MathWorld Search Help

Queries

The default search method returns a list of pages that contain all of the words specified in a search query.

Search words are delineated by spaces; there is no need to include "and" between terms.

Searching is case insensitive.

Search words may contain numerals.

Searching for the special single letters a and i must escape these letters with quotes, i.e., "a" and "i".

Special characters such as backslashes are ignored. The plus sign ("+") has special meaning, as does the colon (":"). Dashes are significant, so a search for "Gauss-Legendre" finds only literal matches.

Common Words

Common words and characters such as "the", "where", and "how", as well as certain single letters are ignored by the search engine. If such a word is necessary for your search, include it by putting a "+" sign in front of it. (Note that a space is needed before the "+" sign.) Another way to keep common words in your search is to search by phrase.

Phrase Searching

Phrase searching may be specified by enclosing the search string in double quotes. For example, "Fourier transform" matches only pages where those two words appear as a contiguous phrase.

Searching for Words Containing Special Characters

Special characters, including accented characters, are matched both literally and in "flattened" form. This means that to find pages containing the term "Möbius", you can either type the o-umlaut character explicitly or else just use a plain "o". Searching for a transliteration containing a different spelling however, such as "Moebius", will return only pages that literally contain those strings. You should search for the form of the words as it appears on MathWorld. See the entities FAQ for more information about the conventions used for encoding special characters on MathWorld.

Stemming

Stemming (also known as prefix matching) and, more generally, suffix matching or other types of wildcard matching, are supported by the search system. As a result, asterisks (i.e., "*") and question marks (i.e., "?") are treated as wildcards in matching.

Word Variations

When appropriate, your search terms will be expanded by the search engine to include variations of terms.