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---
title: 'π-Base: a community database of topological counterexamples'
title: 'π-Base: Cyberinfrastructure for Formalized Results in Mathematics'
tags:
- Typescript
- Svelte
- mathematics
- topology
- GitHub Actions
- Mathematics
authors:
- name: Steven Clontz
orcid: 0000-0002-4938-4274
Expand All @@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ affiliations:
index: 1
- name: Independent Researcher, USA
index: 2
date: 2 April 2024
date: 16 June 2024
bibliography: paper.bib
---

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -106,17 +106,23 @@ be respected and of use by active researchers in general topology,
in the vein of other [mathematical databases](https://mathbases.org/)
such as the LMFDB [@lmfdb].

## Software Infrastructure

To accomplish this, the π-Base was refactored into the form it exists
in today. The frontend of the application is a single-page application
written in SvelteKit. This application ingests a single JSON file that
contains peer-reviewed data on topological spaces, properties, and
theorems that have been established in the literature or other moderated
sources such as MathOverflow or Math.StackExchange. This payload is
quite small, with the JSON built as of 2024 March taking up less than
one megabyte of space. The π-Base takes this data and then processes
quite small, with the JSON built as of 2024 June taking up less than
one megabyte of space. The π-Base frontend takes this data and then
processes
it in the client in order to deduce any missing space/property pairs.
For example, if a theorem states that all "compact" and "Hausdorff" spaces
are "normal", then any space that's marked as both compact and Hausdorff
For example, if a theorem states that all
"[compact](https://topology.pi-base.org/properties/P000016)" and
"[Hausdorff](https://topology.pi-base.org/properties/P000003)" spaces are
"[normal](https://topology.pi-base.org/properties/P000013)",
then any space that's marked as both compact and Hausdorff
will also be deduced to be normal. Furthermore, any space marked as
compact and not normal is automatically deduced to be not Hausdorff,
and so on.
Expand All @@ -130,8 +136,8 @@ addresses a security concern: the only way to compromise the application
is to gain access to its deployment workflows, not via the application
itself.

However, as a client-side application, there is no way to contribute to the
π-Base through its website. Instead, its contribution workflow is
As a client-side application, there is no way to contribute data to the
π-Base through its web application. Instead, its contribution workflow is
offloaded to GitHub's infrastructure using the `pi-base/data`
repository [@pibasedata]. Three directories (`properties`, `spaces`,
and `theorems`) contain Markdown files with YAML frontmatter. Each
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -168,6 +174,8 @@ away from the π-Base team and into the hands of GitHub. And for that subset of
mathematician users who are already familiar with GitHub, they do arrive
to the community with an existing knowledge of how to contribute.

## Impact

While frequently used as a resource to aid scholars
in searching the literature, π-Base is infrequently cited as a primary
source
Expand All @@ -189,6 +197,10 @@ mathematicians an opportunity to "contribute" to research infrastrcture by
way of π-Base, even when results on their own would not be considered "new"
or "publishable" in the traditional literature.

Finally, a fork of the
π-Base to model topos theory is in development at
<https://github.com/pi-base-topos/>.

<!-- # Citations
Citations to entries in paper.bib should be in
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