# Happy Second Birthday, M.SE!

It seems that the time to give out Yearling badges is at hand once more! This site is now two years old, and it seems that it is growing nicely.

Anyone that wishes to share their experiences on the site for the past two years, feel free to do so in the comments and answers!

I, for one, feel that my abilities to answer and explain mathematics have greatly improved thanks to this site, not to mention the amount of knowledge I gained here!

Happy birthday, site!

• In my 717 (consecutive) days on the site, I have learned once again that I am a complete internet addict! – Asaf Karagila Jul 20 '12 at 20:45
• It is a curiously and dangerously addictive site. – copper.hat Jul 21 '12 at 1:10
• Yes, addictive indeed! – lhf Jul 21 '12 at 3:05
• Funny, that this is the only stackexchange site, where user admit to be addicted to: Google Search: addict site:stackexchange.com/questions, rank 6!! – draks ... Jul 23 '12 at 22:18
• @draks... Note that comments do not appear in search results. – wizzwizz4 Nov 25 '17 at 14:30

The only things that have changed are that I now know even more mathematics than when I started here thanks to you guys, and I now have swag that is a concrete testament to how much I've been posting to this site... (all good, and not too much, I hope).

I hope math.SE will keep being part of my continuing education outside school.

The amount of mathematics knowledge present on this website (in the form of questions, answers, comments, and people) is now truly enormous. I think that exactly one year ago almost all possible questions involving "basic mathematics" had been asked and answered along with a substantial number of questions involving "intermediate mathematics" and some questions involving "advanced mathematics". Of course, in this classification I am specifying an equivalence relation defining precisely when two mathematics questions are "the same"; my definition is that "(question A) $\equiv$ (question B)" if and only if the underlying sets of concepts and ideas (in a broad sense) used in the definition and the solution of each of these questions are "the same" (in a broad sense). In this case, the number of questions involving advanced mathematics is still infinite but we can reasonably state that the number of questions involving basic or intermediate mathematics is finite (provided that we suitably define "basic" and "intermediate").

However, now it is difficult to find a concept in mathematics about which has not been asked on this website (including very advanced and esoteric concepts). In fact, many of these questions have also been answered indicating the amazing breadth and depth of knowledge possessed by the community at the moment.

It would be great to have a few more specialists in some of the more esoteric topics in mathematics actively participating on this website but at the moment there are at least a few specialists in each of the "major branches of mathematics"; I think that in exactly a year of time the community will be extremely vast in terms of mathematical interests and knowledge. I think at some point in the future (I predict almost definitely by 2020) we can expect this website to be not only an extensive and deep library of mathematics questions and answers but also a place where you can reasonably expect to have virtually any mathematics question (of bounded difficulty where the bound is a nondecreasing function of time) to be answered very quickly (of course, this will have advantages and disadvantages but I think that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages).

• The problem is, it's a library without a card catalogue. It has several copies of some of its holdings, but they're all on different shelves. – Gerry Myerson Jul 21 '12 at 5:36
• @Gerry, not having a card catalogue wouldn't be so bad if the search wasn't such a crapshoot... notwithstanding the fact that math is hard to search for, especially for things without names. – J. M. is a poor mathematician Jul 22 '12 at 14:14
• @GerryMyerson: sci.math has the same defect, for which Dave Rusin's efforts at systematizing provided a bit of mitigation beyond what a FAQ offers. I have a suspicion that some math.SE threads inspire Wikipedia material and conversely. – hardmath Jul 30 '12 at 12:50

I really don't know where to begin. I came here when some parts of my vision to Mathematics were not operative. Masters here have assisted me to learn how to pass some unpaved ways in problem solving, step by step. The site has been giving the chance for anyone who wants to be a good student in Maths. Happy birthday M.SE. I hope someday you be one of the only references in Mathematics ever. Thank you for accepting me as a very small member. :)