Hubbert math

POSTFACE

One day I learned that Firefox had a much better way of zooming web pages, zooming the pictures too. Knowing that equations are pictures I went to Wikipedia, and looked up ``Fourier Analysis". I was delighted. A table of equations looked beautiful and could be zoomed up to a size suitable for public lectures! It was as if html had finally incorporated math. In reality the math had been done via LaTeX and inserted as photos. Wanting to have on-line lectures drawn exactly from my books I learned to contribute to Wikipedia including equations.

At the same time I was reading Deffeyes book ``Beyond Oil'' (a play on the slogan ``Beyond Petroleum''). I wanted to play with Hubbert's curve fitting of worldwide oil production. Francis Muir gave me the algebraic tips I needed. I prepared my contribution in my ``sandbox'' and then moved it to the main encyclopedia. One of their volunteer managers soon found it and didn't like it. Rather than quote his opinions, I paraphrase saying ``equation derivations do not belong in an encyclopedia.''

So, I gave up and prepared this PDF file instead. It's not as seamlessly web viewable as html, but I'm much happier with it - and I am able to include it in this report!

A goal I cannot meet today is to write a single LaTeX file that becomes two things: (1) print media that is attractive, readable, and contains its web references (perhaps in footnotes), and (2) a PDF file with references as web links that work. I would like to see my books and all SEP report articles in this form. I'm not going to develop this myself. Someone else will do it; and I'll try to be an early adopter.

Hubbert math