Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2011

Jan 2011

User:Rychlik

Rychlik (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), no doubt an otherwise well-intentioned editor, does appear to be adding material that is unduly self-promotional. He has already been warned of a potential COI, but perhaps further action is needed? Specifically of concern are the articles Marek Rychlik, Rychlik's theorem, and Chordal problem, all of which appear to assign undue significance to the editor's own research. I thought I should post here to solicit input on the best way to handle this constellation of articles. One possibility that seems reasonable to me is to delete Marek Rychlik and Rychlik's theorem, possibly merging some content from Rychlik's theorem to Chordal problem. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:47, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Most recent contribs include homoclinic connection, which has long been needed, and now appears to be a workable start. I'd recommend letting things slide for a while, and getting him comfortable with editing WP in general, rather than scaring him off with contentiousness. I suspect that many start by editing WP pages close to their heart, before showing broadened interests. Even I resisted but eventually succumbed to the urge to mention my own thesis work in an article somewhere :-) linas (talk) 05:36, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

One particular issue that strikes me is the need to establish that Rychlik's solution to the equichordal point problem is actually known as Rychlik's theorem. Almost all of the independent references currently in that article pre-date Rychlik's solution and so cannot be a source for that name. I have asked for a reliable source at Talk:Rychlik's theorem, but that request has so far gone unheeded. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:39, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

... and Ushiki's theorem, started by the same editor, has the same problem. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:16, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Situation does look manageable. Would anyone inclined to intervene please note the key distinction: "potential COI" may be a hypothesis or it may be something that can be confirmed. But WP:COI relates fundamentally only to putting the encyclopedia's interests second, rather than first. Something like the discussion of whether equichordal point problem is a better title can actually be carried out compatibly with AGF. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:26, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, and I hope I didn't seem alarmist. My chief concerns are that the autobiography is unsuitable (the subject is of borderline notability, and autobiographies are a COI as a rule) and the article about "Rychlik's theorem" (which is also a clear COI, although our standards on theorems are generally fairly relaxed). The other edits seem to be beneficial on the whole. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:23, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I am not convinced that redirecting Marek Rychlik to Rychlik's theorem was a good solution. We do have notability guidelines, and in this regard Marek Rychlik clearly fulfilled the criteria. Sure, the article was poor, but if anything I'd expected Rychlik's theorem to be renamed to equichordal point problem. Nageh (talk) 20:05, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not at all convinced that Marek Rychlik passes the notability guideline. He has one or two highly cited papers, but an otherwise fairly unremarkable career. Solving the equichordal point problem seems to be something that he himself is very excited about, but it does not seem to have generated any buzz in the wider mathematical world, so I don't think this rises to the required level of notability. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but at any rate people should not be writing articles about themselves to begin with, so as a short-term solution, a redirect seems fine. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Now on AfD. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:38, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

AfD is fine with me. If your concern is insufficient notability, I do have to repeat the point that we have guidelines for when an academic is notable, and he clearly fulfills them. Regarding your disregard of his solution on the equichordal point problem, I want to point out this source and its introduction as a hint for notability. Anyway, I put my comments on the AfD page. Nageh (talk) 18:13, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, I am certainly aware of the notability guidelines, and I see no evidence that he passes them. The book you cite mentions the subject, but only briefly in passing. And, at any rate, there are still the demands of WP:V, that sources must address the subject of the article in a nontrivial manner. If he truly is notable only for one thing, then WP:1E applies, and a redirect to Equichordal point problem is fully justified. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:43, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The other problem is that equichordal point problem is now a redirect to Rychlik's theorem. As I pointed out previously, I can find only a single source on Google that refers to this problem by "Rychlik's theorem". If anything, Rychlik's theorem should be redirected to the equichordal point problem article. Nageh (talk) 12:38, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it's just silly. The Rychlik's theorem page says that it solves the equichordal point problem, but then that link redirects to the page you're on. Meaning you don't know what the equichordal point problem is, and you don't know the motivation for Rychlik's theorem. It's a total COI for Rychlik to write articles about his own work. — Fly by Night (talk) 14:15, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I just found a paper on ZBMATH database (Wojtkowski, M.P., Two applications of Jacobi fields to the billiard ball problem, J. Differ. Geom. 40, No.1, 155-164 (1994)) which mentions Bialy's theorem and also Rychlik's theorem in the abstract. Now, two major questions arise: 1) is the user Sławomir Biały related to Rychlik in any way, if yes, did the relationship induce this discussion? 2) Independent of the first question, is one mentioning by another polish mathematician a proof for notability? I highly doubt that. DrPhosphorus (talk) 19:39, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I have requested a renaming of Rychlik's theorem to equichordal point problem, followed by deletion of the article name Rychlik's theorem. Discussion here. Cheers, and a happy new year! Nageh (talk) 10:32, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Input requested on recent breakage of Template:Su

I'd like to solicit input on the recent breakage of Template:Su in the Firefox 2.0 compatible browsers (there is a thread at Template talk:Su). I've just been told off that the ~20,000 current users of this line of browsers is not enough market share to consider fixing the template. The template is totally broken for users of this line of browsers (see the image on that discussion page for details), and a solution is very desirable. Potentially the template should be retired from use in favor of using <math> instead. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:07, 1 January 2011 (UTC):

Does putting the whole thing (including the previous symbol) inside "nowrap" fix the problem? — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:30, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

No, the span actually has an embedded <br /> in it, and it breaks in Firefox 2.0 because it does not understand display:inline-block;. It used to work throuhg mozilla-specific CSS, which went deprecated in Firefox 3.0, but that caused problems for newer browsers (including Firefox 3.x), so the template was overhauled to use generic CSS. Firefox 2.0 is extinct; with making up only 0.43% of pageviews, we felt it is not worth fixing. — Edokter • Talk — 17:08, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I think the real question here is not "can we fix it?", but "should we fix it for 0.43% of users, if that means poorer experience for the rest?" in other words "backwards compatibility at what cost?".     — SkyLined (talk) 11:59, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

In this case, it seems to be an issue of fixing it for the ~5% who use Internet Explorer 6 at the cost of breaking it for the ~0.4% who use Firefox 2. If that's accurate, I think that going with the larger number of readers is the right choice. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:26, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I suppose it depends on whether it is still a priority for Wikipedia to remain usable for people running older systems. I know that in some areas (e.g., accessibility) obviously the need to be accessible to as wide a user base as possible is a major consideration. However, perhaps in other areas (e.g., the perennial debate about unicode) it is less of an issue. So, depending on how one prioritizes the matter, there are two ways forward: either accept that an appreciable number of users are going to be unable to read some of our articles, or use something else (e.g., <math>) instead of the template. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:36, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

One problem with <math> is that it offers no accessibility features and you can't copy+paste it either; you would lock users with disabilities out, who cannot address their problem, in favor of users with insecure, outdated browsers, who are a liability to the net as a whole and the main reason why we have so many botnets. IMHO the later should be banned outright, but let's not get to that discussion :D. There are probably a number of ways to solve this specific issue in the tempalte, each with different drawbacks. This is why I think we should focus on the generic question of what level of backwards compatibility should we provide and at what cost to useful features.     — SkyLined (talk) 16:36, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

One can tell Wikipedia to format <math> as plain text, which will be accessible to every browser and works with screen readers. Math images cannot be copied and pasted but they work for everyone who can read images, again on every browser. Also the Su template loses the semantic information that a formula is mathematics, while the <math> tags will keep working (and improve appearance) when we eventually move to a better math system like mathjax or mathml. So there are several advantages to using <math> for formulas in a mathematical context. The majority of uses of Su seem to be for chemical symbols; only about 60 math articles use the template. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:50, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Side comment: I agree that mathjax is better, but I think it is likely to be broken on a much larger number of browsers. As I recall, mathjax seems to demand the latest version of everything, and doesn't seem to work on some of the more exotic browsers like Konqueror. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:06, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Operator

Hi, I was hoping to get some expert help. Operator (disambiguation) currently has over 100 incoming links, and we're having a tough time figuring out how to fix them. I'm suspicious that the disambig is missing a mathematics article or two. Could someone take a look at the mathematics articles in this list and give their opinion? Thanks, --JaGa^talk 19:06, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

The word "operator", even when restricted to mathematics, has several meanings depending on context. Most of these meanings should be covered in Operator (mathematics) but I'm thinking that article should be merged with the main dab article; it's not in a very good state as it is. Meanwhile, the links to "operator" in math articles should be changed to link to an article with the specific meaning. I've done one or two but but it's not an easy task since it's often difficult to tell what specific meaning (if any) the author of an article had in mind.--RDBury (talk) 10:34, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I did exactly the opposite about a month ago. The problem was that there was no article on operators on vector spaces, and the article operator (mathematics) (then just called operator) was horrible, mainly because its main contributors were programmers (even though there was already operator (programming) at the time) and non-specialists only familiar with arithmetic operations. You can look at the discussion page to get a feeling of how inadequate they were. That's why I think there must be a separate article on operators on vector spaces if only to protect it from unintentional vandalism, maybe under different title. — Kallikanzarid^talk 11:55, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Part of the problem here is confusion between what programmers call "operators" and mathematicians call "operations" (e.g. the arithmetic operations "+", "-" etc.). So that some of the uses of the term "operator" which now link to operator, actually are referring to, and ought to link instead to, operation (mathematics). Paul August ☎ 12:26, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm with you here, maybe we need to sketch a network of articles that will satisfy the community and lessen the confusion. — Kallikanzarid^talk 13:50, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

New Articles Are Being Created All The Time

Why does this project not use a project banner to identify articles that are within its purview? I put the banner on a somewhat new article's talk page while I was putting a value in |listas= and when I previewed the page I got the message that all the mathematics articles are in a List.

Lists have to be maintained manually. Categories populate themselves. The article I was attempting to tag is not on your list even though it has been around since October, 2010.

I am not doing drive-by tagging. I am working strictly by hand because of the low level of the quality of the sort values. I merely wanted call your attention to an article you seem to have ignored.

Happy editing! JimCubb (talk) 01:16, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Which article are you looking at? The list is updated by a bot, not by hand, and we can investigate why the bot didn't find the article.

The reason we have not tagged every math article is that (1) it wouldn't be any more accurate than our list, anyway and (2) a bot cannot assess the quality or priority of an article, and the only point of our article tags is to carry this data. However, maybe the bot's list of categories needs to be tweaked. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:35, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

There is a project banner on the talk pages of most math articles, I think.

Perhaps Movable singularity is what he's talking about. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:05, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

That article is on the list and has been around for years, though. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:10, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Károly Bezdek is the right age (and the talk page was edited by JimCubb recently). It's on the list too, though. Algebraist 02:13, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Bezdek is the one I meant. I did not see him on the list and I apologize for missing him. The talk page of his article gives no indication that this project knows the article exists. JimCubb (talk) 02:21, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

It's on the list of mathematicians, which is separate from list of mathematics articles. Both are maintained by a bot using the article categories. If we tried to maintain the article talk page tags by hand, it wouldn't be any more accurate than the bot already is (how would we find the untagged articles, apart from categories?). — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:26, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

List of topics named after Karl Weierstrass

I've created a List of topics named after Karl Weierstrass.

Tasks:

• Link to it from appropriate other articles. So far there's only a link from Karl Weierstrass.
• Create all plausible redirects you can think of (I'll do the one with the eszett).
• Expand it is appropriate.
• Annotate it. After a link, one might put a comma followed by "a function used for turning elephants inside-out" (or whatever.........).
• Add appropriate category tags (there's just one right now; maybe that's all it needs?).
• Other appropriate editing as needed/desired.

So get busy and have fun with it. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:55, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Movable singularity

Movable singularity has been prodded.

Do what you can with it. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:05, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Someone's added a reference and de-prodded it. Quite possibly it still needs work. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:06, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

See three sections up. Algebraist 02:07, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Movable singularity

The article Movable singularity has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

A search for references found several references for the phrase, but multiple phrasing differences between sources and this article make impossible to Validate the accuracy of the article content

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 17:50, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I've removed the "prod" tag, as this is certainly a notable topic. Paul August ☎ 18:10, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

The false positive is a bit worrying. The above template message suggests that there is some centralized place where a bunch of articles are being prodded en masse. This seems problematic. Also Jitse's bot seems to be out of commission at the moment, so we likely will have no idea if this affects other mathematics articles. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:22, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I will see what I can do about making a list of any math articles with prod tags. I need to get with Jitse to see if we can move his bot to the toolserver where others can help keep it running. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:40, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

At the moment there are three math articles with prod tags: Proof Involving the multiplication of natural_numbers, Srđan Ognjanović and Q-class decomposition. — Carl (CBM · talk)

These are already on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity and it appears the bot was working as of the 2nd. One of the articles is also listed on the article alerts page, but 1 out of 3 isn't a very high coverage rate.--RDBury (talk) 22:03, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I saw this discussion just after I made my addition to the page. You are missing the point of the prod tag on the article. There are no references on the article. The subject of the article may be notable but there is no justification of that in the article other than what appears to be original research. I have reinstated the tag.

There has been a history of empty threats on WP for some time. The no references tag has been in place, and ignored by the project, for years. A group of editors have noticed this problem and are trying to clean up the mess. JimCubb (talk) 01:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Do not reinstate prod tags: it is a direct violation of policy. Algebraist 01:32, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

An "unreferenced" tag is not a "threat" - it's just a maintenance message, like "uncategorized" or "wikify". There's no deadline to handle these tags. If you wish to see more articles with references, the best thing to do is to add references. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:41, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Also, WP:BEFORE #9 has good advice: look for references before nominating an article for deletion based on a claim that the topic isn't notable. In this case, just a google books search would have shown that the topic can be found in many textbooks. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:47, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I heartily agree with Carl. A lack of references has not suddenly become a criterion for deletion. It certainly isn't the sort of thing that WP:PROD is supposed to be used for, which is for uncontroversial deletions. If, as indeed you say, "a group of editors" has banded together to start deleting unreferenced articles willy-nilly using prod, then someone needs to put a stop to it. Sławomir Biały (talk) 01:56, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I see from their edit histories that Jeepday and JimCubb have been prodding any article that they cannot find references for. I have started a discussion about this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles#Appropriateness of PRODding articles. Ozob (talk) 11:57, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I found this discussion from the WikiProject Unreferenced articles thread. Anyway, I just wanted to clarify that it's my understanding Jeepday is working through the articles which have been unreferenced since 2006, not just any article tagged as unreferenced. Anyway, I'm glad the false positive was caught, and that the article is now sourced. PhilKnight (talk) 15:48, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I am also glad that the I was wrong about the article, I wish I was wrong as spectacularly as this more often. The project goal is to find and add references to article that have been tagged as needing them the longest. The simple fact that articles are in the oldest Category:Articles needing additional references means that most are without anyone who cares to improve them, math articles are lucky to have a solid group like this. When a search for references does not find support for the articles content, every Wikipedian has an obligation to remove content that does not meet the expectations of Wikipedia. Now to the prod being discussed, more then just finding and adding a reference to an article, it is my basic expectation that the references should support the actual content of the article as written, and anything unsupportable should be removed. I looked and found multiple references, but was not able with validate the content to the reference enough to make me feel comfortable that the references supported the content. Unfortunately not every article can meet Wikipedia criteria even those written by the most trusted editors (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Manar Group). The best anyone can do, is what seems like in best keeping with the goals of Wikipedia to maintain a high standard of content. I make every reasonable effort to contact anyone who might be able to show my prod is incorrect, (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Songs were I am mostly ignored) to the places I posted messages after this prod [1] [2] [3] [4]. If I can be of any help in referencing Math articles that are most in need of help let me know. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 16:57, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Your inability to find a reference which you were able to understand to support all of the article's content is not a valid reason for deleting an article, please see WP:DEL. If an article is about a notable topic, something your research must surely have confirmed, then the article should be improved not deleted. Paul August ☎ 21:31, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Paul, actually it is "Articles for which thorough attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed", Which I believe you have quoted in part at least once. No where in Wikipedia (that I am aware) does it say that when a subject is notable the content of articles in not subject to WP:V, which requires that "readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source,", which I was not able to do. If you issue is with my judgment, or with Wikipedia policy this is not the venue to discuss it. I invite you to bring your concerns to my talk page or any appropriate venue. Jeepday (talk) 22:51, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

A google book search for "movable singularities" finds many textbook sources that look good. So my feeling is that your failure to find good sources cannot have constituted a "thorough attempt", because a thorough attempt would have easily succeeded in this case. Therefore, you did not have a valid reason for deleting this article. It is unsurprising that an editor who does not specialize in mathematics would not have the expertise to actually integrate the sources into the text, but that is different from what WP:DEL asks. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:12, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:16, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

WP:OWN Jeepday (talk) 01:00, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Don't be ridiculous.TimothyRias (talk) 06:48, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is by no means true that mathematics here is a "walled garden", which would be a criticism worth answering. You know where we are, and this project is reasonably effective at dealing with queries about referencing. So please drop us a line in such cases. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:52, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Möbius resistor

Should one of the math categories be added to the article titled Möbius resistor? Which one(s)?

(BTW, Oleg's mathbot has stopped adding new items every day to the list of mathematics articles. Jitse's bot still seems to be working, so it's Oleg's bot's fault we're not seeing anything new on the current activities page.) Michael Hardy (talk) 07:51, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

No, at best this is an application of Möbius strip to electrical engineering. It is not mathematics per se, unless you consider balancing your check book to be mathematics. JRSpriggs (talk) 12:45, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Hoax warning

IPs 70.51.177.249 (talk · contribs) and 70.54.228.146 (talk · contribs) have been adding material which appears to me to be hoaxes, using actual (but absurd) papers by Patrick St-Amant as references. JRSpriggs (talk) 11:55, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this is a hoax; it seems more likely to be a conflict of interest. The linked papers seem real, and one of them claims to have been published. However, I've removed the material from fundamental theorem of arithmetic and prime number because it doesn't appear to be notable, i.e., there are no reliable secondary sources yet. (I suppose that's a backhanded way of saying I don't think it's interesting; but it's also true.) I kept the reference at tetration because it's mostly about notation. I have no insight on the addition to continuum hypothesis, and I don't know what else might have been added. Ozob (talk) 12:22, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Not sure about the hoax angle, but it could be routine WP:COI. This needs a wider base of sourcing before being used in an article.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 11:32, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

See Talk:Continuum hypothesis#No inverse powerset for my debunking of one of Patrick St-Amant's papers. JRSpriggs (talk) 05:28, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

The paper referred to in hyperoperation has such absurdities as "First, we devise a way to write the parentheses of a formula by using a superscript notation on the operations." (And even then, there doesn't seem to be a complete definition of his hierarchy of hyperoperations.) Even if published in a peer-reviewed journal, we would need to find someone who finds it notable and relevant. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:58, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

International Journal of Algebra

Has anyone heard of this impressively named publication? I can't find any article about it in WP, nor about its publisher, Hikari Ltd.

I ask mainly because a certain Pierre St Anant seems to have published in it, and the work is referenced in the hyperoperation article. A couple of Canadian IPs have been adding references to St Anant's ideas (largely sourced to arXiv publications) to various articles, including continuum hypothesis and fundamental theorem of arithmetic. My strong suspicion is that these are not appropriate for inclusion, but I have not read them carefully enough to be sure. --Trovatore (talk) 02:40, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, it's Patrick St-Amant, not Pierre St Anant. I see that JR has opened a related discussion above. --Trovatore (talk) 02:46, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

So no one's heard of the journal, then? --Trovatore (talk) 20:05, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

See http://www.m-hikari.com/ija/index.html I suppose it could all be a hoax but it would make a rather elaborate one :) Tkuvho (talk) 20:17, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh no, I'm sure it exists. I found the online presence as well. What I want to know is whether anyone in the field actually knows it, whether it has a reputation, good or bad. --Trovatore (talk) 21:00, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

It's indexed in MathSciNet. So in that sense the field as a whole knows about it, at least. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:11, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, again, knows that it exists. Come on. Surely there are some algebraists reading this. What's the journal's rep? --Trovatore (talk) 22:29, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I find St Amant's ideas intriguing. Two different ways of formalizing a Grothendieck completion of set theory by adding "negative ranks" lead to opposite consequences as far as the status of the continuum hypothesis is concerned. This is sufficient reason to treat the contributor respectfully and avoid "hoax" rhetoric. Tkuvho (talk) 12:21, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

As far as the International Journal of Algebra goes; I've reviewed one paper for MathSciNet that was published there. It was okay, but nothing spectacular. I've never heard anything bad, nor anything good for that matter, about that journal. This may not say much, but looking at the Mathematical Citation Quotient in MathSciNet (this is the number of times articles in the journal were cited by articles indexed in MathSciNet, divided by the number of items published by the journal that are indexed in MathSciNet), the International Journal of Algebra has an MCQ of 0.04 (161 items published between the end of 2007 and the end of 2008, cited 6 times). For comparison, here is a random sampling of other journals (indexed going back to 2004): the Bulletin of the Iranian Mathematical Society has 0.15; the Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society has an MCQ of 0.32; Archiv der Mathematik is at 0.42; Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society has 0.68; Communications in Algebra 0.36; Journal of Algebra is 0.58; Mathematical Sciences Research Journal is at 0.07. If you restrict, say, the Bulletin of the Iranian Mathematical Society to just 2007 (no items indexed for 2008), the MCQ is 0.15. Magidin (talk) 18:51, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Prod notification

I can see that this group is motivated, and I would like to offer a couple of suggestions that may decrease the loss of articles to prod, no mater how you feel about them, you need take them into account.

1. Not all math related articles are have templates on the talk page that will direct a Wikipedian to Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics, an example is Movable singularity, as a group you may want work towards putting your template on talk pages of math related articles, to make it easier for someone to inform you of a prod. (A more welcomeing response to receiving a notification, might be a good thing as well)
2. While WP:AfD usually involves a group notification, there is no requirement nor function to ensure notification for {{PROD}}. There is a suggestion to notify author/project, but no requirement to do so. As group you may want to address those articles that are most at risk of a prod, unreferenced articles that have been tagged as needing references for prolonged periods. This usually involves comparing articles in categories under your knowledge base, to articles in Category:Articles lacking sources and/or Category:Unreferenced BLPs. There is no existing tool that simplifies this search, if you create one please drop a note at WP:URA so we can spread the word.

Cheers JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 12:00, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

What's that old saying: I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Most often two of these qualities come together. The officers who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Those who are stupid and lazy make up around 90% of every army in the world, and they can be used for routine work. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately! – General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.241.231.162 (talk) 13:20, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I guess the smart and lazy solution is to check Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity daily where a stupid but industrious bot lists all the prodded articles in mathematics category. --Salix (talk): 15:50, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

That is pretty cool tool, I have not seen any other projects that are using it. Can you get it to sort by date of tag so that those article that have been tagged as unreferenced longest can get attention first? JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 16:06, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

A few days ago I mistakenly thought Jitse's bot had gone down again (it seems to do that every year or two.....) but actually it's mathbot that has not been working since January 2nd. That's why the current activities page hasn't been notifying us of any new articles. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:58, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

JeepdaySock: I seem to remember that WP:Philosophy was setting up something similar based on our source code. CRGreathouse (t | c) 18:22, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

It is a great tool, Seem to require some technical skills to convert for each project. I am going to post in on the WP:URA talk page and see if I can get someone to make the solution easy workable for other project with less technically skilled help. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:54, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Weierstrass substitution

I've created a new article called Weierstrass substitution.

Tasks ahead:

• Add references. (It has none yet. I'll soon add some.[Later note: There are now two. Maybe more are needed.] Others will know of some references that I don't know of, and they should add those.)
• Add more categories if appropriate. Is there an algebraic geometry connection?
• Expand the article. Maybe something on the geometry of the thing. Maybe I'll add a word or to on that later.[Later note: I've added a little bit about geometry.]
• Carefully check details of the examples.
• Other articles should link to it. Several already do. Probably more should.
• etc.....

So get busy. Have fun. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:48, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Help w/ new article Highest Weight Category

I just patrolled a new article Highest Weight Category and verified all that I could. I've confirmed the reference and updated it with a link to an online version, but this is far beyond my expertise. Could somebody familiar with representation theory review the article and confirm it is valid? Thanks. -      Hydroxonium (talk) 22:48, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I did a few copy-edits and moved it to highest-weight category. As it stands, the article ends abruptly with an unfinished sentence. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:03, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you kindly. The article is way over my head, but it did seem sort of like an unfinished thought. The original creator had only this one edit, but was familiar enough with Wikipedia and markup language to create the article. So I'm not sure what to think about it. I was mostly concerned about it being a useful/valid article. Thanks again. -      Hydroxonium (talk) 01:51, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll look into the literature and try to at least finish what's written, it appears that not only is the second axiom unfinished, but there is also a third, and a few other hypotheses. Certainly, Crelle's journal is a respected journal; additionally, Renner's book Linear algebraic monoids refers to the cited paper as "seminal" and Humphreys' book Representations of Semisimple Lie Algebras in the BGG Category O says the setup is "especially influential", so I think this article is legit. RobHar (talk) 02:48, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

WOW! Thanks very much, RobHar. I'm blown away. I just have to say thanks very much to everybody. Wikipedia is really lucky to have such educated and intelligent people helping. I really appreciate everybody's efforts and thank you all. -      Hydroxonium (talk) 17:28, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Your welcome (and thanks)! RobHar (talk) 19:19, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

The article is still an orphan: no other articles link to it. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:13, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that's going to be harder to fix. I've added it as a "see also" in Weight (representation theory), but I don't know if there are any other current wiki articles that could link to it. It looks like a prototypical example of a highest weight category is the category of right A-modules where A is a "quasi-hereditary algebra" over the field k. It appears to also be related to Kazhdan–Lusztig theory and Bernstein–Gelfand–Gelfand's category O. But none of these are currently covered on wikipedia (AFAIK). (Also, thanks for the clean up on the article, I don't think I ever noticed that lower-case Greek should be italicized, probably 'cause they look so weird in html to begin with). RobHar (talk) 19:19, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Articles names: singular or plural?

I'm not a mathematician, although I have a science background. I sometimes do proof-reading of some scientific Wikipedia articles, but mainly from the perspectives of English and readability rather than for technical content.

Various articles have brought me to a few pages such as "Bred vectors" and "Lyapunov vectors". It seems slightly strange that their titles use the plural form "vectors" rather than the singular "vector". By contrast, the title of (for instance) "Eigenvector", being in the singular form, seems much more natural.

Does the Mathematics wikiproject have a preferred convention on plural vs. singular in such titles? Shouldn't the title usually be singular unless there is good over-riding reason to use the plural?

(In all the above, my use of the word "singular" is in the English language "opposite of plural" sense, rather than any mathematical sense "singular vectors" sense!)

Would there be any objection to renaming, in particular, "Bred vectors" to "Bred vector" and "Lyapunov vectors" to "Lyapunov vector"?

Feline Hymnic (talk) 01:01, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia generally—not just the mathematics project—has a convention that titles are to be singular except when there is some special reason to use a plural. One such reason is nouns that are used only in the plural. Another is when the topic is a set of things, identified by a plural whose singular would refer to a member of the set—for example The Beatles or Maxwell's equations. Some polynomial sequences have articles that fit the latter description, e.g. Hermite polynomials. See Wikipedia:Article titles. There is a section where it says:

Use the singular form: Article titles are generally singular in form, e.g. Horse, not Horses. Exceptions include nouns that are always in a plural form in English (e.g. scissors or trousers) and the names of classes of objects (e.g. Arabic numerals or Bantu languages).

Michael Hardy (talk) 03:44, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

PS: I've just moved those two articles and fixed the links to them from within the article space. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:55, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Eigenvector is actually a redirect to eigenvalues and eigenvectors. There was a recent discussion over the article's name here, which resulted in a renaming from singular to plural form in this case. Gandalf61 (talk) 06:56, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Great. Many thanks. (As I typed my request, I was trying to think of an example from Maths where the plural would be the best; I was sure there would be some but they eluded me. So thanks, too, for jogging my mind with "Maxwell's equations".) Feline Hymnic (talk) 09:38, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

There are a few cases where it's better to use a plural since the the subject is about a relationship between two or more objects. For example we have Orthogonal polynomials since "Orthogonal polynomial" doesn't make sense.--RDBury (talk) 23:39, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

How many digits to show in irrational number articles?

The articles linked to in {{irrational numbers}} differ in the number of decimal places they show in the lead. Euler–Mascheroni constant shows 50 digit after the decimal point, Apéry's constant shows 45, Square root of 2 shows 65, Square root of 3 and Square root of 5 show 60 each, Golden ratio shows 10, Plastic number shows 17, etc. Should they be made consistent? I'd propose a not-too-large number of digits, e.g. 30. What do you guys think? --A. di M. (talk) 13:45, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd say about 40 digits should be generally OK. However, some local considerations may apply. For example, the decimal expansion in the Plastic number article is squeezed between a fairly long radical expression on the left, and the bloody infobox on the right, so there is not enough room for additional digits. —Emil J. 14:14, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I would suggest 3 (three) digits, with a link to more precise data. Tkuvho (talk) 14:20, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

This is an example of totally unnecessary and inappropriate standardization, as the difference between the proposed figures of 3 and 40 illustrates. How many decimal digits of a rational number would you list? Each is recurring, so why not all of them until the first repetition? Unhelpful in most cases, and the ratio provides an explicit formula. How about the golden ratio? Well, it has a dead simple continued fraction expansion. What about algebraic numbers? Should we list them all to the same precision as the most famous transcendental numbers, such as pi? I don't think so, and I suspect the best sources have a good sense how many digits is helpful.

Should they be made consistent? Short answer: No. Geometry guy 22:05, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Maybe not a standard but guidelines may be useful. Probably a minimum of 8 or 10 would be good since that's what is shown on a typical calculator. Obviously there are some values that aren't known to that many digits. There is little value in doing 65 so I'd say that's excessive and krufty. How about we say don't include any more than can be found in Abramowitz and Stegun?--RDBury (talk) 01:10, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Right, I don't see any need to enforce consistency for its own sake, but it wouldn't hurt to record the conclusions that have been reached in other similar cases and their reasons, rather than arguing from scratch every time. Every now and then someone goes to the pi article and dumps in 50,000 digits or so and is quickly reverted — clearly we don't want that anywhere. On the other hand, three seems sort of stingy, unless that's all that are known. I think around ten as a general rule. In cases where the decimal expansion itself has been the focus of lots of attention (really, I think that's only pi, although e might just sneak in), fifty would be OK. --Trovatore (talk) 02:09, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

For such numbers, we can have a section called "Decimal expansion" or something giving a hundred digits or so after the point, as IIRC pi does or used to do; I still think that giving more than about 30 digits in the lead, which is supposed to be a summary of the most important points of the article. --A. di M. (talk) 20:25, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

@ Geometry guy: Right now, the numbers of digits appear to be chosen randomly, rather than according to any criterion at all, so, whether or not standardization would be "totally unnecessary and inappropriate", the status quo isn't necessary or appropriate either IMO. --A. di M. (talk) 20:25, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

@ Emil J.: I've tweaked the lead of Plastic number so that now it could accommodate more digits (and IMO looks better even with 17 digits). --A. di M. (talk) 20:25, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

first order logic, second order logic,...

There is some confusion at these logic pages concerning the meaning of the term "first-order logic". There is a narrow sense of the term and a larger sense of the term. Thus, the page second-order logic adheres to the narrow sense, so that we find that "First-order logic uses only variables that range over individuals (elements of the domain of discourse); second-order logic has these variables as well as additional variables that range over sets of individuals." Meanwhile, the page first-order logic currently works with the larger sense, and moreover there is a bit of a back-and-forth going on, to which I have unfortunately contributed before realizing what the problem was. Tkuvho (talk) 12:36, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Could you briefly summarize here what you see as the two senses of 'first-order logic' -- I'm not seeing it from the articles you reference, but that was after an admittedly casual scan. Thanks. BrideOfKripkenstein (talk) 16:52, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I summarized it at Talk:First-order_logic. Tkuvho (talk) 17:24, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

New article Frenet-Serret frame

The redirect Frenet-Serret frame → Frenet-Serret formulas was recently replaced with a new article that consists of content that is crudely copy-pasted from the articles Frenet-Serret formulas and differential geometry of curves. As far as I can tell, apart from the brief lead, no new content was added in the process (and all of the content still remains at Frenet-Serret formulas and differential geometry of curves). Should we have this separate article or should this content forking be reverted? It seems to me that the already existing article Frenet-Serret formulas is intended to cover both the formulas and the frame. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:16, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Comment: It looks like even the lead was copied from differential geometry of curves. Also the text of Frenet-Serret frame often doesn't make any sense, because it is a mish-mash from two different articles. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:16, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Even if I didn't know the article was recently split I'd suggest a merge. To be fair, it appears from the edit comments that the author was trying to create a merge of differential geometry of curves and Frenet-Serret formulas into a new article, but has only created a third article instead. So maybe the real question is whether there should be a single article instead of those two. My feeling is that there is a lot of material in the second article that's too specific to be included in the first, so that merge isn't a good idea.--RDBury (talk) 17:47, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Move "operator" to "operator (mathematics)"?

If you have an opinion, please comment here: Talk:Operator#Requested move. Paul August ☎ 21:14, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

List of mathematics journals

Today, someone removed a large number of items from List of scientific journals in mathematics. I undid that edit. More eyes on the article and opinions on the talk page would be nice. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:49, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I also made a proposal there to create redirects from the titles of less-notable mathematics journals to that page. This will help with redlinks other places, too, for example there are two different articles that currently have redlinks to Topology and its Applications. We can discuss it on the list's talk page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:19, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Mathbot

Mathbot doesn't seem to have added any new mathematics articles since January 2. I assume that the articles showing up lately in the current activity have been added manually somehow. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:01, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I have just sent this email to ts-admins@toolserver.org :

Hello.

Mathematicians throughout the world have been

waiting patiently since January 2nd for you to

restore Oleg Alexandrov's access to his account

so that mathbot can continue its work.

Wikipedia's mathematics WikiProject is the most

successful, and possibly the most active, of all

WikiProjects, but there is this bottleneck.

Perhaps not the best way to do things, but that's

how it is for now.

The Project's "current activities" page has failed

to do its daily updates listing new articles since

January 2nd (except in cases where articles were

manually added to the list of mathematics articles).

I'll post a copy of this email to the project's

discussion page.

--

Prof. Michael Hardy

mjhardy (at) wnk.hamline.edu

(In case someone here doesn't know, new articles are (normally) listed daily at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Current_activity.) Michael Hardy (talk) 19:24, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

For those of us who aren't in the know, what's the background story?—Emil J. 19:47, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

In particular, I still have toolserver access, and access to the code that I arranged with Oleg in 2010. I didn't realize that this was a problem, and I might be able to fix things. But I don't know what's going on myself. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:42, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

user:mathbot updates the List of mathematics articles daily. Then user:Jitse's_bot updates the Current activity page every day, including a list of new mathematics articles that have been added to that list. But mathbot stopped functioning on January 2nd. Its creator, Oleg Alexandrov can fix it if he can get access to the mathbot account. For some reason he can't do that, and has been kept waiting for a while. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:43, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I sent Oleg an email. If someone can tell me what needs to be done on toolserver, I should be able to do it. Actually, I am going to try running mathbot by hand right now, and see what happens. Crossed fingers.

