# Collection of Mathematical Constants

I recently stumbled over the large collection of mathematical constants of Mauro Fiorentini; it is in Italian and appears to be something in the vein of the famous OEIS, however maintained by a single person in isolation.

Question:
what is known about the author of, and the motivation for, that collection of constants and, is something similar available from other sources (the link leads to the first of several hundred tables of constants)?

• the author is a professor of mathematics at the University of Milan in Crema, according to his professional home page Apr 4, 2018 at 17:31
• @CarloBeenakker thanks for answering one of the central questions; it made we wonder, why the website wasn't in English, which would have aided in more widespread recognition. Apr 5, 2018 at 5:20
• I'm curious why you don't contact the author and ask him. Apr 6, 2018 at 6:40
• @jinawee maybe because my Italian is too limited... Apr 6, 2018 at 9:00
• I bet he knows some English. Apr 7, 2018 at 7:10

Steven Finch used to have a site full of essays about his favourite constants including a table, though the contents page is actually more interesting

He then turned this into a book Mathematical Constants (Encyclopedia of Mathematics and its Applications 94, CUP, 2003), formalising the essays with an expanded table on pages 543-566. The website then shrank before disappearing

• here is also a link to a pdf of the first few pages of Steven Finch's book, where the constants are listed. Apr 5, 2018 at 5:10
• I accepted this answer, because I like being confronted with things I was not aware of; in that sense a collections of constants is analogous to a zoo. The other answer is related to a very important algorithm that helps in answering the question, whether a value can be expressed by known constants and thus hinting to possible connections between mathematical results or theorems. Apr 5, 2018 at 5:17
• also interesting: Errata and Addenda to Mathematical Constants by Steven Finch, 149 pages! Apr 5, 2018 at 5:28
• and apparently Finch is producing Mathematical Constants II soon Apr 5, 2018 at 7:56
• yes, indeed! And for the itchy ones among us, it can already be ordered Apr 5, 2018 at 11:58

There is the inverse symbolic calculator. Unlike the (amazingly great) OEIS which only gives exact matches, this uses an algorithm to get close to what you put in. I've not had great success with it. although I did give it $0.42331082512$ which is close to $\pi-e \approx 0.4233108251307480$ (so the last digit I gave it was wrong) and it figured that out.

If you go to the home page of Simon Plouffe you can see that he says that he has a more advanced version. It may be a huge Maple program which you need to download. I have not tried it out.

• I've had some success in this for finding roots of simple polynomials of low degree, which show up sometimes from numerical calculations. Apr 4, 2018 at 7:57
• I usually do that in Maple. It is LLL on $1,r,r^2,...,r^k.$ these sites (I think) use a larger base including various famous constants, logs etc. Apr 4, 2018 at 8:39