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!! Diagramming Maths Topics - 2014/11/22

An impossible task, but wouldn't it be useful to have some sort
of diagram of topics in maths, connected somehow to show the links
between topics?  How could such a diagram been created?  How could
it be explored?  How could it be dynamic?  Maintainable?  Usable?

Maths is an incredibly wide subject, covering a vast, /*vast*/
number of topics.  There's a /*huge*/ variety of topics within the
subject, and so many of them connect with each other.

Studying complex numbers can be assisted by knowing about vectors,
but learning about vectors can be assisted by knowing about complex
numbers!  Each can support the other, so which should we regard as
more fundamental?

Or what about calculus versus adding fractions?  Without being able
to add fractions it's almost impossible to learn the fundamentals of
calculus, and yet we /can/ do calculus without being able to add
fractions.  Well, sort of.

And then there's the sheer complexity of the connections, and the
number of topics.  The granularity is also a challenge - how detailed
should we be when we specific a topic?  We can talk about "algebra,"
but then we can talk about details such as rearranging and solving
equations, linear equations, cubics, completing the square, surds,
factorisations, and so much more.  How deep do we go?  How detailed
should we be?

But there are already so many pages and sites already out there that
it's obvious this is important, and potentially incredibly useful.
It's also completely obvious that this is /*hard.*/

Really hard.

The challenge is to make something useful.  Navigable, connected,
explorable, maintainable.  I think it can be done.  I think it
should be done.

I know that teachers have worse than zero time.  They have huge
amount of negative time - over-committed, over-worked - but if we
can work together, perhaps we can make something that ultimately
will help.

I'll start to collect links to pages that already have something
and I'll put them here:

* MathsTopicLinks

Let's make a start.
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