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Community: What should we do at the joint meetings?

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    I registered for the upcoming Joint Mathematics Meetings. It'll be my first time, and I understand that there will be lots of mathematicians there, so we should take the opportunity to spread the word about MO. Here are some ideas that came up when I was chatting with Scott (Morrison) about it earlier today:

    • I'll bring a backpack full of MO t-shirts like the one I'm wearing in my profile picture.
    • We can arrange to get together at a bar or restaurant one evening. I think all the actual events will be happening at the Moscone Center, so we should pick some place nearby. Any preferences for where to go or when to do it?
    • I can print up some flyers to the effect of "[MO logo].net, a place for mathematicians to ask and answer questions". Is there anything else that should go on an MO flyer? Will there actually be any place to put up flyers? Would it be better if instead of flyers they were (roughly) 2"×4" scraps of paper for easy dissemination?

    Any suggestions for other things to do? Once we figure out what we're doing, I'll post a system message at the top of the site to the effect of, "Coming to the Joint Meetings? Do X with us!"

    • CommentAuthorKevin Lin
    • CommentTimeDec 25th 2009
     

    Which day(s) do you plan on being there?

  3.  

    Looking at the schedule is overwhelming; I have no idea how I'm supposed to figure out what to go to. Right now my plan is to show up every day January 13-16 and find something to do. I definitely want to go to Davide Cervone's MathJax talk on the afternoon of the 15-th since MO will probably adopt MathJax to replace jsMath.

    • CommentAuthorKevin Lin
    • CommentTimeDec 26th 2009
     

    Cool. In any case, I think a bar/restaurant meet-up is a great idea, and I'd definitely come to that. As for flyers, I think a full-page flyer is too big and probably something like 4.25"x5.5" (1/4 of 8.5"x11") size would be ideal.

  5.  

    I'm not sure the flyers can give enough information for a person to tell the difference between MO and expertsexchange.com (no, it's not a real Q&A site anymore, but it actually was*). If some other people here will be attending, could they ask you to make a roundtable discussion about MO? I'd be certainly interested if I were there.

  6.  
    An idea for a gimmick: As I remember, the joint meetings have a bulletin board where people can leave notes for each other. Set up another board next to it for posting mathematical questions: scraps of paper, pencils and thumbtacks. Repost those questions to MO and see how many we can answer before the meetings close.

    Of course, mathematicians at the meetings may also answer questions. That's great! Encourage them to join MO.
  7.  

    @Ilya: I'm happy to chat ad nauseum about MO, but a "roundtable discussion" sounds like it would require reserving a room (or at least a table) and would serve approximately the same goals as a semi-organized dinner. I do like the idea of eventually putting together a beamer talk about MO that would walk people through how the software and the community work, various use cases, and how to take math you think about and turn it into good MO questions.

    @David: That's a fantastic idea! I should probably email the organizers about it. Are they more likely to say "we'd better not catch you doing that" (in which case we should just do it rather than emailing them) or "sure, you can use this space, and we even have a spare corkboard you can use" (at least without the bit about the spare corkboard)?

  8.  
    I don't know; I don't even know how the organizers are.
  9.  

    Regarding the restaurant outing, I'd like to put a system message at the top of the site soon. I assume we'll be a group of 20-30 people (I vaguely remember Scott telling me that was about the turnout when SBS did it). A friend of mine who lives nearby recommends Buca Di Beppo, which he says can handle large groups, has paper tablecloths that we can write on, and is near the Moscone center. How does Thursday (Jan 14) at 6pm sound? If there aren't any objections in the next 14 hours or so, I'll call them and reserve a spot for us.

  10.  

    Dinner Thursday (Jan 14) at Buca Di Beppo at 6:30pm

    Buca Di Beppo (yelp page) is at 855 Howard St. (basically right across the street from Moscone center west). I look forward to seeing you there. Have a look at their dinner menu if you like. Note that their "small" portions are meant to serve up to 3 people and their "large" portions are meant to serve up to 6 people, so you'll have to make a few friends with similar gustatory preferences, or be a glutton.