The toolserver admins are, in my long experience with them, actually very professional. The scale of the toolserver and the strict policies of Wikimedia Deutschland who sponsor it slow down the account acceptance process, but they have done their best to handle it. Again, I can get with Oleg and see if I can help navigate the process more smoothly. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:56, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I completely forgot that CBM had access to the bot. I had expected the toolserver folks to quickly restore my toolsever access but they are very slow. (The background story here is that I reinstalled by laptop OS, and I lost the ssh key with which to connect to the toolserver.) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:04, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I was able to run Mathbot myself, and it seems to have worked fine. For those who don't know, there is a "multi-maintainer project" named wpmath on the toolserver, which has the mathbot code. I am hoping to eventually get Jitse's bot there as well. The goal of this is to put us in a position that someone else can take over the code smoothly if the current maintainers leave. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:47, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

You ran it, but I don't see any more new articles on the current activities page. What will it take to get all the articles created in 2011 listed there? We need that. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:40, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I assume they'll show up within a day once the other bot (Jitse's bot) runs. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:03, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry....I'd momentarily forgotten about that. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:33, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

New articles

It seems that maybe some people involved in this project do not regularly look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity and see the daily update on new articles. Because of the recent bot problems we have ten days of new articles simultaneously. Here are those new articles:

Action axiom, Amitsur–Levitzki theorem, Auslander algebra, Auslander–Reiten theory, Axis-angle representation, Bergman–Weil formula, Bivariate analysis, CP decomposition, Distortion problem, Einstein–Infeld–Hoffmann equations, Energy distance, Equichordal point problem, Erdős–Rado theorem, Euler calculus, Extension of a polyhedron, Fictitious domain method, Formally étale morphism, František Wolf, Gabriel's theorem, GraSM, Hadamard three-lines theorem, Harmonic pitch class profiles, Hermann Schapira, Highest weight category, Humphrey Baker, Ising critical exponents, John Baines (mathematician), John of Tynemouth (geometer), José Augusto Sánchez Pérez, Juan Luis Vázquez Suárez, Karl Johann Kiessling, Lagrange multiplier, Leah Keshet, List of four dimensional games, List of topics named after Karl Weierstrass, Loewy ring, Logicomix, Manohar Vartak, Mathematics Made Difficult, Mathematics and Computer Education Journal, Mathematics journal, Maurice Auslander, Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society, Metzler matrix, Mikhail Vasilyevich Menshikov, Mishnat ha-Middot, Multi-objective optimization, N=2 superconformal algebra, NK Model, Nakayama algebra, Nearly Kähler manifold, Octave (electronics), Olga Holtz, Opasnet, Open assessment, Operator, OptimJ, Orthodiagonal quadrilateral, Per comparison error rate, Pre-math skills, Press–Schechter formalism, Pseudoanalytic function, Real Analysis Exchange, Ribbon theory, Sheldon Axler, Solomon Gandz, Steven J. Cox, System Size Expansion, The Mathematical Classic of Sun Zi, The Ten Computational Canons, Thomas Little Heath, Tilting theory, Time-frequency analysis for music signal, Topology and its Applications, Transformation (function), Tricomplex number, Troposkein, Truncus (mathematics), Vector (mathematics and physics), Vladimir Ivanovich Mironenko, William E. Beckner

Acta Numerica, Advances in Mathematics, Alfred Loewy, List of mathematics education journals, List of mathematics journals, List of probability journals, List of statistics journals, Weak-star topology, List of genetic algorithm applications, Conformal group, Dieudonné determinant,

Happy editing! Michael Hardy (talk) 03:37, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Struck a few that I think are OK. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:30, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Tricomplex number

Tricomplex number has been prodded. Is it worth keeping? Michael Hardy (talk) 20:48, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Although the topic does sound suspect, there does seem to be some work by Silviu Olariu, for example this paper and a book "Complex numbers in N dimensions". — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:32, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

The only way this even begins to make sense is if one takes {1, i, j} to mean the distinct cube roots of one in the ordinary complex numbers. JRSpriggs (talk) 08:35, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

On 3⁄2-th sight this may not be as absurd as it appears on first sight. The source seems to be 2.1 of Olariu's book (published by North-Holland). What he describes is actually three-dimensional as a vector space over the reals. First I thought there must be a contradiction, but it turns out it's just a commutative ring, not a field. There are a plane and an additional straight line on which the tricomplex numbers have no inverse. Hans Adler 09:41, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

The review of Olariu's book in Mathematical Reviews gives some insight. I think Olariu's approach is worth a short mention at hypercomplex numbers. The article could then be turned into a redirect. Hans Adler 10:14, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

MR2003j:30002 --Qwfp (talk) 11:35, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I've added some references to the article and a link from hypercomplex number saying "Tricomplex numbers - a 3d vector space over the reals, one of a family of systems of commutative hypercomplex numbers in n-dimensions over the reals.". Still not very notable, but neither are multicomplex numbers. 89.241.233.7 (talk) 23:52, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Transfinite induction

An anonymous editor at transfinite induction is under the remarkable impression that there is no successor step in transfinite induction. Please help out. --Trovatore (talk) 22:13, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

"The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers" by David Wells

Is this reliable? A certain editor is adding "facts" sourced to it, and in cube root, what was attributed to it about the history of the cube root of two was totally wrong. I'm asking here, before going to WP:RSN, as I'd like to see what other mathematicians have to say about it. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:19, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

My copy of the book is the "Revised Edition," so perhaps it's different from the edition used by the editor who inserted the purported fact about the cube root of 2. But I can't find any claim, in the edition I have, that Descartes was the one who proved the cube root of 2 to be irrational. (In fact, Descartes doesn't appear in the index.) The section about the cube root of 2, on page 17, focuses entirely on the duplication of the cube, and mentions only ancient Greeks. Page 34 is in the middle of the section about pi, and discusses a few attempts to square the circle, but doesn't mention Descartes or the cube root of 2.

About your question of reliability: Many of the entries in this book include references to other sources, so if there is a question about the correctness of a claim, hopefully there's a reference we can follow up. —Bkell (talk) 18:58, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Investigating other recent additions by LutherVinci sourced to this book (it does appear that he is using a different edition, since the page numbers are different):

• Quotation about 0⁰ [5]: The relevant quote appears on page 9 of the Revised Edition, and says: "Like unity, 0 proves exceptional in other ways. It is an old puzzle to decide what 0⁰ means. Since a⁰ is always 1, when a is not zero, surely by continuity it should also equal 1 when a is zero? Not so! 0^a is always 0, when a is not zero, so by the same argument from continuity, 0⁰ should equal 0. [Karl Menninger, Number Words and Number Symbols, MIT Press, 1969]".
• 0.12345678910111213141516171819202122… [6]: Appears on page 9 of the Revised Edition.
• Decimal expansion of $i^{i}$ [7]: Appears on page 10 of the Revised Edition.
• Joke cancellation of fractions equaling 1/4 [8]: Appears on page 10 of the Revised Edition.
• Decimal expansion of $\log _{10}2$ [9], [10]: Appears on page 10 of the Revised Edition, but no claim is made that this is an algebraic number.
• Decimal expansions of $\pi ^{-1}$, $e^{-1}$, and $\log _{10}e$ [11]: Appear on pages 10 and 11 of the Revised Edition, but nothing is said about their transcendentality.
• Facts about 1/2 [12]: Appear on page 11 of the Revised Edition. The paragraph mentioning 6729/13458 and 9327/18624 has a reference to "[Friedman, Scripta Mathematica v8]".
• Unknown status of the irrationality or transcendentality of Euler's constant [13]: Appears on page 12 of the Revised Edition, with a reference to "[Brent, MOC v31]".
• Tau [14]: Page 51 of the Revised Edition states that 6.283185… is 2π, and says that it is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its radius and also the number of radians in a complete circle (both of which are very elementary facts), but does not call it "tau."
• Expression of $\log 2$ as a series [15]: Appears on page 12 of the Revised Edition.
• Importance of $\pi /{\sqrt {18}}$ to sphere packing [16]: Appears on page 13 of the Revised Edition, where it is a direct quotation attributed to Rogers.
• 1/ζ(3) [17]: Appears on page 13 of the Revised Edition.
• $\pi /(2{\sqrt {3}})$ [18]: Appears on page 13 of the Revised Edition.
• Facts about 1 [19]: The fact that it is both triangular and pentagonal appears on pages 14 and 15 of the Revised Edition, though on page 15 it is written as, "Similarly, 1 is the smallest number that is simultaneously triangular and pentagonal. Also boring!" This is immediately followed by the sentence, "Indeed, 1 might be considered to be the first number that is both boring and interesting," but obviously this is a statement of opinion and is mathematically imprecise. The book also mentions that 1 is excluded from the primes, and gives a couple of intuitive justifications for that, but nowhere does it say, "1 is the smallest number of ways n objects can be arranged" (what is that supposed to mean, anyway—that 1 is the smallest factorial?).
• Solution to Prince Rupert's cube [20]: Appears on page 16 of the Revised Edition, where it is attributed to "[Schrek, 'Prince Rupert's Problem', Scripta Mathematica v16]".
• $\pi ^{4}/90$ [21]: Appears on page 16 of the Revised Edition, but its transcendentality is not mentioned.

It appears that LutherVinci is attempting to go through the entire book and add nearly every fact to Wikipedia somewhere. —Bkell (talk) 19:36, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I have the first edition of The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers (although mine's falling to bits now). It includes the following on page 34: "This [finding the cube root of two] is impossible with ruler and compasses, as Descartes proved two thousand years later in 1637". No reference is given, unfortunately. Interpreting this as implying the cube root of two is irrational, rather than constructible, was presumably an honest error.

The section about the duplication of the cube begins on p34, and includes: "The legend was told that the Athenians sent a deputation to the oracle at Delos to inquire how they might save themselves from a plague that was ravaging the city. They were instructed to double the size of the altar of Apollo." The change from 'altar' to 'temple' and omission of 'legend' here is down to the editor. As for the other discrepancies between this version and Doubling the cube#History (Athenians consulting oracle at Delos vs. citizens of Delos consulting oracle at Delphi), i'd personally be inclined to doubt Wells rather than that article's editors or Plutarch. --Qwfp (talk) 20:54, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I certainly have no objection to including the legend, but LutherVinci was including it as fact, and I don't see why it should necessarily be in cube root, rather than in doubling the cube. In fact, I moved the information to doubling the cube, although I left it with {{cn}}. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:31, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Duplication of content and general confusion

Please see Talk:Entailment#Duplication of content. - dcljr (talk) 19:55, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Lapierre-Roy vectors?

Editor User:NewtonEin (as well as some anon ips) has been inserting material on Lapierre-Roy vectors and the Lapierre-Roy Law (such as in recent edits to Riemann zeta function). These two articles and related edits seem to be non-notable and OR. I'd be tempted to prod them, but I've never actually done this so I don't really know what it means. The first article appears to be renaming the concept of "infinite-dimensional vectors" while the second appears to be elementary estimates on values of the zeta function. Could anyone look at this? RobHar (talk) 03:18, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Prodded, although $\zeta (2k+1)\leq {\sqrt {\zeta (2k)\zeta (2k+2)}}$ might be of interest for large k. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:14, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

0.999...<1, a common misconception?

Is this a common misconception? You can comment at Talk:List of common misconceptions#0.999.... Tkuvho (talk) 03:41, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Advances in Applied Mathematics

I've created a new article titled Advances in Applied Mathematics. As it stands, it needs work. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:35, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Three math related FP nominations

After weeks of nothing there are now three nominations at once. Follow the links to see the discussions:

• Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/BML Traffic Model - a cellular automata approach to traffic simulation.
• Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/2D Random Walk - Animation of a random walk
• Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Lyapunov Fractal - Lyapunov Fractal

--RDBury (talk) 14:41, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

possible articles for clarity/accessibility improvement

• metric tensor - this one was actually a featured article once. (a long time ago.) and commended for its readability (also a long time ago.)

post away. perhaps some day i'll find a better place to gather such a list.

also, another idea might be sort of a prize for clear and accessible articles. Kevin Baas^talk 02:51, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The first paragraph of that article seems perfectly reasonable, and it has a long introduction section. The topic is a basic part of differential geometry, which again is typically studied either at the basic graduate level or an advanced undergraduate level. And the article would still give some help to a person with some mathematical maturity who was willing to follow links. I don't think it's a goal we can or should attempt to make articles like that "accessible" to readers who don't have any of the background needed for the topic, for example the typical person off the street. A certain amount of mathematical maturity is going to be required for graduate-level mathematics, and there's nothing Wikipedia can do to change that. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:08, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

okay, now you're just being silly. i understand the topic quite clearly i picked up a few books on them in my freshman year and it was quite clear and intuitive with just a basic understanding of calculus. the article is nothing of the sort. to give but an example "a rank 2 tensor". oh, you mean a matrix. well you know you could have said that. i happen to know that but say an engineer who hasn't taken a graduate course in topology abstract algebra and catgory theory is probably going to have a little difficulty with the intro. which is unfortunate because the concept is really quite simple and easy to understand. and easy to communicate. that article is a perfect example and it defintely stays on the list. Kevin Baas^talk 03:25, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The article does not seem to include the phrase "rank 2 tensor", and the first paragraph seems fine, like I said. But if what you mean by "accessibility" is replacing the word "tensor" with "matrix" in an article titled "metric tensor", personally I'm glad we don't have it. The article does say, in the last sentence of the lede, that relative to a coordinate system the tensor field can be reduced to a matrix field. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

errr.. i'm sorry.. "nondegenerate symmetric bilinear form". i think that's what it refers to. you get my point. (i'm pretty sure i saw rank 2 tensor somewhere in the article if not the intro.) Kevin Baas^talk 03:44, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't get your point, actually. "Symmetric bilinear form" is a pretty elementary topic, and which is usually covered in an undergrad linear algebra course. I feel most students learn that before they learn what a matrix field on a manifold is. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:52, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Not to mention that it would be fairly difficult to define a metric tensor without relying on this concept. Fortunately, the article has a self-contained explanation of this concept. Yay! Sławomir Biały (talk) 03:59, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Now you're wading into the tensor wars. Have fun with that.

To be a little less obscure — there is a deep division of opinion on how best to present tensors in general. The usual preference among mathematicians, and physicists of a certain stripe (e.g. the ones who wrote Gravitation), is to use a coordinate-free presentation. In my view there are good reasons for this; it is conceptually more fundamental. It is true, however, that the barriers to entry are a bit higher. --Trovatore (talk) 03:33, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec)i beleived we compromised a long time ago by having 3 treatments: classical, intermediate, and component-free (modern). they can exist independantly just fine where the terms are different. though i'm sure there's overlap. Kevin Baas^talk 03:44, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The three-tiered solution was not ideal. I'm glad to see that there has recently been some progress towards consolidation. Sławomir Biały (talk) 03:59, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Of course, the metric tensor article actually does it both ways, and explains nearly all of the jargon that it uses. But the real irony is that Kevin complained that there was too much jargon (e.g., covariant, tensor, etc.) in 2007 on the discussion page, and then someone added careful explanations of all the jargon along with the introductory section, and now he's complaining again because the explanations are difficult to understand. Sometimes that's just how it is with mathematics. Sławomir Biały (talk) 03:38, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

you're not listening and you're not being sympathetic. please if you're jsut going to be adversarial well it's not going to help so please let us just do our thing and improve the math articles for once. Kevin Baas^talk 03:44, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Also, the version of the article that Kevin seems to prefer is (presumably) this revision, which was the last time he meaningfully edited the article. I don't see how anyone can honestly claim that this earlier revision is superior. Moreover, it is equally clear to me that no revision of this article would have been featured by any meaningfully standard, contrary to Kevin's claim. Sławomir Biały (talk) 03:47, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

if that wasn't an edit conflict i'd feel i'd have to repeat what i just said. Kevin Baas^talk 03:50, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Given that you have commented on the talk page of metric tensor since 2003, what do you mean by "for once"? — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:52, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

clearly i am talking specifically about the metric tensor article which i have been working so hard on the past few months. (end sarcasm) Kevin Baas^talk 03:53, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

(In response to Kevin's reply to me above) That's interesting advice from someone who avowedly no longer edits mathematics articles. Believe me, I am interested both in making our technical articles more accessible, and in making them serious reference works. I have edited hundreds of mathematics articles with these aims in mind. Telling off the very people who are trying to help is clearly not constructive. Are you sure you aren't trolling? Sławomir Biały (talk) 03:55, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

who's "telling off" anybody? i'm talking about improving article content and i would very much like to remain focused on that, please. are there any articles you'd like to add to the list? Kevin Baas^talk 15:30, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

You just said "please let us just do our thing and improve the math articles for once", which I consider to be telling off. You have made very clear that you don't want my help. In fact, it seems to me that you aren't interested in the help of anyone that disagrees with you, which includes most of the folks here. Since these are the very people in the best position to improve the accessibility of our articles, it has become difficult for me to continue to believe that you seek genuine improvement. Perhaps you don't really understand what improvement entails. This is certainly suggested by the two examples you have so far provided, which went from amateurishly written, error-filled pieces to professionally written authoritative references on their respective subjects. Yet you seem to feel that this kind of progress is undesirable. Perhaps you aren't interested in professional quality writing—one obvious hallmark of which, incidentally, is being able to locate the SHIFT key on the keyboard. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:46, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Why are we humoring this obvious troll? 71.139.25.142 (talk) 04:31, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

i wouldn't go so far as to call anyone on here trolls. i don't think they really mean to stand in the way of improving the articles. i'm guessing its largely status quo bias. and accusing people of things like that can itself be a problem and is generally considedered uncivil and bad form. for the sake of having a productive discuss, lets keep things focused on content. thanks. Kevin Baas^talk 15:26, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Uh, no genius, he was (correctly) calling _you_ out as a troll. 12.234.39.130 (talk) 19:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

BTW (not to feed the troll), shouldn't Riemannian manifold be given more attention? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kallikanzarid (talk • contribs) 07:29, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

see above. please try to remain civil and keep the discussion productive. thank you. Kevin Baas^talk 15:35, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Quite possibly, but the lede (which is all I read just now) seems perfectly accessible for the topic. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:17, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

bear in mind, CBM, that you are not the general audience. "accessible" is a word that by its very nature refers to a general audience, not just you. it is clear that it does not seem perfectly accessible to some, even most people, as for one, most people don't have a graduate degree in mathematics. Kevin Baas^talk 15:31, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

In a number of cases, such as Riemannian manifold, there is an easy solution, namely by providing a link to a more elementary page. Tkuvho (talk) 15:55, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm very much against that solution in general. The lead should as far as possible should be written at an introductory level though there may be bits at the end of it to summarize more advanced bits of the article. Precise definitions can wait till later and one can have an introduction in the articles themselves. Dmcq (talk) 13:37, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with that as a general guideline, but in a hierarchical field like mathematics this is difficult to accomplish, and I think Riemannian manifold is a good example. Carl and I added a link in the lede to Differential geometry of surfaces, which is more elementary. I don't see how one can make Riemannian manifold accessible to a beginner (even with a calculus under his belt) without including a huge chuck of the material from Differential geometry of surfaces. My general suggestion would be to have an "Introduction" article for each high-level article such as Riemannian manifold. In this case, the article on surfaces can play the role of such an introduction. Tkuvho (talk) 13:48, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Personally i've grown tired of this. there is way to much adversity to change making itself plainly obvious, despite what some people say. i just posted one suggestion here and see all the resistance that resulted. WhatAmIDoing was right: it's pointless; all it's good for is raising one's blood pressure. and i'm not really in to that sort of thing. it's sad, really (unfortunate), but what are you going to do? i can certainly find more productive uses for my time than dealing with this kind of blood-boiling resistance, utter lack of sympathy, or even listening, and worst of all condenscion, and getting nowhere. Kevin Baas^talk 19:45, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Miniclip, Jango, YouTube, ... just go have fun and don't worry about it. If you later decide to help out we'd be happy for another set of eyes, but the discussion at this point seems counterproductive. CRGreathouse (t | c) 20:04, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Three questions for the lede

Tkuvho really gets credit for that link. I did copyedit the lede some. I think that the main questions that the lede needs to answer are the following, along with their answers from the lede of Riemannian geometry

1. What is it? A Riemannian manifold is a real differentiable manifold in which each tangent space is equipped with an inner product that varies smoothly from point to point.
2. What is it useful for? A Riemannian metric makes it possible to define various geometric notions on a Riemannian manifold, such as angles, lengths of curves, areas (or volumes), curvature, gradients of functions and divergence of vector fields.
3. What field is it studied in? Riemannian geometry and differential geometry of surfaces

It is not always feasible to give a full answer in the lede, in which case we should still try to say something non-trivial (and at least nearly correct). For example, here are the answers from Kleene's T predicate:

1. A particular ternary relation on natural numbers that is used to obtain a normal form for computable functions and to represent computability within formal theories of arithmetic.
2. Telling whether a particular computer program will halt when run with a particular input.
3. Computability theory.

The answer to #1 there is intentionally vague, but it's still explanatory. Especially in longer article, the lede also serves as a summary of the main points of the article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:01, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The start of the definition section of the Kleene's T predicate looked quite reasonable to me as an introduction for someone who was about ready but didn't know anything about it, so it looked better to me as the easy bit of the lead. The what is it is true - but I eel it assumes you already know a bit about where you're going. WHich is all a bit wrong in ways because I'd have thought the more difficult bit would start with the definition section. Dmcq (talk) 14:42, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I think there's an aspect of mathematical literacy that we may be somewhat overlooking here. In the sentence "In computability theory, the T predicate, due to American mathematician Stephen Cole Kleene, is a particular ternary relation on natural numbers that is used to obtain a normal form for computable functions and to represent computability within formal theories of arithmetic.", for instance, a mathematically literate reader may well see "ternary relation", think "I don't know what that is, so I'll leave it as a variable and come back to it later", or maybe click on the bluelink. This sort of writing, in which undefined terms are defined much more precisely later on, is standard in mathematics, and we're all used to it. A mathematically illiterate reader, or Kevin, may be more likely to think "I don't know what that is. This article is written too technically for me. I can't continue reading." So, more than is usual in articles written purely by and for mathematicians, we need to be careful here to avoid to the extent possible esoteric and technical terms at the starts of our articles, or when they are unavoidable to gloss them immediately within the text of the article rather than relying on the bluelink to do the glossing for us. (Of course, "ternary relation" is not the most technical term in that sentence, but I still think it would be an improvement in readability to write it as "set of triples" instead. It may be less precise that way but a little imprecision in the lede is not always a bad thing.) —David Eppstein (talk) 18:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Carl, I like your set of three questions. I think they go a long ways towards addressing this problem. Furthermore, it's a simple, actionable goal: anytime someone complains, you can see if the three questions are answered. If you try them out on a few articles and continue to find them as promising as they look to me, then I suggest adding them to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics)#Article_introduction.

David, I think your example of "set of triples" is a good way to deal with technical terms. Another option is "ternary relation (set of triples)". We live in an unfortunately math-phobic world, and using simpler-sounding words will reduce the odds of scaring away the reader. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:05, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I like both of those wordings for ternary relation in that article. CRGreathouse (t | c) 20:06, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts#personal attacks and uncivil comments by User:TimothyRias

Just to note that is at least one attack at WQA basically at all the editors here (by Gregbard). Dougweller (talk) 12:51, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there is much benefit in responding to things like that. Many editors here have seen this opinion from Gregbard before – it's far from the first time he has expressed it. The WQA thread seems to be mostly resolved, and if it is going to come to any resolution that will require completely uninvolved editors commenting on it, rather then involved editors needlessly prolonging the discussion. — Carl (CBM · talk)

I view practically all the discussion referred to as having just sucked away a bit of my life. Dmcq (talk) 13:53, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

But that's _IMPOSSIBLE_ Greg's a Goode Faithe Editor. You must have just read it wrong. 12.234.39.130 (talk) 19:20, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

And someone said I couldn't take criticism! Kevin Baas^talk 19:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

exterior algebra lead

Some encyclopedic editors are reverting my addition of a sentence in the lead at exterior algebra providing a link to more elementary pages that should be read first. Are they being too encyclopedic? Tkuvho (talk) 19:50, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

wikipedia is a great source of info for just about anything, with one exception: mathematics.

...for that I go to wolfram mathematica or planetmath or essentially anywhere else.

and it seems this state has been getting progressively worse throughout the years. as if there are a number of people who are actively making it worse.

something really needs to be done about making the articles coherent and accessible. badly.

Kevin Baas^talk 17:36, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

So fix it. —Bkell (talk) 18:28, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

i'm not unfamiliar with that. i'm a long time contributor. surely you don't expect me to single handedly fix up every mathematics article on the wiki, do you? no, of course not. that kind of hand-wavey response is wildly out of proportion. Kevin Baas^talk 18:42, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, were you proposing a solution, or just complaining about the problem? If it's the latter, then I don't think my admittedly brusque response was "wildly out of proportion." —Bkell (talk) 19:30, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

both, actually, as you can tell simply by reading what i wrote. but your response was wildly out of proportion regardless. you see it is out of proportion because i am one person and the subject is a systematic trend throughout all of the mathematics articles. those two things are wildly out of proportion. furthermore whether i just say a complaint or make a criticism has no effect on the proportions of anything. Kevin Baas^talk 20:11, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. I have found the opposite to be true, pretty much without exception. Whenever I need a mathematics reference, I find that the best general purpose resources are typically Wikipedia and the Springer EOM, in that order. Mathworld's articles are too superficial, and often filled with technical errors and idiosyncracies that make it unsuitable as a mathematics reference. There are topics of enormous importance in mathematics that Mathworld doesn't even cover, or covers only minimally. Moreover, the references at mathworld are not very well-selected, often to tertiary literature, and so it is difficult to use Mathworld as a jumping-off point to consult the primary literature on a topic about which one wishes to learn more. (Although the same criticism could be made to many of our articles as well, I find that the standard of referencing in recent times is much improved over that of just a few years ago.) Finally, I can't imagine that anyone would seriously consider Planetmath as a viable alternative anymore. At any rate, most of the Planetmath content was already imported here ages ago. So perhaps it would help to turn this in a more constructive direction if you could be more specific. What role does a mathematics reference serve in your life, and why does Wikipedia fail to live up to that role? Can you give examples? Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:49, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) The thing with WIkipedia is that it has many contributors to keep an eye and a hand on it. If we spot a mistake, we can indeed fix it. If we spot one at Mathworld, we can send them an email once, twice, and three times—and then stop bothering since they never reply anyway. I gave up a long time ago, and whenever I see mathworld as a source for something here, I tend to hear an alarmbell somewhere. Probably a Pavlow thing. DVdm (talk) 18:57, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec)We borged Planet Math a while back. Maybe that needs updating, but it's detail work the second time through. Rich Farmbrough, 18:58, 17th day of January in the year 2011 (UTC).

(ec) (reply to bialy) you see, none of what you just said speaks to what i said. that's great if you find wikipedia math articles make for a great collection of links ("well selected references") and what not. but among other things wikipedia is not a collection of links. now if you can recall the adjectives i used to describe what is lacking in the articles (as distinct from logically unrelated things that are not lacking), and relate your response to that, well that would be much more helpful. as you will see if you can find those adjectives, i _was_ specific in a _constructive_ direction. Kevin Baas^talk 19:01, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

You wrote above:

wikipedia is a great source of info for just about anything, with one exception: mathematics....for that i go to wolfram mathematica or planetmath or essentially anywhere else. and it seems this state has been getting progressively worse throughout the years. as if there are a number of people who are actively making it worse.

I find the opposite to be true, and I have attempted to explain briefly some of the reasons. I don't believe that I ever mentioned links, but I agree that Wikipedia is not a collection of them. Our articles are generally much more detailed, with substantially more information than the corresponding Mathworld articles. From this perspective, our articles are better without a doubt, much more than a repository of links. Now coming to your last point, unfortunately it is not always easy to express this information in a way that will be accessible to everyone. It is certainly a worthwhile goal to do so as far as possible, and project members are by and large really interested in improving accessibility. Obviously this is not the only consideration: in particular, the depth and breadth of our coverage should not suffer as a result of our efforts to clarify. So to help guide your critique in a more useful direction, perhaps you could list some Mathworld articles that you feel express themselves better than the corresponding articles here, but yet have about the same depth of coverage. I think a reasonable goal is for our exposition of more elementary material to be as good or better than than at Mathworld. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:23, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

thank you, bialy. in particular i've noticed the exterior algebra article is quite opaque. though i can't say in this case that wolfram is much better (i've just noticed over the years that it's much clearer and more visually intuitive which is why i use it instead of wikipedia). particulaly it starts off by barraging the reader with a bunch of esoteric terms, and in no apparent order. basic writing composition says you shouldn't put more than a fe ideas in a sentence and it violates that right there. it also clearly violates WP:LEDE. sure, you can have in depth information and all that, but that's what the body is for. the intro is for just that: to give a light introduction, and it should be accessible to readers who are not already familiar with the subject, as the clearly expressed by the style guidelines. Kevin Baas^talk 20:11, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

on a more general note, there seems to be the presumption in many cases that accessibility is something more or less optional. and in any case takes a back seat to things like completeness and technical generality and so forth. however, it is easy to see that if something is not accessible, these latter things are entirely moot. accesibility and clarity is not merely optional, it is essential. it is a higher priority than making wikipedia something like a complete technical reference for every single aspect of every single proof of everything in only the most abstract all en-compassing terms etc etc. that is not what wikipedia is for. wikipedia is supposed to be a human readable encyclopedia, above all else. so what i'm suggesting here is a shift in priorities. i understand that some people may be quite adverse to this for their own reasons. but we are not writting for ourselves, we are writting for our audience. as such we should make a focused effort to write with respect to them. Kevin Baas^talk 20:26, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, people do have different priorities. We are all just volunteers after all, and I think that imposing a different set of priorities is likely to be met with the sort of resistance you are encountering. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:11, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The truth is that enWP's mathematics coverage is the go-to reference for those seriously studying the subject, i.e. graduate students. This is clear from the attitude on the MathOverflow site: search WP first, then ask us. In other words the articles this project curates are doing the work of a mathematical encyclopedia. It may be that we should look at criticisms that we are not performing other functions; but I for one am not prepared to accept such criticisms from User:Kevin Baas, whom I don't consider a reliable witness. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:27, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

lol! "being prepared" to "accept criticisms" from [insert name here], and whether they are "reliable witnesses"! omg, you can't possibly be serious! rotflmao! Kevin Baas^talk 19:47, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

You haven't named a single article that you think could be improved. Ozob (talk) 19:49, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

thank you master of the obvious. Kevin Baas^talk 20:02, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Put up or shut up. Ozob (talk) 20:08, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

dude, learn some frickin' manners. what are you like a high school bully or something? geez. i don't condone that kind of stuff. i don't tolerate people speaking to others that way. Kevin Baas^talk 20:11, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

For someone who claims on his user page to value critical thinking, your contribution so far has been disappointingly vague. Thank you for your discussion of exterior algebra above. If you have more evidence for your claim that Wikipedia's math articles are not "coherent and accessible", please provide it. Ozob (talk) 20:18, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

and yet he continues on in the same vein... as for critical thinking, i did not "claim that Wikipedia's math articles are not "coherent and accessible"". i said something logically related to that, yes, but that statement is a much stronger statement that is altogether logically different and does not follow. also being "vague", or more accurately, "general" does not preclude critical thinking. so there is another flaw in your argument. furthermore my goal is not to provide evidence of anything about wikipedia. that would be rather pointless and unproductive. but in any case, regarding the example i gave when asked nicely by baily... perhaps next time instead you could save yourself some breath and hardship by being a little more patient, or by taking after baily's much more practical approach of asking nicely. Kevin Baas^talk 20:38, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

[22]. Bully yourself. You have been making assertions about the treatment of mathematics here for seven years, and I have yet to see you do any actual work towards improving it; you have certainly scrambled up the tensor topics, but forgive me if I don't count that as a plus. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:27, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

i'm not bullying anybody and i'm certainly not going to take orders from you. what you mean to say is that i've voiced similiar concerns something like seven years ago. which is quite different from implying that i've been doing it constantly for seven straight years. VERY VERY different. and of course i do not appreciate that. in fact i find it quite aggressive and inappropriate. (besides being an ad hominimem argument (among other things) and thus having no real practical value) and from the rest of what you say it's clear that you value your own opinion especially highly. certainly you consider your own opinion so much superior so that you can justify to yourself being offensive and aggressive to other people. needless to say this is also inappropriate. Kevin Baas^talk 20:38, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Compared to other areas I think the maths articles are quite well developed. For instance if you want to find out something like why using wax on a polyurethane coated floor is a bad idea or how to sharpen a chisel Wikipedia is definitely not the place to go. Comparing to Planetmath is silly. Mathworld can be a bit friendlier sometimes, that's something a person interested in improving the maths articles could help with. Dmcq (talk) 20:41, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Gentlemen I vaguely remember we have a policy concerning the undesirability of personal attacks. As far as the subject of this posting is concerned, as I recall Charles developed a rather comprehensive reply a number of months ago, could you please provide a link? Tkuvho (talk) 20:46, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) yeah, that's what i'm talking about, making it a bit friendlier. i'm thinking maybe there should be some kind of community collaboration effort to make the articles "friendlier". that's why i brought it up on the project portal. on the note of the tensor articles, i'd like to take a breather from deflecting aggression aimed at me and say that i think that's an area where i feel there has been much improvement in this regard over the years and i'd like to thank everyone who contributed. Kevin Baas^talk 20:47, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec)

1. Wikipedia is not in competition with PlanetMath or MathWorld or any of these other places you mentioned. There is no need for Wikipedia math articles to be better than articles from those other sources. They are specialized resources focusing solely on math; Wikipedia is a general-purpose encyclopedia. If Wikipedia has better math articles than they do, great; if not, well, that's not our specialty.
2. If you think PlanetMath or MathWorld has better math articles than Wikipedia, then use PlanetMath or MathWorld instead of Wikipedia. It won't bother us, I promise.
3. Your suggested solution in your original post was apparently "something really neeeds [sic] to be done about making the articles coherent and accessible. badly." That's not a helpful suggestion. You aren't providing any specific ideas or proposals. You are basically just saying, "You guys have bad math articles and need to fix them!" That's not a solution—that's a complaint.
4. We are volunteers here. We don't need to do anything.
5. If you aren't happy with the state of Wikipedia math articles, you are more than welcome to help to improve them. That's why I posted WP:SOFIXIT. But simply complaining at the rest of us that you don't like the math articles here isn't going to solve anything. —Bkell (talk) 20:55, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

1. Wikipedia is not in competition with PlanetMath or MathWorld or any of these other places you mentioned. There is no need for Wikipedia math articles to be better than articles from those other sources. They are specialized resources focusing solely on math; Wikipedia is a general-purpose encyclopedia. If Wikipedia has better math articles than they do, great; if not, well, that's not our specialty.

   we're not in competition with anybody. but that doesn't mean we can't look at the strengths and weaknesses of other sources and maybe learn some valuable insights about writing and presentation by doing so. as to our specialty, quite correct: it is not math articles, it is as you say, being a general purpose encyclopedia. which is kinda my point, actually. our math articles should be written as if we are a general purpose encyclopedia, not as if we specialized in math for mathematicians. Kevin Baas^talk 21:08, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

2. If you think PlanetMath or MathWorld has better math articles than Wikipedia, then use PlanetMath or MathWorld instead of Wikipedia. It won't bother us, I promise.

   oh yes, but they're not a wiki. i can't take the strengths of one and transfer it to another. with a wiki dictionary, that's at least theoretically possible. Kevin Baas^talk 21:08, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

3. Your suggested solution in your original post was apparently "something really neeeds [sic] to be done about making the articles coherent and accessible. badly." That's not a helpful suggestion. You aren't providing any specific ideas or proposals. You are basically just saying, "You guys have bad math articles and need to fix them!" That's not a solution—that's a complaint.

   i was more specific and suggested ways in which they could be improved. you see i just used the word suggestion right there. (well, the -ed version of it.) i'm surprised you missed them after actually quoting me on them. i suggested "making the articles [more] coherent and accessible". (edit:that is certainly a specific way of improving things. put otherwise "i strongly think the articles could benefit greatly if we focused more on ___." and that is clearly a solution. and not a vague unspecific complaint as you seem to try to parody it as.) i was trying to leave the discussion open for ideas, kind of brainstorming, instead of jsut taking control of it right away with my own. though i have stated it now, creating sort of a formal team for making articles "-friendlier", as somebody else put it. Kevin Baas^talk 21:08, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

4. We are volunteers here. We don't need to do anything.

   oh yes, i didn't mean to use the word like that. i though that was clear from the context. sorry. Kevin Baas^talk 21:08, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

5. If you aren't happy with the state of Wikipedia math articles, you are more than welcome to help to improve them. That's why I posted WP:SOFIXIT. But simply complaining at the rest of us that you don't like the math articles here isn't going to solve anything. —Bkell (talk) 20:55, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

   i have improved them. i know why you posted sofixit. (i'm not an idiot.) and again i'm not simply "complaining at the rest of us that you don't like the math articles ". that is a false characterization. which should be pretty obvious by now if it wasn't originally. Kevin Baas^talk 21:08, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Maybe we should start collecting these discussions, in a FAQ-type listing. It might be a much more efficient method of communicating this group's apparent disinterest in addressing this ongoing problem.

