As I predicted in an earlier post, my rate of posting has (temporarily) gone right down. This is partly for the reasons I said—I am very busy with a final push to finish the Princeton Companion to Mathematics, and busy in general—but also for another reason. I was going to keep personal matters rigorously excluded from this blog but since my secret is out (see the comments on Examples First II on November 17th) I may as well also mention that I have a five-week-old son, Octave, who doesn’t leave much time for blogging given that my other commitments won’t go away. So this isn’t a proper post but just a way of saying that my blog hasn’t died: it’s just hibernating. Meanwhile, I can at least briefly mention that a “Tricki”—that is, a Wiki-style website devoted to theorem-proving techniques—will almost certainly exist in the near future. Remarkably, my earlier post on this idea led to an offer of technical help that will be enough to turn it from a fantasy into a reality. And that’s saying something, since my own technical ability in this area is basically zero. I’ve seen a prototype and it looks great. Probably we’ll get a small site up and running and I’ll then ask for comments about how it could be improved before we throw it open. (We still haven’t decided what policy to adopt about who can edit what, but we are actively thinking about it.) And that’s it from me until 2008.
December 19, 2007 at 1:11 am |
Congratulations Tim! I’ll look forward to more news on the the Companion and to the Tricki next year, then. And to see the baby the next time I swing by Cambridge, of course :-)
December 19, 2007 at 2:53 pm |
Congratulations!
December 21, 2007 at 1:46 am |
Tim
Do you mind me asking. What is the time frame for the Princeton Companion and also the Tricki?
December 22, 2007 at 12:19 am |
I’d say the Tricki should make a start possibly as early as January, while the Princeton Companion will be out, if all goes well, round about next autumn. There’s quite a lot of uncertainty about both of these — I’d describe them as lower bounds with a reasonably high probability of being attained.
December 24, 2007 at 3:50 am |
Tim,
I hope this is not too personal but I’m assuming your wife is a non mathematician in which case on a day to day basis do you ever talk much about mathematics?
and do your children show an interest at all in maths?
December 27, 2007 at 12:47 am |
Congrats on achieving a personal “milestone”! :-)
And, I am very glad and relieved to know you are just “hibernating” for now. I look forward to your posts as well as the publication of the PCM in 2008.