I'll expand my comment that was haphazardly deleted with the duplicate post.

The definitive site for discussing math is

artofproblemsolving.com

for discussion of contest-style problems.

Some of the other online forums are restricted to persons in particular professional associations; Art of Problem Solving is open to anyone, and well moderated.

http://artofproblemsolving.com also hosts regular "Math Jams" - moderated, instructor-led real-time chats on solving various math problems - in which anyone can participate. http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Community/AoPS_Y_Math_Jam...

My apologies. I inadvertently deleted the thread.

In this, as with hacking, it's worth asking what your objective might be. Are you looking to learn math? Are you looking to listen to learned math conversations? Are you looking to ask questions about esoteric matters?

How do you see yourself interacting, and what are you trying to accomplish?

Good questions. Sorry I was not clear. I'm looking to learn math & also looking to listen to learned math conversations.

It depends on what you're looking for. As has been mentioned, artofproblemsolving.com (aka AoPS) and mathlinks.ro are good for the contest types. I've taught and graded for AoPS in the past, and there is no other place that can compare for contest math.

On the other hand, the overall skill level at AoPS is very high and very contest math oriented. I don't really check it that often anymore but in the past it never struck me as discussion forum as much as a problem solving forum (or a "how to become a better problem solver" forum). In addition, the majority of the posters there are young, that is high school age and below (though there are still a fair number of older posters).

To put it a different way, when friends of mine that are interested in learning "interesting math" from a casual standpoint ask me where to look, I'm not really sure what to tell them. Certainly I recommend giving AoPS a shot, but I'm unsure as to whether it would be the best place to go.

Agreed, it's a fantastic forum for that sort of thing. It was extremely valuable during my 1/2 semester as a physics major.

wu :: forums - http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi

xkcd - http://forums.xkcd.com/

#math on freenode

It's not really a forum, but Project Euler (projecteuler.net) is awesome.

I really like irc.efnet.org #math

If you want to get answers to questions for elementary math questions, you might also want to consider these two sites:

1) MathForum.org

http://mathforum.org/dr.math/

You can check out the previous answers here:

2) Yahoo! Answers (Home->Science & Mathematics->Mathematics)

http://answers.yahoo.com

On Usenet, you're probably already checking math.sci. That's my favorite one.

-Larry

You can try www.reddit.com/r/math although it is not that good. You may be able to digg up something nice at http://planetmath.org/?op=forums .

I don't think there is really a nice discussion forum for math :(

I guess I deleted the previous thread. Sorry. This was one of the comments in the deleted thread. ---- 1 point by tokenadult 6 minutes ago | link | parent | on: Ask HN: Good math forums?

The definitive site for discussing math is

artofproblemsolving.com

for discussion of contest-style problems.