Someone complains that the math-related articles are needlessly opaque several times a year, and as far as I can tell, every single complaint gets blown off. Typically, the closest we come to a solution is someone inviting the complainants to magically know enough about the subjects to fix basic problems (e.g., the absence of a paragraph about "why anyone cares about this concept"). In my experience, identifying specific, concrete problems in specific, named sentences in individual, linked articles earns you exactly the same kind of dismissive response that vaguer complaints produce. I've personally seen a complaint about a basic grammar problem get dismissed, as if editors who work on math articles shouldn't have to use the level of English that one expects from a typical 12 year old.

So Kevin, let me assure you that far from the first person to complain about this problem, but unfortunately the people who appear to be primarily responsible for creating the problem are perfectly satisfied with the status quo, so complaining here will accomplish nothing except raising your blood pressure. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:05, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

It's utterly ridiculous to compare WP math coverage with MathWorld and think it comes up short!! WP math articles are immensely superior to MathWorld. --Trovatore (talk) 22:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that people complaining typically do so with a very aggressive voice and with an air of entitlement. The OP of this thread is a case in point, it is basically a troll. It appears the OP wanted nothing short than a flame war for his own entertainment. If not, he just has very poor people and motivational skills.TimothyRias (talk) 22:23, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

breaking up

@WhatamIdoing: I, for one, have on many occasions addressed issues raised by users concerning the accessibility of math articles. Typically, these occur on talk pages of the corresponding articles, in which case they are much easier to address. I'd venture to say that most accessibility issues raised on this discussion page are rather vague and hence much harder to address appropriately. It is true that it would difficult for the one person raising the issue to fix everything him/herself, but with a complaint like "almost all math articles on wiki are incoherent and inaccessible", it's not like the ~20 regulars who hang out in this forum can fix everything either. Other times I've disregarded a request to improve accessibility are along the lines of "I have a college degree in engineering, and even I don't understand what the article Class formation is saying", and while that article could be improved and made more accessible, knowing college level math is by no means sufficient to have any idea what that article is about.

As for the discussion at hand, the OP's original comment was certainly not the best way to approach this issue. In fact, the only phrase the people in this forum are likely to somewhat agree with is that accessibility needs to be improved. I, for one, am pretty sure most of our articles are "coherent", and I'm only on wikipedia because I find planetmath and mathworld mostly unhelpful. I'm also fairly certain our articles have not been getting worse. (You could argue that maybe the number of good ones as a percentage of the whole is going down, but only because there's an increasing amount of articles, so that's not a very good measure). Finally, while there are people making articles actively worse, they are presumably not the people from whom the OP is asking for help, so there's no need to leave a lingering potential insult lying around. So, as I said, there is at most one thing out of six that the OP said initially that participants here could identify with. That's not a good score if you're trying to get people to help you. RobHar (talk) 22:39, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) i don't know who you're talking about, unless "OP" refers to "original poster", which is pretty transparent, i.e. you might as well use the person's name. it doesn't make it any less of a personal attack, which is strictly prohibited. and it is very overt and egregious and i strain to not state myself more plainly for fear of the same. furhtermore it is assuming bad faith and it is talking about editors and not content. all rather egregious contraventions of policy and simply good form. and the personal attacks on me are certainly most egregious and i do not appreciate them and in fact take great offense to them. i presume in good faith that that is not your goal, of course (and well, that it would be quite ironic if it were). so perhaps as a sign of good faith you could offer some repair, as it were? Kevin Baas^talk 22:43, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

If you take such great offense at insult, you might consider not starting off a thread with one. I'm prepared to offer an apology, if you first apologize to this community as a whole. TimothyRias (talk) 22:54, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

i'll take that as a no. be that as it may, i am reporting you on WP:ANI. Kevin Baas^talk 22:59, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

In case anyone cares: the actual report appears to have been at Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts#personal attacks and uncivil comments by User:TimothyRias. And Kevin appears to have failed to follow proper Wikiquette himself, by not notifying the subject of his report more explicitly. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:27, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

opp, sorry i missed that. thanks. though notifying me more politely on my talk page (and perhaps being a bit ore patient and less accusatory. (first time i've used the new process.)) would be... well looks like we both screwed up. Kevin Baas^talk 23:45, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Maybe. But I think in general, it would be an improvement for you to spend more energy on improving articles and less on trying to figure out who screwed up where. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:48, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

oh but when i screw up i should certainly like to know. and when something bothers me i should much rather politely say so then just bottle it up or be crass about it. anycase i don't have much of an idea on who screwed up what nor do i care as long as everyone's being honest and fair and decent. i just want to find ways in which we can make the content better, preferably with as little squablling as possible. Kevin Baas^talk 01:19, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

(afters 2nd paragraph was added) please stop refering to me in the third person. i am right here. it is rather transparent and impolite. there are areas where the articles have improved in accessibility and there are areas hwere they have gotten worse. and i do with all my heart hope that the people who are giving accessibility and the like short shrift and responding most obstinately at the suggestion that there might be a better way are precisely the ones who take these things MOST to heart. for anything less would be a rather hopeless state of affairs. perhaps i'm being too optimistic; perhaps i am putting a little to much faith in people here. i could be. but its certainly more productive then constantly ridiculoius, attacking, and diminishing the honest and selfless concerns of a "original poster". Kevin Baas^talk 22:51, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

For the record "OP" stands for both "opening post" and "original poster". Its use is well established netiquette, and can not really be regarded as impolite.TimothyRias (talk) 22:57, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

it is not the term that is polite or impolite but the way in which it is used. that is well established etiquette'. Kevin Baas^talk 22:59, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

It seems as though I am one of the people that you are unhappy at for using the designation "OP". I can assure I meant no harm, nor was I attempting to be mysterious, I simply meant to use it as a completely standard way of referring to the person who started the topic. I was referring to you in the third person because, as the "@WhatamIdoing" at the beginning of my post indicates, I was responding to User:WhatamIdoing. RobHar (talk) 23:11, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. :) you make some good points, robhar. i still think we might benefit from some kind of more formal effort in this regard. maybe like forming on open "team" that focuses on one article at a time. in the same matter as "article improvement drives", it could be more along the lines of accessibility and "friendliness" improvement. Kevin Baas^talk 23:27, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

oh, and by "coherent", what i mean is, well i guess that kind of ties into accessibility, but it's more to do with the order in which ideas are presented rather than the language used and such. articles sometimes seems a bit fragmented to the unacquainted and can sometimes be made more pedagogical. so that's what i meant. probably not the best word choice, best i could think of at the time. Kevin Baas^talk 23:42, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) I was going to point you to Wikipedia:Mathematics Collaboration of the Month, but it looks like you're already aware of it. It's been dead for a couple of years now though, and it's unclear whether it would survive if reanimated. You do raise an interesting variant: a collaboration of the month that wouldn't necessarily attempt to add material (i.e. depth) to an article, but try to make an article more accessible. That could have appeal, I dunno. One problem is that it's easier to add depth to any article than to make it more accessible: most mathematical sources deal with the raw facts and spend little time on accessible narrative. Though for some of the more basic topics, this would be easier. Are there specific articles that you think would be good articles with which to begin such a project? RobHar (talk) 23:52, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

good question. let me think on that. in general i would think it would make sense to start from more elementary and go up. or if some people find articles that they think particlarly opaque, provided the content isn't too esoteric to begin with... how did collaboration of the month do it? Kevin Baas^talk 00:34, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

For COTM, people just nominated articles and at the end of the month the article with the most votes became the COTM (if it had at least 3 votes). I think there was a discussion on the talk page of that project containing suggestions on how to improve the process. Still give some thought to some first examples of articles and if they work out that could get the ball rolling. RobHar (talk) 02:34, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Rob, I'm willing to agree that Kevin has failed to win friends and influence people, but in my experience, the presentation wouldn't have affected the outcome.

If you want to change my mind, then I invite you to provide me with links in WP:MATH's archives that prove the existence of brilliantly helpful, or at least sympathetic, responses to this kind of general complaint. I can supply you with links to more examples of the defensive, insulting, and self-justifying responses that we saw today, but that doesn't sound very uplifting. Can you provide good examples of discussions that show this group (and not merely one editor) responding helpfully and kindly to criticism about unnecessarily obscure content? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:47, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think I claimed that there were cases of sympathetic responses to general complaints. On the other hand, I don't remember any reactions as adverse as the current one. RobHar (talk) 02:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. One of the people at wikiquette alerts seems to think i'm full of s**t. I am done talking to him. Kevin Baas^talk 02:42, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Examples in the form of this talk page complaint at a specific article leading to this improvement to the article are not hard to find. Examples of a constructive response to someone coming to the project talk page and telling us our articles are all bad without telling us which articles he's talking about are likely to be rarer, though. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:57, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm saying -- and i thought i already made this clear -- that we should do some thing(s) more systematic. the FAQ recently posted is a good example. Kevin Baas^talk 02:20, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Could you give some examples of unnecessarily obscure content? The only link I saw above was to exterior algebra, which is an obscure topic to begin with. It's a graduate-level topic, not covered in the typical undergraduate curriculum except possibly at the very strongest universities. But that article does not seem particularly obscure to me, and I am neither a geometer nor an algebraist, and only have a basic graduate background in those areas. So I'm not sure whether the criticism is simply that we have articles on graduate-level topics – I consider that a strength, not a weakness. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:57, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The other thing that makes the complaint hard to understand is that Wikipedia is well-regarded in academic math circles as a basic reference. Many mathematicians I know use it as a way to check basic definitions in fields they aren't familiar with. I have seen talks where the speaker actually quotes definitions from Wikipedia (although that would be unlikely in an actual paper). So, without more detail, it's hard to understand a vague claim that Wikipedia is not a good reference for mathematics topics. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Well there's the misunderstanding right there. i didn't say it wasn't a good reference. i thought i already cleared this up. i said some of the articles could use some more pedagogical prose (to say it differently). which is something altogether different. the back pages of a calculus book is a good reference, but it doesn't tell you anything about what anything really means, visually. Kevin Baas^talk 02:20, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

We have to avoid most pedagogical prose because it violates WP:NOR (and WP:NOT). Being a textbook isn't our mission, we just try to be a reference. I generally don't remove mild OR when I see it, unless it's far over the line, but at the same time it's not something that careful editors are going to add. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

yeah, it's a tricky issue. i believe wp:nor makes exceptions for trivial things and a lot of stuff, esp. at more basic levels, are quite trivial. there is a balance and it's i think further in the prose direction than a lot of people think. we don't try to be a reference, we try to be an encyclopedia. big difference (and i know an encyclopedia is a type of reference, that's not what i mean). in order to do that we have to be descriptive and prosiac, just like other encyclopedias are (maybe briticannica or comptons or something is a better example than wolfram). otherwise we're not really doing our job. that's all i'm saying. i understand the difficulties. i didn't really think it's that strict where we can't do a good job at it. Kevin Baas^talk 02:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

On one hand, exterior algebra is not something at a "more basic level". On the other hand, we already far exceed Britannica in our coverage. For example, try to find any coverage of group theory there – and that's taught to virtually every pure mathematics undergrad. Using Britannica as a mathematics reference after high school is essentially impossible.

On another hand, we can't hope to write textbook style presentations, complete with many original examples, pedagogical remarks, exercises, etc. Personally, I don't see that exterior algebra as particularly, bad; the first paragraph is accessible to anyone with half an undergraduate degree, and it has a lengthy "examples" section. It's not an elementary topic, and there are no low-level books on it. It's unrealistic to expect Wikipedia, which has absurdly high restrictions on sourcing, to write low-level articles on topics for which the only references are at the graduate level. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:44, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

is hard to do

I agree with the OP that the maths articles do let WP down. I've a maths-physics background, and the maths articles fall below the physics articles in clarity, IMO. Some are good, but a lot are really bad in that they don't communicate the concepts to all audiences. They look like they are written by PhDs for PhDs. A good article can communicate on many levels, explaining the concepts at an elementary level and more advanced levels. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 10:52, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

What is the "elementary level" of exterior algebra? We don't have a goal of writing popularizations of topics like that – it would be silly to try to write that article in a way accessible to an 8th grader. These topics are primarily of interest to people at the graduate and advanced undergraduate level, and it's perfectly appropriate to write articles that are aimed at such an audience, rather than trying to address some nebulous concept of "all audiences". On the other hand, articles like addition are written in a much more accessible way, as they should be.

As Charles Matthews and I have pointed out, Wikipedia is used very frequently as a reference by practicing mathematicians. I value that much more than I value the ability of a random 8th grader to read exterior algebra. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:15, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, there is some truth to the statement that a significant share of our articles can and should be more accessible, without really sacrificing much in the way of usability as a serious reference work. But obviously the issue of making articles accessible is one of priorities. There are only so many people who regularly edit Wikipedia mathematics articles, and still fewer that are talented enough as expositors to be able to make any topic accessible for a general audience. Naturally, we are going to prioritize which articles that we attempt to improve for a general audience. No amount of shouting at us is going to change the fact that there are few of us and so many articles. Moreover, a discussion that begins on the premise that all of our mathematics articles are inaccessible, and that project members don't care, can be quite frustrating to the actual project members who, by and large, do care about such things, and are already quite well aware of the issue. Secondly, many of us (yourself included) believe that it is better to have an article on a mathematics topic than to be silent on that topic, even if that article is pitched primarily at research mathematicians. A perhaps unfortunate result of this point of view though is that we do have many mathematics articles that are pitched at too high a level. But we also have many times more mathematics articles then there are physics articles. Our coverage of mathematics is much more comprehensive than physics, and that seems to be a good thing. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:39, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I completely agree. In addition I don't really that MathWorld or PlanetMath are necessarily better or more accessible in most cases. MathWorld often simply does not cover many of the more abstract subjects, i.e. the "greater Acessibility" is often achieved by simply not covering the subject. On more basic subjects, WP articles are usually as accessible as those on MathWorld, but in addition often more comprehensive and detailed. PlanetMath has many articles being not particularly accessible at all and on average it is hardly easier than WP. Not mentioned so far was Springer's Encyclopaedia of Mathematics being probably the "most distinguished" of our online competitors and it is clearly less accessible (as their primary audience are professional mathematicians).--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure on what you base that there are many times more mathematics articles, than physics articles. At best there is a factor of 2 more mathematics articles than physics articles (approx. 25,000 vs. 12,500). However, most of those are stubs, if you only count articles rated beyond the stub level, than there are more physics articles than mathematics articles (approx. 8,500 vs. 6,000). In all, I would say that the number of physics and mathematics articles are of the same order of magnitude.

I'm not sure what this says about either of the projects. WP physics, has it own set of problems (such as a much higher crackpot-to-expert ratio) and has its own set of almost completely unreadable articles. The general problem is that writing accessible articles about inherently technical articles is a lot of work, especially within the bounds of Wikipedia policy (especially WP:V, particularly WP:OR and WP:SYNTH). It is much easier to write technical articles at the same level of technicality as most of the sources used, and as a result a lot of articles that are written on these subjects are hard to read without a lot of background knowledge. This is still better than having no articles at all, in fact, having technically complete and correct articles is necessary as a first step for making them accessible.TimothyRias (talk) 14:56, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I was looking at List of physics articles under the impression that it was maintained in a manner similar to our List of mathematics articles. But it's now clear that this is not the case. Consider me rebuked ;-) Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:07, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Exterior algebra is one of the best math articles in wikipedia, thanks largely to the efforts of "S. Rabbit" in the past, and more recently other editors including Biały. Tkuvho (talk) 13:46, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Really? Then why does it contain zero sentences that a non-expert can understand? Why doesn't it begin with some very basic sentence, like "Exterior algebra is a complex type of linear algebra used for areas and volumes, rather than lines" (assuming that I've made any sense at all out of the article, which I honestly doubt)?

Does your definition of "best math article" include only a calculation of the benefit to experts, with no thought to the need to make technical articles accessible? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:40, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The page exterior algebra typifies what I wrote about the hierarchical structure of mathematics. Just as a reader will not understand vector spaces until he is thoroughly familiar with examples such as Euclidean spaces, spaces of polynomials, etc., so also exterior algebra presupposes thorough familiarity with determinants and rank. You are correct to point out that the lead does not make this clear. I made a note to that effect. Tkuvho (talk) 17:05, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Your change is not helpful. Telling people "we don't expect you to understand any of this unless you've spent years studying these other subjects" does not solve the problem.

Valid solutions give the non-expert reader at least an idea of what the subject is about. Non-experts don't need to understand every detail, but they should leave the first paragraph with a basic idea of what the subject is. Saying "I don't expect mere mortals like you to understand anything on this page" is not giving the reader a basic idea of exterior algebra.

To put it another way: I can explain basic algebra equations to a child who knows how to count, but not how to add or multiply. Surely all you smart people can figure out how to tell people who have studied far more mathematics than the typical four year old what exterior algebra is—unless, of course, you're more interested in showing off how "smart" you are than in writing an encyclopedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

And we have figured out how to explain it to people with a basic background in college mathematics. The first paragraph of that article takes it down pretty much as simply as it's going to go. There is already a substantial introductory section explaining the connection to vector calculus. If this isn't good enough, then I don't see what the target audience could possible be. Four year olds? Seriously? Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:45, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Your theory: "we have figured out how to explain it to people with a basic background in college mathematics."

My data: I am one of those "people with a basic background in college mathematics". I don't understand the article, or even the first paragraph.

If your audience is "people with a basic background in college mathematics" (a perfectly reasonable target, IMO) then you are not reaching your audience. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm sorry that your education apparently omitted important topics like the cross product, areas and volumes (calculus) and rank and linear independence (linear algebra). It is not unreasonable to expect readers of this article to have a solid foundation in these ideas and there are constraints on what can be covered in the lead. I think we've done the best we can, based on experience teaching this subject to math/physics/engineering students. If there is a roadmap to writing a better lead for this article, I would happily look it over. But I haven't seen better. If my best isn't "good enough" then I might as well leave Wilipedia. Obviously my continuations are neither necessary nor appreciated. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:37, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

A few comments here. Wikipedia incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias (pillar one), so there is nothing wrong with adding advanced content. In this regard I think it is fair to say that the current state of the article mentioned targets more an undergrad student – even though it should be possible to understand the first paragraph with background in college mathematics. The question that comes to mind is how much does it make sense to "dumb down" an advanced topic? I can imagine the Motivating examples section to be simplified by being more informal, avoiding mention of undergrad topics like a basis, and so on, but what does it give? Still, you will require undergrad math knowledge to apprehend its usage. Just a question... (Besides, thanks to all the contributors for this extensive survey on the subject.) Nageh (talk) 22:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) I think you underestimate the difficulty of explaining these advanced topics! I read pop math books from time to time, and they sometimes have ingenious ways of explaining a small part of modern mathematics to a high-school level audience. But most people, including Wikipedia editors, lack the ability to navigate so many levels, and many topics simply can't be explained that way at all. Even the authors of those books spend long periods trying different approaches to simplify the exposition; the average Wikipedia editor isn't willing (if indeed able) to spend 20 months pondering a single article as an author would with a book.

You may be one of the special people with this gift, in which case I encourage you to use it! But in the large majority of math articles it is the difficulty of explaining it rather than a failing on the part of the editors. (There are exceptions -- for a long time, and to some extent at present, wheel sieve was needlessly complex, to give but one example.)

I very much support the quest to make articles approachable for a wide audience -- but truly, there is 'no royal road'.

CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I know that it's hard. IMO it is actually the hardest topic area in all of Wikipedia. The fact that it's hard does not change the fact that it needs to be done. These responses of "you're just too ignorant to understand anything at all about this subject" also don't solve the problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I have added substantially to the lead of the exterior algebra article. So much that now I think we are really breaking WP:LEAD. Is this the sort of thing you had in mind? Sławomir Biały (talk) 00:36, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I can understand why people think it makes sense to compare physics and mathematics, but in reality it can only lead to false comparisons. The basic language of physics involves electrons, atoms, forces, time, energy, etc. In other words, (for the most part) it involves concepts that are taught to high school students. Other than that, the term "quantum" is an element of pop culture, and the concepts of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian are a step away from energy. Hell, kids even use the term "force field"; not totally accurately mind you, but still. The basic language of mathematics involves functions, topological spaces, groups, invariants, manifolds, graphs, rings, vector spaces, R-modules, categories, etc. While some of these are introduced at a high school or undergraduate, many of them are graduate topics. This makes it inherently more difficult to provide down-to-earth explanations on many wiki math articles. Take for example one of the biggest mathematical proofs of the recent past: Wiles' proof of Fermat. Luckily, you can fairly easily say a bunch of things about Fermat's Last Theorem; however, you'd be hard pressed to give a down-to-earth explanation of what the modularity theorem even says. Anyway, that's a bit of my rant. RobHar (talk) 16:02, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Greetings Kevin, You have made an excellent observation and contribution to the discussion for this group. I have read your user page, and I am impressed by the time and thought you have put into NPOV. Please take a look at User:Gregbard/Mathematosis which is content that members of this group actively suppressed, and was moved from Wikipedia:MMSS to user space. It is no surprise to me that you have appropriately brought this important issue to the attention of the proper community, and have gotten a negative response from several of them. The prevailing attitude is represented by CBM (who is a wonderful and reasonable editor to discuss things with, however is still guilty of having this attitude that it isn't important at all for non-mathematicians to be able to understand mathematics articles in Wikipedia --a position he has stated in this discussion). Most of the active members couldn't care less if articles are only intelligible by themselves and their mathematician buddies. They are territorial and hostile to any interdisciplinary treatment of topics which might lend a great deal of clarity to non-mathematicians. As a note to the group, this poster Kevin has made a good faith report to this group for a need for improvement which the group has heretofore failed to achieve. His observation is valuable, as criticism is how we improve. Do not take this opportunity to dismiss him. Put away your arrogance, and adopt the humble position that he is speaking to an valid issue on behalf of the reading audience. Show some respect.Greg Bard (talk) 21:17, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I think people should note that there was "no royal road to mathematics" when Alexander the Great asked for one; and there was considerably less mathematics in his day. While it is clearly the case that exposition of mathematical topics can be improved in some ways, those who insist that advanced topics can in some sense be made less advanced by cosmetic changes are simply barking up the wrong tree. Charles Matthews (talk) 22:09, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Charles, consistent with your Alexander quote, an interdisciplinary treatment is the solution. In many cases, especially in the logic department, the solution is to provide the contemporary account given by analytic philosophers of mathematics. The entire project of analytic philosophy is clarification. When members of the group here are hostile to incorporating this kind of scholarship because they "don't see the need" or think it is "POV pushing" or simply disagree that it helps to clarify, with respect, they really are just demonstrating their own ignorance.Greg Bard (talk) 00:55, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

rofl CRGreathouse (t | c) 01:05, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

[23], nuff said Dmcq (talk) 12:12, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm still awaiting outside input at exterior algebra. In light of some of the comments made here, I have completely rewritten the lead of the article. However, since the issues were never clearly identified (beyond a general lack of understanding), it is difficult to determine if I have hit the right mark. It does seem at the very least that those complaining loudly about its original inaccessibility should offer there feedback on the revision. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:30, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Being that I have a PhD in math, I seem to have to recuse myself from commenting on the accessibility of what you've written, I will therefore comment on the other side of the issue. Maybe first off, the first sentence is supposed to contain the word "Exterior algebra", otherwise perhaps this article should be moved to "Exterior product". Of course, starting this article with two paragraphs on exterior products is, I presume, simply trying to make the article accessible without being "allowed" to simply use a wikilink to "Exterior product" (which I've always thought should be its own article, I rarely use the exterior algebra, but often use various exterior products). Secondly, I realize that providing an overview of a subject will require hand-waving and white lies, but I generally look for a way to use language that gets across the same point, but technically manages to avoid lying. What I'm talking about is the current repeated use of the term "geometric space". As a mathematician, I read this, naturally, as "Euclidean space" (or "inner product space"), but the inner product is completely unneccessary for defining the exterior product. I think this could lead to confusion for someone who has the background/mathematical maturity to read this article, but doesn't yet know its contents. Perhaps using the word "Euclidean vector" instead of vector, and initially mentioning that the exterior product can be defined on any abstract vector space. I'm leaving these comments here because I think that they hint at some of the counterpoint issues in the current talk of accessibility. RobHar (talk) 15:58, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I have added a link to vector space, since that is what the more sophisticated readers should have in mind. It's true that we also assume a Euclidean structure in this paragraph of the lead, but I have recently added a footnote that hopefully clarifies that as well. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:13, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Yup, the footnote works well. RobHar (talk) 16:24, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

New FAQ

I have been inspired by the above discussion to start an FAQ. It's currently visible at the top of this page. Anyone who wants to edit it is free to do so; it's at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/FAQ. Ozob (talk) 01:35, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

noticed the new FAQ. awesome. thanks, Ozob. well written. Kevin Baas^talk 01:37, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Well done Ozob. Probably something we've needed for a long time. Paul August ☎ 13:53, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Great job. Will save a lot of ink in the long run, too. Tkuvho (talk) 14:02, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

"Law and medicine"

The first answer in the FAQ likened the difficult of mathematics articles to those in "law and medicine". User:WhatamIdoing has recently visited WP:MED and WP:LAW attempting to get them to say that their concepts can be made accessible; see WT:MED#Advanced topics and WT:LAW#On making technical articles accessible. By and large the folks at WP:MED were of the opinion that most of their material could be explained to the layman, though to me they didn't sound particularly enthusiastic. WhatamIdoing Anthonyhcole has used this as justification for removing "and medicine" from the FAQ answer, and I am sure he hopes to do the same for "law". I've replaced "medicine" with "medical science" since that seems to me to be closer to the actual consensus in that thread.

I'm starting this thread in the interest of centralizing discussion. I'll shortly be posting to the Law and Medicine WikiProjects directing them here. Ozob (talk) 12:37, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Whatamidoing did not edit the FAQ. [24] --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:34, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

My apologies; I stand corrected. Ozob (talk) 21:58, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Praise for the new lead at Exterior algebra

I am totally impressed with the huge improvements to the lead at Exterior algebra. I finally understand what the subject is, and why anyone should care about it. (It's the biggest tool for certain purposes! It provides complete, precise, unambiguous definitions instead of just vague descriptions! It's sometimes convenient! It has desirable properties! It's useful! It's compatible with some other things!)

In terms of practical feedback:

The subject is advanced so the material is naturally dense, and I read the lead slowly, trying to reactivate some rather rusty neurons. The occasional parenthetical comment (e.g., the degrees add (like multiplication of polynomials)) helped me connect the current subject to some basic but apparently rusty concepts (going from "The degrees add?!" to "Oh, he means the degrees add! How could I have forgotten!"). It's still not going to be accessible to someone at the pre-algebra level and that's okay. I think it's going to be accessible to someone who has studied vectors past the introduction-to-physics level.

The lead makes judicious use of occasional "needless verbosity" as a way of introducing unfamiliar terms. For example, it says The exterior product of two vectors u and v, denoted by u ∧ v, lives in a space called the exterior square, rather than The exterior product of two vectors u and v, denoted by u ∧ v, lives in the exterior square. The difference from the perspective of the non-expert is that the chosen construction says "Now you know what we call this bit, and that's all you need to know about that for now" rather than "Here's another bit of jargon to prove that you don't know what we're talking about!" I found this so effective that I plan to adopt this strategy for other technical subjects.

The newly added image helped me check my understanding of the first paragraph.

In the end, I felt like I understood the main point of every single sentence, at least to a first approximation—well enough, in fact, to confidently identify and fix a minor typo that the spilling chucker missed, without wondering if perhaps this was some strange new mathematical concept.

I'm enormously happy about the new third paragraph, which contains most of the "What's it useful for" and "What field is it studied in" answers. (The short answers to those two questions are "Lots of things" and "Several", and as a result, I know why this article is a high priority on this project's WP:1.0 assessments.)

This is such a wonderful bit of work. Thank you to all who helped, directly and indirectly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I think that new lede has some good material, but it is far too verbose for the lede section of an article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:20, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree that it is long—three paragraphs of ten sentences each—but I don't think that it is too long. Instead, I think it is just about as long as necessary. Except for possibly the parenthetical description of differential forms, I'm not sure what could be cut without failing to identify the subject and its importance to the reader.

One reason that I think its length is appropriate is because it's really introducing two closely related subjects: Exterior algebra is also the article for Exterior product. So you've got ten sentences on each of two 'subjects', and ten sentences that apply more or less to both 'subjects'. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:29, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Ono partition proof

Ono et. al. have recently published a paper which is getting a lot of hype. If someone can work on Partition (number theory) in preparation for that would probably be good. The paper deals with congruences and a new closed-form formula (I've only skimmed it so far); we should, in particular, work on Partition (number theory)#Congruences if at all possible. At the moment that section directly contradicts itself.

CRGreathouse (t | c) 00:15, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

A picture is worth 1,000 words

Although I did Maths up to it being a subsidiary subject at first-year university level, I've forgotten most of it, although I do like to try to get a vague grasp of concepts as I come across them (see, for example, the above discussion about Lyapunov vectors). So I can heartily commend and congratulate that article for including a diagram which, more than thousands of words could do, gives the outside reader a rough idea of what's going on. Excellent. Any chance of a few more articles doing likewise? If diagrams are tricky, then use a real world example if possible: "Imagine this scene 'X' ... aspect 'Y' is described by mathematical concept 'Z'." (I realise this really may not be possible in various cases, but I'm sure it must be in some, as per Lyapunov vectors.) In short, could articles, where possible, attempt to teach a non-mathematician? Thanks. Feline Hymnic (talk) 09:52, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Mathematics is abstract by nature and it is often difficult to come up with a diagram which illustrates a concepts in any meaningful way. But I'm sure there are quite a few math articles where a diagram would very helpful, and others where the existing diagram(s) could be improved. I believe Template:Reqdiagram can be added to an article to request a diagram and add it to the corresponding category, but I don't know if we have a way of sorting out just the math articles from the list. Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Graphics has some links to the Wikipedia:Requested pictures page but the indicated sections don't seem to exist.--RDBury (talk) 23:32, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

There is a list here for future reference. It's mainly for photos but diagrams seem to be included as well.--RDBury (talk) 18:09, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Someone should split that list into mathematicians and mathematics articles. I'm sure that should be easy for the bot to do. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:46, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

There are places where diagrams would help. But even when you can sketch a diagram in a few seconds on the back of an envelope, it may take two hours, or eight hours, to create something that can be uploaded. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:57, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

In many cases, I think that even a less than perfect diagram is better than none at all. And overall I heartily agree that many of our articles could use more illustrations. A useful first task, per above, would be to organize a list of articles needing images, although realistically the list should be fairly long. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:46, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree. In drafts of papers it's routine to sketch a diagram on paper and scan it in as a placeholder. Similarly, once in a computer science article I encountered a diagram that was apparently drawn by mouse using MS Paint. These lo-fi diagrams not only are better than no diagram, but also strongly encourage the production of a higher-quality one. Dcoetzee 22:50, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Although I've tended to emphasise pictures, diagrams, etc. to help the outsider get a finger-hold on a concept, another really valuable way to do this is a "motivating example". For instance, many years ago I couldn't see any point to the vector cross product. "Why bother?", I thought. "Completely perpendicular to the usual vector plane? Crazy!", I thought. But in another isolated compartment of my poor little brain was already squirrelled away the right-hand rule for electro-magnetic induction. Then in one physics lesson about electromagnetism, the lecturer said, almost as a throw-away, "...and we can express this mathematically as a vector-cross product." And the light went on: "Yes, at last, I get it!". So, if reasonably possible, could articles have some sort of "motivating example" near the top? Feline Hymnic (talk) 12:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Here's some more support for the principle that putting examples early in the article is good pedagogy. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:21, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I recommend GeoGebra as an excellent package for creating mathematical graphics. It's not so good with colours, but you can export any pic you generate as a PNG and use Paint or something to colour areas in. --Matt Westwood 12:54, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

PNG and more generally bitmap graphics are inappropriate for most mathematical illustrations. We should be using vector formats such as SVG. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:22, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Drive-by reverts at Midy's

Midy's theorem is being enriched by unsourced material. Tkuvho (talk) 04:05, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The article said:

If the period of the decimal representation of a/p is 2n, so that

${\frac {a}{p}}=0.{\overline {a_{1}a_{2}a_{3}\dots a_{n}a_{n+1}\dots a_{2n}}}$

then

Does "so that" make sense? I.e. if the denominator is a prime other than 2 or 5 and the numerator is less than the denominator, is it necessary that the repetend begins immediately after the decimal point? If so, I think the article should mention that, and so should the one titled repeating decimal.

For now I've changed it so that it says this:

If the period of the decimal representation of a/p is 2n, and

${\frac {a}{p}}=0.{\overline {a_{1}a_{2}a_{3}\dots a_{n}a_{n+1}\dots a_{2n}}}$

then

Michael Hardy (talk) 22:58, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

You should be able to get the original WLOG. CRGreathouse (t | c) 20:47, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is necessary that the repetition begins immediately after the decimal point. If 0<a<p and p is prime (but not a factor of the base), then remainder of the long division of a by p after a_i is congruent mod p to a×10ⁱ. These remainders form a coset of a subgroup of the multiplicative group of Z_p. Or you could just read the proof in the article carefully to see it.

Actually, this is covered in a more general way at Repeating decimal#Reciprocals of integers not co-prime to 10. Although that is only talking about fractions whose numerator is 1, it also applies to other numerators co-prime to the denominator. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:07, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Repeating decimal#Why does repetition begins where it does?. JRSpriggs (talk) 09:05, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Hadamard's maximal determinant problem

Hadamard's maximal determinant problem is a quasi-orphan (in the article space, one "article" and one list link to it (and I shouldn't have to tell you which list)). Try to figure out which other articles should link to it, and add the links. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:14, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Tangent half-angle formula

Tangent half-angle formula has long been a deficient article. It's not as bad as it was 30 minutes ago, but more work is needed.

The illustration would accompany a geometric proof fairly well, but it's badly titled, and also see my commented-out comment on it within the article.

I'm not sure the Weierstrass substitution should be mentioned other than very tersely. There's a main-article link for that. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:45, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Mathematical economics: Shapley-Folkman, Chichilnisky, & Mas-Colell

In the last 3 days, User:David Eppstein created articles on the mathematical economists Andreu Mas-Colell and Graciela Chichilnisky (yesterday).

Chichilnisky's continuous social choice theory may interest topologists, especially; her work on international trade, development, and environmental economics has received international attention; further, she has received national attention in the USA because of a (now settled) sex-discrimination law-suit.

Also, another article started by David, the Shapley-Folkman lemma, received "Good Article" status today, thanks to the reviewing of User:Jakob.scholbach, who guided the needed revisions. Further editing, especially copy-editing, would be appreciated.

Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 22:54, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Did you know? for Chichilnisky, Mas-Colell, and Henry Mann

There is a new article on the algebraic/additive number theorist Henry Mann, who was also a statistician.

