdayton (discuss • contribs) - Algebra
 * 5) Whoop whoop pull up (discuss • contribs) -

No activity seen in 2011

 * 1) Thenub314 (discuss • contribs) - Trigonometry, Ordinary Differential Equations
 * 2) Adam Majewski
 * 3) WeijiBaikeBianji
 * 4) Freiberg
 * 5) CyborgTosser
 * 6) Dan Gardner
 * 7) Perl

Mathematical Picture of the Month
We use the traditional for this page definition of a month as one twelfth of the orbital period, where the planet in question is unspecified.



Picture is from Pictures of Julia and Mandelbrot Sets. The mathematically interesting point about the picture is the smooth colouring, based on distance to the set, rather than the more usual banding of colour based on number of iterations before leaving the unit circle. The distance is converted to a height, which then makes a 3D surface that can be lit.

Selected as Mathematical picture of the month from Jan 16th 2011.

Things to do
Want to help with an existing mathematics text?

There are mathematics books at every level from preschool to Graduate Level and there is room for anyone to help, no matter your mathematics background. Here are some ideas how you can get involved:
 * You can expand on stubs. Mathematics pages will appear in Mathematics stubs, or in Stubs
 * Look at Recent Changes to see which mathematics books are being actively worked on and who by, and get involved.
 * WikiProject Languages templated the Language pages with, perhaps we should consider making a similar template and implementing it.

Book Merging and Splitting
Current thinking on how content should be split between books:
 * Work has been done to combine two Algebra books that were at the same level and covered similar material.
 * High School Trigonometry is a wikibooks compatible licensed version of a Californian textbook. It is not being merged with Trigonometry whose origins pre-date it.
 * One of the reasons is that the pedagogical approach is different. Trigonometry explains how to remember formulas, check them, relate them and think about them - making memorisation easier.  Similarly through puzzle-like examples it shows how proofs can break down, explains how someone could arrive at a proof and gives alternative proofs, rather than present proofs as things to be rote learned.  It also has pedagogical innovations such as links to video.


 * Trigonometry is a three volume book, currently all in one name space. It is being split for different levels.  In particular algebra is done step by step in book one.
 * Modular Arithmetic is a subset of number theory. The book is intended as a monograph, and is unlikely to be merged into a larger number theory book any time soon.

Templates
Some templates which authors might like to re use:

Examples and Exercises
An example that is worked through step by step.

An exercise where the student is asked to do something like check a result or answer a question.

Info Boxes
For use of the pigeonhole principle:

Table of Contents Markers

 * Some maths-for-computing topic with a special icon beside it

Summary Facts
In any triangle the angles always sum to $$180^{\circ}\,$$

Typesetting
There are several guides to help provide information of how to typeset mathematics, they are the following: Keep in mind that there is no correct choice of how to typeset mathematics on a Wikibook. The goal should be consistency both within an individual module, and within the modules of a given book. It is a good rule of thumb to take a look at how typesetting is done in a particular book when you start to edit it and to try to emulate that style. This should hopefully give the readers a consistent presentation.
 * Help:Formulas

Consider using \displaystyle on all formulas, even when in line in text. That way the shape and appearance of symbols will be consistent across the html and the set off text. Without this there can be confusions when the same symbol looks different in the two forms.

Some LaTeX to Plunder

 * $$\displaystyle f:\mathbb{R}^2\to\mathbb{C} \text{ defined as  } f:(x,y)\mapsto x+iy$$


 * $$(x+y)^n = \sum_{k=0}^n {n \choose k}x^{n-k}y^k.$$

Images
The best way to upload files is to upload them to Commons, which transparently makes the files available in all of the Wikimedia projects.

You can also browse that repository by category and by search term, and there are many useful images already there. It is also possible to go to a related wikipedia page for a topic, follow the images to wikicommons, then look for other images in the same category or by the same uploader.

Vector images
There is a strong preference on Wikimedia for SVG graphics files. Programs that can output graphics in svg format :
 * Gnuplot (A general mathematical plotting program)
 * Thenub314 can give information on producing animated graphs.


 * Inkscape (An svg image editor)
 * The current stable version of inkscape has problems reading svg graphs produced by Gnuplot. A good width for lines in geometric figures is 1.7px.  A good font to use is Lucida Bright.  Greek letters like 'alpha' can be inserted by cutting and pasting from Word.  Fonts should be converted to paths in case not present on user's machine, even though it makes i8ln harder.  Check svg images in firefox before uploading.  If you see unwanted black regions it is because of 'rotated text' tags that are Inkscape specific.  If you've converted the text to paths the rotated text tags can be removed (use the XML editor feature) to fix this problem. Many geometric images, especially of tiling and subdivision, look a lot better with solid fill of pastel colours.


 * Octave (Which actually calls gnuplot.)
 * Maxima CAS (Which can call gnuplot, but also other programs like VTK )
 * C.a.R (Compass and Ruler) (produces fixed-scale graphs)

Note that one can also directly create SVG file.

Image Requests
If you need a diagram to illustrate a mathematical text, describe what you need here. The mathematical project has recently been producing diagrams for geometry (for the trigonometry book) and even fake road signs to help teach mathematical concepts.

Transwiki
It can be useful to start new mathematics topic pages by importing the corresponding page from wikipedia as a starter. Discuss possible imports here.