Ancient Web: Cosma Shalizi’s Notebooks Never Stopped Being a Work in Progress

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Some researchers keep notes in private until they have something polished to publish. Cosma Shalizi has spent decades letting strangers wander through the untidy shelves.

Browse the Bactra Notebooks.

The main index describes the project as notes about subjects its author finds interesting, puzzling, outrageous, or worth learning more about. The list ranges across mathematical statistics, probability, social science, philosophy, history, programming, fantasy fiction, and recommended books. Many entries are frankly labeled incomplete, with bibliographic leads placed beside questions the author still wants to answer.

A Probability Theory notebook gives a particularly revealing pair of dates: the first version was April 29, 1998, while its latest update is much newer. It moves from the history of mathematical probability to reflections on research and teaching, then into extensive references. The site's form allows the same page to accumulate revisions for decades without pretending it has become a finished textbook.

A bibliography with the author's doubts left in

Shalizi's FAQ explains that the notes are personal working material rather than polished essays. The index invites corrections and additions but even welcomes suggestions about what can be discarded. The page also offers an RSS feed and links to a LiveJournal syndication maintained by someone else, a trace of different social-web eras layered over the older site.

What makes the notebooks especially useful is the mixture of judgment and bibliography. A page on complexity measures sorts references into levels of recommendation, sometimes explaining why the author is unpersuaded. Another on the physical principles of biology connects physics, evolution, and mathematical models. They are notes toward understanding, not a search engine's mechanically assembled results.

This entry is distinct from Bactra's separate, preserved 1994 HTML edition of J. D. Bernal's futurist essay. That project makes a historical text readable. The notebooks expose the continuing process of one researcher's reading and thinking.

The current index has revisions dated October 2026, so the site remains actively maintained. Its long history is visible in dated individual entries rather than inferred from an antique-looking design.

Browse the notebooks and the 1998-origin probability page.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.