Ultimate www math reference ?

Eric Weisstein's Encyclopedia of Mathematics
http://www.treasure-troves.com/math/

Essential Stuff. Fun (? !:-)

- Drew

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Drew Skyfyre songwriter, webmaster, happy human

Skyfyre 2.0: http://skyfyre.lookscool.com
email: drew_skyfyre@yahoo.com

Xenharmonic Engines : microtonality/xenharmonics
http://microtonal.lookscool.com
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On 15 Oct 1999 Drew Skyfyre wrote:

> Subject: Ultimate www math reference ?
>
> Eric Weisstein's Encyclopedia of Mathematics
> http://www.treasure-troves.com/math/
>
> Essential Stuff. Fun (? !:-)

Well, it doesn't look too bad, it's true, but take a look at the music
"encyclopedia" on the same site, by the same author, and you might have
second thoughts about trusting him on *anything*. The shocking thing is
that his maths enyclopedia has been picked up by a publisher who has plans
for the whole series of encyclopedias, so we may end up seeing this crap
in print.

Here's an example: the entry for "Major Scale":

-------from www.treasure-troves.com/music---------------
>
> Major Scale
>
> The Major Scale, also called the Diatonic Scale, consists of Diatonic
> Intervals. The intervals in the major Scale and the frequency ratios
> they correspond to are Second (9:8), Major Third (5:4), Fourth (4:3),
> Fifth (3:2), Major Sixth (5:3), Major Seventh (15:8), and Octave
> (2:1).
>
> The diatonic scale is of ancient origin, although the modern version
> of the scale was introduced by Zarlino in 1558. The diatonic scale
> bears some resemblance to the Pythagorean Scale (also known as the
> Lydian Mode), to which it is probably historically related (Culver
> 1956, p. 132). The ordinary diatonic scale seems to have been
> introduced into Greece in the middle of the Sixth Century BC , was
> standardized by Pythagoras , and has remained the basic scale used in
> western music ever since (Jeans 1938, p. 164). The diatonic scale
> consists of three sets of Major Triads. Major Triads are collections
> of three notes with frequencies in the ratio 4:5:6.

> There are three intervals in this scale 9:8 (1.125), 10:9 (1.111), and
> 16:15 (1.067). The first two are called Whole Steps and the third a
> Half Step (or Semitone), even though two Half Steps (16/15)2 = 1.138
> are larger than one Whole Step.

Since his maths pages are very popular, and so potentially lots of people
might also read his music "encyclopedia", I emailed the author and
explained very carefully and politely all the things that were misleading
or wrong, in this entry and several others. I think they hurt his
credibility elsewhere - who wants to trust someone's definition of a
cyclotomic polynomial if they think major scale and diatonic scale are
synonyms, and Pythagorean scale and Lydian mode are synonyms? In any case
he made no attempt to fix anything up or even reply, so I say don't trust
his maths pages either.

cheers, Jon

> Since his maths pages are very popular, and so potentially lots of people
> might also read his music "encyclopedia", I emailed the author and
> explained very carefully and politely all the things that were misleading
> or wrong, in this entry and several others. I think they hurt his
> credibility elsewhere - who wants to trust someone's definition of a
> cyclotomic polynomial if they think major scale and diatonic scale are
> synonyms, and Pythagorean scale and Lydian mode are synonyms? In any case
> he made no attempt to fix anything up or even reply, so I say don't trust
> his maths pages either.

Oh dear ! Caveat emptor and all that...
Well, at least we now know of yet another misleading/misinformed
disseminator of information... When did u email him ? He may yet get back to
you, plus making changes on web pages can sometimes take a while to get
round to.

Jon, Thanks for checking this out and letting us know.

- Drew

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