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though I'm a relative newbie to the "Stack" community, my research interest has brought me to a dilemma. The area of Numerical Analysis is theoretically covered by both MO and SO, but is practically covered by none. SO usually answers very practical Matlab/R oriented question, while MO Numerical community is relatively small.

Do you think both communities should align on this subject? maybe link the Numerical-Analysis tagged questions between sites? How is this problem solved in other algorithmic areas?

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    $\begingroup$ There is also scicomp.stackexchange.com $\endgroup$
    – j.c.
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 9:02
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    $\begingroup$ How is that supposed to work alongside with MO and SO? $\endgroup$
    – Amir Sagiv
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 9:25

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If you have questions concerning , you should really try to ask it at Computational Science. The top users there are nearly all tenured professors, or at least active researchers with PhD and lecturing responsibilities. Some are descendants from big names like Rolf Rannacher or Nick Trefethen, some active contributors of widely used numerical libraries like PETSc. There is really no reason to expect getting better answers at MO, just because some famous (pure mathematics) professors are active here. And if you look at the stats for Computational Science, you will see that more question would be welcome.

That said, I agree with Joonas Ilmavirta that other StackExchange sites like Computer Science, Mathematics, StackOverflow, ... can be appropriate too, depending on your actual question. (But I admit that I have seen question with underwhelming answers here, and I guess that most regular users here would have problems even noticing when an answer to such a question is underwhelming.)

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No I do not think the MO and SO communities should cooperate on this tag. While ideas to "link tags" or have listings of questions on several sites get entertained from time to time the current proposal seems infeasible and not needed to me.

For one thing, the sites Stack Overlflow and MathOverflow are quite different; "Stack Overflow for Mathematics" would be rather [math.se] not this site.

Furthermore, as mentioned by others already, there is a site [scicomp.se] that seems to cover the overlap you talk about quite nicely.

For other algorithms areas, there would be [cs.se] and for research questions there is [theorycs.se] and there is also [programmers.se] for conceptual programming related questions.

There are also various other sites, including [stats.se], [quant.se], [dba.se] and various science-sites, that would cover certain aspects.

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  • $\begingroup$ Hey @quid , thanks for the response! I agree that theoretically we should have the two aspects of Numerical Analysis in two different websites, but it is the same community that deals with both on a daily basis. You don't want to keep them away from the Matlab/R/C/fortrun experts, but, you don't want them too far from the analysis experts. Scicomp, in that sense, might just all the more isolate them and create yet a third community. $\endgroup$
    – Amir Sagiv
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 18:47
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    $\begingroup$ You are welcome. I do not understand what problem you want to solve, or think would be solved, by what you propose. Can you perhaps give some examples of questions that you think are on-topic on MO and SO at the same time? $\endgroup$
    – user9072
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 19:14
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There are some StackExchange sites that seem relevant here:

For others, see quid's answer or browse through the list of SE sites.

Compare their help pages and look at some questions to learn their scopes. Then you should have a guess for the most suitable site for each question that arises in your research. Ask there. If you don't get a useful answer in a couple of days, post at another one of these sites, but make sure the different versions of the question contain links to each other. You might also want to adapt the question to the new environment if that seems appropriate. You will probably learn over time where you are most likely to get help.

The scopes of SE sites overlap and their boundaries are ill-defined. I suggest using the above strategy, and when in doubt, asking guidelines at the relevant meta sites. I think it is better if the different sites don't interact too closely, but rather the users choose different sites flexibly according to their needs. I don't think cooperation between MO and SO on some tags would be very fruitful (or practically feasible).

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