I nominated the 3 mathematical articles for DYK, and so I encourage mathematical-project editors to review the DYK facts. Thanks, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 02:18, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

What are the DYK facts? Please provide a link to where the proposed "facts" are? JRSpriggs (talk) 04:24, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

They're on T:TDYK while they await approval. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:56, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Bourbakism

A user at Talk:Exterior algebra asked me to define what I mean by "Bourbakism". As this is an important issue I am starting a thread here. As pertaining to the style of the pages here, particularly the ledes, what I am referring to is the idea that the latest fad in the foundations of mathematics is also the foundation of human thought and therefore should be the foundation of education. In the sixties, set theory was fashionable as a foundation. This foundationalist mentality therefore led to the New Math debacle in education. Concepts such as "naturality", "universal constructions", "equivalence of categories" are certainly appropriate on some math pages, but not most. Thus, understanding the naturality and universality of the exterior algebra is important in its applications in de Rham theory and building the exterior differential complex, etc. However, such concepts are basically a Bourbakist infestation when it comes to explaining basic concepts such as exterior algebra, and should be relegated to the last section of the page. I appreciate the effort that went into the upgrading of the page exterior algebra recently, but at the same time misguided educational principles should be checked. The elaboration of the "categorical" material has been accompanied by the deletion of material on simple-minded topics such as rank, minor, and cross product which can serve to connect the topic to the reader's previous experience. However, if you are Bourbakist, connecting to previous experience counts little when one is dealing with alleged foundations of human thought. Tkuvho (talk) 10:00, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Just as an aside, Bourbaki seminar publications did not use categorial approach to mathematical structures and instead developed them using sets with additional structure. This approach is still widely used today, and I like it. Now, as I said in the talk page on Exterior algebra, the concept of the largest algebra satisfying this or that property is intuitive, and no category theory was explicitly invoked. I think you're overreacting. P.S.: Set theory is the foundation of modern math, not just 'a fad'. — Kallikanzarid^talk 10:17, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

The discussion at Talk:Exterior algebra is quickly becoming tiresome and unproductive. A nutshell version is that Tkuvho feels that the lead of a mathematics article should not even attempt to summarize the more advanced parts of the article, because of accessibility concerns. Some outside comment is obviously needed. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:07, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

The lead still contains some errors, partly due to the overemphasis on "universal constructions", as I pointed out at the said talk page. Outside comment will be welcome. Tkuvho (talk) 14:11, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I can't see any, can you point them out? — Kallikanzarid^talk 15:08, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

See here. You are the one who acknowledged the error in an earlier edit on this (WPM) page! Tkuvho (talk) 15:13, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

It's just not relevant to what we're discussing. If you want, you can consider Euclidean space where vector fields can be (and are being) safely introduced as mappings to $\mathbb {R} ^{n}$. The concept of vector and covector fields is just not as advanced as you picture it to be, and Slawomir correctly identified that even on an arbitrary manifolds such fields form a module so you can't even argue that the generalization from Euclidean space to manifolds is not straight-forward—it is! — Kallikanzarid^talk 16:22, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Considering that Bourbaki was founded in the 1930s, calling it a recent fad is a bit odd. And trying to tie in Bourbaki's stated wish to write an encyclopedic reference for contemporary mathematicians with the New Math is something of a slur; if you wish for more context read the introduction to Dieudonné's Infinitesimal Calculus; it was much more of a question of getting the French university examiners to consider whether undergraduate teaching should have some relevance to research topics. The excesses of American educators, post-Sputnik, are really only vaguely related. It is obviously the case that our treatments of graduate-level topics should reflect graduate-level textbooks. Those are a mixed bunch, but the "formalist" treatments will be in evidence in certain areas of higher algebraic content, and it is perfectly fine that our articles should reflect that to some extent. My impression is that the anti-algorithmic and "no pictures" prejudices of Bourbaki are now pretty much obsolete, so that heuristics on how you compute with the exterior algebra (say), and some geometrical interpretations, are appropriate. Also some history gives a chance to speak to why ideas were introduced in the first place, which usually helps. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:47, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

But in this case, the charge of Bourbakism can only refer to a parenthetical mention of the universal construction. The vociferous criticism of one particular user seems to be totally out of proportion to what actually appears in the text. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:05, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Certainly the basic principle is that the choice of content should not be anyone's personal taste, but a reflection of a mainstream view. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:34, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

The last I heard the mainstream view was that college juniors are unfamiliar with either "functors" or "universal constructions". You may want to consult Talk:Exterior algebra where it just turned out that college juniors are intimately familiar with the idea of an unfree module. Tkuvho (talk) 17:41, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Point me to the sentence in the lede that relies on that — Kallikanzarid^talk 17:51, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Comments like this and your recent edit to the new FAQ make me wonder if maybe WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT and WP:POINT are getting to be increasingly relevant. Many of your comments suggest that you have not even read the lead (eg equivalence of categories, natural transformations, module coefficients—none of which even appear in the lead), and your comments here and elsewhere have demonstrated a propensity to read what others write very selectively as well. None of this seems to be headed in a constructive direction, largely because it doesn't seem to be focused on the actual text. Instead it seems to be about being "right" about some fine points of rigor. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:54, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I am perfectly prepared to stop this discussion if you find it aggravating. Tkuvho (talk) 18:06, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

It's not that it's aggravating, it's that it doesn't seem to be about the same article. Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:04, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

My one cent

I agree with posts I have seen elsewhere. I think the lead for Exterior algebra generally looks great. Thank you to all the editors who have worked on that text! ---My Core Competency is Competency (talk) 18:30, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

More eyes needed?

User:Gauravmisra del mentioned on his userpage last month that he was having trouble with the wiki-syntax necessary to add his Remarkable Discovery to the article on subtraction without borrowing. He subsequently went ahead and added it (I guess he figured it out?), so that's fine, I guess.

Problem is, I'm concerned about his description of this as a Discovery, which evokes Original Research. But this really isn't my field. I'm sure I could follow his step-by-step instructions if I tried, but I wouldn't be able to recognize whether this is something new and original or old and familiar (and his mention of the psychological side effects of ordinary subtraction seem... unusual, to say the least). Anyone care to have a look? DS (talk) 15:12, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

What's the template for speedy deletion of amateur's self-promotion? :) P.S.: The guy is probably a troll. But please do read vedicmaths.org, it will make your day! :D — Kallikanzarid^talk 15:46, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

My Google search for subtraction without borrowing reported 87,200 results.

—Wavelength (talk) 17:10, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I put quotes round the phrase and got about 17000. I looked at the first and it said "skills include subtracting without borrowing, subtracting with borrowing", so it is obvious they mean a progression in skills where they first set problems where borrowing wasn't required. I guess most are like that. Anyway we should not be the first publishers of remarkable ideas. Dmcq (talk) 20:24, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

It is especially true because this 'remarkable idea' is more than 3000 years too late to be truly remarkable. — Kallikanzarid^talk 20:57, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

So it can't be related to this bit of New Math? :) Dmcq (talk) 21:25, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you Americans were so much traumatized by misguided attempts to rival our sheer awesomeness 8) — Kallikanzarid^talk 21:56, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

So... who wants to AfD this? Unless someone thinks it would survive a prod... I don't think it qualifies for a speedy. CRGreathouse (t | c) 21:05, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

By all means, proceed :) — Kallikanzarid^talk 21:56, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps redirect to Method of complements? --agr (talk) 22:16, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Lede of Hermitian manifold: eyes needed

IMO the sentence about the connection almost complex structure has two errors:

1. As pointed out in the talk page, almost complex structure preserves the metric, not the other way around,
2. More importantly, this is almost Hermitian manifold, for Hermitian manifold you need complex structure, not just almost complex one.

I'm writing here because I don't think many people are watching that page :) — Kallikanzarid^talk 18:49, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I changed the lede, please check for the correctness — Kallikanzarid^talk 18:35, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Prime number

Anyone willing to join me in making this article Good? I think prime numbers [c,sh]ould be a showpiece maths article, ranging from most elementary math's to jungles of unsolved conjectures and recent top-notch work. Everybody, please inscribe yourself here! Jakob.scholbach (talk) 23:17, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Australian Mathematical Society - a reliable source?

Is the Australian Mathematical Society ranking of mathematics journals a reliable source for list of mathematics journals? Opinions on that question are welcome at Talk:List_of_mathematics_journals#AustMS_journal_rankings. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:49, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Feb 2011

A concrete proposal to help the beginners

My suggestion is to adopt a guideline for math pages (particularly the more advanced ones) that they should include a specific pointer to the more elementary topics that need to be mastered in order to understand the more advanced page. The pointer should consist not merely in a mention of a page imbedded in a clause in a long sentence, but a specific mention that the linked page is more accessible. Here is an example. Riemannian manifolds and their curvature cannot even begin to be approached until the student has mastered the theorema egregium of Gauss and the idea that Gaussian curvature is an intrinsic invariant. Pages such as Riemannian manifold should make it clear that the reader has to understand surfaces first. A similar example: I believe the reason the contributor who expressed himself above cannot make any headway in exterior algebra is because the wedge product appears there in a completely "ex nihilo" fashion. By the time the article gets around to construct the exterior algebra in terms of the tensor algebra (!), we have already lost all beginners. The page exterior algebra is a great page, but it could be made more accessible to someone with basic background in linear algebra, but not much more. I tried to link it to more elementary pages in the spirit of my suggested guideline above, but encountered reverts on the grounds of being "unencyclopedic". We should adopt a guideline making it encyclopedic to try to help beginners. Tkuvho (talk) 22:09, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not completely opposed to this in principle (though the idea has never really gone over well in the past). But it seems to me that there are a lot of practical difficulties in getting it really right. Just to start with, I'm not sure I agree with your specific example — when I took a course in semi-Riemannian geometry, I had never studied the theorema egregium by that name, though I did know the concept more or less. I doubt that that theorem per se is a true prerequisite, though I'm not saying it wouldn't be helpful. I see this proposal as giving us new and exciting things to argue about in every article.

For difficult articles, the list of concepts to be mastered before a "beginner" can approach them is pretty intimidating. Is the idea to present, say, just a few immediately-more-general notions, with it being understood that you also need the sort of general familiarity with a whole range of concepts and techniques without which you wouldn't understand the immediate "prerequisites" either? --Trovatore (talk) 06:27, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

"The idea" is that a beginner who looks at, say, riemannian manifold, should not walk away baffled, intimidated, and non-plussed, having learned nothing. If we offer him some leads to lower-level articles, he will either look at those and learn something, or else say, OK, to understand Riemannian manifolds I need first to know what Gaussian curvature is. This is far less discouraging than walking away completely baffled, which seems to have been the experience of some of the beginners who expressed themselves above. Every college course has a list of prerequisites in the course catalog. I am not sure why some mild approximation in wiki should be viewed as such anathema. And I don't think this is "condescending" toward the beginner (see comment below), on the contrary, endless blather about "non-encyclopedic" is condescending. Tkuvho (talk) 14:00, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, I agree with the reverts because I don't think your pointer was in quite the right place and expressed in quite the right way. At Chain rule#The chain rule in one dimension, there's a hatnote that says, For an explanation of notation used in this section, see Function composition. Placing the pointer separately from the main text warns the reader what he's getting into before he starts, and I think that's better style.

But I also wonder whether we should have that kind of message at all. I think a really good article wouldn't need a hatnote like that. I have some recollection that we've discussed this here before, but I can't remember what the outcome was. Ozob (talk) 00:14, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

If you go to the "Search Archives" box and enter "Prerequisites" (here, I've done it for you) some relevant discussions appear. --Trovatore (talk) 06:18, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The hatnote may be a good idea. At any rate this sort of thing should be anchored in official guidelines because you will always have purists who come along and say this is unnecessary. A beginner's needs should be anchored in guidelines. As far as your remark concerning "really good articles", I agree in principle but we have very few of really great ones in the sense of being accessible to beginners. Certainly neither Riemannian manifold nor exterior algebra is at present, as I argued above. Should we wait for them magically to turn into "really great ones"? The users above were right to complain about them. Tkuvho (talk) 05:53, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I think it is generally a bad idea to start of an article by saying: "you should know this, this, and that before attempting to read this." (Or any friendlier message with the same content.) It feels really condescending to me. Moreover, it encourages laziness on part of the editors, by just allowing them to put up some prerequisites and not push to obtain the uttermost accessibility that is possible for the subject. In particular, it encourages starting articles at a high entry level, instead of steadily increasing the difficulty level as the article proceeds. Another thing to keep in mind, is that there can exist vastly different roads to understanding a mathematical subject. A pattern I sometimes see in the thinking about accessibility of math pages on this project, is that it tends to focus on the path that a typical mathematics student would take in learning about the subject. This is not surprising since it is the path that many of contributors here followed/are following, but many users will actually have a different background, which often misses some of the mathematical foundations that a mathematics student would have, but might on the other hand might include a lot of hands experience of using similar structures. For example, students of theoretical physics will learn about Riemannian manifolds in a GR class without any solid knowledge Gaussian curvature or the theory of surfaces (that a mathematics student would have.) Similarly, when (even if) physics and engineering learn what a tensor of a vector bundle is, they usually have been working with examples of these structures for years. I think that a similar effect to providing a list of prerequisites, (without the possible condescending connotation) can be achieved by detailing in the lead what types of things a concept is generalizing and/or naming a few well-known (to people that do not already know about the subject) concrete examples. This typically are things that a reader should know about to understand the article. A reader that has never heard about any of these things, will generally get the clue that he has encountered an article for which he doesn't even properly understand the basic context. Although hopefully he will have a much better idea of the context then before.TimothyRias (talk) 13:29, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

As one of those reverting the change I should add my thoughts. Perhaps my overriding concern is that articles are about a particular topic, and so be written about that, in an encyclopaedic but accessible way. That means that comments about the article, even indirect ones such as "before reading this, read this", have no place in it. Far better to write the article in a clear, straightforward way to make it as accessible as possible to as wide an audience as possible.

That does not mean we don't help those who would be better off reading something else first. In fact we go to great lengths to support them. Through well-chosen wikilinks, through 'See also' links, through navigation boxes, templates and project pages we guide users to articles on related topics and more fundamental ones so they can find those most of use to them. We don't make assumptions about what they know, we show the connections between topics so readers can navigate to the ones they need. We also provide references that often are much more useful for learning from than a factual encyclopaedia article. Arguably we do more like this, and do it better, than any other encyclopaedia, in a way that doesn't interfere with writing the best encyclopaedia articles we can.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 13:52, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

This discussion should not be about specific reverts but rather about a mild "prerequisite" guideline. If you feel strongly about exterior algebra we should focus on a more neutral example such as riemannian manifold, see my comment above. There is no way of making this accessible without copying a large part of differential geometry of surfaces into it. Either we provide gentle hints to the beginner, or we don't, and merely leave him baffled. Tkuvho (talk) 14:05, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I've added an introduction section to Riemannian manifold which I hope should help. I think many of the complaints about math articles on Wikipedia can be addressed by improving the lede or adding a less technical introduction. However that should not preclude other, perhaps interim, steps, that suggest an article to read first. If we can have a { { main } } tag, why not an { { intro ] } tag that says something like For an introduction to this subject see. I'm often bothered by the adjective "encyclopedic" as used on Wikipedia, which seems to mean "helpful, but not too helpful" rather than its dictionary meaning.--agr (talk) 16:52, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

It's a problem with technical articles that the people who know enough about a subject to write about it intelligently tend to be more used to writing for their colleagues than for the general public. So many articles are filled with jargon that only someone who would already be familiar with the subject out be able to get past. (I just ran across this in a psychology article so the problem isn't restricted to mathematics.) On the other hand it's impossible to start from first principles on every article so a certain level of prior knowledge must be assumed. I don't like the idea of adding a specific prerequisites section because the introduction should be telling the reader that implicitly already. For example in math we tend to start article with a phrase like "In topology ...", which should tell the reader that if their not familiar with topology then they'll probably find the article rough going. In the example above, the article on Riemannian manifolds should have a sentence to the effect that it arose from the study and/or is a generalization of the idea of Gaussian curvature and the reader should get the idea that it would be a good idea to be familiar with the latter before getting into the details of of the former. Also, WP is meant to be a reference and not a textbook, so the task isn't to teach the subject from a clearly defined starting point anyway. I do think the general level of the target audience should be identified somewhere though, probably on the talk page. It may be tricky to do this for longer articles since some have advanced level information even the introduction in written at an elementary level. I think it would be helpful for future editors, once the article has taken shape as to content, to know for example that the introduction and history sections should be kept accessible to a general audience, the derivation should be understandable to someone with freshman calculus, and the rest of the article is at grad school or higher level.--RDBury (talk) 16:59, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

@RDBury: I like your proposal a lot. Note however that what you are proposing is much more radical than my proposal. I am merely proposing a mild introduction hatnote guideline, which only involves minor adjustments to existing articles (that, in my opinion, go a long way in helping beginners). If I understand your proposal for the introduction correctly, it would involve rewriting a large percentage of our articles, and would certainly require an official guideline to succeed. Just check the current lede at exterior algebra and tell me if it is "accessible to a general audience", which seems to be evolving in the opposite direction. Thus, a discussion of determinants and rank has just been deleted. What seems to have taken its place is a discussion of equivalence of categories and universal constructions, with the justification being that "we are constrained by a need to summarize the article in the lead, and a large part of that is dedicated to these issues". Is the lede supposed to be a scientific abstract of the article?

Tkuvho — my sense is that (i) you read RDBury as saying that all introduction sections should be kept accessible to a general audience but that (ii) he was really saying that there should be a way of recording the decision that a particular article has an introduction section that can be kept that accessible. Certainly there are plenty of topics (actually, the ones I'm most interested in writing about are all in this category) where the best we can hope for a general audience to take away from the article is not much more than "that's some complicated math thing". However if an article has been written with an accessible introduction, then clearly it can be, and RDBury was proposing (I think) that there should be some way to remember that. --Trovatore (talk) 06:16, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

(Just to be clear, I was speaking in generalities and not really looking at a specific article. To answer your question, no, imo abstracts belong in a journal article but not an encyclopedia article. Off the top of my head I'd say the introduction for the article like "exterior algebra" should be written for a junior or senior college math major.)--RDBury (talk) 05:19, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Consensus in the past has been that the lead of the article should conform to WP:LEAD, meaning that it should be an overview of the article that is accessible as possible, but it should not leave out the harder bits just because those are impossible to describe for the layman. The lead needs to be a summary of the article for everyone—beginners, experts, and everyone in between. There has also been consensus in the past that a separate introductory section can be helpful for beginners. There is obviously confusion in this thread whether by "introductory section" you mean "lead" or actually "introductory section" in the sense that our WP:MSM uses. Could you please clarify? Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:35, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I do think of lead section and introduction as the same thing, sorry if that caused confusion.--RDBury (talk) 15:08, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Note that this does not have to conflict with making the lead more accessible than the main text. Being a summary, the text in the lead does not have to have the same amount of rigor as the main text. In many cases it would be OK to have a statement in the lead that is (from the perspective of a mathematician) slightly ambivalent, which is clarified with more mathematical rigor in the main text.TR 12:46, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:22, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

@agr: Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the adjective "encyclopedic". I wholeheartedly agree. I like your suggestion for an { { intro } } tag. If we can get a guideline approved in this direction, we would have an official basis for fighting off some of the "encyclopedic" browbeating. As far as I see that makes the two of us supporting the idea, though, with an additional "maybe" from Trovatore. Any ideas, fellow editors? Tkuvho (talk) 19:13, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that RDBury's proposal is radical. I think it's similar to the existing official guideline at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics). Most of the articles that people are complaining about are currently in violation of this guideline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:04, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The lede is currently dominated by a Bourbakist formalist attitude that has seriously degraded the quality of the article. The vague expostulations border on error, as when the lede confides that the exterior algebra construction can be generalized to more general vector spaces such as spaces of vector fields or differential forms. This may lead the reader to conclude that one is calculating the exterior algebra of the said infinite-dimensional vector space, which would be complete nonsense. I can't fight this alone, though. Tkuvho (talk) 21:28, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The lede of exterior algebra is not at all like Bourbaki. I disagree with your other claim as well, what exactly is your problem with saying the exterior algebra construction can be generalized to vector fields? RobHar (talk) 06:08, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

It can, it's just that these are not vector spaces, but sections of respective bundles, so construction is done pointwise, and then we take sections of the resulting bundle. — Kallikanzarid^talk 08:29, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

(@Tkuvho) The lead is supposed to summarize the most important points of the article. Since the article seems to be largely sourced to Bourbaki, naturally the lead is going to summarize some "Bourbakist" material. By and large, it's actually the more accessible content that tends to violate WP:LEAD, and there is always a tension between the demands of making a technical article accessible and conforming to WP:LEAD. In the case of the exterior algebra, two paragraphs of introductory material of the lead is wildly out of proportion to its representation in the text. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:38, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

(ui)I'm not sure that appeals to WP:LEAD are valid since we are, in effect, discussing the possibility of changing it, at least for math articles. (There seems to a couple threads here at once, actually.) I think the rationale for WP:LEAD are: a) WP is a reference work so people from a wide range of backgrounds may come to an article. b) Many people reading an article will not read beyond the lead section, some won't go beyond the first sentence. c) An article should provide benefit to as wide a range of possible readers as possible, from those who just want a vague idea what the subject is to those who are already familiar with it and want to fill in some details in their understanding. My conclusion is that the lead section primarily serves the lower end of that spectrum. It the private sector it's called an "elevator speech", or "How would you describe the your job (or the subject of an article) to someone you met randomly in an elevator before they get off at the next stop?" The higher end of the spectrum are served by the latter parts of the article and will probably blow past the lead section anyway. This is a big reason WP writing is so different from textbook writing, in a textbook you can assume all readers are starting at the same point and are committed (with their tuition money) to see it though to the end. Yes, you do want to include the important aspects of the subject since even a casual reader may want to know why someone might be interested in this strange new idea they've come across. But this should be written with the casual reader in mind for the lead section. My favorite example of how this should be done (perhaps because I put a lot of work into the article) is W:Catenary. Everything above the "Mathematical description" section should be accessible to a high school student and there is even eye candy so no one falls asleep.--RDBury (talk) 16:21, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Remark, changing WP:LEAD is pretty much out of the question. It is a wikipedia wide guideline, changing it would require consensus very much beyond this project. Since it is wikipedia wide guideline, it will apply to mathematics articles no matter what additional guidelines we would impose. The most we could do is provide a guideline, of how leads in maths article could best realize the requirements of WP:LEAD. Writing such a guideline, that collects various "best practices" of how to deal with the difficulties of satisfying the various aspects of WP:LEAD in articles about abstract mathematical subjects, might actually be a good idea.TR 16:41, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

There should not be any situation where text X is the best article on a given subject but WP:LEAD forces us to choose an inferior text Y. If there is in a rare instance, WP:LEAD can be ignored--it's just a guideline. If problems arise regularly and there is project consensus on what should be done differently, WP:LEAD can certainly be supplemented by a math specific style guide or altered itself if need be. The guidelines are there to help editors, not get in their way.--agr (talk) 22:33, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

A guide of best practices seems like a good start in any event. There is clearly a lot of confusion, not just about how WP:LEAD can help improve our articles, but indeed what WP:LEAD actually demands. I find our own WP:MSM not to be very helpful in clarifying what the ideal lead of a mathematics article should look like. In particular, it confuses an introductory section for the lead, whereas I think one of our current best practices is that these are generally different things. Since the time that was written, many of the other guidelines have changed to reflect the improving content of Wikipedia. I think that our own guideline should also be brought up to a higher standard as well. We have more good articles now then we did back then, and today's good articles are even "gooder" than yesterday's. Of course, given the confusion and disagreements here, bringing our guideline up to speed is likely still to be a long way off. But I think it should be a priority. Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:04, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Some best practices

Here are some suggestions for the lead. I've itemized them for easier discussion.

1. The lead should conform to WP:LEAD: The purpose of the lead is to define the topic and summarize the article with appropriate weight. (The proposed guideline of best practices is in addition to the requirements of WP:LEAD, which editors are encouraged to consult before continuing.)
2. For a mathematics article, as a general rule, the lead should at a minimum include answers to the following questions: (1) What is it? (2) What is it useful for? (3) What field is it studied in?
3. The lead should be as accessible as possible to those without a specific mathematical background. This may include providing a concise intuitive description of the subject, even if it isn't fully rigorous.
4. Generally speaking, explaining things in words as opposed to mathematical symbols improves the accessibility. Likewise, if any specialized jargon appearing in the lead can be easily explained, it is a good idea to do so (even if in very informal terms).
5. In spite of the goal of making the lead accessible, the lead should avoid teaching the subject. (WP:NOT#TEXTBOOK)
6. Because of the constraints on the length of the lead, a separate "Introduction" or "Motivation" section may be warranted to allow a more complete intuitive description of the subject. However, like all content on Wikipedia, such a section is held to the same standards of sourcing (WP:V) and should be written in an encyclopedic and formal tone. These constraints may dictate the precise structure of such a section (it may take a historical perspective such as in Metric tensor, or the perspective of increasing generalization like Group (mathematics).)

--Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:40, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good to me--Kmhkmh (talk) 15:49, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

There was an old change I was involved in that might be relevant. I set up a motivation and overview section in exponential function which was later changed to just "Overview". You might find the discussion at Talk:Exponential function#Slight muddle? and the next section. It seems there is a real desire in some editors to have article written in a purely logical fashion like some old textbooks where the final result only appears on the last page. I think there really is a need for explicit style guidelines in this area, though even here when I quoted the guidelines another editor responded very negatively to the ideas there. Dmcq (talk) 00:04, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with your thesis. I find that a good way to deal with people who say things like "I wipe my arse with the Mathematics manual of style!!" is to ignore them until they become interested in something else, and then to go ahead and whatever one was going to do anyway. This particular arse-wiping editor seems to have quit Wikipedia since the discussion you mentioned. —Mark Dominus (talk) 10:13, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

1) Should this discussion be moved to another location? Maybe the talk page of WP:MOSMATH, since I think it is a good idea to record the result of this discussion somewhere, for example as a section of WP:MOSMATH. 2) I generally agree with the points above. Something that could be add is that, if use of jargon is unavoidable, it is generally a good idea to avoid using more than one new piece jargon in a sentence. This way it is possible for readers with a vague acquaintance of the subject, but who are fuzzy on the jargon to get some idea of the meaning of the jargon from the context.TR 08:59, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Perturbation problem beyond all orders

Perturbation problem beyond all orders could use some work. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:54, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Accessibility of WP:Math (or "No, I don't have Dyscalculia but WP:Math is just facts and proofs.")

I know, I'm beating this horse over again going over the archives but there few issues and common themes that seem to repeat themselves. WP:NOTTEXTBOOK is often referenced (like in the FAQ above and essay reference) as the excuse for the difficulty of what it's hard to learn anything from WP:Math pages. I do not believe this fair that it's intended purpose. That was meant to leading questions followed by systematic problem solutions as examples. In that same section it states:

5. Scientific journals and research papers. A Wikipedia article should not be presented on the assumption that the reader is well versed in the topic's field. Introductory language in the lead and initial sections of the article should be written in plain terms and concepts that can be understood by any literate reader of Wikipedia without any knowledge in the given field before advancing to more detailed explanations of the topic. While wikilinks should be provided for advanced terms and concepts in that field, articles should be written on the assumption that the reader will not or cannot follow these links, instead attempting to infer their meaning from the text.

Also in right below that in that same section:

7. Academic language. Texts should be written for everyday readers, not for academics. Article titles should reflect common usage, not academic terminology, whenever possible.

This is the problem with the current state of WP:Math and it's infamous for this, both inside and out of the wikipedia community.

"Article titles should reflect common usage, not academic terminology, whenever possible." What is an example of an article title that follows "academic terminology" in preference to "common usage" that would say the same thing or something similarly adequate to the purpose? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:01, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

BTW, I agree with 5 and 7 above. And I've seen cases where they're violated, and tried to fix them. But far more often they are followed. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:06, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I've done my part in the past few years to link jargon to appropriate pages, fix circular definitions across pages by providing an entrance for someone trying to find an in, and created a few images (all of which to been replaced by better ones it seems). I totally get that it's one it's one of the best resources for the intelligentsia and I don't want to diminish that but that isn't the goal of an encyclopedia. I recently was shocked when I popped in an old copy Encarta and compared the text of our math articles. The articles are brief but you can actual pick up the topic if you not an expert. I feel a little overwhelmed though and hope someone hears and understands the community's pain. --ZacBowling ^(user|talk) 11:05, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. Yes, you're beating the same horse again. There are a few misconceptions on your side. First, if you think that every topic could be made accessible to laymen then why not start with the hardest topic of all ("rocket science" so to say) and after reading the article you'll be an expert. Is that what you have in mind? Second, we have just been discussing right on this very page the issue of accessibility (scroll up). If you have constructive suggestions on how to improve exterior algebra, which have been praised for the recent improvements, you are welcome. Third, pillar one states that "[Wikipedia] incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers.", emphasis on "and specialized". Last but not least, the last two words of point 7 read "whenever possible". Nageh (talk) 11:17, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Ad "WP:Math is just facts and proofs": Facts and proofs are inherent to abstract and formal sciences. As long as it's not Euclidean geometry it's hard to draw pretty pictures to visually demonstrate the problem. Nageh (talk) 11:20, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

"Texts should be written for everyday readers, not for academics. Article titles should reflect common usage, not academic terminology, whenever possible" - this is impossible. Math is about rigor, you cannot replace strictly defined terms with colorful metaphors - except for the lede, 'Introduction' and 'Motivation' sections, where it is permissible to some degree. If you think math can be done the way liberal arts are, you are sadly mistaken — Kallikanzarid^talk 11:41, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I sympathize with user ZacBowling. The kind of Bourbakist rhetoric people get for voicing frustration over inaccessibility is discouraging. Tkuvho (talk) 11:45, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

The point where many mathematical articles (admittedly) can be improved are the lead and introductory sections, as Kallikanzarid has pointed out. However, it is impossible to dumb down the core of most articles without getting rid of advanced topics all together. Otherwise, as I suggested, why not skip all the basics, all the elementary and high school stuff and start right with the most advanced topics assuming it is all a matter of presentation? Nageh (talk) 11:51, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

You again? :D You're funny and all, but one more time and I'm reporting you for being a troll — Kallikanzarid^talk 12:04, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Certainly more can and should be done to increase accessibility; but this has to be within a framework of reasonable expectations. It is somewhat misleading, for example, to make comparison with cutting-edge physics, where a one-hour documentary can make you feel that you have clue about the Higgs boson or strings; when in fact the content doesn't give you access to the simplest computations or basic intuitions in quantum theory at all. Reasonable here means that topics up to about first year graduate study, for which there are adequate and fairly stable textbook treatments, should be presented with some of the heuristic remarks that might well accompany lectures. Saying that Galois discovered that polynomials exhibit hidden symmetries is probably OK; that group theory and field theory help to express the idea conveniently is OK too. I have seen too many such "loose" remarks cut out of lead sections over the years. Have a look at back versions of spectral sequence to see what I mean: the current version really assumes you first know what an abelian category is, which would have been news to the users of spectral sequences in their great period 1945-1960. So some pushback is necessary. But on the other hand the trouble you can get in is illustrated by this, which I happened upon this morning. Trying to be overly heuristic about the Riemann Hypothesis tangles you up with describing the state of research on the primes, which is trouble we don't need in basic exposition (it is very much "facts and proofs" to describe the state-of-the-art in serious topics).

Therefore a "reasonable" way forward would seem to me to be to delineate "core" topics of advanced mathematics and to try to bring their exposition up to scratch, at least where all heuristics are probably out there in the literature and just need to be referenced. Vague remarks that contain elements of OR are also against key policies. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:05, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

One of the main problems is that individuals like Kallikanzarid who have shown their lack of understanding of some of the more advanced issues, continue to edit pages as well as expressing themselves in a virulent fashion throughout wiki. The problem with accessibility at exterior algebra has not yet been resolved, partly due to the lack of understanding of some of the participants. Tkuvho (talk) 12:11, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I might say the same thing, although with a slightly different emphasis... Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:46, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, I have always in interpreted the "academic language" section to be referring to articles like apple that are commonly discussed in non-academic settings. It would be possible to fancy up that article with a lot of terms from biology, for example by saying "endocarp" instead of "core". But the common term for the core of an apple is "core".

The intended audience for apple is much broader than the intended audience for Galois cohomology, and it would be silly to expect the latter to be accessible in the same way that the former should be. The common, everyday word for "homological algebra" is "homological algebra"; there is no other, more common, term to use.

The "research papers" section, which claims that readers should not need to follow wikilinks, has been at odds with actual practice for years, and should generally just be ignored. This is not just in math; see B flat major for another article that you couldn't read unless you knew many terms. The lede of that article is also full of specialized terminology, and is also perfectly appropriate. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:27, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the end result of all this discussion is going to be. I like User:Sławomir Biały's best practices listed above and perhaps they should be added to MOSMATH before they disappear into the archives forever. Some, perhaps most math article could be improved in terms of accessibility, and there are several reasons that some articles have to be less accessible than others. But I don't see any specific changes to MOSMATH or anything else concrete that can be decided here being suggested. I'd like to add that, while WPMATH has a large number of articles, it has a relatively small number of editors working on them. So I think some recognition is due to this project for getting math articles into the shape they're in now, even if it's still a work in progress.--RDBury (talk) 14:20, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

This section's heading looks like someone didn't pay much attention before posting. "Just facts and proofs"? There aren't very many proofs in Wikipedia math articles. Proofs are something we have very little of here. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:57, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I was quoting a CS professor I know from Berkeley. We had a long conversation about it since I'm fairly active in the community here. --ZacBowling ^(user|talk) 00:56, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm a software engineer myself with a focus on user experience so that is where my brain goes. (coincidentally I used to work a TI developing the software for graphing calculators). Here are a couple of ideas:

• The <math></math> tags should be a little more accessible when used. It's more a technical challenge (my kind of thing), but I would be nice if math symbols could optionally link to topic articles in the syntax.
• A common info box that links to the areas of math the page is directly related too (set theory, elementary algebra, etc), sub categories with pages (eg: matrix calculus), and a field for an optional list of areas of math, physics, and other sciences that the topic can be applied too.
• If someone has stumbled into a page that requires knowledge of a general topic to even understand the current page, the page should within the first few sentences state that and give a link back to a topic. A bunch of pages simply say "In mathematics," and then a list of topic specific jargon. If you are lucky, you find a category tag or hit the talk page and see area of math the topic is trying to cover (like Schubert variety and Bender–Knuth involution)

It's sad that WP:Math is the only Wikipedia area that makes me feel like I should be using Simple English Wikipedia. --ZacBowling ^(user|talk) 01:56, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Re "It's sad that WP:Math is the only Wikipedia area that makes me feel like I should be using Simple English Wikipedia." This is more a function of mathematics than Wikipedia's treatment of mathematics. Paul August ☎ 02:01, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. I think it would be nice if our articles had more navboxes. For instance, take my own dear field of algebraic geometry. It has the generic "areas of mathematics" navbox at the bottom. Now, someone interested in browsing algebraic geometry articles could go to Category:Algebraic geometry, but that category has hundreds of entries plus subcategories. The algebraic geometry article spends most of its time on foundational issues like what varieties and schemes are, and nowhere does it give the reader a map of the subject. A much cleaner solution would be to have a navbox. I think that wider use of navboxes would to some extent address the second and third bullet points above. (I don't know what to do about the first, though.) Ozob (talk) 02:44, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Since algebraic geometry makes no attempt to use summary style (WP:SUMMARY), something could certainly be done there by quite conventional means. The imposition of a section on "derived algebraic geometry" (no refs) makes it look pretty haphazard. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:20, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think the article is in sad shape. But writing a good survey article for an entire field of mathematics is very, very hard. As an entirely inadequate band-aid, I have created Template:Algebraic curves navbox. It is large and unwieldy, but I think it is a pretty accurate survey of the important topics in the theory of algebraic curves. At least, of those we have articles on. (E.g., I didn't find an article on Mori's bend and break or on rational connectedness, both of which I think would be nice additions. And I couldn't find a really appropriate article on the Riemann–Hilbert correspondence for curves and all of the wonderful stuff related to it (representations of fundamental groups, etc.).)

