Mapping the world of mathematics

Quanta Magazine’s ambitious plan to map the world of mathematics was also a challenging task in regard to interface design. How can we layout such an abstract map that has relations, categories and hierarchies? But not only show the overview and constellations: Each node of the network is described and has additional links to former Quanta articles. The most important topics are then explained with interactive visualisations.

The solution we developed is a hybrid article/map. The reader can simply scroll down and is presented with all subtopics in the shortest path. But once the user decides to take another router, she can use the overview map or the individual links between the nodes.

The two types of visualisations – Visualise It and Play With It – either explain the mathematical problem in a visual way or allow the user to interact and thus playfully explore the problem. In this way, we hope to both pay tribute to the complexity of each of the questions while also making such seemingly abstract problems tangible.