September 25, 1999–More than 20,000 messages have now been posted to MathGroup since its inception in 1988. MathGroup, a technical discussion newsgroup, is a free service of Steven M. Christensen and Associates, Inc. Christensen, one of the first Mathematica users and cocreator of MathTensor, started MathGroup shortly after the official introduction of Mathematica. Members of the group post their questions to the mailing list and usually receive rapid and expert help with their Mathematica questions. Many of the world’s leading experts on Mathematica, both inside and outside of Wolfram Research, read and respond to user comments and problems.

Initially, the mailing list was just that, with three or fewer postings per day. However, over the years it has grown as the number of Mathematica users has grown. MathGroup is now linked to the moderated newsgroup comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica on the internet, and the number of messages posted daily has multiplied at least tenfold to 30 or more on most days now.

According to Steve Christensen, MathGroup founder and moderator, “There is no way to estimate the size of the newsgroup reading population, but there are over two thousand members on the mailing list. My guess is that many tens of thousands read the newsgroup or mailing list regularly.”

The 20,000th message was posted early Saturday morning by a Mathematica user at Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany in response to the question of an Austrian colleague regarding the use of fractions as axes labels.

For more information on MathGroup, visit the web site at http://smc.vnet.net/mathgroup.html.