I am not too attached to the organization that I chose. Classifying everything in some way, let alone a good way, was plenty hard. It may be better to break this into several navboxes, but I'm not sure what would be better. Also I am sure I've made mistakes and left out important things. For the moment I've added the navbox to algebraic curve, elliptic curve, plane curve, and Riemann surface, but of course anyone should feel free to add it to appropriate articles. Ozob (talk) 04:10, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I have to say that a navbox link is a poor substitute for a {{details}} link, when it comes to exposition and structure. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:03, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Ozob's navibox is very helpful and well-designed. May there be more like it. Tkuvho (talk) 09:16, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, I've thought about rewriting the algebraic geometry article into a good survey article, but I'm too intimidated by the scope to actually try. Even the algebraic curves navbox is much less than I had initially set out to do. I started out trying to do an algebraic geometry navbox, and I was entirely overwhelmed: Either it was going to be too huge for me to make or it was going to be too selective to do its job. Curves are a specific enough subject that making a navbox like this was actually feasible. And while I agree that navboxes may not be as useful as a survey article, they are a lot easier to do. Ozob (talk) 11:40, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Some candid observations

I have some relevant thoughts on the original post of this thread. The fact is that there are a great many mathematics articles that are inaccessible, and I don't think anyone can credibly deny this. There are plenty of terrible mathematics articles, some of which no doubt I myself have inflicted on the world. I do think that improving the accessibility of mathematics articles is an important and worthy goal, and I think the best we can hope for in general discussions here is a systematic solution, such as bringing the MOSMATH in line with our current best practices. But project members often display a lack of concern for these issues, or at least a lack of sensitivity to them, and various often sinister reasons have been ascribed for this. But I would like to make some candid observations that I think help explain why things are this way.

Wikipedia's mathematics editors seem to be mostly academics of one stripe or another, and this also seems to be less true of other content areas. To some extent, this dictates how our coverage of mathematics topics develops. I have written articles for the following reasons, and I think that so have many other mathematics editors if I had to guess at their motives based on their behavior: (1) to understand the topic of a seminar I am involved with, (2) as a convenient reference for myself (and other researchers), (3) as a resource for my students (who may be undergraduate or graduate students), (4) to help learn a subject myself or out of sheer curiosity of a subject that I know little about. While I'm sure that the whole altruistic "free encyclopedia" thing may make us feel good about our contributions, it's much too rarefied to elicit any real work on the encyclopedia (for me, at any rate). Out of my own motivations (and I presume those of others), very little has to do with making the encyclopedia accessible to Joe on the street. The only time accessibility is a big personal concern is when I am writing for students, but in their case I assume a fairly specific background (especially when they are graduate students) that the wider population isn't likely to have.

Wikipedia's mathematics editors themselves are also products of the wider world of mathematics, which seems to lack expository source material aimed at Joe on the street. For us, articles published in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society are expository, although most of these articles are almost certainly not understandable to Joe. The rest of the sciences have serious expository outlets like Scientific American, the American Scientist, Nature, and Science, that attempt to explain cutting-edge developments in the sciences to laypeople. But mathematics has no such outlet: Journals in mathematics that specialize in exposition do not emphasize mathematics that is of substantial contemporary interest. One can attempt to rationalize this by saying that "It's the nature of the subject" and "It's much more difficult to make mathematics accessible than other content areas". Critics here dismiss these rationalizations as mere excuses, but I think it is significant that there are so few expository sources for most of mathematics. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:06, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

It is quite true that mathematics generally is short of survey articles. Let's assume that this WikiProject really could solve three problems:

1. Writing surveys that would help mathematicians get into topics not in their specialist area;
2. Writing surveys that would help non-mathematicians get into topics; and
3. Writing material that would help anyone read the contemporary literature on the Web (and elsewhere).

Then the summary of a great deal of debate comes out that #1 and #3 are handled better than #2. Complaints that aim at #3 (NB what recent papers typically lack is definitions and basic facts), as a way of sorting out #2, are misguided. I think we saw this during a flurry of interest in E8 in the media not so long ago: the media reports were essentially without content, while we added some material on Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials that meant the actual result could be stated clearly. What #2 would require in that context is exposition of exceptional Lie groups (for example for a chemist), not an attempt to say what the research had been. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:51, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

"there are so few expository sources for most of mathematics" - what about The Princeton Companion to Mathematics? --Boris Tsirelson (talk) 07:00, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I concur with Boris. There are plenty of expository sources. The japanese encyclopedia is an excellent source. Most of their articles start with the simplest nontrivial example of a theory about to be developed, and works out the example before proceeding to generalisations. The idea that mathematics is somehow different from other scientific fields (and hence hard to explain) is a lame excuse for indulging in Bourbakism. Tkuvho (talk) 11:12, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I clearly said that advanced mathematics generally lacks expository sources aimed at Joe on the street: that is, aimed at a completely non-mathematical audience. I wouldn't argue that there are expository sources aimed at mathematical audiences. The Princeton Mathematical Companion is pitched at about the same level as many of the "Notices" articles, and most of it is not accessible to Joe on the street. But I think this is a good example because it illustrates about the right level of expository style for several distinct groups of people in this discussion: those who wish to improve the accessibility of portions of our encyclopedia, those who feel that the compendious style of many of our articles is ok, and those that post here to complain that mathematics articles are inaccessible. There is obviously tension between these three groups, and getting them to agree on an acceptable style might be one way forward. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:42, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, what is the Japanese Encyclopedia? I'm familiar with Ito's Encyclopedic dictionary of mathematics, though I would emphatically disagree that the exposition in that text would be comfortable to non-mathematicians. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:45, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

That's the one I had in mind. I see that you emphatically disagree about non-mathematicians. Let's leave them aside for a moment. The expository style of Ito's series is attractive because it is geared to explaining basic things rather than trying to cover as much ground as possible. That's a guideline that we should adopt as well. But first we need to get away from the idea that this is somehow "impossible" due to the inscrutable nature of mathematics. Only Bourbaki is inscrutable. I am a great fan of category theory, by the way, and its spectacular applications such such as synthetic differential geometry. But every thing has its place. Tkuvho (talk) 13:47, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that we should strive not to be Bourbakist. The expository style of either Ito or the Companion is definitely appropriate for a mathematically mature audience. However, I'd like you to please read again what I originally wrote, you will see that I am here talking exclusively about the problem of making things accessible to a non-mathematical audience. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:53, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

We will never be able to make this accessible to Joe in the street. Your thread is a sub-thread of an earlier thread where useful ideas such as introductions and navboxes were discussed (and some created since). I think we should orient ourselves on people like the originator of the larger thread, who obviously have technical training in college mathematics. Generic discussions of whether "dumbing things down" for a scientific audience is possible or not possible are not going to get us anywhere. You can participate in the current improvement of the algebraic curve group of pages if you believe such improvement is possible. Tkuvho (talk) 14:11, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

But it does seem relevant in relation to the highlighted points from WP:NOTTEXTBOOK in the previous section, which refer to "any literate reader". If we can at least agree on an appropriate way to cover advanced mathematics, then this would indeed be progress. It would help if this were enshrined in some guideline, since the letter of WP:NOTTEXTBOOK would seem to (wrongfully) exclude most of our mathematical content. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:22, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Glad you are back. This is an important issue. Perhaps "literate" should be made more specific with reference to mathematics to mean "scientifically literate". This should be discussed in a separate thread. Tkuvho (talk) 14:29, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

List of mathematics journals

I have been working recently on List of mathematics journals. The list was pretty much unattended for a while, and recently some editors from the Academic Journals wikiproject asked us to clean it up. Journals aren't our core focus, but this list is certainly in the broad scope of the math project, as well as the scope of the journals project.

There is a notability "essay" WP:NJournals, which apparently has some weight at AFD discussions, which says that (as one possible criterion) if a journal has an impact factor and is indexed in Math Reviews and Zentralblatt MATH, then we can create an article on it. So I have pruned the redlinks on the list to journals that meet those criteria, and I am working on creating the articles. I made a journal article helper program that can help format the information about a journal into a reasonable stub. If you're interested, you can look up information on your favorite redlinked journal and make a stub article about it (this is easiest if you are at a computer with access to MathSciNet and Journal Citation Reports). — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:17, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Math related FP nomination

Another pair of cellular automata animations have been nominated, see WP:Featured picture candidates/Non-intermediate phases of BML Traffic Model. See are related to the CA animations that were promoted to FP a week or so ago.--RDBury (talk) 16:01, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Flat function

The article titled Flat function is somewhat orphaned, i.e. very few other articles link to it. This sort of function plays an important role in the theory of test functions, used in developing generalized functions. It also is used to show why complex differentiability is so much stronger than real differentiability. There must be other things that ought to link to it. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:06, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I just added a link from the "See also" section of power series. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:08, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Accelerated PSO

I declined a WP:PROD on this article but am sending it to AFD on request from the original PRODer. Some input from those familiar with computer science and mathmatics would be helpful. The discussion can be viewed here. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:40, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Dehn plane

The Dehn plane article is up for deletion. While plausible searching the usual suspects Planet Math, Encyclopaedia of Mathematics don't yield and references.--Salix (talk): 05:28, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Bourbakism or provocation?

User:Tkuvho continues to accuse me of Bourbakism. He feels that the lead of Exterior algebra, because it mentions the universal construction, is "engaging in Bourbakism" (whatever that means). Could someone else please comment on what he means? Is he right and I just don't see it? Or is he just trying to provoke me? If so, it's working and it needs to stop. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that there is nothing Bourbaki-esque about that lede. The Bourbaki treatment can be seen on Google books, on p. 507 of Algebra [25]. In stereotypical Bourbaki style that section starts with a formal definition. It's about the opposite of our article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:46, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

The specific case of exterior algebra needs to be discussed separately. As far as Bourbakism is concerned, this type of formalism is a common problem that a number of outside scientists frequently complain about, it is about time to give it a name and see what we can do about it. Now returning to exterior algebra, the shape of the lede as you currently see it is the result of a tooth-and-nail fight of which you may not have followed all the intermediate stages. It took a massive effort just to have a reference to cross product restored. Some additional elementary topics are yet to be restored. Note that it was originally deleted on the grounds that "it is already covered under determinants", which is a typical bourbakist way of looking at things. Similarly, I had to fight to have some of the superfluous category theoretic language deleted, such as the following passage: "In terms of category theory, the exterior algebra is a type of functor on vector spaces, given by a universal construction. The universal construction allows the exterior algebra to be defined, not just for vector spaces over a field, but also for modules over a commutative ring, and for other structures of interest." As a result of my criticism, this has been replaced in the current version by "The association of the exterior algebra to a vector space is a type of functor on vector spaces, which means that it is compatible in a certain way with linear transformations of vector spaces". Note that references to "category theory", "universal constructions", and such have been severely curtailed as a result of my criticism. I am not sure why I am accused of criticizing shortcomings that are not there. Once they were removed following my criticism, they are certainly not there anymore. As far as applying the said "universal construction" to the space of sections, this is a rather advanced topic that requires no fewer than 5 stages to develop: (1) linear algebra, (2) topological stage to define the vector bundle, (3) analytical stage: sections of said bundles to prepare for applying the exterior derivative, (4) forming the infinite-dimensional space of said sections, and finally (5) noticing that the formal algebraic construction applies at the level of the said infinite-dimensional space of sections. Presenting stage (5) as if it were identical with stage (1) is simply mind-boggling and can only be attributed to a Bourbakist mindframe. Notice that I was the first one to state, on this page, that exterior algebra is a great page. It became even better as a result of my criticisms. There is still some residual "functor" jargon to be eliminated. Tkuvho (talk) 13:16, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Wow. You have really invented a whole slew of facts to support your personal campaign against me. Firstly, the original removal of the cross product from the first paragraph, over my own better judgment, was the result of discussion with Jakob, who felt that it obscured rather than elucidated the meaning of the exterior product. The discussion of the cross product was then re-introduced without any fanfare at all by User:Nageh, and I think in a better way. (Hardly the tooth and nail fight that you make it out to be.) The material on minors was not removed because "it is already covered under determinants", it was removed because it was not covered in the rest of the article proportionally to its coverage in the lead that most participants in the discussion felt that was too long. The wording in the third paragraph was changed days before you made any input at all on the matter (thus it hardly "As a result of [your] criticism..."). Finally, your last comment is wrong on at least two points: (1) that the universal construction is anywhere being mentioned in the article in connection to differential forms (one can use the universal construction, tensor products of modules, tensor products of bundles, or whatever approach one likes to the subject—the only thing the article says is that it is "one of these more general constructions"), (2) that because it is complicated, the lead should not mention it (the language used in the lead doesn't in any way suggest that the generalization is trivial, although perhaps the body of the article could say more about the details). Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:45, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Bialy, let's leave aside what you call the "campaign" and concentrate on the issues. This is getting tiresome. I was not the one to bring up exterior algebra a few minutes ago. Please consult the end of the previous thread. Tkuvho (talk) 13:48, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is getting tiresome. I do not appreciate the accusations of "Bourbakism". It's really quite irritating (not to mention unfounded in the example that we know you have in mind). Please stop. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:55, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Incidentally, if you want to apply the construction to vector bundles or tensor products of bundles, then you are not applying the exterior algebra construction to a vector space (as in the case of the space of sections), but rather applying it pointwise to every fiber. This is exactly the ambiguity that I pointed out repeatedly on the talk page, and it is still there in the lede and can lead the reader to errors. I never called you a Bourbakist. I am criticizing a certain style of writing in mathematics. This is a very common term in the "community". It no longer has that much to do with Bourbaki themselves (which started out before category theory). It was not meant as a personal attack. If it is any help, I apologize for giving you such an impression. Tkuvho (talk) 14:00, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I think that any interpersonal aspects of this should be moved to user talk pages.

I don't like the idea of using the word "Bourbaki-ism" to refer to "not clear enough". Bourbaki is a particular group of people, and the name Bourbaki has the connotation of the actual writing done by those people, which many mathematicians have had exposure to. The problems people sometimes perceive in Bourbaki's writing are broader in some ways and narrower in others than the perceived problem on Wikipedia articles. Because our problems are not the same as Bourbaki's, we don't want to label our problems with that name. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:58, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

You are not relating to the way the term is used in the "community". It does not just refer to "not clear", and it does not refer specifically to Bourbaki writing. For instance, Bourbaki did not develop category theory, but everyone knows what I mean when I say that emphasizing category theory in a lede of exterior algebra is Bourbakist. Luckily, the emphasis has been significantly curtailed by now. Tkuvho (talk) 14:02, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Bourbaki did not emphasize category theory very much, and worked with set-theoretic foundations instead. Indeed, the lack of category theory is a criticism often made about Bourbaki. This is the type of thing that I mean when I say that the criticisms of Wikipedia articles are not the same as the criticisms of Bourbaki. The word "Bourbaki-esque" has to be used to refer to Bourbaki's writing, because that writing is such a well known aspect of 20th century mathematics that it is difficult to separate the name from the work.

On the other hand, topics such as Exterior algebra should mention category theory, because that is the standard language of modern algebra. If a construction is functorial, our article should say so; that's exactly the type of information that our articles are meant to contain. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:16, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Carl, you have not been reading the discussion very carefully. Of course it should be mentioned at exterior algebra! What I was arguing is that the lead is not the place for it. At any rate, the current categorical content of the lede is quite minimal, and I see the controversy is taking a toll on some of the participants. If it is deemed uncontroversial perhaps some of the deleted references to elementary concepts such as rank and minor can be restored. This is a minor issue in an otherwise excellent page. As far as Bourakism is concerned, you may not like it but it is routinely used in the sense I used it. I am not sure it is our role to fight custom in this case. Tkuvho (talk) 14:26, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Please see WP:LEAD. The lead is supposed to summarize the article, much of which is devoted to functorial properties and the universal construction. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:29, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

OK, well, hope you like my latest change to the lede. Glad you are back. Tkuvho (talk) 14:31, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Re Tkuvho. Personally, when I hear mathematicians criticize Bourbaki, it is for an overlapping but non-identical set of reasons compared to the reasons people criticize Wikipedia articles. Moreover, in practice, our articles do not resemble Bourbaki's writing very much. So criticisms that our articles are "Bourbaki-esqe" always strike me as somewhere between polemical and naive; either way, it makes me take their argument less seriously. If that's the goal, then by all means keep using the word. I think you be able to convince more people if you phrase your criticisms in other terms. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:36, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Bourbakism or excessive formalism?

What term would you suggest then? Excessive formalism? Jargon-filled brow-beating? Somehow they are not as effective. Tkuvho (talk) 14:41, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Or you might just try to be a little less polemic. You might find that this makes others more amenable to constructive discussion.TR 15:09, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Let's ask that everybody avoid personal attacks. It may be wise for some participants to take a few days off, for their own good and the project's. The participants have been very valuable members of WP and this project.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (talk) 15:20, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Two quick examples of what might be considered excessive formalism: at natural number, for years the article opened with a definition that spoke of the set (mathematics) of natural numbers. I took the "sets" out of the lede. This was my successful anti-Bourbakist operation. Second example: at first-order logic, I tried to include a sentence in the lead to the effect that "first-order" means quantification over individuals, whereas higher-order involves quantification over sets. Now this is technically not quite correct. Still, a lot of people think this remark clarifies the nature of the term "first-order". But because it was not 100% technically correct, my change was mostly reverted. That's my example of a not completely successful anti-Bourbakist operation. Tkuvho (talk) 17:37, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I think I'd reserve the term "Bourbakism" for articles that start immediately with the most general possible approach to a topic that doesn't warrant it. On several occasions Bourbaki use monoids where most people would be happy with groups, or when they first develop integration they do it for arbitrary locally compact spaces (which I'm quite happy with, but would be the wrong place to start on wikipedia). I completely disagree with saying that mentioning category theory or functor in the lead of an article is "Bourbakist" and more importantly I disagree that it is wrong. Exterior algebra isn't the article "Prime number", it's an article about a formal algebraic tool. A tool which is commonly used in a functorial way. Almost nobody actually takes the exterior algebra of a vector space (at the very least, people use it for a module over a ring, or a representation of a group). If there is an article whose problem is unnecessary use of jargon, then it's problem is "unnecessary use of jargon", not "Bourbakism". For example, using "set" in the first sentence of the article "natural number" is an unnecessary use of jargon. An infringement that would more merit the term "Bourbakism" would be some sort of high-brow axiomatic description such as "In mathematics, the natural numbers are the standard model of Peano arithmetic." RobHar (talk) 17:48, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

The natural numbers are the free monoid generated by a one-element set: that would be excessive formalism. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:10, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Bourbakism is good. --Matt Westwood 19:01, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually the knack is to take out excess "mathematics made difficult" formalism, while not being "anti-Hilbert" (retaining the idea that mathematical concepts are axiomatic and "sharp-edged", not vague). And being entirely accurate in what is said, unless flagged up with language such as "roughly speaking". Charles Matthews (talk) 20:34, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

That's a pretty good summary of the challenge. I think we are in agreement that there is room for improvement in a number of cases. The important thing is not the label, but the recognition that there is a challenge. Keeping an eye on reducing "mathematics made difficult" formalism, combined with some work on introductions and navboxes, would probably go a long way toward making our colleagues in the sciences less frustrated with our pages. Tkuvho (talk) 21:19, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Just a quick additional comment about Hilbert's axiomatics: we all agree about its fundamental importance. At the same time, it was not necessarily meant to be a pedagogical tool. Peano tried to apply the purely axiomatic approach in his own teaching, with disastrous consequences documented at our page for him. I would ahistorically call that Bourbakism, because that's the way the term is used in the "community". People have pointed out above that this is may not be related to Bourbaki proper, which is also a good point. Tkuvho (talk) 09:25, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia, also, is "not necessarily meant to be a pedagogical tool". It's a reference site, primarily.

The issue of long chains of logical dependencies is an expository one, inherent in axiomatic subjects, and it is natural for us to try to solve it by means of wikilinks. We should continue to do that (no choice in fact); it has been noted that in the medical area we tend to assume people will follow the links if they need definitions, while professionally-written material uses a great deal more paraphrase into layman's language. I think we could make some progress here by working towards a "style guide" paragraph or two on how to use paraphrase in mathematics articles. There is an obvious issue of finding an appropriate register of language, and mathematicians have much less practice than physicians in that matter. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:49, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

In my view, this issue of "long chains of logical dependencies" that Charles mentions above is a key one here. These long (and exacting) chains in mathematics can be extremely tedious and time consuming to follow (as every mathematicians becomes painfully aware when they try to read any mathematics outside their specialty). The length of such chains in mathematics is significantly (rough guess, at least an order of magnitude?) longer than in other fields, and that non-mathematicians greatly underestimate this difference, leading to considerable frustration. It would be interesting if there were some objective measure of the average length of such chains in various fields. Paul August ☎ 14:31, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Dependency bot

The above discussion gave me an idea — let us have a new bot which looks at the lead of an article and assigns it a number which is the smallest natural number greater than the numbers assigned to the articles to which it is linked. If it is not possible to calculate such a number due to a closed loop in the links, then it would report that fact and give a list of the links in the loop. This tool could be used to try to break circular definitions and reduce the depth of searching which readers have to do to understand the lead. JRSpriggs (talk) 13:24, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

That would not be too difficult, technically speaking. It could be done by starting at a given article and chasing links until there are no more. Unfortunately, my time at the moment is committed, but I'd be very interested in seeing the results.

One concern I have is with loops (even in the lede) of a "see also" kind. For example,

• Recursion theory is a branch of mathematical logic.
• Mathematical logic is often divided into the fields of set theory, model theory, recursion theory, and proof theory.

However, without actually generating some numbers, it's impossible to say how common that issue would be. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:35, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

My suspicion is that such loops occur in almost all cases. From an accessibility point of view this is not really a problem since such links typically inform the reader of parallel articles on closely related subjects, one of which may in fact be more appropriate for the specific info that the user was looking for. (Knowing "what to search for" already requires quite some familiarity with a subject.)

Moreover, such links are useful since people come from different backgrounds, some readers will be familiar with A but not B will others will be familiar with B but not A. If A and B are similar in some sense, then both these groups will be well served by the leads of A and B pointing out the similarity and linking to the other article.TR 14:09, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

This particular issue is resolved to a certain extent by navboxes. While it is obviously not a solution to all ills, a hierarchical structure of a navbox can help the reader break out of a logical loop. Thus, we could create a navbox for linear algebra with three levels, beginner, intermediate, and advanced; here rank, minor, determinant, cross product would go at beginner level; exterior algebra and other college-level topics would go in intermediate level; advanced topics could connect to differential graded algebra, etc. This way a reader who is having difficulty with "exterior algebra", instead of getting frustrated with links that lead to other intermediate or advanced topics, could go where he should go first, namely the elementary topics which are prerequisites for exterior algebra. Two people involved in this discussion have already created navboxes. Give it a try! Tkuvho (talk) 14:28, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't see exterior algebra as a college-level topic except possibly for a few exceptional students are a few very strong universities. Maybe this is a matter of different universities doing things differently, but I think of the algebra content of a "typical" undergraduate mathematics degree as including just the basic group, ring, and field theory, some basic linear algebra (maybe through Jordan canonical form), and probably a little basic Galois theory. I wonder if there is any information on what topics really are common at the undergraduate level. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:47, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that it would be the rare college level student that would be taught this. In fact the same might be true for the average topology graduate student. I don't recall seeing this, nor does a quick glance in my three graduate algebra books (from the late sixties, early seventies) find any mention. Paul August ☎ 15:16, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree, it is not really an undergraduate topic. Obviously whether or not it is taught depends strongly in the interests on the faculty. My argument in favor of navboxes is independent of the issue whether exterior algebra is an undergraduate topic (replace "intermediate" level in the navbox by "advanced", and "advanced" by "research" :) ). Tkuvho (talk) 15:18, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Affine Grassmannian

The article on affine Grassmanians AGr(n;k), i.e. the k-dimensional affine linear subspaces of an n-dimensional vector space need some additions. For example, it says that as a homogeneous space it can be realised as

${\text{AGr}}(n;k)\cong E(n)/\left[E(k)\times O(n-k)\right]\,.$

At first it didn't even say what O(n−k) was, never mind link to the article. (It's the orthogonal group and E is the Euclidean group.) I think this expression needs explaining. I'm half way to understanding it, but not completely. You start with a k-dimensional subspace passing through the origin, say S₀. You can move that onto any other k-dimensional affine subspace, say A₀, by a Euclidean transformation; so we start with E(n). But different Euclidean transformations take S₀ to A₀; look at the image of the origin when you take S₀ to A₀. That's why we quotient out E(k); we get a map A₀ → A₀ given by different Euclidean transformations taking S₀ to A₀. This is where I start to get stuck. I can see that the O(n−k) term comes from the different choices of original subspace instead of S₀. But that's just the ordinary Grassmannian Gr(n;k) and not O(n−k). Could some one possibly explain to me where O(n−k) and then add the explanation to the article itself? — Fly by Night (talk) 16:27, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Take a set of all lines in R³, for example. E(3) acts transitively on them, so you have to find what transformations leave a fixed line in place. There are naturally two kinds of them: euclidean transformations of the line itself and (improper) rotations of the space around that line as an axis. Thus the isotropy group is E(1) × O(2) — Kallikanzarid^talk 18:51, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I see, but how would you phrase that in terms of my S₀ and A₀? In terms your more general approach, what is the general theorem at work? If you have a Lie group G acting transitively on manifold X by α : G × M → M, then M is isomprphic to to the quotient G / G_x, where x ∈ X and G_x ≤ G is the isotropy subgroup of x? This reminds me of the first isomorphism theorem which says that if φ : G → H is a homomorphism then φ(G) ≅ G / Ker(φ). Is that where the proof comes from? If not, could you leave me a link or a reference? I need to understand this for some work I'm doing; but I'm more of a geometer than a group theorist. Thanks. — Fly by Night (talk) 21:03, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

"If you have a Lie group G acting transitively on manifold X by α : G × M → M, then M is isomprphic to to the quotient G / G_x, where x ∈ X and G_x ≤ G is the isotropy subgroup of x?" Yes, but please note that it is a quotient of manifolds, isotropy group is not required to be normal. It makes sense if you think about it :) I am not very familiar with the subject myself, for a rigorous explanation refer to homogeneous space; the second volume of Kobayashi–Nomizu has a chapter about homogeneous spaces, but I haven't read it myself yet. — Kallikanzarid^talk 22:04, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Great, thanks. When one of us has read that chapter we ought to improve the article I mentioned at the top too. I didn't mention normal subgroups. As far as I recall G_x ≤ G means that G_x is a subgroup of G. While $\scriptstyle G_{x}\,\triangleleft \ G$ means that G_x is a normal subgroup of G. Thanks again. — Fly by Night (talk) 01:37, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Plücker coordinates

There seems to be a big flaw in this article. The space of lines in P³ is a projective concept. Yet Plücker coordinates are defined in terms of a Euclidean structure defined on R³, e.g. the construction uses a scaler product. Cross products and scaler products depend upon the choice of Euclidean structure and are not projectively invariant. Is it just me, or does that seem a little alarming? — Fly by Night (talk) 02:09, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

The article as I read it explicitly argues that the coordinates are projectively invariant despite the non-invariant setup. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:28, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Really, maybe I missed that. Could you point me towards that? (The article doesn't contain the word invariant). — Fly by Night (talk) 02:53, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

The part in the geometric intuition section about "up to a common (nonzero) scalar multiple". —David Eppstein (talk) 03:13, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

You should think of R³ is an affine coordinate patch of P³ (that is, it is just P³ minus the plane at infinity). Io describe lines in P³, it's enough to describe those in R³, and then add in the ones at infinity (e.g., take the projective closure).

That said, I'm not defending the approach taken by the article, though, which I find to be quite awkward. I think a better way to define the Plucker coordinates is to think of the space of lines in P³ as Gr(2,4). Planes through the origin in R⁴ are defined by simple two-forms in $\wedge ^{2}\mathbb {R} ^{4}$, which are uniquely defined up to scale, so there is a one-to-one correspondence of Gr(2,4) with the set of simple two-forms in $\mathbb {P} \left(\wedge ^{2}\mathbb {R} ^{4}\right)$ (this is the Klein quadric). The coefficients of a 2-form in a basis then define the Plucker coordinates. The article should probably discuss this approach more explicitly. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:00, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Applied mathematics

Input needed at Talk:Applied mathematics, where Michael P. Barnett (talk · contribs) has proposed various re-writes of the lead paragraph of the article. My own view is that his writing style is poor, his proposed leads are rambling and do not summarise the article, and he makes several unsourced claims; in short he is proposing to replace the current brief and clear lead paragraph with a POV mini-essay. But that's just my opinion - views of other editors would be useful. Gandalf61 (talk) 10:30, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

In his comment on the talk page, Charles Matthews found a charitable tone, which is worth emulating. I was unable to find the kind words needed before editing yesterday, and so I did not explain my edits on the talk page.

Yesterday, I expanded the lead with a sentence or two describing the activity of applied mathematics, that is formulating and studying problems in other (empirical or more empirical) fields, and noting that this activity had given rise to topics in mathematics, that then became the subject of study for their own sake (in the activity of pure mathematics). My expansion failed to cite the conventional sources that my edit summary mentioned, e.g. von Neumann, Kantorovich, etc. What is important is that applied mathematics not be limited to a collection of techniques: Both the techniques and the practical activity need to be mentioned.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (talk) 12:24, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Triangulation

The situation regarding the articles titled ABC triangulation XYZ, for various values of ABC and XYZ, seems less than satisfactory. In particular:

• Triangulation
• Polygon triangulation
• Point set triangulation
• Triangulation (geometry) (just moved from triangulation (advanced geometry))
• Triangulation (topology)

How much difference is there between the topics of these articles? Should some be merged? How should they link among each other? Should we have a disambiguation page titled triangulation (mathematics) that would link to these and also to triangulated category and Delaunay triangulation and upper triangular matrix (apparently "triangulation" sometimes means putting a matrix into that form)? Michael Hardy (talk) 22:25, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

The first one you list, triangulation, is completely unrelated to the rest: it's about locating objects by measurements from three other objects, and the other four are all about some sort of simplicial complex. The next three are all about similar topics (complexes where the cells are actual Euclidean triangles in the Euclidean plane) so are in that sense different from the fifth in which a triangle is something more abstract. And, although mathematically they are similar, polygon and point set triangulations are quite different from the computational point of view. But triangulation (geometry) seems kind of useless to me since it is trying to be something of a catch-all and we already have triangulation (disambiguation) for that. For the same reason I don't see a justification for creating a new triangulation (mathematics) article: how would it differ from triangulation (disambiguation)? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:59, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

It's not at all unrelated to the rest, and it's not about "locating objects by measurements from three other objects". It's about locating objects by measurements from two other objects in the simplest cases. Surveyors use triangulations of the surface of the earth; geometers speak of triangulations of the plane; the latter is merely a more abstract thing. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:30, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, at the very least triangulation (mathematics) would omit the non-mathematical topics. There are several cases where XXXX (mathematics) is a disambiguation page and XXXX is also a disambiguation page, and in which this particular division of labor is clearly useful. For example partition (mathematics). Michael Hardy (talk) 23:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it is desirable to have directions or distances from four or more known points to a new triangulation station. This gives one enough redundancy to isolate a gross error (if any) and make an estimate of the magnitude of minor errors. JRSpriggs (talk) 07:38, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

FP nomination

Two animations related to maze generating algorithms have been nominated for FP. See Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Maze Generation 2.--RDBury (talk) 08:20, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, the previous nomination, WP:Featured picture candidates/Non-intermediate phases of BML Traffic Model, is about to close so please take a look if you haven't already. It does happen that pictures aren't promoted simply because there aren't enough votes.--RDBury (talk) 08:35, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Groupoid algebra up for deletion

The brand-new article Groupoid algebra has been nominated for deletion.  --Lambiam 19:30, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Adjoint representation disambiguation links

Greetings! This month, we have a large number of links to the disambiguation page, Adjoint representation - 61 links, to be exact. We at the Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links project would appreciate any help you could give us in fixing these ambiguous links. Cheers! bd2412 T 00:41, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Shouldn't these two be merged? — Kallikanzarid^talk 22:24, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Not necessarily. Charles Matthews (talk) 23:06, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Gyrovector space

Project members might want to keep an eye on links that feed into gyrovector space. Someone has been trying to do quite a bit of WP:UNDUE promotion of this article, which perhaps includes some legitimate mathematics, but also appears to include some crackpot ideas. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:32, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Peer Review for Logarithm

I have nominated logarithm for peer review. Please talk here. Thank you all, Jakob.scholbach (talk) 21:41, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

De Groot Fourier Transform

The new article De Groot Fourier Transform has some very strange statements. E.g.,

DGFT is an method with two variables: groot and power.

I find myself doubting that "groot" is actually used as a parameter. The only reference in the article doesn't seem to talk about an analog of the Fourier transform at all.

I have the feeling that this is an elaborate hoax, but this is not a field that I'm familiar with. Can someone else take a look? Ozob (talk) 02:55, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

The referenced work is a masters thesis, Localization and Classification using an Acoustic Sensor Network, by de Groot. The Wikipedia article is pretty much a direct copy of Appendix D in the thesis (page 110), and the work is copyrighted with the notice:

All rights reserved. No part of this thesis may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the above-mentioned.

Notability aside, it's likely a copyvio. Cheers, Ben (talk) 03:42, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

If it's a master's thesis, it was probably put there by the copyright owner, so it would not be a violation. But maybe it's OR. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:40, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I have marked it for speedy deletion under WP:CSD#G12. In any event, even if the author did release this under the GFDL, it is still clearly original research. This at least saves time at AfD. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:52, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposal for all articles

WP has improved its math articles greatly since just 3 years ago, when reading an article on a topic one did not already know involved nested (and sometimes circular) link chasing for definitions (links that refer to articles with more links, and so on). I propose that editors try to put a WP:HAT on each article that does not define all its terms, with something like, "This article might be easier to read if you read article A first", in the case that terms come up that can best be understood by reading prerequisite article A, instead of the reader having to chase links for definitions. This might be something like a bottomless pit leading into philosophy of math, but it might also back link to an article the reader is already familiar with, breaking the "infinite" regression back. Remember what Hawking said about what the flat-earth-on-the-back-of-a-turtle-woman in the audience said to Bertrand Russell when he asked her upon what did the turtle upon which the earth rested rest, "its turtles all the way down"[26]. PPdd (talk) 05:32, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

This is a perrenial proposal. I'm against silly notes like this. They violate WP:HAT and are rarely if ever written in a tone appropriate to an encyclopedia article (they directly address the reader). Besides, they shouldn't even be necessary. A well written lead should establish the context of the article, including Wikilinks, so that readers can navigate from those. There has also been a recent proposal to increase the use of navboxes, which also serve a similar purpose. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:15, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I have added an FAQ entry about this one. PPdd, this proposal has come up many times before. Every time someone's found an article where this is a problem, the right fix has always been to revise the lead or some other part of the article. Ozob (talk) 15:03, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

FAQ is good (especially for late comers to here like me), but it might also specifically mention Bullet point #8 here[27] and this[28]. PPdd (talk) 15:17, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

The difficulty is that highly technical terms, in math at least, cannot be simply explained in a few words. Moreover, adding definitions of every term used quickly makes a paragraph incomprehensible, because the main point of the paragraph is lost among all the side points. (I also note that you were the one who added that section to the MOS a couple days ago [29]). Hatnotes are used for disambiguation, not for prerequisites. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:22, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Another related proposal regards "suggested prerequisite for more easy comprehension", which is subtly different from a "more general treatment" hat. PPdd (talk) 15:17, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

The standard way that we handle prerequisites is by judiciously linking to them in the lede section, and also by adding "introduction" or "background" sections to the article, as with Diagonal lemma. Remember that our articles are intended to be references, not detailed introductions like lecture notes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:26, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

help with an svg file

I keep having trouble with inkscape—could somebody please help me out with this image: ? I want the black rectangle be replaced by a z and the extraneous red phi removed. Thanks! Jakob.scholbach (talk) 14:48, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll take a look and see what I can do. RobHar (talk) 18:31, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Looks like I fixed it. I deleted phi (hopefully the correct one), and converted the text to path (that's what you need to do to when some text is just showing up as a big black box; you can just select everything in inkscape and click on "Path → Object to Path" and it should work out). RobHar (talk) 18:49, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

WPM at its best—thank you! Jakob.scholbach (talk) 21:31, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposal re definitions for all articles

This has likely been covered before on talk, but I propose a general suggestion to add a "Definitions" section at the bottom, for terms defined in the article, for ease of reference. An opposition to this proposal might be that a user can do a search in the article, but this likely produces numerous results (the first of which should be the definition, if a definition has been made in the article. PPdd (talk) 15:59, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Are you proposing that every article should repeat the formal definition of all the terms it uses? That's the point of wikilinks: the first use of a term will be linked, and the reader can follow the link the get a whole article on the other topic. If we want to summarize the definition within the article, it's better to do that in the regular prose, not in some section at the bottom. We can assume that the reader will actually read the article... — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:05, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Very often the definition of the concept that the article is about is in the first sentence or otherwise near the beginning of the article. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:26, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Category rename

There is a proposal to rename the category Recursion theory to Computability theory that hasn't received any response yet. Please comment there if you have any thoughts on the matter.--RDBury (talk) 08:19, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

The category was renamed yesterday. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:04, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Fundamental solution

Comments on Talk:Fundamental solution indicate a need to explain the relationship with Green's function. This is one of those interfaces between traditional language and contemporary mathematical language that has been discussed here. That would be part of the issue only, though. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:24, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Make technical articles understandable

Following the promotion of rhodocene to FA status, some discussion has started again at Wikipedia talk:Make technical articles understandable. That guideline is written in a way that does allow for some technical articles, although it was written to encourage all articles to be as accessible as possible. There have been some useful conversations here recently about accessibility, and people who contributed to those may be interested in following the discussion on the guideline page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:00, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Target audience in WPMath assessment template

Hey all. In looking through the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Make technical articles understandable mentioned by Carl in the previous section, in particular some comments of User:Sławomir Biały on the "target audience" of an article, I had a crazy idea: we could add a field to the Maths rating template banner we put on talk pages that holds the "target audience" of the article. It certainly seems like the target audience of an article is something that it is important to establish. Editors who have spent a long time on certain articles end up having to justify the work they've done to editors who have just shown up and are unhappy with the level of exposition. And that's fine, but it would help if the "seasoned" editors of the article had some way of pointing to an established consensus of what the "level" of the article is. I think there are several other ways this would help. The types of "levels" could be something like "Basic", "High school", "Undergraduate", "Advanced undergraduate", and "Graduate" (where the last should be used sparingly, and the specific terms used could be made more international or otherwise clarified). The approach of "one level down" that Carl has been talking about at Wikipedia talk:Make technical articles understandable would provide a guideline for how to assess the "target audience" of a given article. For some other articles, one would also want to use the subject's popularity to "lower" the level. Thoughts? RobHar (talk) 14:46, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't see any reason why we, as a wikiproject, couldn't designate a "target audience" for an article. On the other hand, I am certain that some editors feel that every article should be aimed at a high-school audience (at the extreme fringe, editors sometimes argue that esoteric topics shouldn't be covered at all). So all the we could do is say, "this is what we think about it"; we can't force anyone else to listen.

