Sharing equations, algorithms and data in immediately usable form on the Internet

Anatoliy,

I was looking at “nuclear data” on the Internet and at “ENDF”.  I came across your 17 Oct 2018 posting at https://zenodo.org/record/2535170#.YJ0iytVKhEY entitled “Converting ENDF libraries into relational format”

Searching to see if you had written anything else on the topic, I also found you listed in Universiti Tenologi Malaysia Library at http://libmast.utm.my/Record/doaj-art-e5b13f1a4f66447f9397a68f70627ece with two other papers,
“Infological models of the ENDF-format nuclear data” and “Circuit design solutions for the reactimeters”

I like your “The transfer to a relational format will make it possible to use standard readily available tools for nuclear data processing which simplify the conversion and operation of this data array.”

Have you continued to pursue this idea of putting all the nuclear data into relational database form?  The closest I can come to your “infological formulas” is the concept of having all equations on the Internet in symbolic form with careful data on units and dimensions and ways of solving and use in simulations.

The major problem on the Internet for all scientific, engineering and quantitative collaboration is PDF and HTML formats that flatten the data so that only human eyes can take it in, without considerable investment of time and effort.  I call it the equivalent of paper.  It forces humans into the loop for ever step of global diffusion and sharing of knowledge.

For the Internet Foundation I track all global communities, particularly those where sharing of data, models, equations would have a transformational impact on global economy and systemic issues.  “Covid”, “global climate change” and thousands of other topics that I have investigated all give the same result – after massive duplicates and variations, and untraceable materials on the Internet, the almost universal use of paper methods (PDF and html and equations in images) are the most prevalent reasons why research takes years and not days.

I took over TheInternetFoundation.Org domain and purpose back in July 1998 from Network Solutions when the original Internet Foundation was cancelled for US political reasons.

I hope you will not give up on trying to make all atomic and nuclear engineering data useful for engineering, education and research.  Letting people immediately simulate and calculate is far superior to making them memorize formulas they cannot use, or memorize works they cannot find the meanings of, or try to solve problems without all the pieces.

Data in relational databases, sharing in json for small datasets, and tab separated line feed terminated tables with standardized headers for large tables is the most efficient for immediate use by the largest number of people. There are about 4.8 Billion people with some level of access to the internet.  Their common denominator is javascript and text.  Applications are fairly easy to convert to javascript. There are automated ways for most languages and wrappers.  I have looked at pretty much all of them for all topics and subjects on the Internet.

I am trying to get collections like Wikipedia so that all the equations are accessible in symbolic form, so they can be merged, compared and tested.  All the numbers having units and dimensions.  All the tables as relational tables, all the references to data sources live and integrated.  All the references to mathematical libraries and external mathematics and programs – traceable and living equations and representations of logic.  I have spent decades looking at all the computer languages and representations.  In the last several years I study GitHub and similar sites to see if all those scattered and incompatible efforts can be combined.  Just site:github.com “ENDF” has 1430 entry points,  site:github.com “nuclear data” has 793 entry points, and site:github.com “atomic data” has 1010. There are many more.

“nuclear data” – 1.06 Million entry points

“atomic data” – 454,000 entry points

“nuclear engineering” – 6.24 Million entry points

The massive duplication, incomplete and broken pages, use of forms that only humans can access, different styles and navigation and generally poor quality. That affects “nuclear data” communities and future generations.  It is part of why the cost of simulations and finding alternatives is so high.

(“covid” OR “coronavirus” OR “corona virus”) has about 7.5 Billion entry points on the Internet.  Most all the research is only shared in paper formats (html and images and pdf).  There is massive duplication.

“global climate change” has 13.3 Million entry points

There are many more.  All these are potential communities that could be sharing tools and data, not words on paper and undocumented text statements, and untraceable and unusable “equations” or untraceable and unreproducible computer programs that are missing key elements and mostly worthless.

There are about 2 Billion first time learners in the world now from 5 to 21. They are being forced to memorize in a few year the things they are supposed to know and apply the rest of their life. But many things change so fast, they are going to be seeing everything change constantly. So better to teach them how to work in global communities, global groups working and exploring together.

site:Wikipedia.org “Fourier transform” has 7380 entry points.  Yet nowhere is there a place to choose sample datasets, or FFTs from real datastreams and look at them as living things.  Nowhere to have the FFT applied to a persons microphone stream or video stream and see the result.

“Fourier transform” OR “Fourier transforms”  has 19.8 Million entry points, and almost all just talk about it, show text version of a few unconnected equations, and much is inside PDF where all the useful parts are lost and inaccessible for the kind of rapid prototyping, modeling, simulation, testing, calibration, experimentation and design of new things that will be needed in the near future.

Sincere regards,

Richard K Collins, Director, The Internet Foundation