[gib65]

Is there a listing somewhere with all the formula of science recorded - something like the guiness book of world records except for all known scientific formuli?

[John Cuthber]

It would need to be a big book.

[Xittenn]

There are reference texts that avoid developing concepts and serve merely as a list of equations such as:

"Table of integrals, series and products" by Iosif Moiseevich Ryzhik, Alan Jeffrey, Daniel Zwillinger

"Matrix mathematics: theory, facts, and formulas" by Dennis S. Bernstein


If you disregard application ie. Physics, I'm sure there are enough of these books to cover a good deal of the equations. This obviously would mean no cross referencing for say the Normalization Constant with say Hermite Polynomials. This would be a very nice encyclopedia collection and I'm sure one day, if it doesn't already, it will exist. Hell of a lot of reading . . . .

[Bignose]

CRC Standard Mathematical Tables and Formulae, The CRC Encyclopedia of Mathematics are both good starts. I like Schaum's Mathematical Handbook of Formulas and Tables, bought it years ago and is the first place to turn when I just want to make sure I have the formula right in my head. It doesn't really explain anything about the equation, just what it is. Dover's got a good one in handbook of Mathematical Functions that is pretty cheap to boot, too.

as the posters above wrote, it would quickly become pretty much meaningless to write down every single equation. It would make the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica look like a penny paperback. Or, to put it another way, every single formula IS written down -- in the vast body of scientific literature: books and journal articles. The important skill here is learning how to use the tools out there to search the existing literature to find the equation(s) you need.

If you were interested in all the formulas in a particular area, that's where handbooks and review papers become useful. For example, Crispin's Stochastic Methods: A Handbook for the Natural and Social Sciences covers a lot of the useful equations in stochastic calculus. Handbook of Particle Physics catalogues the same for experimental high energy physics. Most any subject where more than just a few people are working on it has a handbook or two published on it and even subjects where there are only a dozen people working on it usually will have a monograph or review paper(s) on it. Again, the skill here is in using the library and other resources effectively to find the info you need.

This post has been edited by Bignose: 23 October 2011 - 07:59 PM

[Schrödinger's hat]

<facetious and unhelpful>
Here you go, just don't worry about any of that gravity nonsense.

</facetious and unhelpful>

[gib65]

Bignose, on 23 October 2011 - 07:57 PM, said:

as the posters above wrote, it would quickly become pretty much meaningless to write down every single equation. It would make the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica look like a penny paperback.

Really? Well, that shoots down my idea. I had an idea for an App: a program that would allow you to bring up any scientific formula you want and would allow you to manipulate it in various ways. But if there's just that many formuli out there, it may turn out to be too big a project (not to mention too big to be loaded onto a computer).

[mathematic]

Try using google or bing for any formula and see what happens.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

gib65, on 24 October 2011 - 04:44 PM, said:

Really? Well, that shoots down my idea. I had an idea for an App: a program that would allow you to bring up any scientific formula you want and would allow you to manipulate it in various ways. But if there's just that many formuli out there, it may turn out to be too big a project (not to mention too big to be loaded onto a computer).

Well, one could replicate the handbook concept. Sell "formula bundles" designed for a specific field, containing the sort of information a printed handbook would have. You could get the same information in a form much easier to manipulate and search.

[DrRocket]

Cap, on 24 October 2011 - 11:13 PM, said:

Well, one could replicate the handbook concept. Sell "formula bundles" designed for a specific field, containing the sort of information a printed handbook would have. You could get the same information in a form much easier to manipulate and search.

Those were available for hP calculators 25 years ago.

[gib65]

mathematic, on 24 October 2011 - 11:10 PM, said:

Try using google or bing for any formula and see what happens.

Can you get interfaces that allow you to manipulate those formuli?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

DrRocket, on 25 October 2011 - 06:01 AM, said:

Those were available for hP calculators 25 years ago.

Yes. Mine has physical constants and conversions, and you can download various equation packages.

A calculator is a pretty poor user interface for a reference manual, though, and there's a number of clever user interface ideas for manipulating equations and combining them on a computer.

[Elliott007]

John Cuthber said:

1319388565[/url]' post='633480']
It would need to be a big book.

Make that a very big book!

[khaled]

This gives another good idea .. to create a huge book, say a reference for all physics-related formulas .. and then,

not only that users can search those formulas by title, but also can search by formula-snippet ...

Example: a book { X^2 + X + 2, log(x)+log(1/x), 2^X }

Search input [ #^# ] .. results: { X^2 + X + 2, 2^X }

input [ log ] .. results: { log(x)+log(1/x) }

[Buckie]

I think it's "formulae", not "formuli".

[zapatos]

gib65, on 24 October 2011 - 04:44 PM, said:

Really? Well, that shoots down my idea. I had an idea for an App: a program that would allow you to bring up any scientific formula you want and would allow you to manipulate it in various ways. But if there's just that many formuli out there, it may turn out to be too big a project (not to mention too big to be loaded onto a computer).

That would be a pretty small computer.