A separate issue is that it takes a huge amount of work to go through and actually tag articles with this information. Let me tell you...

I have a different suggestion: any article that is marked "Top" or "High" priority should be written to be understandable by someone with no more than high school mathematics experience. "Mid" priority articles should be written so that at most freshman and junior topics are required. Articles marked "low" priority could be handled on a case by case basis. This would give an easy rule of thumb, and it uses the existing priority ratings that we have. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:17, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

That's a pretty nice suggestion. Is there any way we could go about expressing this rule of thumb explicitly somewhere? I think that would be helpful. RobHar (talk) 15:32, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

One option would be to add it to the maths rating template. We could add a short section below the rating information that says something like this for Top/High:

And like this for Mid:

And like this for Low (if we need anything)

These could appear automatically inside the rating template based on the priority rating. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:44, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I like the idea of target audiences -- or at least think it's worth a shot. I strongly disagree with linking that to article importance. Some very important parts of math are esoteric, and some unimportant things are easy. CRGreathouse (t | c) 21:30, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

For example, Rhombicuboctahedron is rated Low-priority, but it should be accessible to a general audience. Homological algebra is Top-priority but probably can't be made accessible to general audiences (or even most undergrads?) in any meaningful way. The best we could hope for is a lede that could be understood by high-school students. CRGreathouse (t | c) 21:38, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with that high priority things can be more advanced, but I think that in practice our High-priority articles should also be a high priority for accessibility, even if they are advanced; list of High priority articles. Easy unimportant things are fine; I don't think that "Low" priority has any reflection on intended accessibility.

I'm not sure that Homological algebra should really be Top-priority; I would think that Topology should be Top-priority, and homological algebra should be High or Mid priority. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:43, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

(ec)I'm a bit wary of identifying a single target audience. The background knowledge is not by any means a linear scale. Typically, the target audience will consist of a divers group of people with different types of background knowledge. For example, take any an article about Lie algebra's. Interest readers could be (advanced) undergraduate mathematics students with a fair amount formal mathematical knowledge about rings, vector spaces, etc. But they also could be interested physicists, with only very vague knowledge of formal mathematics (they probably could not reproduce the definition of a group), but with a fair amount of practical experience with some real life examples of Lie groups like SO(3), and maybe even with the concept of an "infinitesimal generator". Some engineers coming into the topic might have yet a different set of reference knowledge.

An important part of making an article accessible is to reach out to this different audiences. A danger of identifying a single target audience is that in writing the article a certain prior knowledge is assumed that is reasonable for the identified audience, but is completely unreasonable for other interested groups.

One thing I often like to do when writing technical articles is to profile a couple of different types of persons that might want to look up that article. In writing the article, I try to include things that one of these fictitious readers may have heard about (but not necessarily all of them).TR 22:08, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, in both my original suggestion, and Carl's suggestion, I don't think there would be a problem with Lie algebra. In my suggestion, it would be clear (at least to me) that "Undergraduate" should be an upper bound on its level (by "undergraduate" I mean someone who has gone through say a typical freshman science program at an american/canadian university, and maybe some linear algebra). That this should be level is precisely for the reasons you cite. In Carl's scheme, since Lie algebra has high priority, in fact the suggested level would be high school background audience. More generally, with my suggestion, the argument that a given article is of interest to a diverse group of people means that its "target audience" should be a low level; and in Carl's scheme, math articles that are of interest outside of pure mathematics are typically rated high priority (in fact, that is one of the rules of thumb listed on the assessment page for rating something high). So, I'm not sure the problem you are bringing up would really show up much at all. RobHar (talk) 02:00, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

(ui) I like the idea of having some kind of "level" indicator in the maths rating tag. And I agree that while the importance is strongly correlated to the expected level, it should be used as a guideline only. One issue is that the majority of math article still don't have a rating tag at all yet. Another is that many math articles vary in what they expect the reader to know, so an article might need a different levels for different sections. However, as a baby step to see if the idea might work, how about creating a new category Category:General audience mathematics articles and adding the articles that should be readable at a high school level of math? A category like this would be incorporated into a ratings tag scheme anyway. And it won't be much time and effort lost if the idea turns out to be impractical.--RDBury (talk) 03:51, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I was just looking at the list of Most viewed math articles to see if could be used as a starting point for the hypothetical category from the previous paragraph. A few issues occurred right off the bat. First, biography articles should probably be considered general audience without have to say so. Second, there really aren't that many articles on the list with no advanced math at all. For example Circle, which you would this is a pretty basic topic, has a section on representations in the complex plane. I certainly wouldn't throw out the section because not everyone knows what a complex number is; that information will be useful to those who do and the rest can skip the section. So it should be stressed that a general audience tag should be taken as a guarantee that someone who graduated high school will be able to understand every word.--RDBury (talk) 04:39, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

online copies of cited references

I'd appreciate if people citing math papers in WP articles could make an effort to include non-paywall links to copies of the papers when such are available. The papers are often on the authors' personal websites or preprint sites like arxiv, and at other times can be found through citeseer or by googling the title, but sometimes they can be a bit obscure. I try to add such links when I come across them, but that's just a drop in the bucket. Thanks. 71.141.88.54 (talk) 01:27, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree (and I try to do this when I can). Unfortunately, the trend of putting papers online is relatively recent, and most papers before the 1990s won't be available. It also seems to be less common in Europe; many European mathematicians don't have any personal website they could even think about posting papers on.

A separate issue, which I expect we will see more soon, are the "black market" scanned copies of books that can be found by appropriate google searches. I think we have to avoid these on Wikipedia, since they are almost always copyright violations. Readers who want them can probably find them anyway. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:57, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

One issue that WP, for some good reasons, regards an on-line PDF as a less reliable source than a printed book. It is nice to have these in the External links section though.--RDBury (talk) 03:26, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I know there are a lot of unauthorized book scans floating around and I'm not suggesting we link to those. I'm mostly talking about papers that are posted online by the author, to their own homepage or to a preprint server. Those should be usually considered presumptively authorized and authentic unless actually in dispute. Citeseer can be slightly trickier but I think it's generally ok to use those links unless there's concrete reason to think some particular link might have a problem. There are also quite a few scanned books at Project Euclid and those are also authorized as far as I know. There are a bunch of old French math papers at numdam.org, and dblp.uni-trier.de is sort of a German version of Arxiv for computer science papers. 71.141.88.54 (talk) 04:51, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

As far as I know DBLP stores a lot of bibliographic information for computer science papers, but does not store the papers themselves. The other thing to watch out for here is that in some cases the free versions may have been placed online prior to journal refereeing and so may contain inaccuracies compared to the non-free versions. Or they may not, but it's not safe to blindly put a link to a free paper with the same authors/title assuming that it's automatically good. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:24, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I think unless there's a known problem with a preprint, we should link to it, just making sure to label it as a preprint. Even if there's a known problem, we should probably (subject to reasonable judgment about the specific issue) link anyway but mention what the problem is. Again, this refers mostly to preprints where the online copy is somehow under the author's control, so if the problem was really bad, the author wouldn't have left it on the web at all.

Also, if there's not a good non-walled copy of the paper but there is a JSTOR scan, we should include that, since lots of public libraries subscribe to JSTOR while usually only academic libraries will subscribe to Springerlink and the like. JSTOR improves accessibility over journal publisher sites in that regard. 71.141.88.54 (talk) 06:53, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree, in the majority of the cases peer review leads only to minor corrections, which rarely effect the statements that an article is referenced for. If PR does lead to major changes, most authors also update the preprint. I don't think there is reason to be overly careful. (although if possible on should always check).TR 09:23, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

David--you're right about DBLP, it appears to be more like Citeseer in that it has links to fulltext on other sites. I was thinking of ECCC (eccc.hpi-web.de), which has a lot of online material but is limited to complexity theory. 71.141.88.54 (talk) 07:02, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

This is clearly not just an issue for WikiProject Mathematics, but is relevant to all citations to academic journal papers regardless of academic field, so this discussion should be raised/moved/flagged up somewhere more general. Wikipedia Talk:Citing sources, perhaps? Qwfp (talk) 08:03, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I think the general practice is to link document identifiers if they are available. The "cite xxx" and "citation" templates have parameters specifically to support DOI, PubMed, and Bibcode identifiers. Other identifiers can be linked using the "id=" parameter of these templates and using templates like {{arxiv}} ,{{MR}}, {{JSTOR}} or {{Zbl}}. Using these specialized templates is preferred to using the "url=" parameter to link to any of these databases/archives.TR 09:18, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I generally do. But these link only to full-text on the official journal sites. Google Scholar often links paper titles to open-access versions when available, but I tend to look for the doi and use that in {{cite doi}}. This thread has made me consider also adding a link to the end something like [preprint], when such is available. Qwfp (talk) 10:29, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

For referencing preprints on the arxiv it is better to use "id={{arxiv}}". Note that this will link to the abstract page rather than directly to the pdf. This gives readers the choice what format they want. (usually both PS and PDF are available). Also note that only DOI links, will send you directly to the journal page, MR, JSTOR, PubMed, bibcode, etc. will provide a link to the article's entry in the respective database/repository.TR 11:30, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

True, good point, though the sites these templates link to are of use only in certain academic fields. In my particular field of medical statistics the only two of those services that are really relevant are JSTOR and PubMed, which provides open-access abstracts but only links to the official site for the full text. The other services are almost never used at present. The placing of preprints or postprints on university websites is increasingly common, however, but there's little point creating a template for these. Qwfp (talk) 11:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Poincaré conjecture and accessibility

Continuing the accessibility trend of late, there is a conversation visible on my talk page [30] about Poincaré conjecture. Since this is one of the Millennium Prize problems, it really should be as readable as possible up top. I made a minimal change to the lede to point out the fact, which is well known to confuse students, that the 3-sphere is the surface bounding the 4-dimensional unit ball (rather than, say, the 3-dimensional solid from grade school geometry). My change was reverted. Maybe someone else can find a better wording? — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:31, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Rewrite of lead at "Linear algebra"

A couple of editors are attempting to rewrite the lede at Linear algebra. I reverted the first try here (as I didn't think it was an improvement) other edits have been made since. Other views welcome. (I'm traveling all day today and unable to give much attention to this.) Paul August ☎ 11:24, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

That article is in such poor shape that we should do everything we can to encourage the energies of new editors. Almost any attention to the article would be most welcome. At present, the lead is probably not ideal, but I think it's more constructive to get people focused on expanding the article, rather than worrying over the color of the bikeshed. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:12, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Lists of integrals

Am I the only person on Wikipedia who is actually monitoring Lists of integrals? The page is viewed 1900 times a day and supposedly has 49 watchers. Just today, substantial vandalism was left untouched for more than 13 hours. Xanthoxyl ^< 02:46, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry but how can you tell how many people are watching a page? BrideOfKripkenstein (talk) 03:56, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

External tools at the top of the history. Xanthoxyl ^< 04:50, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

On my user page you'll see an easy way to tell how many people are watching. But I may not be watching all the pages that I'm watching. (Apologies to Yogi Berra.) Maybe Xanthoxyl is the only person monitoring that page. Being the only person watching a page has happened to me sometimes. Michael Hardy (talk) 07:35, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Page moves and renaming

Hi

As a result of my nominating a page (Dehn plane) for deletion. Consensus was that the name was incorrect as it could not be sourced and the deletion discussion is here Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Dehn_plane.

My move, based on the deletion discussion, was discussed here Talk:The_Dehn_plane#Bold_page_move

Several moves later it was left at Non-Legendrian geometry.

Now a single editor has gone against consensus and changed it back to a badly titled "The Dehn plane"

Firstly "The" should not be used, secondly consensus was against using Dehn plane and thirdly it seems as though some editors are deciding that their way is the right way even though it is against consensus.

I fully appreciate being bold, but something has to be done about this. There is no proof given so far that shows a convincing argument for using Dehn plane in any apart of the title. It has so far only produced one neologism from one source.

Chaosdruid (talk) 21:24, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

What we really need more urgently is someone fluent in German to read Dehn's paper and sort this mess out. The secondary sources are some combination of wrong, confused, and self-contradictory. (But yes, fixing the name issue is a good idea too: the standard terms for Dehn's two examples are "semi-Euclidean geometry" and "non-Legendrian geometry"). Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:33, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I see this discussion is continuing in a new section below Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#To_boldly_go_against_the_consensus Chaosdruid (talk) 19:28, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Curve (geometry)

At best the title of this new article is confusing since it's not about Curves in the mathematical sense. I thought flexible strips used in drafting were called splines, from which the mathematical term was derived; please confirm or correct me on this. It seems like we should have an article on them, whatever they're called. We also have a rudimentary article on Elastica theory which covers a mathematical model of these things.--RDBury (talk) 01:24, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

The article as it is currently written seems to be about a particular product ("flexible curves") produced (and probably trademarked) by a company. Since the specific product clearly isn't notable, there is probably very little worth merging anywhere. I would support redirecting to curve (or deleting, since disambiguation seems unnecessary). Sławomir Biały (talk) 01:50, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

We have the article flat spline about the general notion. I went ahead and boldly redirected curve (geometry) to curve. Sławomir Biały (talk) 01:53, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Absurdity constants, Suppes, Church, and Currie's paradox

I recall something about "absurdity constants" (not absurdity "constraints") in relations to Suppes' Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Church's thesis, and Curry's paradox, but that is all I remember. Can anyone help with this for the absurdity article? PPdd (talk) 05:39, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll try to look at it next week, although I may have lent my copy to a colleague.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (talk) 15:01, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I have a different book by Suppes, whose index lists no "absurdity". Sorry I couldn't help.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 17:38, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but note - my memory might be wrong; that is where I best recall seeing "absurdity constants". Since I was a student both of Church and Suppes, my (errant)memory might be biased. PPdd (talk) 15:20, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

There certainly appear to be a number of Google hits for "absurdity constant" in the literature. See, for example, Gabbay, Dov (2004). Handbook of the History of Logic. Amsterdam: Elsevier. p. 191. ISBN 9780444516237., in the chapter "Paraconsistency and Dialetheism":

"For example, in both classical and intuitionist logic there is an absurdity constant, ⊥, such that for all β, ⊥ → β is a logical truth."

-- The Anome (talk) 20:20, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Rake (angle)

Hi

I have just added the maths project banner to Talk:Rake (angle)

I think it is within your scope but would appreciate someone checking that !

Thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 02:26, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

From the edit history, it appears that this was originally about a part of motorcycles. Now it has lost that connection and appears to be merely a definition of a synonym of vertical angle (angle from the horizon) or zenith distance (angle from vertical). It needs a category, but does not appear to me to be about mathematics. In short, it is a mess. JRSpriggs (talk) 03:46, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Am I wrong in thinking it should merged with the corresponding entry in Wiktionary?--RDBury (talk) 16:23, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

The original page is here [31] and only mentions bicycles in the second example.

I do not think it should be solely about motorcycles, that material was added afterwards, as it is clearly about more than just motorcycles. It seems crazy that there are already so many different rake pages linked from Rake.

The page was expanded (almost hijacked) until it was solely about motorcycles and then the material was moved to the bicycle and motorbike geometry page leaving the redirect. Chaosdruid (talk) 04:31, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I think RDBury has a point. How much is there to say about this thing, beyond its definition? A definition is not enough to justify an article. --Trovatore (talk) 04:35, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Well the main point I would make is that the angle of rake is mostly used to describe either ships prows/bows/other features and motorcyles/bicycles. I suppose this could be the page soley for ship's angle of rakes? (all the rest having their own pages rather than being wiktionaried) Chaosdruid (talk) 05:24, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

It just doesn't sound like there's enough there for an article. --Trovatore (talk) 09:42, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Existential theory of the reals

Existential theory of the reals is an orphaned article: nothing links to it (except the list of mathematics articles). Some links to it could be created and it would bear expansion.

It's in three categories (maybe others should be added?): Category:Real algebraic geometry, Category:Mathematical logic, Category:Computational complexity theory. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:54, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Potential merge to semialgebraic set. Charles Matthews (talk) 18:06, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

It's a very important topic in the computational complexity theory of real-number computation. I don't think that merge would do that aspect of the subject justice. On the other hand, the existing article is in bad shape. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:22, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

It was in even worse shape before I edited it. (I think?) Michael Hardy (talk) 23:00, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I was thinking of linking it to "elementary theory of the real numbers" but I discovered we have no such article! Moreover, elementary theory is rather monosyllabic. It would be helpful to fill these gaps if anyone gets a chance. Tkuvho (talk) 14:32, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

The elementary theory of the real field is the theory of real closed fields. Algebraist 18:56, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. Should there be a redirect from Elementary theory of the reals? Apparently elementary theory should be connected to real closed field then. Tkuvho (talk) 20:15, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Directing it to "elementary" rather than "existential" doesn't seem to make sense, since that's an essentially different problem. It's about sentences that begin only with existential quantifiers, and one can imagine statements like the one about NP-completeness changing if one allowed universal quantifiers. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:48, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I didn't mean that "existential" should be redirected to "elementary", but rather that there should be an extra redirect to real closed field from elementary theory of the reals, as well as a "see also" cite of elementary theory of the reals at existential theory of the reals. Tkuvho (talk) 06:06, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

What would be the point of a see-also link that is redirected to an article already prominently linked from the first sentence of existential theory of the reals? —David Eppstein (talk) 06:21, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I see the link was added two days ago. Thanks for pointing this out. Tkuvho (talk) 08:26, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Singular value decomposition is up for review

The article singular value decomposition is up for A-class review. It needs both reviewers and editors. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:14, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

To boldly go against the consensus

The page Dehn plane contains a discussion of an example of a plane where the parallel postulate fails. The example satisfies Legendre's theorem to the effect that the sum of the angles in a triangle is π. The page has now been moved back to non-Legendrian geometry, even though the geometry discussed here is eminently Legendrian. This is the kind of committee decision we are getting famous for. Tkuvho (talk) 12:42, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

What is most troubling is how unreliable the content there should be regarded. The naming issue should be a totally peripheral matter. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:48, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

The current content is reliable. Tkuvho (talk) 13:55, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Boldly going against the consensus? No, that is not how wikipedia works. We make bold edits, they are discussed and consensus is formed.

To make a "bold edit against consensus" means that the editor believes that consensus does not matter.

It would be better to have read the talk pages and deletions discussions which were available on the talk page, not yet archived, and then start more discussions that to simply ignore the consensus that had previously been achieved. Chaosdruid (talk) 19:31, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Although Tkuvho feels confident that the article's contents are reliable, I still feel like better verification is desirable. I think more discussion and better sources would help, rather than continuing to argue over the title. Present day sources that include "semi-Euclidean geometry" and "non-Legendrian geometry" might be good places to attempt to verify the article's content, as well as to write a better article. Also sources discussing "non-Archimedean geometry" can be used with some care. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:36, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

In the mean time, I suggest that the article be moved back to Semi-Euclidean geometry as a reasonable compromise until the article actually gets sorted out. Unfortunately, admin powers seem to be required to do this now. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:46, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Yup, the last page move created lots of problems with double redirects and so forth. It is likely that the page couldn't be put back to "Dehn plane" for those very reasons also. Chaosdruid (talk) 19:58, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

(ui) For a little context, the article recently survived an AfD here. This is a good topic for an article but what we have at the moment needs much work or perhaps a restart from scratch. Hilbert gives a long discussion of the Archemedian axiom in geometry and it's relationship to the parallel postulate and the sum of angles in a triangle, citing Dehn's paper. It appears however that "Dehn plane" plane is a noelogism, or at least not notable as a phrase. There also seems to be some confusion on the term non-Archemedian, as used in modern English, and non-Legendrian as used in 19th century German, I think it will take someone reasonably fluent in the latter to determine what Dehn actually meant since mathematical language changes significantly over a hundred years. So it may well be that the geometry is "Legendrian" in the modern sense but not what Dehn meant. I personally think the article should be moved to Non-Archimedean geometry which is definitely not a neologism, see the Springer EoM entry for example.--RDBury (talk) 23:40, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi RD, thanks for your interest. The AfD discussion you mentioned is based on the false premise that the example discussed here is non-Legendrian. The error resulted from the conflation of two examples discussed by Dehn, as I explained a week ago in detail at Talk:Dehn plane. The property of being non-Legendrian has nothing to do with the property of being non-Archimedean. Both terms have been stable since at least Dehn's time. The point of Dehn's example was not that the geometry is non-Archimedean (the existence of such geometries is much older), but rather that it violates the parallel postulate. Moving this to "non-Archimedean geometry" makes no sense. Tkuvho (talk) 03:08, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification, maybe a new article is in order then.--RDBury (talk) 16:30, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

One immediate problem is that the contents of the page do not correspond to its current title, but (literally) on the contrary. Can we have a consensus for moving this to "Dehn's plane" or "dehn's counterexample"? Tkuvho (talk) 17:13, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

There are still problems with the double redirects caused by the page moves, the bots are possibly getting confused. I have asked Tkuvho to take a look at them as he was the last to move. Chaosdruid (talk) 16:18, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

New disambiguation

The new article Sum of squares (disambiguation) includes a number of maths topics and hence might be worth checking. Melcombe (talk) 17:27, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Wijsman's decomposition

I just needed a beautiful theorem which lots of people know but is not written down anywhere (asfaik) in an accessible way including elementary examples. Suppose a probability space $(\Omega ,P)$ is invariant under a compact group $G$ of transformations on $\Omega$. Suppose for simplicity that only the trivial subgroup leaves all elements of the space fixed (otherwise we must divide it out). Assume smoothness. Then the space is essentially the product of two independent probability spaces: one space carrying the maximal invariant, the other being the group itself with Haar measure. There is a neat elementary example in the Monty Hall problem.

The result is also much used in ergodic theory, it's called the ergodic decomposition.

Question: what to call it, what to link it to? I'd like to start writing the article but I'm a mathematical statistician, not an analyst or ergodic theorist or whatever.

There are connections to sufficiency, to invariance (in statistics), to experimental design, and so on. Everywhere where symmetry can be used to simplify statistical models or statistical reasoning. Multivariate normal distribution and multivariate analysis.

References:

R. Wijsman (1990), Invariant measure on groups and their use in statistics

P. Diaconis (1988), Group representations and their applications in statistics and probability

Richard Gill (talk) 15:54, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Maybe ergodic decomposition is a suitable name for it. Or Wijsman's decomposition? Can you clarify what you mean by "carrying the maximal invariant", and can you tell us a few concrete examples? Those might actually shed some light on what it should be called and which other articles should link to it. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:45, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Graphical comparison of musical scales and mathematical progressions AfD

The above article is up for AfD here. I've had my say but there is some new discussion basically asking for more expert opinions, so please have your say if you can bring some mathematical expertise to the issue.--RDBury (talk) 21:49, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

R. Catesby Taliaferro

R. Catesby Taliaferro is a stubby new article, doubtless imperfect. Do what you can. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:49, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Any idea whether he pronounced it "Tolliver"? That's the usual pronunciation from the Southern US, but Yankees usually don't know that, to say nothing of folks from other countries. But I wouldn't want to add that unless we can find out. --Trovatore (talk) 00:56, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

The infamous MHP problem ended up in arbitration

After constant editing conflicts for years, a discussion archive probably running several volumes as printed books and 2 failed mediations the article has ended up in arbitration now.

Maybe it is of interest for some of the editors here or they even want to provide an assessment/opinion.

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Monty Hall problem

--Kmhkmh (talk) 22:06, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

It is probably useful to point out that Arbcom has historically avoided making decisions about the content of articles; they only deal with editor conduct. The actual disagreements about the content have to be handled on the article's talk page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:44, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

yes, they emphasized already that they intend to focus on potential misbehaviour of editors rather than content issues. However most involved parties are already arguing content nevertheless and there are content issues at the core of various long standing conflicts between authors.

Another thing that might be advisable is reevaluate the article's excellence status after the arbitration is completed, since the article has changed rather significantly (not necessarily for the worse though).--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:27, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Please see the hilarious preliminary statement by Alanyst!  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 19:54, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Alanyst almost cost me a mouthful of coffee and a new keyboard. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:08, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Categorical bridge

Categorical bridge has been prodded. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:33, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I couldn't find any sources for it, so deleted it. Dreadstar ☥ 00:00, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Boolean logic

Would someone please monitor. I'm at 3RR, and I can't say the edits I'm reverting are vandalism, just completely, and obviously, inappropriate. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:05, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

MTAA discusion

There is a discussion underway at Wt:MTAA that concerns this project. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:46, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Mar 2011

Anti-geometric mean and anti-harmonic mean needs rescuing

The new article Anti geometric mean and anti harmonic mean has been proposed for deletion for a lack of sources. This article needs rescuing. These two means are legitimate: one of them is the same as the contraharmonic mean. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:02, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

They may be means within the meaning of that word, but are they notable? Also the article should explain how to generalize them to three or more inputs. JRSpriggs (talk) 15:20, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

At least the contraharmonic mean/antiharmonic mean is notable (there are many google scholar and google books hits for both of these terms). Perhaps an alternative to deletion is to redirect to the contraharmonic mean article. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:34, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

The means may be legitimate, but the notability, names, and the connection between them don't seem to be. They appear to be taken from http://aweeklyriddle.blogspot.com/2010/10/anti-geometric-mean-and-anti-harmonic.html , the October 16 entry in a "riddle" blog.

The anti-geometric mean is a mean, as it's

$\operatorname {not} {{\frac {x^{3/2}-y^{3/2}}{x^{1/2}-y^{1/2}}}={\frac {\int _{x}^{y}t\,dF(t)}{\int _{x}^{y}\,dF(t)}}}$ (oops, how do you strikeout within a formula}

for an appropriate value of F. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:50, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

${\frac {x^{3/2}+y^{3/2}}{x^{1/2}+y^{1/2}}}$

which is the Lehmer mean with p=3/2. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:58, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

The article is fairly clearly OR; note where it says "copyright shrenuj 2010" in the title of the blog entry that Arthur linked to, and see the username of the Wikipedia article creator. Having said that, "anti-harmonic mean" seems to be used elsewhere as a synonym for the contraharmonic mean, so this term (on its own) could merit a redirect. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:55, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

As an aside, should we make a note as to the generalized Lehmer mean,

$\left({\frac {x^{p+q}+y^{p+q}}{x^{p}+y^{p}}}\right)^{1/q}$

— Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:56, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I've fixed the punctuation in the article's title. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:21, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Multilinear subspace learning

Someone has been adding sections on and links to something called multilinear subspace learning to a variety of articles on linear algebra and multilinear algebra. I have removed one such section from the tensor article since it obviously didn't belong where it was. I'm wondering whether the rest of the added content is worth keeping though. There seem to have been only a handful of papers] published (in fairly obscure places) on this topic, most of them in the past few years and mostly by the same group of authors. What should we do about this, if anything? Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:53, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Proposing deletion, and tagging, although I believe the SIAM journal to be legitimate. I believe most of the references should be weeded out, but I suspect that, as long as the article is here, it should be linked somewhere in multilinear algebra. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:14, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Perfect number articles

Jurvetson2 (talk · contribs) has created articles 33550336 and 8589869056. As far as I can see, the only interesting property of these numbers is that they are perfect numbers, so I don't think they meet the criteria for notability of specific individual numbers at WP:NUMBER. Speedy deletion was proposed for one article, but declined. I have noted my concerns on Jurvetson2's talk page. Should we take these articles to AfD ? Gandalf61 (talk) 09:32, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I think they should be deleted. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:11, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes I feel like imitating the Cybermen and saying to the article 'You are deficient, you will be deleted. deleted'. I seem to be wanting to delete things quite often nowadays even though I try to find something useful about them and leave them time to grow. Dmcq (talk) 11:44, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Both articles now taken to AfD - thank you, Arthur. Discussion is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/33550336. Gandalf61 (talk) 09:03, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

@Gandalf61: Thanks. It wasn't easy to do the AfD multi.

@Dmcq: They're not deficient, they're perfect. LOL — Arthur Rubin (talk) 09:12, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Aargh! I am deficient. If I were a Cyberman my head would explode! :) Dmcq (talk) 13:05, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

k-Poincaré disambiguation

I've just saved the Kappa-Poincaré page from speedy deletion for the time being, but it definitely needs to be changed into something else, either be deleted (Wikipedia's search does seem to find all the k- K- and κ- variations already) or converted into a disambiguation page or a redirect. I'm not conversant in math issues, so I need to ask a question: Is there some particular reason that both the K-Poincaré algebra and K-Poincaré_group articles shouldn't be merged into subsections of the Poincaré group article followed by the creation of redirects for the various k- kappa- κ- -algebra -group variant names to that article? Alternatively, how about an article for k-Poincaré with the -algebra and -group versions as subsections. Because I don't understand the math or the significance of the math, I'm clueless but I'm sure one of you do. Best regards, TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 16:38, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

K-Poincaré algebra and K-Poincaré_group can probably be safely merged, since they are basically two sides of the same coin. Explaining what these objects are may in fact be easier if they are in the same article. However, I don't it such a good idea to merge with Poincaré group, which a much simpler and widely known object, that needs an accessible article. (The Poincaré group article should however mention at some point that it can be deformed into the K-Poincaré_group.)TR 14:41, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Chain rule

The article titled chain rule currently says:

The chain rule is frequently expressed in Leibniz notation. Suppose that u = g(x) and y = f(u). Then the chain rule is

$\left.{\frac {dy}{dx}}\right|_{x=c}=\left.{\frac {dy}{du}}\right|_{u=g(c)}\cdot \left.{\frac {du}{dx}}\right|_{x=c}.\,$

This is often abbreviated as

${\frac {dy}{dx}}={\frac {dy}{du}}\cdot {\frac {du}{dx}}.$

However, this formula does not specify where each of these derivatives is to be evaluated, which is necessary to make a complete and correct statement of the theorem.

Does this last form really fail to "specify where each of these derivatives is to be evaluated"? It seems to me that the first form above clutters things in such a way as to interfere with understanding, and that the second, read correctly, doesn't really fail to do anything that should be done.

Opinions? Michael Hardy (talk) 23:04, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm with you on this one. The sentence isn't really Wikipedia-appropriate, anyway -- at best that's textbook language. CRGreathouse (t | c) 01:47, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, since I'm the one who wrote that sentence, I think I should defend it. But I'm going to do so on Talk:Chain rule, not here. Ozob (talk) 01:49, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Just out of interest why is chain rule marked as "mid priority"?TR 09:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Help needed

There appear to be a series of disputes with Optimering (talk · contribs). One is listed at Talk:Algorithm. Another is at WP:COIN#Optimering and is mostly about an edit war at Luus–Jaakola. The assumption is that the user is the person whose work the user keeps citing, thus making WP:SELFCITE relevant. As Optimering has announced a preference to deal only with people who are also mathematical experts, I was hoping that some of you would please look at these disputes and see if you can help resolve them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing, your suggested reading for Optimering seems to have been read as an endorsement of his behavior, rather than a spur to reflection (on the WP dynamics of expert editing).  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 03:26, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Also see the threads at my talk. So far I've only seen this editor write in a neutral way. He is obviously watched with some scepticism. By some in a healthy way, but by others in a fashion that borders on harassment. It would be a pity if an editor capable of writing is a niche area got scared away. —Ruud 00:52, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Alas, Optimering's use of sources and apparent OR (in ... trying ... to document notability of the thesis) is far from neutral. Lately, Ruud has insulted MrOllie on his talk page, and similar insults to Mr Ollie by Optimering appear on the article talk page.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 03:23, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

G. J. Toomer

I just created a new article titled G. J. Toomer. Quite a large number of articles link to it, but it's very stubby. Do what you can to improve it. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:22, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

C*-algebra

Hello, I saw on the discussion page of C*-algebra that this WikiProject supports the page. Is there anyone here who knows of references to support the statements found in the "Some history: B*-algebras and C*-algebras" section (that I have recently added 'fact' tags to)? Any help would be appreciated. 121.216.130.64 (talk) 11:45, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I've added cites (with links) to a supporting reference to the the article. Paul August ☎ 12:25, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

On a maybe related note, that page could use some attention from the C*-folks here. Mct mht (talk) 11:15, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Archimedean property

Should Archimedean property and non-Archimedean ordered field get merged? Michael Hardy (talk) 21:42, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Merge Archimedean with non-Archimedean? Cute, let's merge p-adic numbers with ordered field at next step. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 22:04, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Very funny. Archimedean property is about a property; it needs to give both examples of cases where the property holds and examples of cases where it fails. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:14, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

More seriously. There are many non-Archimedean fields, some of which are ordered, but so notable as p-adic numbers are not. Imagine a redirect from "non-Archimedean ordered field" to a mess of examples and counterexamples resulting in all 4 possible flavours (because there are also Archimedean normed, but unordered, fields such as complex numbers). Incnis Mrsi (talk) 23:25, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Non-Archimedean ordered field could be enriched by some history, which is certainly rich. Tkuvho (talk) 07:43, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

No free lunch theorem, help from probability & algorithmic analysts

This article needs scrutiny:

"no free lunch theorems... 'state[s] that any two optimization algorithms are equivalent when their performance is averaged across all possible problems.'" (The probability measure on all possible problems would be an interesting object, I assume.)