    Once I know something about the layout of the Moscone center, I'll post a location where we can meet up (around 6:15) and walk to the restaurant as a group. Of course, you're welcome to just meet us there.

  11.  

    I'm going to pick up a big foamboard to implement David's idea. It'll have pencils, push-pins, quarter sheets of paper for questions (look like this), and an instructions page (looks like this), which reads

    Got a math question you think another mathematician might know the answer to?

    Post it here on one of these small sheets of paper. Include your name if you like. Got an answer to one of these questions? Post it under the question.

    Somebody will periodically post these questions to mathoverflow.net so that mathematicians who couldn't make it to the Joint Meetings can see what you're thinking about (and try to answer your question). Better yet, you could post your question there yourself. If you do, fill in the question number so that other people interested in the same question know where to look for responses (you don't need to write the whole URL, just the question immediately after http://mathoverflow.net/questions/).

    I'll print out the quarter-sheet question pages and the instructions on Tuesday (to bring with me Wednesday morning). If you think of some suggestions for modifications before then, post them here.

    I'll also pick some questions from the unanswered list Tuesday night and post them as "seed" questions.

    Should it also have some sort of a title?

  12.  

    Correct link for menu: http://www.bucadibeppo.com/menu/index.aspx

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    @Anton,

    on the instructions sheet seems hard to read -- try changing the font or line spacing of the title? The questions sheet should have a "Question:" prompt after the Name____ prompt.

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    @David: it looks like this place really wants to prevent people from linking to their menu.

    @Scott: drat, no question prompt. I've already printed everything and I'm jumping on the BART shortly. Oh well.

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    It turns out that Buca Di Beppo is basically right across the street from Moscone center west, which is where everything is happening. I'll try to get people together on the first floor (in front of the registration desks) at around 6:20.

    Also, I made some MO stickers (which are way cooler than flyers). Be sure to get some from me if you see me.

  16.  

    Hey, how's it going?

    I'm enjoying the sun and surf and geometric quantization in Hahei, and eager for news from the JMM.

    • CommentAuthorKevin Lin
    • CommentTimeJan 15th 2010
     

    Unfortunately, I wasn't able to show up. :(

    I'm also curious about the meet-up. How did it go? How was the turnout?

    • CommentAuthorAnweshi
    • CommentTimeJan 15th 2010
     

    Yes, Kevin, thanks for asking.

    For those of us not fortunate enough to be at Berkeley, please post us a mini-proceedings!

  19.  

    The internet is basically unusable in the Moscone center, and I'm there for most of the day, so I've fallen behind on following MO and meta; I'll try to catch up tomorrow evening, but I can give a brief update now. The Q&A board next to the message board is getting a few questions now and then, but seems to get quite a lot of eye-ball time. I've posted the non-joke questions that I've made some sense of, but there are a couple more that either I or Dave Brown will post soon. The meet-up was about a dozen people total and was lots of fun; we got to sing happy birthday to Don Knuth.

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    I'll be attending the upcoming Joint Meetings (first time), and I was wondering if any of the great ideas listed above - t-shirts, flyers, an MO meet-up, a question board, etc. - are being arranged again? Who else will be attending?

  21.  
    At past meetings (I assume this will be the same) there has been a table near the registration desk provided where stacks of flyers can be left.
    I will be attending. (Running a special session.)
  22.  

    I won't be there, but if somebody wants to organize a meetup, I'm happy to post a banner on MO. If somebody does a question board (or any other method of generating questions), they're welcome to use the Joint Meetings account. Is there somebody currently in Berkeley who wants to bring a stack of MO stickers to distribute? I think I also have some t-shirts left, but not too many (and I can't make them as cheaply as I did before).

