Notices · terms
Terms and Conditions
These terms state plainly what a reader may do with the compendium and what the compendium promises in return. They are short because the compendium asks little and offers little beyond its writing.
Your use of the pages
You may read every page of the compendium without charge and without registering anything. You may print a page for your own study, keep a copy for personal reference, and quote from a paper in your own writing, provided you name the paper and the step to which it belongs. What you may not do is present the writing as your own or sell it onward, because that would misrepresent both the desk and the material.
Quotation and attribution
The compendium is written to be quoted. A short passage may be used in a student's work, a teacher's notes or a reader's own journal, so long as the source is named. A longer passage should be accompanied by the title of the paper and the step, so that a later reader can find the passage in its place. Attribution is not a formality here; it is how a reference keeps its threads connected.
The limits of the material
The compendium treats mathematical ideas for their own sake. It renders no advice of any kind, it offers no service, and it makes no promise about any situation outside its pages. A reader who applies a formula to a real problem does so on their own judgement, and the compendium cannot be responsible for the result, because it never spoke to the particular case in the first place.
No warranty of fitness
The pages are offered as they stand. The desk takes great care over them, but it cannot promise that every sentence suits every reader's purpose, and it cannot promise that every page will always be reachable. Where a page proves unsuitable for a reader's purpose, that is a signal to seek a fuller treatment elsewhere, not a fault in the reader.
Conduct on the pages
The compendium has no commentary, no posting and no accounts, so there is little occasion for conduct to be regulated. The single point that matters is this: a reader who writes to the desk by mail should write about the material rather than about anything else. Messages that concern a subject outside the compendium will receive a short reply declining them, and that is the whole of the desk's enforcement.
Changes to these terms
These terms may be revised when the compendium itself changes. A revision will be shown on this page and will take effect when it appears. Because the terms are short, a reader can see at a glance whether anything of consequence has moved, and the desk undertakes to keep them short for exactly that reason.
Governing understanding
If any sentence of these terms turns out to be unenforceable in a reader's situation, the remaining sentences stand as written. The compendium would rather lose a clause than grow a paragraph of qualifications, and it trusts its readers to read a short statement in good faith, as it is offered in good faith.
A note on the spirit of these terms
Terms are usually written to guard against misuse, and this page does guard against the misuse of presenting the writing as one's own. But its deeper spirit is permissive. The compendium wants to be read, printed, quoted and passed on, and the terms are written to make those uses easy rather than difficult. Where a reader is unsure whether a use is allowed, the question to ask is whether the source is named and whether the writing is offered as the reader's own.
A reader who names the paper and the step has done everything the compendium asks. That is a light burden, and it is light on purpose. The desk would rather have the writing travel widely with its name attached than sit untouched behind a paragraph of restrictions, and these terms are shaped by that preference.