There is a related article,No free lunch in search and optimization, which cites an article by the well-known computer scientist Wegener, which probably can be salvaged.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 14:04, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

There is nothing problematic about considering probability measures an all possible problems of a fixed size. And "any two optimization algorithms are equivalent" is too strong a statement — one algorithm might perform redundant work compared to another — but I think it's safe to say that in this problem setting no algorithm is better than a brute force search. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:06, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

The statement seems completely reasonable in the context of No free lunch in search and optimization. The two articles have a lot of overlap, and it might be better to merge them. Ozob (talk) 18:40, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Whether an algorithm is optimizing (or not) depends (in part) on which probability measure one uses on the space of possible problems. No algorithm is optimizing for all such measures. That is the point. JRSpriggs (talk) 20:40, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Axiom

I'm not sure it's the right board to post it on, but the article axiom caught my eye. AFAIK the notion of axiom being self-evident truth is very outdated: even when talking about logical axioms as described in the article, we cannot treat them as 'self-evident truths', if only because there are several logics (e.g. classical, intuitionist) that use different axioms, so calling them self-evident seems moot.

Is there anything that can be done to improve the article? I'm a complete layman in logic, so I didn't edit it myself. — Kallikanzarid^talk —Preceding undated comment added 13:13, 6 March 2011 (UTC).

I don't see the problem. It distinguishes between the traditional use and the current use in mathematics quite clearly in the lead as far as I can see. Dmcq (talk) 15:20, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

The "traditional" sense of the word makes sense in certain contexts other than mathematics. For example, in epistemology. To say it's outdated is to limit one's world-view to mathematics and forget that other subjects exist. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:26, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

This began with Euclid's Elements which distinguishes between axioms (obvious and general premises) and postulates (premises which are specific to geometry and not quite so obvious). Most of us use those two words as synonyms today. JRSpriggs (talk) 20:54, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

"Number theory"?

Our article titled Basel problem currently begins like this:

The Basel problem is a famous problem in number theory, first posed by Pietro Mengoli in 1644, and solved by Leonhard Euler in 1735.

[snip snip......]

The Basel problem asks for the precise summation of the reciprocals of the squares of the natural numbers, i.e. the precise sum of the infinite series:

$\sum _{n=1}^{\infty }{\frac {1}{n^{2}}}=\lim _{n\to +\infty }\left({\frac {1}{1^{2}}}+{\frac {1}{2^{2}}}+\cdots +{\frac {1}{n^{2}}}\right).$

Should we change "number theory" to "analysis", or to something else, or should we just delete it? Or let it stand? Michael Hardy (talk) 19:24, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I WP:BOLDly changed it to mathematical analysis, but if someone else wants to change it again I won't object. We shouldn't just delete it because we need some context to tell readers it's about mathematics. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:30, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Is it worth mentioning in that article that the reciprocal of that sum is the asymptotic probability that a pair of integers, selected at random, are relatively prime? (As with any special value of the Riemann zeta function.) From this perspective, number theory seems like the right categorization. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:42, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Certainly that's worth mentioning in the article. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:24, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone have any idea how Mengoli and Euler thought of this problem? Tkuvho (talk) 20:16, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Simple solution: Put both. I left analysis first as it has claim to be 'senior' here. CRGreathouse (t | c) 18:43, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I've changed it to read thus:

The Basel problem is a famous problem in mathematical analysis with relevance to number theory, first posed by Pietro Mengoli in 1644, and solved by Leonhard Euler in 1735.

Michael Hardy (talk) 03:49, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Citation templates now support more identifiers

Recent changes were made to citations templates (such as {{citation}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite web}}...). In addition to what was previously supported (bibcode, doi, jstor, isbn, ...), templates now support arXiv, ASIN, JFM, LCCN, MR, OL, OSTI, RFC, SSRN and Zbl. Before, you needed to place |id={{arxiv|0123.4567}} (or worse |url=http://arxiv.org/abs/0123.4567), now you can simply use |arxiv=0123.4567, likewise for |id={{JSTOR|0123456789}} and |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/0123456789 → |jstor=0123456789.

The full list of supported identifiers is given here (with dummy values):

• {{cite journal |author=John Smith |year=2000 |title=How to Put Things into Other Things |journal=Journal of Foobar |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=3–4 |arxiv=0123456789 |asin=0123456789 |bibcode=0123456789 |doi=0123456789 |jfm=0123456789 |jstor=0123456789 |lccn=0123456789 |isbn=0123456789 |issn=0123456789 |mr=0123456789 |oclc=0123456789 |ol=0123456789 |osti=0123456789 |rfc=0123456789 |pmc=0123456789 |pmid=0123456789 |ssrn=0123456789 |zbl=0123456789 |id={{para|id|____}} }}

Obviously not all citations needs all parameters, but this streamlines the most popular ones and gives both better metadata and better appearances when printed. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:05, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

GREAT! This update shall increase the consistency of citations, e.g. the ordering of JSTOR and MR.

It seems that if I want to have two ISBNs, I can use "isbn= " for one (e.g., 13-digit), and then use "id=ISBN 0123456789" for the second. Unfortunately, math-reviews can then split the isbns: For example

Molchanov, Ilya (2005). Theory of random sets. Probability and its applications. Springer-Verlag London Ltd. pp. 194–240. doi:10.1007/1-84628-150-4. ISBN 978-185223-892-3. MR 2132405. ISBN 1-85233-892-X. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |address= ignored (|location= suggested) (help)

I would prefer to be able to use 1-3 isbns: isbn=,isbn-10=, isbn-13=, simultaneously. Thanks!  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 18:15, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

With ISBNs, there's actually a trick (it only works for ISBNs however), |isbn=0123456789 translate into a raw "ISBN 0123456789", which is linked via the software rather than being linked through the template. So this means you can use |isbn=0123456789, ISBN 0987654321, ISBN 1029384756 and it will be converted to Bob's Book. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/0123456789, ISBN 0987654321, ISBN 1029384756|0123456789, '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000003E-QINU`"'[[ISBN (identifier)|ISBN]]&nbsp;[[Special:BookSources/0987654321 |0987654321]]<span class="error" style="font-size:100%">&nbsp;Parameter error in {{[[Template:ISBN|ISBN]]}}:&nbsp;checksum</span>, '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000003F-QINU`"'[[ISBN (identifier)|ISBN]]&nbsp;[[Special:BookSources/1029384756 |1029384756]]<span class="error" style="font-size:100%">&nbsp;Parameter error in {{[[Template:ISBN|ISBN]]}}:&nbsp;checksum</span>]]. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); templatestyles stripmarker in |isbn= at position 13 (help). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:41, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I tried this technique but the ISBNs have disappeared:  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 19:32, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Molchanov, Ilya (2005). Theory of random sets. Probability and its applications. Springer-Verlag London Ltd. doi:10.1007/1-84628-150-4. MR 2132405. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Text "|isbn=9781852238923, ISBN 185233892X" ignored (help)

Try not using the span; that was just to show you what the wikiformatting should look like. Without the span, it's: Molchanov, Ilya (2005). Theory of random sets. Probability and its applications. Springer-Verlag London Ltd. doi:10.1007/1-84628-150-4. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/9781852238923, ISBN 185233892X|9781852238923, '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000043-QINU`"'[[ISBN (identifier)|ISBN]]&nbsp;[[Special:BookSources/185233892X |185233892X]]]]. MR 2132405. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |address= ignored (|location= suggested) (help); templatestyles stripmarker in |isbn= at position 16 (help) —David Eppstein (talk) 20:57, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Semper Benignus! THANKS!

That was much easier Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 21:25, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Timelike topological feature

This pretends to be a piece of theory of Lorentzian manifolds, but… it is a theory of doubtful notability. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:18, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Ptolemy's table of chords

I've created Ptolemy's table of chords, in its present form an imperfect article. Work on it! Michael Hardy (talk) 23:12, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

At Talk:Ptolemy's table of chords, I've created a "to do" list of work that should get done on this article. I'll probably get to most or all of it eventually unless others get there first. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:09, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Here's the list:

Work that needs to be done on this article:

• Further inline citations, including:

• It was the earliest trigonometric table extensive enough for many practical purposes, including those of astronomy
• (an earlier table of chords by Hipparchus gave chords only for arcs that were multiples of 7½°).
• Several centuries passed before more extensive trigonometric tables were created.
• Page numbers in Glowatzki and Göttsche?
• The parts about the three distinct methods of computing chords.

• More on the geometric theorems: Their precise statements, how they are proved, how they are used in deriving trigonometric identities, how those identities are used in computing chords.
• History of editions of the book including those in Arabic.
• When did more extensive tables supersede this one? Which century?
• How did the table influence later work?

• And probably other things.........

Michael Hardy (talk) 00:16, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Please review seriousness v. proposed deletion as parody of new article Names of small numbers at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Names of small numbers

Mathematics WikiProject members, please, this is being discussed at:

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Names of small numbers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Names_of_small_numbers#Names_of_small_numbers

Thank you. Pandelver (talk) 00:05, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

May be of remote interest

There's a math-related arbcom case in which someone has proposed something along the lines that discussing math on talk pages without references or (lord forbid) pointing out an error in a WP:RS is a blockable offense (after warning, of course). Linky here. Tijfo098 (talk) 07:22, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Is not this absurdity restricted to Talk:Monty Hall problem? JRSpriggs (talk) 10:06, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Invitation to comment on RFC regarding the stubbing (deletion) of the Mathematics in medieval Islam article

You are invited to comment on the content dispute regarding the stubbing of the Mathematics in medieval Islam article Thank You -Aquib (talk) 04:11, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Whew! I've certainly had problems with some rather industrious people making unjustified claims about Islamic maths with citations that don't quite back them up and bending things like turning Persian into Islamic. This seems a very drastic step though and rather a pity. I hope it all gets fixed up soon again but my experience does indicate that all claims will need to have the citations examined. Dmcq (talk) 13:25, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Numerical approximations of π -> Approximations of π

Please see Talk:Numerical_approximations_of_π#Requested_move. Cheers, Ben (talk) 11:52, 16 March 2011 (UTC).

Template:Pi

The usage of {{pi}} is under discussion, see Template talk: pi . 65.95.13.139 (talk) 13:40, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Quarter squares

Another editor is insisting on adding their bit on calculating quarter squares to Multiplication algorithm and I'm failing to get them to desist, latest round at Talk:Multiplication_algorithm#Construction_of_tables. ANyone like to have a look at it thanks? Dmcq (talk) 13:11, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Cardinals

There are many used notations for cardinal numbers and cardinality. In all (advanced) mathematical articles which use them, we need to clarify whether the axiom of choice is assumed, and whether the von Neumann cardinal assignment and/or the assumption that cn(cn(X))=cn(X) (i.e. that "the" cardinal number of a set has the same cardinality as the set) is made. The "Union" of cardinal numbers requires some assumption similar to the von Neumann cardinal assignment, and the Sum or Product of an infinite set of cardinal numbers requires some version of the Axiom of Choice to define.

I would like to have a centralized discussion on this, putting pointers on all the articles which refer to "cardinality". I was also thinking that merging initial ordinal with aleph number might be a good start. The constructions are the same, but the assumptions are different. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:20, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, my reference library is not available (i.e., I didn't keep it from my last move), so I would be forced to reference the material to my and my parents' books and papers. This is generally considered improper. Any ideas? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:21, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I would not merge those two, no. I think aleph number is an appropriate title for a brief, and not extremely mathematical, article of fairly limited scope, namely just to tell people what these funny $\aleph _{0}$, $\aleph _{17}$, $\aleph _{\omega }$ thingies that they may have seen somewhere are. For deeper information, readers should be directed to articles like cardinality. --Trovatore (talk) 00:00, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I can see your point. In that interpretation, I couldn't help rewrite aleph number, but much of the material now in aleph number is in initial ordinal and should not remain in aleph number.

I wonder if someone can describe the difference between cardinality and cardinal number, also. Should those be divided in a similar way, with cardinality being non-mathematical, and cardinal number being more mathematical? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:18, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

At first thought it seems plausible to me to merge cardinal number into cardinality. I suppose cardinal number could be used as meaning "some complete invariant for cardinality, with the exact invariant depending on what scheme you have in mind" but I don't know that that is particularly standard. --Trovatore (talk) 00:25, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

@Arthur: Personally, I am not very worried about the (potential) conflict of interest. The articles we are talking about are on completely established subjects, and the books by H. and J. Rubin are mainstream, not fringe sources in any way. There are plenty of other editors who watch the articles and can edit them to add other references. Your identity is known, and you are a long-time contributor to the project. Given those facts I think you should not be too worried about editing the articles, and I will say that again if anyone raises the issue. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Square bracket in a link

I was thinking about puttting in a link to interval (mathematics) for things like (−π, π] because people keep 'correcting' it to two round brackets. However there is a little problem in that one then gets three right square brackets or else one has to put in a space or the right bracket is black as in (−π, π]. Any ideas on a good way of getting it looking right thanks? Dmcq (talk)

Create a set of templates {{left half-open interval}}, {{right half-open interval}}, etc. Makes it more difficult to "correct" them (and more obvious why they shouldn't be). —Ruud 16:07, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

well you could always use $(-\pi ,\pi ]$ as long as you're not to picking about Latex within a text block.--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Use <nowiki> tags, or any other delimiters: (−π, π] Nageh (talk) 16:20, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks everybody. I think I'll go with the nowiki or perhaps nobreak so I don't even need the &nbsp; Dmcq (talk) 16:41, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Just been thinking about the templates left half-open interval etc. It does have the advantage it can be used for later instances that shouldn't be linked. Dmcq (talk) 17:18, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

We had this discussion a while ago (in 2003 or so?) and one of the things that got decided was that the brackets in asymmetric intervals should be enclosed within "nowiki" tags. Has that been neglected lately? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:22, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid so. I have difficulty with last week never mind eight years ago :) Anyway I just set up {{open-closed}} and {{closed-open}} - my first foray into creating templates! I guess I should stick something about it in a math help with formatting page if people like them else just the <nowiki> method. Dmcq (talk) 18:40, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

And I've tried them out on atan2. I've used {{math}} to format the contents rather than just {{nowrap}} as I think π looks better than π. Dmcq (talk) 22:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

A similar problem occurs when one tries to put a link to one of our articles into the comment part of an external link. See this edit to Monetary policy where Mattdarst tried to insert a link to Credit Channel into the comment field of an external link where the comment read ""THE STOCK OF CLOSED BANK DEPOSITS, DURATION OF CREDIT CHANNEL EFFECTS, AND THE PERSISTENCE OF THE U.S. GREAT DEPRESSION"". It caused the external link to terminate prematurely. JRSpriggs (talk) 01:27, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I've seen bots "correct" semi-open intervals and similar mathematical notations. I'm aware of the nowiki solution, but seem to recall that this doesn't always discourage the more vigilant bots. A template solution seems best. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:35, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Which bots? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:04, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I no longer remember. I also don't know if this issue has since been fixed. It was a few years back that I noticed that some bots would sometimes parse mathematical markup incorrectly, and attempt to "correct" the problem. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:33, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I've set up {{open-open}} and {{closed-closed}} as well to complete the set. I hadn't thought about it before but they must be doing some special work to stop things like [1, 2] causing trouble. Anyway I use &#91; and &#93; instead in the templates. Dmcq (talk) 13:36, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

As an example {{open-closed|−π, π}} produces (−π, π] and the eventual code sent out to do this is <span class="texhtml" style="white-space: nowrap;">(−π, π]</span> Dmcq (talk) 14:07, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I have formatted the argument (complex analysis) article using math type formatting for any inline mathematics throughout. I also set up a {{mvar}} template to do individual variables easily. Any comments gratefully received. Dmcq (talk) 15:14, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Florentin Smarandache

The article Florentin Smarandache has been nominated for deletion for a 2nd time (AfD here); members of this project may be interested in commenting. Mlm42 (talk) 18:35, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

At least one editor there seems to be laboring under the impression that the subject of that article is a very influential mathematician. It is very frustrating arguing with this person. Sławomir Biały (talk) 01:31, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Logarithm is up for FAC

Opine here. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 17:59, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Probability notations

On the suggestion of one of the editors interested in the arbitration on Monty Hall problem, I started a little essay on mathematical notation in probability theory and its applications. First draft is at essay on probability notation; you can talk about it at: probability notation essay-talk. Comments are welcome! Especially if you can tell me that this is all superfluous because it's been done, and done better, before. Richard Gill (talk) 18:21, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Duffin–Schaeffer conjecture

I've put an "orphan" tag on Duffin–Schaeffer conjecture, so get busy and think of a few (dozen) articles that should link to it. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:49, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

DYK: Criss-cross algorithm for linear optimization

A new article on the Criss-cross algorithm for linear optimization has been nominated for Did You Know?:

• ... that, while the criss-cross algorithm visits all 8 corners of a cube when started at a worst corner, it visits only 3 more corners when started at a random corner?

Corrections and comments are especially welcome. Best regards,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 03:48, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Normal numbers page is broken

I was looking at Normal number and there seems to have been an edit by a well-meaning anonymous user which broke the markup. I would revert his edits, but I don't know enough about the subject to know if he was correcting an error in the article and made a mistake. Could someone with some more math skills than I take at look at the last two edits? Thanks.

DavidSol (talk) 01:34, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I just noticed that Lindelof space was broken in much the same way for no apparent reason. It appeared to be caused by an edit adding a Korean interwiki, but now I wonder instead if it's a software problem. Sławomir Biały (talk) 01:43, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Please note: Lindelöf space and Lindeloef are essentially identical spellings, whereas Lindelof is different (and incorrect). So if you can't type the umlaut, then write Lindeloef. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:51, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

At the time I was more concerned with having a link to the right place than valid typography, Michael. And yes, I can't type an umlaut at the moment. Sławomir Biały (talk) 10:46, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I think it's just the wiki software getting confused. The anon at normal number undid his/her own change. The article got better after I tried purging it. I've seen similar issues with other unrelated pages today as well. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:45, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Article should be in mathematics project?

Pick's theorem seems pretty applicable to your project. You might want to examine it and tag it if appropriate. Cliff (talk) 05:50, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I added the project rating to the discussion page. Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:12, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

The article was already on List of mathematics articles, as well. That is the master list of articles in the project. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:18, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Arbcom decision on MHP: OR vs exposition in mathematics

The arbitration of the Monty Hall problem is nearing its decision phase.

Two proposals for the arbitration committee's decision concern Wikipedia policy on mathematical articles, especially original research versus secondary sources. Both proposals endorse editors' use of "arithmetic operations". This language could be of great concern to this project, and deserves your attention. Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 23:47, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's of real importance to our project, and there are important nuances that neither version captures. But I thought we weren't supposed to edit Arb proposals?

CRGreathouse (t | c) 00:19, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Editors may comment on proposals on the appropriate talk page. (I can strongly recommend against editing the arbcom pages that have warnings against civilian editing!)

I have asked two wise editors to watch the proceedings and this language, and I am sure that another wise editor already there can also comment effectively. (I commented informally on one arbcom member's talk page, and raised my concerns.) I believe that the most experienced editors should be trusted to advise ArbCom.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:44, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Most worrying. Either version appears to make original research out of even routine examples. Sławomir Biały (talk) 01:19, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Examples make or break articles, on WP and elsewhere. IMHO, we have to have the ability to make simple examples to interest readers, who would never be able to read research or even junior-senior math.

They should not issue any ruling on mathematics exposition. The social problems sufficed to make the MPH talk page a horror. If a mathematics article appears at ArbCom without social disorder on the talk page, then it may be reasonable for ArbCom to invent new principles to guide mathematics exposition. with apologies for being opinionated,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 01:33, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't see how the proposed principles interfere with the presentation of routine examples, being routine they will undoubtably be able to be sourced. Paul August ☎ 02:01, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Having looked closer at this I now have concerns about the proposed language. Paul August ☎ 12:55, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Copying examples from reliable sources is generally not possible, due to copyright. While it is true that I've often seen people introduce errors into examples, there's not really a great alternative. Dcoetzee 02:27, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Our examples are often similar to, but not identical with, those in other sources. The proposed mandate would in principle require that we copy sources step for step. Otherwise, it us generally not possible to find sources for each and every particular detail, even if the general principles are well-known. For instance, even simplifying a polynomial at the end of a longer example now requires sources in which the very same polynomial is simplified, which seems to be straightjacketing. Sławomir Biały (talk) 02:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that the OR rule together with the Copyright law make coverage of mathematics (or any other subject) impossible. You have to think (commit 'original research') to do mathematics. The only alternative is to blindly copy from 'reliable' sources which violates copyright. Of course, such copying and the verification that the source is indeed reliable also require thought (OR). So the rule against OR is an absurdity which should be repealed.

The reason we have a rule against OR is to try to avoid disputes about what is correct reasoning by appealing to an outside source. Notice that in mathematics, this is usually only necessary when one or more of the disputing parties is a crank or troll. However, refusing to allow an edit on grounds that it is OR is ultimately just an excuse for rejecting what we think is false without having to get the agreement of a crank or troll. JRSpriggs (talk) 03:05, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

This one is fairly complicated. I don't think it true that, outside of mathematics, OR and copyright makes coverage impossible. The problem is that an allowable rephrasing in most fields becomes OR in mathematics, as even a change in notation does not fall in the "routine arithmetic calculation" exemption in Principles 11. However, an expert mathematician's edits may qualify as allowable per se under WP:SPS, but may fail WP:COI. This might lead to weird results as using the diff adding the material as a reference, but it seems to satisfy the rules. I'll comment there if I can think of anything sensible to say. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 04:33, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

To be more precise, if I make an edit to an article on (say) the Axiom of Choice which I consider obvious, and it's reverted as OR, another editor can restore it sourcing it to the diff. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 04:42, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

After David Eppstein and Geometry Guy have alerted ArbCom of concerns about unintended consequences of the proposed wording(s), some ArbCom members have declared that they need some time to think about this issue.

I have followed only a couple of the ArbCom proceedings, but reading those few proceedings, I have impressed with the conscientiousness and intelligence of its members --- it is like a committee made up of Geometry Guys who actually read and think before writing!

Mathematicians should not cluck like a brood of chicken littles on the ArbCom pages. Let us leave our most experienced and articulate volunteers, whose work on WP is known to and respected by some ArbCom members, to discuss calmly the proposals with them. As the original chicken little,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 08:49, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

JRSpriggs's comment describes my experience. The WP community is able to control tendentious editing by agreeing that some edits represent OR (often OR by synthesis).

I am worried that the proposed language may influence featured-article and good-article criteria, rendering mathematical articles ineligible if they include examples for lay readers or explain concepts using consensus explanations that cannot be sourced: for the latter, see the example on my talk page, which could be challenged as OR by synthesis, I fear.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 09:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Alternative wording suggested by Kiefer.Wolfowitz

I (K.W.) suggest the following changes:

1. Change "arithmetic" to "mathematical".
2. Add "providing context using standard mathematical results or providing elementary examples" to the list of accepted editing activities.
3. Add the following: "Explanations, which use routine mathematical results or reasoning, are not considered "original research by synthesis", even if such routine mathematics are not referenced specifically for the application discussed: The mathematical results should be capable of routine referencing (easily referenced if challenged) and the article's editing should display an overwhelming agreement both that such derivations are routine (rather than original research) and that (to avoid simple OR proofs of important results) the result is unsurprising."

I would suggest that we strive for consensus language here, and then ask our leaders to communicate consensus suggestions to the ArbCom page.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 11:34, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Elen asks for alternative wording

If you guys can get together a variant form of words quickly, and post it on the proposed decision talkpage, it can be put in as an alternative.

Providing examples is not a problem - slotting in different variables to a sourced method is not OR, nor is it really deriving from first principles. Glossing should not be a problem if you have some referencing to show the general applicability of the gloss. I do have concerns with the example Kiefer gave on his talkpage [32], but I'd have more problems with the old version that the new, assuming that somewhere in the sources cited are the two equations, the definition of limits, and the information about strictness in relation to Minkowski sum. It is the old example which seems to have lots of derivations without referencing. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 14:20, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I refactored and emboldened Elen's request for help, which is most important!  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 15:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

@Elen, I updated the references in the example. For sequential convergence, the most elementary exposition is John Fridy's Analysis:The Theory of Calculus, and I am sure that the results are available in the Green & Heller reference (and probably Arrow & Hahn, Mas-Colell, etc.: I am away from my references this week). Certainly the strictness of the Minkowski sum is covered by Rockafellar (pages given) and also Schneider: I believe that Rockafellar has a sequential discussion of limits, also. The equation (inclusion) appears in Ekeland (pages given).  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 14:42, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I made this proposal. It would be best for others to strive for a consensus statement, following Elen's very kind and thoughtful statement of interest.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 14:46, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I've only had a chance to skim most of the Arbcom case, but it seems like the main issue is the detailed derivations from first principles. The language used should more closely reflect the actual problem, rather than casting an overly broad net against anything that could possibly be construed as original research.Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I have posted an alternative wording on the workshop page. Geometry guy 22:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Teaching and OR

I don't have much to say about the MHP apart from thanking the people who have commented on the arbcom page. I did want to say something related. Lately, after discussion at WT:TECHNICAL and WT:NOR, and looking at WP:NOT, I have been thinking about the underlying issues that lead to these disagreements. I'm only thinking about articles at the advanced undergrad level and beyond here; articles on basic topics are less problematic because there are plenty of low-level references. But there are few references on advanced topics that are accessible to an untrained reader.

Three points:

• There's a tension between making "reference" articles that are primarily useful for people who already know the topic, and making "didactic" articles that help people who don't know the topic learn it. When WP:NOR is interpreted more strictly, that leads us to favor specialists over learners. WP:TECHNICAL, on the other hand, asks us to lean more towards learners, by explaining things in our own words, using analogies, and giving examples. These two policies are naturally opposed to each other.

• WP:NOT has the same opposition inside it, saying both that articles should not be written for specialists and that articles should not be written to teach people about the topic at hand. For example, it says both "A Wikipedia article should not be presented on the assumption that the reader is well versed in the topic's field." and "The purpose of Wikipedia is to present facts, not to teach subject matter.".

• These disagreements go back all the way to the founding of Wikipedia. There was never a time when all the articles "followed policy" after which time the articles began to "violate policy". Instead, the articles have always been in a state of flux, and the policies have never perfectly captured the balance between the goal to be a reference work and the goal to present material to students who are learning it for the first time.

I think that we do a reasonable job at balancing these things in our articles, both overall and in mathematics. My main point is that if we realize that Wikipedia's goals are sometimes in conflict with each other, it can help us find a middle ground. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Let's not forget IAR

Seems to me we are in danger of becoming too rule-obsessed, hierarchical and obsequious over this. If Arbcom produces a ruling which appears to prohibit simple explanatory examples in mathematics articles, then common sense tells us this cannot be what was intended - either Arbcom have mis-worded their statement or we have mis-interpreted it. As explanatory examples obviously improve the encyclopedia, IAR tells us we can use them anyway. At the same time, we can either ask Arbcom to clarify their ruling, or simply drop them a hint by awarding them a trout. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:50, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

This ruling, percolating through WP like phosphorous from a lava chamber (! ;) !), may make it impossible to get articles approved for feature article status, although it probably would have no effect on most articles.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 16:00, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think it's worth focusing on featured article status anyway. The goals of the FA wikiproject are not necessarily aligned with our goals, but that's OK. Wikipedia can accomodate both. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:31, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

New wording

In response to comments made by editors from this WikiProject, Arbitrator Elen of the Roads has proposed an alternative wording of the principle, which caused concern here, for other arbitrators to consider and vote upon. You can comment on the proposed principles at Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Monty_Hall_problem/Proposed_decision. Geometry guy 23:42, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks again for working with this. — Carl (CBM · talk)

The links being said to show Original Research

Regardless of the OR statement of principle that ArbCom may or may not adopt, I am concerned by what the examples of what they are claiming is OR in their statement of facts -- specifically the three claimed examples cited at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Monty_Hall_problem/Proposed_decision#Article_has_been_subject_of_original_research Article has been subject of original research.

As far as I can see (more detail on the decision talk page here, here, and here), none of these three examples properly constitute original research.

It seems to me that this is no small issue, because the examples Arbcom cite are going to be the most direct operational indication of what they consider to be OR, and how they mean whatever principles they adopt to be interpreted.

I'd welcome second and further opinions on these examples, and whether we think they are OR or not, because the Arbcom members are refusing to engage on the merits of these links; yet are still happily voting for the proposition. Jheald (talk) 09:55, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

This is extremely concerning for me as well. There are thousands of words on that talk page detailing how horrible these words are, and no one except Elen (which is epically wrong bout what is OR and what isn't) seems to bother reading these concerns. Perhaps we should write message on the arbitrator's talk page to address the concerns raised on the talk page about how the all the proposed wordings are utterly horrible. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 21:53, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:CALC seems open to improvement

Even some ArbCom members refused to vote on using its exact current wording in their principles (which they are still struggling to formulate in that respect). So, clearly WP:CALC is deficient. I suggest you guys take this opportunity to improve the wording in the policy, so you won't have to put out this kind of fire in the future. All the best, Tijfo098 (talk) 18:27, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think wp:calc was ever meant to be used as a guideline for quantitative disciplines, rather the sort of routine calculations that one does in history and biography articles for instance. It's obviously insufficient to cover more mathematical articles, but I don't know if it's worth emending the policy, or just clarifying its intended scope: it doesn't exclude things that aren't just pure arithmetic from the more quantitative articles, provided no original research is committed. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:00, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Clarifying its scope would be my choice too. We don't want editors to start making inferences in other article claiming that "A implies B" from RS1 "B implies C" from RS2 therefore ... because in social science in particular B from RS1 is often not quite the same as B from RS2. Yes, math and a few closely related formal sciences are an epistemic exception, where inferences like the above are possible without much "OR". But I'm not sure how to say that without being too pretentious or too insulting. The current arbcom wording, something along the lines of: it's fine if it has consensus and nobody asks for citation, seems better, and has the elephant standing for it. -) Tijfo098 (talk) 23:29, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Latest proposal

There is a new proposed wording. It works for me. Does anyone else have any thoughts about it? Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:11, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

It leaves matrix calculus as a dead article, but that may be for the best. The only sourced notation so far provided is misleading, and (IMHO) unusable for real mathematics. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

The essential thing I think that WP:CALC is missing is a reiteration that the methods must not be novel and it must not support a novel conclusion. Basically it shouldn't support original research. An example illustrating a method or a straightforward indication of how a result is obtained is okay. Saying "it is okay because I have only used standard methods to derive it, it is straightforward mathematics" is an immediate red flag. Dmcq (talk) 15:10, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I see WP:CALC as a separate entity from original research in mathematics. That's meant to cover routine "everyday" calculations (like in a biography or history article), rather than derivations in quantitative articles. I think the Arbitration Committee has, with this last proposal, finally realized that WP:CALC is ill-suited as a criteria for original research in mathematics. There seems to be some support here for clarifying the intended scope of WP:CALC. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:17, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Decision

The decision has been publicized.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

MathJax update

Just to let you know, I have updated my mathJax user script to recent version 1.1 of MathJax. Notable change is the support for webfonts via CDN (i.e., no local font installation requirements). Details at the user script documentation page. Feedback welcome. Nageh (talk) 21:37, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Currently on the Main Page ...

... is John Milnor, who has been awarded the Abel Prize. The article is OK as such, but could obviously be expanded quite a bit. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:43, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Drinker's paradox

There seems to be a bit of hostility to the newly-listed article Drinker's paradox on the article's discussion page. Various editors are grumbling about deletion, original research, etc. I thought perhaps someone in the project should investigate. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:16, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

You mean Drinker paradox, right? Most of the opposition seems to be about the title; it is argued that it is not a "paradox". Which, as far as it goes, I would agree with, but it can still be an interesting and possibly notable illustration of some tension between the mathematical tradition of using English to express logical formulae, and what English sentences usually mean in an everyday setting. –Henning Makholm (talk) 12:31, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

This sort of thing is covered by WP:COMMONNAME. This is clearly the common name as it is found in a number of books, which by the way also means it will not be deleted. Whether it is actually a paradox or not is only slightly relevant and certainly would not trump the common name criterion in this case. Lots of people have this funny idea that a title is the article whereas it is simply a way to find the article which is what common name is all about. Dmcq (talk) 13:00, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Could you add references to some of that number of books to the article? I found it strange that the only source it gives is to Smullyan's book, which according to the article itself called it the "drinking principle" rather than the "drinker paradox". So the title is currently unsourced, which is not good when it has been seen to cause contention. –Henning Makholm (talk) 13:31, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

maybe make a redirect from "drinker principle" too? regards "difference between [propositional logic] and what English sentences usually mean": no. there is no difference there. the grammar, syntax,, AND semantics is exactly the same; it is a perfectly ordinary sentence and the meaning of it is no different whether you address it with formal logic or with "ordinary interpretation". the difference lies in what happens after the sentence has been linguistically parsed and what not converted into formal relations. up to that point nothing has diverged, and at that point you will have the same thing in either case. once in the form of formal relations, however, differences of two types are introduced: 1.) implicit assumptions, and 2.) rules of logical manipulation. regarding 2.), a person untrained in logic is more likely to use the rules given to them by instinct, which are incorrect. well, in a certain sense. they are not designed to be correct, they are designed to be quick, and to be decent approximations, and to the end they serve well. but, fundamentally, there are incorrect. regarding 1.) the sentence as is gives incomplete information, from a logical point of view, eve. do you mean just right now? this round? ever? here logic differs from conventional usage, in filling in this missing information: logic always refers to the instant, unless otherwise explicitly noted. whereas conventionally we fill in this missing information with "...ever...". and this is how one gets to the difference in conclusions. they are both actually correct, it is simply a matter of how you fill in the missing information. Kevin Baas^talk 13:40, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I suppose in that sense it is a "paradox", because most (if not all) so-called "paradoxes" really just appear as such because there was a missing piece of information that we didn't realize was missing. really when you include the missing information you see that there is no paradox at all. nature simply does not do "paradoxes". Kevin Baas^talk 13:43, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I just tried out "Drinker paradox" | "Drinker principle" in Google books and scholar and there's two pages of references, some to principle, some to paradox and various ones having a 's after the first word! At least there's paradox ones predating the article, I keep worrying that somebody will stick a wrong title in and that takes over from what people were actually using :) Dmcq (talk) 14:14, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

A paradox is an *apparent* nonsensical or *apparently* false statement, which on careful consideration can be seen to be correct after all. So it seems to me that the drinker paradox is a paradox indeed! Or: it shows that ordinary logic is maybe not so appropriate to logical reasoning in everyday life, as most of us thought. Quite a few paradoxes in mathematics can be seen as symptomatic of inadequacies of the "usual axioms* of present day mathematics. But either way, this is the sort of thing that is usually called a paradox, so I see no problem at all with the nomenclature. Richard Gill (talk) 16:07, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

The term paradox is fairly informal. Any puzzling statement may be called a paradox. Paradoxes are not a big deal, because they can be resolved. A paradox that is a big deal, and that cannot be resolved (easily) is called an antinomy. In order to resolve an antinomy, one has to forsake an important part of one's intellectual heritage. The Barber paradox is resolved by accepting that, well, there just isn't such a village with such a barber. In order to resolve an antinomy, one may have to reject long standing accepted fundamental principles. Over the course of history antinomies eventually become mere paradoxes because our knowledge and language catches up with them.Greg Bard (talk) 16:37, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Tai's method

Apparently someone rediscovered the trapezoidal rule and managed to get it published. See Tai's method. Just an article about the trapezoidal rule under another name? Or an article about how something weird like that can happen? Either way, is the article in some way worth keeping? Michael Hardy (talk) 03:49, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

It is claimed that more than 100 works cite the article. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:53, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

If the claimed citations do check out, I'd say it is ok to keep it. Also imho this is partially not a math issue, but a question for the applied field/domain in which the "discovery" was made (here biology, medicine I guess). Many apllied sciences have there own names and versions of math theorems and though I can't think of another example on top of my head, I'm pretty sure there is quite a number of such cases. If the name/method in question is well known/established enough (not among the math community but in the domain in which it originated), WP should provide an article or a redirect. Which of the 2 options is better needs to be judged on a case by case basis.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:21, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Use of maths symbols in html

The 'Math and logic' symbols in the editor include a load of special symbols. Is it okay to use all these in maths articles? For instance can I say ℝ rather than $\mathbb {R}$ in inline maths? And by the way I don't believe I should bold that as in ℝ, would that be right too? Dmcq (talk) 12:56, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

The WP:MOSMATH, which can always be revisited, recommends the ordinary boldface R to the blackboard bold ℝ, due to the latter being potentially unsupported in some browser configurations. I agree that ℝ is wrong (in fact, I don't think this can be typeset in LaTeX easily either). I really don't like the way inline PNG looks in the middle of running text, so I would avoid using the <math> form in any case. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:41, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Well I guess I better raise something at MOSMATH then because it seems silly to have them prompted in the editor and then deprecate them. I think I'd prefer to have the text and the stand along formulae match up better and having those symbols available would help greatly with that but it really needs to be checked. Dmcq (talk) 15:49, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

"Inline" as opposed to "displayed" use of TeX within Wikipedia has always been problematic. Things like the following can happen:

blah blah blah $e^{x^{3}}\,$ blah blah blah.

