I’m sure many readers here also read Tim Gowers’s blog, and so are aware that his long-awaited Tricki is now live. The idea is that it should serve as a mathematical problem-solving resource, and I’m very excited by its potential as a research tool. In contrast to Wikipedia, the idea of the Tricki is to organize the material by the problem that it’s used to solve.
I often find myself faced with an easily-stated problem in an area of mathematics with which I’m unfamiliar (combinatorics, say). I think the Tricki could be a comprehensive alternative to my current strategy in these situations, which is to pester someone in my department who I hope might know the answer.
But what the Tricki needs next is articles. Tim is doing a titanic job writing articles on all sorts of elementary pieces of mathematics, which I’m sure will be the kernel of a great foundation for the site, but I hope the Tricki will be more than just a resource for undergraduates struggling with their analysis homework. I reckon every research mathematician has a Tricki article in them, and so I encourage everyone out there to get busy on their article today!
