Numberpedia

I was excited to read in The Numbers Guy's blog about Numberpedia, an attempt to create a Wikipedia about numbers.

From the article:

The site, launched two weeks ago and still small, aspires to be the Wikipedia of numbers—a place where anyone can contribute (or seek out) statistics about a wide range of topics.

“At its core, it’s a way for people to store statistics that they find online,” says Eric Silverberg, Numberpedia’s creator and a 27-year-old student at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Mr. Silverberg has been posting a half few dozen entries each day and has begun promoting the site with emails to fellow MIT students and Stanford University alumni. He says there are a “couple thousand” registered users so far.

Numberpedia is full of promise and pitfalls. Like Wikipedia, each entry is supposed to include a link to source material and there are forums where other users can discuss and question entries. Unlike Wikipedia, a contributor can opt to prevent other users from editing a certain entry. Mr. Silverberg doesn’t guarantee the numbers will be accurate, saying, “It’s up to the user who finds one of these statistics to judge the credibility of the author and the source.”

I went to Numberpedia to see what the excitement was about. It has some interesting numbers on it -- from the fiscal 2008 US defense budget to the sale price of dog-chewed Vick trading cards.

There's some possibilities there, including the ability to create projects and link a series of statistics within them.

It's something to keep your eye on ....