[foofo]

Why isn't their a Mathematics forum board...?

[Ryano121]

I doubt that there are enough maths related questions to warrant its own dedicated forum.

[modi123_1]

Moving to site questions..

[smohd]

Because we hate Maths

[modi123_1]

Under the software development forum you'll find math resources and what not.. also more so in the computer science sub forum of that.

Over all the lack of a solid math forum *IS* the interest. Sure a few people now and then pop up to say it would be nice but we've never had a big driving group. Now if you want to wrangle up some friends (but not genetically altered super squirrels) to start making a bigger presence in those two forums above we could totally consider it!

http://www.dreaminco...re-development/

[tlhIn`toq]

foofo, on 23 February 2012 - 03:29 PM, said:

Why isn't their a Mathematics forum board...?

Because this isn't a homework website, or a maths website. It is a programming website.

There also is not a forum area specific to traffic control systems, even though that is a niche of programming.
Nor is there a forum specific to computer controlled industrial machine control.
Etc. etc.

I greatly suspect that if there was a dedicate maths section it would be flooded with kids asking for help on their math homework and nothing to do with programming.

[baavgai]

We do have a functional programming forum...

Within the context of this site, math is already covered.

If it's specific to mathematics but a relevant generalist question, it should fit nicely into Computer Science. If it's specific to programming, then the programming forum in question is the best place for it. If it doesn't fall into either of the above groups, then it really isn't apropos to programming and can find it's way to the Lounge.

If all else failed you could stick a math question in Other Languages... If that doesn't really make sense, then neither does a math forum.

[Karel-Lodewijk]

I've seen mention of 6 different places where one might post a mathematically related question. There is really no general consensus where it should go. For example I would have never looked for the math resources in the software development forum.

But I do agree that there is probably not enough purely math related questions to warrant a forum.

So why don't we stick math with the computer science forums. Looking at the posts there it's where they generally end up. Let's call it "Computer science, algorithms, complexity and math" as those topic seem to somewhat overlap/complement each other and that's basically what it is used for today.

Secondly, we should remove the CS from under the software development header where it really didn't belong in the first place. People who specialize in software development can't necessarily tell the difference between a matrix and an integral or develop an algorithm to add two numbers together without involving 4 classes.

And while we're at it, some LaTeX support, I'd say between [math][/math] tags while we're at it would also be nice, I've seen it in forums, it can be done

This post has been edited by Karel-Lodewijk: 24 February 2012 - 07:03 AM

[macosxnerd101]

I generally see math questions go in three general places:
-Computer Science
-Student Campus
-Programming Help

The CS forum is for CS topics, like algorithms, Big-O, recurrences, graph theory, etc. The Programming Help forum is more appropriate for math questions in which you are developing your software. If it is a homework question that doesn't better fit into one of those two forums (ie., your Calc 2 homework), the Student Campus is the best place for it.

[nK0de]

[Karel-Lodewijk]

macosxnerd101, on 24 February 2012 - 02:26 PM, said:

I generally see math questions go in three general places:
-Computer Science
-Student Campus
-Programming Help

The CS forum is for CS topics, like algorithms, Big-O, recurrences, graph theory, etc. The Programming Help forum is more appropriate for math questions in which you are developing your software. If it is a homework question that doesn't better fit into one of those two forums (ie., your Calc 2 homework), the Student Campus is the best place for it.

Well I would already classify Big-O (anything beyond the trivial), graph theory, recurrent relationships and some algorithms as mostly math.

The student campus looks more like the lounge for students. I've looked at the first 5 pages of posts, found 2-3 content related questions which where consistently moved to another forum, mostly CS.

As I see it, putting the word math in CS forum title is just consolidating the situation as it is today without the confusion and the recurring question, why is there no math forum.

This post has been edited by Karel-Lodewijk: 24 February 2012 - 04:32 PM