  23.  
    Today (Thursday) catch the Gibbs Lecture, 8pm. It is intended for the general public, so even if you are not an "applied mathematician" you should find it accessible.
  24.  
    I'm at the meeting, and saw a notice board with a sign asking for Math problems, but there were no takers. I assume this is connected with MO, although there's nothing on the sign to say so. The board is next to the place where you post messages, but that's in a much more out of the way place than it was last year, so there's less passing traffic.
  25.  
    At the closing banquet, there was a plug for Math Jax. The AMS helped in its development. Speculation that it will become the standard way to show math on the web. [Didn;t know whether to put this in the meeting thread, or a MathJax thread...]
  26.  

    Speculation that it will become the standard way to show math on the web.

    I sincerely hope not! MathJaX is great at what it does, but it is not the right way to put maths on the web. The best way at the moment is MathML. MathJaX is a stop-gap until everyone gets a MathML-enabled browser.

  27.  

    Andrew- I'm curious about what you have in mind here. As an non-expert, I have to admit, I much prefer the look of math on MO to the look of math on nLab (and have occasionally had trouble viewing nLab in some browsers).

  28.  

    Ben, it's absolutely nothing to do with the look and everything to do with the implementation. MathJaX can be configured to look like the MathML does on the nLab, and MathML can be configured to look the same as MathJaX's output. (On which point, I'm curious as to what you prefer about maths on MO as opposed to the nLab; I haven't tweaked the CSS of the nLab very much, mainly due to not having a clue as to what would look good. If you're willing to explain, I'd love to hear - probably best by email).

    I've gone on at length in various places as to why MathML is the Right Way; here is what I wrote about this at tex.SX.

  29.  

    Andrew: the math font at the nLab is the standard LaTeX Roman font with serifs, whereas the main font is sans serif. That looks a little jarring.

    • CommentAuthorKevin Lin
    • CommentTimeJan 10th 2011
     

    Tom, but the same is true for MathOverflow!

  31.  

    Andrew- I have to admit, I was going on my recollection of the look of the nLab, which I recalled having much more cramped hard to read math, which didn't look "TeXish," but now I agree, it looks like MO. I don't know if its something that changed on your end or because I'm using a different computer, but I retract my comment.

  32.  

    My diagnostics claim that for maths:

    Font being rendered: STIXGeneral
    font-size: 16px

    whilst for text:

    Font being rendered: Verdana
    font-size: 16px

    I suspect that the fonts would look more jarring if it jumped from a sans-serif to a serif font just to display a particular symbol which wasn't available in the sans-serif font, so as STIX is the most comprehensive font, it's best to use that for maths throughout. Personally, I like having a clear distinction between maths and text.

    Of course, one of the beauties of MathML is that it can be restyled by the user with almost no difficulty. With firefox, the Stylish extension makes it really easy to impose your own styles over the top of those that we suggest. And that's all that we do! We suggest a particular rendering. That, together with hyperlinking, form the basis of why XML-based documents are so great.

    Ben, lots of things have changed and without knowing when you're comparing with it's hard to know exactly what it was that caused the change of view. If it looks very like MO, it may be that you're using a backwards browser on a broken operating system and so are seeing the maths on the nLab through the lens of MathJaX!

  33.  

    Actually, I did a little more investigation; what happened is I switched from Firefox to Chrome. In Firefox, the nLab looks like this Screen shot

    Blech! That was what I was visualizing when I made the comment above.

    In Chrome, it looks like this Screen shot

    Of course, this doesn't look great because of the broken symbols (on the other hand, some other symbols on that page work in Chrome but not Firefox), but the text is harmonious. I can't quite put my finger on what aspect of it annoys me so much, but I find the Firefox style very unpleasant, and the Chrome one not too bad (again, broken symbols aside).

  34.  

    Here's maybe a better example. Look at the spacing around the slashes. It really looks terrible. Screen shot

    In Chrome, it looks basically like normally rendered LaTeX Screen shot

    • CommentAuthorBen Webster
    • CommentTimeJan 11th 2011 edited
     

    The page these are taken from is here

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