Sociotechnical infrastructure for mathematics research

Steven Clontz

University of South Alabama

Abstract

The National Science Foundation defines "cyberinfrastructure" (or "sociotechnical infrastructure") as "the hardware, software, networks, data and people that underpin today's advanced computing technology", particularly technologies that advance scientific discovery. In mathematics research, even theoretical mathematics, we use many technologies, and engage with many different communities, but there is little scholarship on the ad hoc research infrastructure itself that we implicitly rely on from day to day.

"Glue Work"

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Being Glue by Tanya Riley [1]. See also [2], [3].

"Glue Work"

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Being Glue by Tanya Riley [1]. See also [2], [3].

"Glue Work"

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Being Glue by Tanya Riley [1]. See also [2], [3].

What are the
"technical
contributions"
in mathematics?

What is our
"glue work"?
 

A particular type of glue: math research infrastructure

  • Conferences/workshops/seminars
  • Journals (websites, submission management)
  • Forums (MathOverflow, nLab)
  • Software (SageMath, R, Python)
  • Databases (LMFDB, OEIS, -Base)
  • Formalized math (Lean, Coq)
  • Documents (LaTeX, Markdown, PreTeXt)

In math, highly technical
cyberinfrastructure work
is glue.

Who writes research software in general?

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Who writes research software in math?

Who writes research software in math?

🤷

Future work: formal survey of math research
software engineers (identity, practices)

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Last December: AIM Workshop on Cyberinfrastructure

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Participants came from several different backgrounds: established mathematicians, young researchers, educators, industry software developers. [link]

Working groups

  • Formal Math Interoperability with CAS
  • Databases of Visualizations
  • Database of Databases
  • Canonical Concepts and Alignment
  • Knowledge Tracing
  • Developer On-Ramps
  • Community Values
  • Math in the Future

One outcome

code4math.org

  • Consortium Of Digital Ecosystems 4 MATHematics

  • Today: a Zulip chat. Tomorrow: ???

My cyberinfrastructure work

Before tenure: hobby

Post tenure: scholarship ✨✨ (in my heart at least)

Two in particular:

  • -Base
  • ScholarLattice

-Base

https://topology.pi-base.org

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ScholarLattice

https://scholarlattice.org

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Thanks!

Questions?