Abstract
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is preparing a Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF) to provide useful data about special functions for a wide audience. The initial products will be a published handbook and companion Web site, both scheduled for completion in 2003. More than 50 mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists from around the world are participating in the work. The data to be covered include mathematical formulas, graphs, references, methods of computation, and links to software. Special features of the Web site include 3D interactive graphics and an equation search capability. The information technology tools that are being used are, of necessity, ones that are widely available now, even though better tools are in active development. For example, LaTeX files are being used as the common source for both the handbook and the Web site. This is the technology of choice for presentation of mathematics in print but it is not well suited to equation search, for example, or for input to computer algebra systems. These and other problems, and some partially successful work-arounds, are discussed in this paper and in the companion paper by Miller and Youssef.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
M. Abramowitz and I.A. Stegun (eds.), Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs and Mathematical Tables, National Bureau of Standards Applied Mathematics Series, Vol. 55 (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1964).
B.A. Cipra, A New Testament for special functions?, SIAM News 31(2) (1998), http://www.siam.org/siamnews/03–98/function.htm.
D.W. Lozier, Toward a revised NBS Handbook of Mathematical Functions, NISTIR 6072, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD (1997), http://dlmf.nist.gov/about/publications/.
D.W. Lozier, The DLMF project: A new initiative in classical special functions, in: Special Functions: Proceedings of the International Workshop, June 21–25, 1999, Hong Kong, eds. C. Dunkl, M. Ismail, and R. Wong (World Scientific, Singapore) (2000), pp. 207–220, http://dlmf.nist.gov/about/publications/.
D.W. Lozier, B.R. Miller and B.V. Saunders, Design of a Digital Mathematical Library for science, technology and education, in: Proceedings of the IEEE Forum on Research and Technology Advances in Digital Libraries, May 19–21, 1999, Baltimore, MD (IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA) (1999) pp. 118–128, http://dlmf.nist.gov/about/publications/.
B.R. Miller and A. Youssef, Technical aspects of the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions, Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence (2003), this issue.
F.W.J. Olver, Airy Functions, Chapter AI, Digital Library of Mathematical Functions Project, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD (1998), http://dlmf.nist.gov.
Q. Wang and B. Saunders, Interactive 3D visualization of mathematical functions using VRML, NISTIR 6289, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, http://dlmf.nist.gov/about/publications/.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lozier, D.W. NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions. Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence 38, 105–119 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022915830921
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022915830921