MathOverflow is a mathematics question-and-answer (Q&A) website, which serves as an

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s. It allows users to ask questions, submit answers, and rate both, all while getting merit points for their activities. It is a part of the

Stack Exchange Network Stack Exchange is a network of question-and-answer (Q&A) websites on topics in diverse fields, each site covering a specific topic, where questions, answers, and users are subject to a reputation award process. The reputation system allows th ...

. It is primarily for asking questions on mathematics research – i.e. related to

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and the extension of knowledge of mathematics into areas that are not yet known – and does not welcome requests from non-mathematicians for instruction, for example homework exercises. It does welcome various questions on other topics that might normally be discussed among mathematicians, for example about publishing, refereeing, advising, getting

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, etc. It is generally inhospitable to questions perceived as tendentious or argumentative.

Origin and history

The website was started by Berkeley graduate students and postdocs Anton Geraschenko, David Zureick-Brown, and Scott Morrison on 28 September 2009. The hosting was supported by Ravi Vakil. The site originally ran on a separate installation of the StackExchange 1.0 software engine; on June 25, 2013, it was integrated in the regular

, running SE 2.0.

Naming

According to MathOverflow FAQ, the proper spelling is "MathOverflow" rather than "Math Overflow".

Use of mathematical formulas

The original version of the website did not support

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markup for mathematical formulas. To support most of the functionality of LaTeX, MathJax was added in order for the site to transform math equations into their appropriate forms. In its current state, any post including "Math Mode" (text between $'s) will translate into proper mathematical notation.

Usage

As of April 4, 2012, there were 16,496 registered users on MathOverflow, most of whom were located in the United States (35%), India (12%), and the United Kingdom (6%). By December 11, 2018, the number of registered users had grown to 87,850. As of June 2019, 123,448 questions have been posted. In 2011, questions were answered an average of 3.9 hours after they were posted, and "Acceptable" answers took an average of 5.01 hours.

Reception

* Terence Tao compared it to "the venerable newsgroup ''sci.math'', but with more modern, ' Web 2.0' features." *

John C. Baez John Carlos Baez (; born June 12, 1961) is an American mathematical physics, mathematical physicist and a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) in Riverside, California, Riverside, California. He has worked o ...

writes that "website 'Math Overflow' has become a universal clearinghouse for math questions". *According to Gil Kalai, MathOverflow "is ran by an energetic and impressive group of very (very very) young people". * Jordan Ellenberg comments that the website "offers a constantly changing array of new questions" and is "addictive" in a "particularly pure form", as he compares it to the Polymath Project. *Jared Keller in ''

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'' writes, "Math Overflow is almost an anti-social network, focused solely on productively addressing the problems posed by its users." He quotes Scott Morrison saying "Mathematicians as a whole are surprisingly skeptical of many aspects of the modern Internet... In particular, things like

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, etc. are viewed as enormous wastes of time."

Notes

External links

* * — podcast with Joel Spolsky and

Jeff Atwood Jeff Atwood (1970) is an American software developer, author, blogger, and entrepreneur. He co-founded the computer programming question-and-answer website Stack Overflow and co-founded Stack Exchange, which extends Stack Overflow's question ...

(creators of Stack Exchange) and Anton Geraschenko (creator of MathOverflow). {{Fog Creek Software Mathematics websites Internet properties established in 2009 Stack Exchange network