Obviously the e should be at the same level as the surrounding text and the x³ should be in superscript, but that's not what happens. Also on some browsers, the part in math tags looks comically gigantic. You can also get siuations like this:

There are examples (such as $\int {\frac {\sin x}{x}}\,dx$

) in which etc. etc. etc.

The right parenthesis is on the next line! It also happens with periods, commas, etc. "Displayed" TeX, on the other hand, generally looks quite good:

$\int _{0}^{x}{\frac {\sin u}{u}}\,du.$

So I generally prefer non-TeX notation in an "inline" setting. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:54, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

N-dimensional space

Over at Talk:N-dimensional space we're having a traditional merging discussion. The issue is that these articles (and probably others) all contain redundant material: Space (mathematics), Vector space, Dimension, Dimension (vector space), Basis (linear algebra), Euclidean space, Manifold (mathematics), N-dimensional space. So I thought I'd bring it up here.

My opinion: Each kind of space (vector, Euclidean, manifold, etc.) obviously deserves its own article. Additionally the Space (mathematics) and Dimension articles seem useful as catalogues/overviews. But Dimension (vector space) could be merged into Basis (linear algebra) and/or Vector space, and N-dimensional space could be merged into Space (mathematics) and/or Dimension.

Any comments? Mgnbar (talk) 16:39, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Special case

Special case is currently a stub article that could use a lot of work, both within the article and in other articles that should link to it. Get busy. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:45, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

QUERY - Aren't changes on a page supposed to be reported????????????????

Hi! I use Wikipedia very often and thought for sure that a policy of yours was to add in a "page history" page that showed any changes to an article and by whom for that page?

I ask because your page on Summation had early in its write-up an image of an example of Induction ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/5/d/1/5d1ba66a7aca2c258985399ff22410ef.png ) ... odd that that very image wasn't there just a few days ago for another image that was the exact same equation but in different form.

I looked for the history of why and who changed that image because its odd I been coincidently writing a paper on the example of Induction used of the original image and linking this very page for that image and sending that paper to leading Set Theory specialists and other university piers and that image was very helpfull in dealing with the issues the paper regarded. Now suddenly someone changed the image to a different example of Induction and I find the timing very peculiar. It doesn't change anything about my paper except for it to be easier to understand for anyone needing to see the example of Induction I was using from here but is now changed. I only linked to the page on Summation.

Anyways, how did that image change on the Summation page without anyone ever knowing it happened or why in the pages history?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by G2thef (talk • contribs)

The history of summation is here. The sum you mention was put into the article on April 17, 2010, in exactly the same form it is there now. It is possible that some time in between then and now, someone changed it into the form you prefer and that is was then soon after changed back, but that sort of thing is much harder to find since it would take scanning all the changes to the article rather than simply doing a binary search. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:50, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

The assistance of WikiProject Mathematics requested

In looking over some project work I did for an undergrduate computing degree I noted that the academic supervising me had come up with what he called a 'slew' transform.

I've put a rough note in my userspace at Wikiversity (because of concerns about verifability here) The link is : http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:ShakespeareFan00/Slew_transform

I'd appreciate someone from the WikiProject that understand 3D transformation stuff, to help provide a better citation , or indeed a creative commons licensed proof that will show what's stated is correct.

A 'slew' transform is a transform where 'distances' parrallel to an axes before a 'slew' are preserved, as opposed to a 'shear' where they are not.

I'm also trying to understand how to abstractly define a 'grid'. ( The best definition I can think of for 2D is that a 'grid' is a regular arrangement of points and lines that fills a plane.

For a 'cubic' style of grid, this regular arrangement can be more formally considered as a (Lattice Graph?) formed by the Cartesian product of 2 path graphs, representing lines perpendicular to each other. However, I'm thinking I need to put in some kind of constraint on where the grid points can be placed, and I'm not entirly sure how I specfiy that constraint in an abstract math way...

A 'polar' style of grid is however more complex, being the Cartesian product of a number of path graphs(?) with some kind of cycle graph , ( aka a Prism Graph?). Again some kind of constraint would need to be defined on where grid points can be placed..

And finally Has this sort of thing been done before in a textbook a math noob can understand? Sfan00 IMG (talk) 22:36, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Regarding your first request, I am not clear exactly what the text on that page is trying to say, but I do not see how the examples can be correct, as they claim to modify the Z or Y axes but do nothing in those directions.

Regarding your second request, I think you want lattice (group).

Also, I suggest you ask these types of questions at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics in the future. Ozob (talk) 23:23, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, re the 'slew' transform, can you leave some thoughts on my Wikiversity talk page ?

The context of the slew transform by the way in the original project was based on being able to convert a 'cubic' lattice to be transformed into a 'heaxagonal' or 'parallelogrammic lattice' one (in 2 dimensions).

Can you suggest a better way to describe what a slew transform appears to be doing, because I'd like to be able to explain it clearly to other people? Sfan00 IMG (talk) 09:52, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

You might find the explanation at Affine transformation#Affine transformation of the plane more helpful. The problem you mention is a special case of what is talked about there. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:17, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Minimal negation operator

While this unreferenced article looks cool, I can't find anything in google books to support it. WP:OR? Tijfo098 (talk) 05:21, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

The talk page there seem to indicated I'm right (the creator is now indef blocked for something similar.) Tijfo098 (talk) 05:23, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Looks pretty original to me. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:32, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Wow. A Jon Awbrey article lavishly illustrated by Lipedia. Unfortunately it appears that Peirce never wrote about anything else with a similar name. In that case we might have hit a logic crankery jackpot. Let's take this to AfD. If this was a real notable topic, some mathematician would have noticed through all the years and especially since 11 August. Hans Adler 06:59, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I just had a look through Awbrey's contributions and the following just strike me as being iffy. Some are redirects, others are just bits of Pierce's writings that probably could be a paragraph somewhere else I think. Things like boolean domain I just cant see the point of a separate article from boolean but logical matrix I can see is probably okay. Others like sign relation I just plain don't understand. Semeiotic seems to be some variant spelling of Semiotic by Charles Saunders Pierce.

• Ampheck
• Boolean domain
• Boolean-valued function
• Categorical set theory
• Comprehension (logic)
• Continuous predicate
• Descriptive science
• Entitative graph
• Finitary boolean function
• Formal sciences
• Hypostatic abstraction
• Hypostatic object
• Logic of Relatives (1870)
• Logic of Relatives (1883)
• Logic of information
• Logic of relatives
• Logical graph
• Logical matrix
• Multigrade operator
• Normative science
• Parametric operator
• Pragmatic maxim
• Prescisive abstraction
• Projection (mathematics)
• Projection (set theory)
• Relation construction
• Relation reduction
• Relative term
• Semeiotic
• Semiotic information theory
• Sign relation
• Sole sufficient operator
• Zeroth-order logic

I guess most of these are perfectly okay but is there some that even someone familiar with Charles Saunders Pierce isn't familiar with or thinks is unnecessary? Dmcq (talk) 18:50, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I recognize most of these terms as being used by Peirce in his logical writings. Peirce's preferred spelling "semiotic" as "semeiotic", as you suspected.

I have only an amateur understanding of his logic. Peirce had an anti-Fisherian approach to terminology, where he thought it bad sport to use an existing word for a new idea (and would have denounced the Fisherian vice of switching between the two, e.g. "information", etc.). This explains why Peirce introduced so much novel terminology, and why he was less successful as a salesman than Fisher.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 20:47, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Logical graph is a nebulous article that could use work. I think the term existential graph has been used more recently, and perhaps even by Pierce. Tijfo098 (talk) 04:09, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Jacob Barnett

There is a deletion discussion under the auspices of our project that could benefit from its input. Sławomir Biały (talk) 00:21, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Apr 2011

Montante's method

Is this a notable article? Jakob.scholbach (talk) 21:19, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

It's entirely unreferenced, and there are no google scholar hits. I am suspicious of the supposed origin of this algorithm as well: the attribution feels like self-promotion and original research. At any rate, there is a well-known fraction-free algorithm called the Bareiss algorithm from 1968 that predates the date of 1973 given here. As far as I can tell, the two algorithms are the same or very nearly the same. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:34, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Eswiki has an article about the supposed discoverer. Doesn't look quite like run-of-the-mill self-promotion (modulo my lack of knowledge of Spanish). Could possibly be a case of people naming the result after the one among several independent discoverers that they identify with the most. If it's really the same thing, it ought to redirect to a common article, which then should document the various names. –Henning Makholm (talk) 22:08, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

But there is no evidence of anyone calling it Montante's method, and I can't find any reference to Montante regarding the method. The interview here refers to apparently unpublished papers by Montante Pardo, in which he apparently calls it the "Método Montante". That's more than a little questionable, and does look very much like self-promotion and original research to me. Sławomir Biały (talk) 22:21, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

There are some Google hits in Spanish that look like the algorithm is taught under that name at various institutions in (mostly) Mexico: [33] [34] [35] [36]. These links appear to be too different to all be self-promotion.

It feels at least plausible that some Spanish-speaking project member would be able to dig up a reliable source for the name. Anyone have access to a collection of Mexican linear algebra textbooks? –Henning Makholm (talk) 22:52, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps Google scholar and Google books don't index Spanish-language books, but there is an utter absence of any kind of relevant hits for "Metodo Montante" or "Montante's method", and variants in reliable published sources. This very algorithm appeared in a widely cited article by Bareiss five years before Montante allegedly came up with it. It seems to be a neologism that should be avoided. Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:09, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

So, should it be merged into the article on the Bareiss algorithm and attributed to him? JRSpriggs (talk) 09:30, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Since the article seems to be of rather low quality, I nominated it for deletion. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 19:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

People here seem to call it Montante's Method. I found an interview published by a different university in the same city, here. I cannot truly attest to whether this method was found independently or not, but it is a method whose credit is given to him, at least here in the city. Perhaps another Mexican could confirm if the term is used outside of Monterrey/Nuevo León? And about the article deletion, please understand that EsWiki is waaaay behind EnWiki. If we were to quality-test every article, most would most likely disappear. While I agree that articles in Spanish should also follow Wikipedia's guidelines, I must also say that EsWiki is still a work in progress, and deletion of articles will damage more than what it would help, unless information found on them is proven to be actually false. Also, don't always expect Google Scholar hits about Mexican universities, you fail to see the (possibly sad) context they work in.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.138.107.2 (talk • contribs) 02:00:48, 14 October 2013 Note:Comment added after archival.···Vanischenu (mc/talk) 00:51, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Fourth Dimension

An editor is insisting in marking the lead of Fourth dimension as dubious in "In mathematics, the fourth dimension, or a four-dimensional ("4D") space,^{[dubious – discuss]} is an abstract concept derived by generalizing the rules of three-dimensional space". They say a four dimensional space could be any sort of space not necessarily Euclidean whereas others have said it referes in this instance to an extension of Euclidean 3-space. I would like to remove the dubious tag or otherwise resolve this. This is a bit similar I guess to the N-dimensional space business mentioned in a section above but as far as I can see there has been no real follow up to that, also I think they are a bit different in that N-dimensional space is actually used for many other things like configuration spaces whereas four-dimensional space is rather specific. Talk is at Talk:Fourth dimension#Title?. Dmcq (talk) 11:00, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

A mathematician could use the term 4-dimensional space in any discussion of a "space" that has "dimension" 4. For example, a vector space (over any field) with a basis consisting of 4 elements, a manifold whose charts map to R⁴, a manifold whose charts map to C⁴, a topological space of Hausdorff dimension 4, etc. So I feel strongly that 4-dimesional space should not be restricted to 4-dimensional Euclidean space. Mgnbar (talk) 12:57, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

The definite article seems out of place in that article's lede. CRGreathouse (t | c) 13:12, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that it's a historical usage, and the name of the article was taken from the book The Fourth Dimension by Charles Hinton (1912). — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:14, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

@Mngbar: If you ask a mathematician about "a point in 4-dimensional space", with no qualifiers and not saying "a four dimensional space", she will immediately assume you mean 4D Euclidean space. The term "4-dimensional space" as a proper noun is completely tied to Euclidean spaces in ordinary mathematical usage. We have to add other words to make it clear when we mean some other sort of four-dimensional space. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:14, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

You raise a good point. Out of context, it would be unlikely for the mathematician to be referring to a particular complex manifold or topological space. However, I argue that "a point in 4-dimensional space" would just as commonly refer to an element of a four-dimensional vector space. In teaching, we often draw pictures of vector spaces, even when we have not assumed any Euclidean structure on them. Furthermore, a major point of contention at Talk:Fourth dimension is whether "four-dimensional space" should default to Euclidean or Minkowski space. There is a strong physics influence here, and maybe there should be. Mgnbar (talk) 13:43, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Looking at the lead again the 'a' in 'a four dimensional space' looks out of place to me but the 'the' in 'the fourth dimension' is correct in the context of referring to 4 dimensional Euclidean space. The lead does talk about that physics deals with four dimensional spacetime but doesn't say strongly enough that the article is just dealing with a mathematical space rather than spacetime. The fourth dimension is also referred to in things like 'The Time Machine' where they mean something like a four dimensional Euclidean space where we are confined to a layer like in Abbot's book Flatland rather than anything like the modern conception of spacetime. Dmcq (talk) 20:44, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

There may be a strong 'physics' influence here, but in a broad way. In my experience, physicist avoid the term fourth dimention in favor of space-time. Ocassionally the will use the term 3+1 dimensions. On the other hand, there seems to be a popular understanding that time is the 'fourth dimension' such as what Dmcq mentions above. Without proof, I would guess that the most common reason for a user to goto the fourth dimension article is because of this popular misunderstanding of space-time. Some fraction would be interested in 4 spatial dimensions as well looking for concepts related to a non-self-intersecting Klein bottle, etc. I can't speak at all about why mathematicians would use it.

I have ran into similar arguments in other articles where people insist that space-time is four-dimensional or 4D (instead of 3D+1 or better yet not mentioning dimensions at all). I think part of the problem is combining fourth dimension with 4 dimensional (4D) space. To me at least 'fourth dimension' is a colloquial expression that could mean the extra dimension of either space or time, while 4 dimensional space could mean any group of 4 parameters and 4D is definitely 4 spatial dimensions.TStein (talk) 00:04, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Gauss–Codazzi equations vs. Gauss–Codazzi equations (relativity)

I have no idea what these two are about exactly, but these two articles seems to be about the same thing. Opinions on what should be done? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:16, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

They're the same, but both articles suffer from irreconcilable notational incompatibility. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:35, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Well I redirected Gauss–Codazzi equations (relativity) to Gauss–Codazzi equations. If someone wants to bother doing a merge, go right ahead. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:21, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Making sense of 0.000...01

Our page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:0.999.../FAQ lists a number of frequently asked questions about 0.999... One of the answers to these questions deals with the "number" 0.000...01 (with an implied infinity of zeros before the last digit). The answer asserts, correctly, that this number is meaningless as a real decimal. I added a brief parenthetical comment here to the effect that one can make sense of such a number in a proper extension of R, providing a link to a page where this is discussed. The parenthetical remark was apparently too much for the guardians of purity at 0.999... and was reverted, most recently here. I would appreciate some input. Tkuvho (talk) 20:24, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that is likely to just confuse people more. I don't have anything against the hyperreals, but I think that when people are already confused about something that's part of the grade school curriculum (real decimal expansions), we should be particularly hesitant to point them at even more difficult things that are not even part of the usual undergraduate curriculum (hyperreal decimal expansions). So I think the point of the FAQ is to be very simplistic. The article itself does discuss infinitesimals, as I think it should. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:30, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Are infinite decimals part of the grade school curriculum?? You are lucky if you get them in high school in many cases. The purpose of a FAQ page is not to address a particularly young segment of our readership, but to attempt to answer typical questions that might arise on the talk page. A number of inexperienced editors have reacted with interest to the suggestion that infinitesimals have a role to play here. Frankly, I don't see why the talk page is any less of a legitimate place to discuss infinitesimals than the 0.999... page itself. Tkuvho (talk) 21:00, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I have seen grade school curricula with the fact that 0.999... = 1 (specifically, the 10x - x = 9x proof). Ozob (talk) 21:28, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

You mean, "the 10x - x = 9 proof". --Boris Tsirelson (talk) 07:01, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. Ozob (talk) 11:29, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The fact that only rational numbers have repeating decimal expansion, and the algorithm for finding the corresponding rational from such an expansion, are common topics. Here is an NCTM worksheet that puts that skill in middle school. [37]. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:47, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Those are extremely useful formulas, indeed. From the point of view of a wider continuum, they hold up to an infinitesimal error if the infinity of periods is interpreted in terms of an infinite hypernatural. From the real view point, all such infinitesimal differences are erased by an application of limit or standard part. None of this contradicts the fact that student intuitions about "0.000...1" have a fruitful mathematical implementation. Tkuvho (talk) 04:56, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I think the game Hackenbush is a good illustration that these ideas are not altogether theoretical, that there may be very good reasons for saying that one 'value' is larger than another even though sticking them on the real line leaves no room for difference . Dmcq (talk) 11:45, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Excellent point. There are several ways of making sense of the "0.000...01" intuition, Hackenbush being one of them. These are closely related to the surreals. Meanwhile, the maximal surreals have recently been shown to be isomorphic to the maximal hyperreals. So really it's the same basic idea. But getting this past the purists at the FAQ page seems to require a titanic effort. They are currently busy eliminating any vestiges of an alternative to the reigning dogma. Tkuvho (talk) 12:18, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The article itself already does cover infinitesimals, of course; I don't think anyone is removing that. It seems to me that an FAQ does not need to cover every alternative theory. The point of the FAQ is to give very simple answers to a few questions, not to replace the main article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:22, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Here's an analogy. Suppose we had a FAQ in solar system about whether the sun orbits a stationary Earth or the Earth orbits a stationary Sun. The right answer to that would be "modern science accepts the theory that the planets of the solar system are in orbit around the Sun (heliocentrism)." We would not want to go into length about how a few modern scientists have been interested in geocentrism and about how it is possible, after some effort, to reformulate things in a geocentric coordinate system. The lack of infinitesimals on the real line is similar: the thing which students need to learn first is that there are no infinitesimals on the real line. Only after they are comfortable with that fact could they be in a position to study other systems in which there are infinitesimals, but which (like geocentrism) are considered only potentially-useful fictions by modern researchers. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:31, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. I am obviously not going to pursue the FAQ thread if you are against it. Perhaps we can settle for a more meaningful mention of infinitesimals in the lede of 0.999.... The following comment is somewhat predictable, but I will make it anyway: I agree with your geocentric/heliocentric analogy, provided the roles are reversed. Tkuvho (talk) 14:05, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the article should definitely discuss infinitesimals in some depth, since infinitesimals are the heart of the issue from my perspective. Another analogy that I have in mind is quantum mechanics. Bell's theorem shows that quantum mechanics is incompatible with the naive idea that an event in one place must take some amount of time to influence events in another place. Surely many people would find that surprising at first, and there are always some people who look for a way to work around the theorem (so-called "loopholes"). But the overall consensus of physicists (as far as I have been told) is that the theorem is correct in rejecting local variable theories in quantum mechanics. For an outsider like me, the primary question to ask is "why do physicists feel that way", rather than "what arguments can I use to avoid accepting what the experts have accepted". Similarly, I think that an article on 0.999 should emphasize why mathematicians treat it as equal to 1, which not only tells readers that fact but helps demonstrate the methodology of mathematics. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:54, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The readability of articles

I have just been reading a mathematics article about the Halting Problem (Turing et al) and found it to be very difficult to read. A lot of text books on subjects particularly in the field of science and maths have been written in this style and it leaves the reader frustrated and confused. Surely an encyclopedic article should be accessible to the widest audience possible? I think some simplification of the language with perhaps more steps and examples would help to get across to the reader some of the concepts involved. Readers are generally not stupid people (else why would they be there) but the knowledge should be communicated better. Language, next to knowledge, is the most important asset an encyclopedia can have.

Sam- Helsinki, Finland —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.231.106.209 (talk) 08:21, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Please have a look at the FAQ panel at the top of this page. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:31, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

It is not always easy to present technical material but if you come across a treatment that's more accessible, we can try to improve the wiki article as well. Tkuvho (talk) 10:43, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I just had a look at the article and while there are a few things that could be tidied up it seemed to me to be on the better side as far as readability of maths articles goes. It is quite difficult remembering what problems one had learning something so probably the best thing to do is to flag the specific bits that first give trouble and the bits you find hardest to follow. Dmcq (talk) 11:09, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The style/tone could also use some work there, e.g. Minsky exhorts the reader to be suspicious—although a machine may be finite, and finite automata "have a number of theoretical limitations": It reads like one of those controversial, he-says-she-says, social science articles. Tijfo098 (talk) 21:26, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Absurd numbers

In view of the date, please have a look at this article and confirm my suspicions. JohnCD (talk) 19:07, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

It's a blatant hoax. I've marked it for speedy deletion. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:14, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, zapped. I just wanted a second pair of eyes. JohnCD (talk) 19:27, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

One of the more elaborate hoaxes. Created on the appropriate calendar date for such. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:40, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad someone's watching. Still, I expect an interesting daily update tomorrow.  :-) Sławomir Biały (talk) 01:04, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Subdirect product and Subdirectly irreducible algebra

Can anyone think of a reason not to merge these? Tijfo098 (talk) 22:36, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Frobenius determinant theorem

Frobenius determinant theorem is a near-orphaned article. So if the internal-link-muse speaks to you, figure out which articles should link to it and add the links. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:37, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Futurama theorem

Does the Futurama theorem merit its own article ? A merger proposal is being discussed at Talk:Futurama theorem. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:15, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Tits group

The group of Jacques Tits is important in mathematics, and it might be a suitable article for this project to improve to Featured Status in time for next year's April Fool's Day.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 17:44, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I think DYK would make more sense, but DYK's strange rules make this incredibly hard, even with the special April Fools exemptions for timing. Hans Adler 18:32, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Eligibility for DYK would probably require some (other!) editors writing a fivefold expansion in a sandbox.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 19:35, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

There were a bunch of really obvious copy-editing issues that I've just taken care of. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:26, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Simon Davis (mathematician)

Opinions of Simon Davis (mathematician)? It's been prodded. It says he applies the theory of perfect numbers to physics. I wouldn't have guessed those would be connected, but maybe I'm just naive. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:14, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I started the article a long time ago; I don't think that I would start it now. His attempt to prove properties about OPNs via high-energy physics was a non-starter. CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:08, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Ivar Ekeland

It would seem that we currently have no article about Ivar Ekeland, although nine other articles link to it. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• Ekeland, Ivar (1979). "Nonconvex minimization problems". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. New Series. 1 (3): 443–474. doi:10.1090/S0273-0979-1979-14595-6. MR 0526967. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

 Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 15:05, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The German, French, and Spanish Wikipedias each have an article about him. Michael Hardy (talk) 14:56, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

That's helpful. (After the stressful shuttle-gossiping about the Monty Hall problem arbitration, I just have been writing about ridiculous topics, lately.) But I can translate the French article in a week or so.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 15:03, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Tkuvho has now created the article and some others have contributed to it. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:35, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Lead image of Pi

The article Pi is about the mathematical constant. There is a question about whether the lead image should be relevant to the topic of the article, or should be an image of the Greek letter. Please comment at Talk:Pi#Pi "Unrolled" animation. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:41, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

If you have time while you're there, comments are being sought about moving Pi to π. Cheers, Ben (talk) 00:53, 4 April 2011 (UTC).

π (pi)

The usage of Π is under discussion, see Talk:Pi. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 01:27, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

John Rainwater

Many of you will enjoy reading about John Rainwater, who led the functional-analysis seminar at the University of Washington over a 5-decade career. His research achievements and long-relationship with UW are remarkable especially given his graduate-student record, which included plagiarism and planting an explosive device for his professor. Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 09:51, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Note two related articles on other functional analysts, Robert Phelps and Peter Orno.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 02:34, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Requested move of Fourth dimension

There's a request to move Fourth dimension to Four-dimensional space at Talk:Fourth dimension#Requested move Dmcq (talk) 00:52, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Boolean algebra content forks?

We seem to have three articles on the same subject:

• Boolean logic
• Boolean algebra
• Boolean algebra (logic)

Does anyone know why? Are there any objective reasons to have three articles on this relatively elementary topic? — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:49, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, I had redirected Boolean logic to Boolean algebra because (1) it was clear after doing my research for the lead for Boolean algebra that it's the same topic, and (2) there wasn't much in boolean logic that isn't in boolean algebra; Venn diagrams are in, and even google queries. The only thing that is not in are SQL queries, but there aren't conceptually different (not when restrcited to discussion about boolean operators), and there are thousands of programming languages (PL) out there, why SQL in particular? There's a CS-ish article on boolean expression that could cover that, but as you can see from its stubby nature, nobody (except StuRat) thought the syntactic difference in how boolean expressions are written in various PLs matter much. Tijfo098 (talk) 02:15, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Enough reasons for merging Boolean logic yet again (!) can be seen at the talk page section Talk:Boolean_logic#Entire_Article_Rewrite and following section Talk:Boolean_logic#Problematic_article. Hans Adler pointed out at the time that StuRat was in violation of WP:OWN and WP:POVFORK. At the time StuRat had reverted the merging of his article by reviving it. Just now he's reverted Tijfo098's merge of it. In view of the many circumstances mitigating against this abysmally badly written article that StuRat owns, I've undone that revert. If StuRat wishes to reinstate his article a third time, we can offer him the choice of whether he prefers to be blocked for WP:OWN, WP:POVFORK, or WP:3RR. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 03:26, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, StuRat promptly reverted my redirect, so I've started an official RfC on Talk:Boolean logic to attract opinion from previously uninvolved editors (and perhaps non-WPM editors as well to avoid some sort of systemic bias) as WP:DR recommends. Tijfo098 (talk) 05:55, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Now, Boolean algebra (logic) needs more attention. There may be some material there worth merging (particularly the bibliography), but it seems too WP:NOTTEXTBOOK, e.g. explaining in detail how some expression is different if read as a Boolean rather than numeric. But even CS101 classes would give students a basic idea of type system. Tijfo098 (talk) 02:15, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I do not own Boolean algebra (logic). It is true that I wrote more than 95% of it, but I have no objection to merging it with Boolean algebra. I'm all for anything to reduce the mess that the absurd proliferation of articles on Boolean algebra has become. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 03:26, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, that article is well-written, so perhaps there is a way to keep it available to the public on WikiMedia servers. I don't now much about that, but I think Wikiversity would accept that page as-is. Although Wikiversity doesn't get the same google juice as Wikipedia, we could link it from Boolean algebra; I'm not sure what are the standards for that. Perhaps someone here has experience in that area? Tijfo098 (talk) 12:21, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I was going to suggest as an alternative to move it to Introduction to Boolean algebra, but there's already yet another (introductory?) article on the same topic there. Actually, except for the lead, that article is nearly indentical to what Boolean algebra has now, so it's conceivable to move Boolean algebra (logic) over it. (Some care is needed to probably attributed the current content of [[bolean algebra, so, perhaps the current Intro should be moved to a subpage of Boolean algebra first.) Tijfo098 (talk) 09:48, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I would guess it is in the natural order of things to delete Boolean algebra (logic) which (at first view) is subsumed by the new Boolean algebra as far as coverage is concerned and which extra details can be either added to the current "Boolean algebra" page or moved to specialized pages. However, it would be a pity to just dispatch its contents and delete it. So maybe, as it was suggested above by Tijfo098, that might be a good article to Wikiversity (that I don't know well actually how it works but that might be an alternative if some people think it is relevant). --Hugo Herbelin (talk) 20:19, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

There are several options:

• It could fill in wikiversity:Topic:Computer logic#Boolean Algebra, although I guess it is just too big for that.
• It could replace wikiversity:Boolean algebra (an abandoned page with nothing worth preserving).
• It could make a new chapter of wikibooks:Formal Logic.

I guess the second option would be best because that's an isolated page where it wouldn't be immediately surrounded by inferior stuff. Another option would be to move it to Citizendium. It doesn't have a Boolean algebra article yet. Of course in none of these locations it would get much attention. Hans Adler 20:46, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

The second option is fine by me. The upshot as I understand it is that Boolean algebra (logic) would (for now) become merely a redirect to Boolean algebra (later it might be expanded to Main article status parallel to Boolean algebra (structure). Its former text can go to wikiversity:Boolean algebra if that's kosher according to everyone involved. It's fine by me---as I said, although I wrote almost all of it, I don't own it, Wikipedia does. Or maybe it does: does Wikipedia continue to own text that has been deleted? There should be a mechanism whereby Wikipedia abandons deleted text after a suitable grace period in order to allow others to claim or reclaim it.

While on the subject of lightening up, I propose to put a merge tag on Boolean algebras canonically defined aimed at merging its source-able parts into Boolean algebra (structure) which is in dire need of more substantive material.

In the opposite direction, I'm considering writing a new article Boolean algebra (presentations) as a Main Article covering the many presentations of both Boolean operations (featuring in particular Post's completeness characterization as it appears in Boolean algebras canonically defined, along with complexity results about relative succinctness of different bases) and Boolean axiomatizations (featuring complemented distributive lattices and Boolean rings and why both are important, but also listing some of the more impressively succinct axiomatizations such as Huntington's axiom, Robbins's axiom, Wolfram's axiom, etc.). Boolean algebra is unusual among equational theories in having a great many presentations. Suggestions, objections, etc.? --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 00:57, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Looking again at Boolean algebra (logic) I notice a section on derivation that could form the nucleus of another Main-article subtopic of Boolean algebra, namely Boolean algebra (proof systems) or something like that. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 01:00, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I think they should rather be called something like proof systems in Boolean algebra or presentations of Boolean algebras. If they're sourceable, that is, and not original synthesis. --Trovatore (talk) 01:09, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that a List of equivalent definitions of Boolean algebras (or whatever the title) would be very useful and I would indeed recommend it to be not too much pure original research nor too much textbook-style (and possibly not at all of this kind). Such an article could typically also include non-equational, e.g. order-based presentations.

About a "proof system" article based on Boolean algebra (logic)#Derivations, I'm a bit skeptical. Part of this section should better go to a new page equational reasoning which (in my opinion inappropriately) links to universal algebra but which I think deserves both a larger and more operational approach, for instance by connecting it to rewriting.

I don't know what a more-senior-than-me wikipedian would say here, but my impression is that wikipedia also needs experts like you for consolidating the existing articles and for weaving more connections between articles. An easy road map in this direction would precisely be to merge the "canonically" article, without losing the technical content (creating e.g. an Examples of Boolean algebras subtopic) and ideally adding the new technical contents mentioned in previous discussions: atomicity, completeness, freeness, saturation. --Hugo Herbelin (talk) 23:11, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, there is a book chapter in Padmanabhan & Rudeanu [38] (full ref given in Boolean algebra (structure)), so I have created Axiomatization of Boolean algebras as a redirect, but it's conceivable that it could become a list-type sub-article at some point. I don't have interest in developing it myself though. Tijfo098 (talk) 21:45, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what the purported proof systems article could contain that's not already in propositional calculus. Can someone enlighten me on that? Tijfo098 (talk) 21:57, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Two-element one

There's a proposal to merge that as well at BATF. Tijfo098 (talk) 20:09, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Lightstone

A. H. Lightstone is on sale here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/A._H._Lightstone Tkuvho (talk) 15:20, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Could someone not involved in the discussion close it? Tkuvho (talk) 11:21, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry too much about that; it's linked to the appropriate daily logs, and the admins who patrol those logs generally close AfDs pretty punctually. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:58, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Merge of subrandom numbers and Low-discrepancy sequence

I've proposed a merger of these articles at Talk:Subrandom numbers. It's not a merger that I myself feel competent enough to carry out, though. Are there any volunteers here? Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:51, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

New article Exact_Prime_Counting_Method

Could a mathematician take a look at this new article by a new contributor - it seems a bit odd to me but I don't know much about this subject.--Physics is all gnomes (talk) 13:31, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems to be a very idiosyncratic version of the sieve of Eratosthenes. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:46, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

The statement in the lead: "It works efficiently for infinitely large primes." with a reference citing a post on google groups [39] seems a bit dodgy. In fact, a lot of the article is a direct copy of that post, or vice versa. Is this saying anything useful or should it just be deleted?--Physics is all gnomes (talk) 13:55, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Somebody copied Sieve of Eratosthenes and threw in a little original research. It should be deleted. It references [40] by M. M. Musatov so I guess we have another addition for Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Martin.musatov. See Talk:Mersenne prime#For discussion for a disproof of his recent false claim [41] of discovering the largest known primes. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Now proposed for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Exact Prime Counting Method. -- The Anome (talk) 14:26, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Cool, thanks guys.--Physics is all gnomes (talk) 14:34, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

MHP FAR

I have nominated Monty Hall problem for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Tijfo098 (talk) 22:58, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Cut locus

A somewhat odd and certainly under-referenced article. I looked it up after this thread, which is certainly enough to show the interest of this concept as basic geometry. (Of which I wasn't aware.) The corresponding Cut locus (Riemannian manifold) is better, but still looks neglected. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:54, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Artin's c.........

Artin's conjecture on primitive roots and Artin's constant substantially overlap with each other. Each has a hatnote linking to the other. Should they get merged? Michael Hardy (talk) 03:19, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

It appears the latter article was created yesterday and seemed to be pretty much an exact copy of the former, so I'm just going to go ahead and make it a redirect again (also note that the hatnote at the former is *not* a link to the latter, rather it is a link to something entirely different also called "Artin's conjecture"). RobHar (talk) 04:03, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Recommendation to delete an uneeded redirect for Template:Maths rating

I wanted to let you know I submitted a recommendation to delete an unused and probably uneeded redirect relating to template:Maths rating. You can see the request here. --Kumioko (talk) 19:53, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Inappropriate language

Inappropriate language is being used at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:0.999.../Arguments Tkuvho (talk) 11:25, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

If I understand that correctly, he's calling himself a moron. If he wants to do that, he's imho free to do so.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:06, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I think Nongendered added the "moron" sub-head when he responded to Leonid 2. It has now been removed by Staecker. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:14, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Taylor series GAN

Taylor series, a top importance article, has been nominated for good article status (see WP:GACR for good article criteria). The review is here. We need reviewers and probably also editors. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:18, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Fuzzy matrix theory

Hi all,
I stumbled upon Fuzzy matrix theory, and it looked slightly odd and fringey. The sole source is this which looks rather like cargo-cult maths to me; so I've sent it to AfD. All expert inputs would be welcomed on the AfD page... alternatively, if it could be rescued somehow, that's cool too. bobrayner (talk) 21:48, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Center of alternating groups

A₄ is centerless

Until my revision the article Center (group theory) stated that

"The center of the alternating group A_n is trivial for n ≥ 5."

That may be true, but it sounds as if A₄ had a nontrivial center, which is not true, as can be seen in the Cayley table on the right. So maybe it should read

"The center of the alternating group A_n is trivial for n ≥ 4."

If someone knows that's true he may add it to the article. Until now the sentence is <!---hidden--->. Lipedia (talk) 09:42, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Another way to see it is that $A_{4}$ is the group of Euclidean rotations preserving the regular tetrahedron. Each non-identity element stabilizes a unique line through the origin, and these lines can be different from each other. Sławomir Biały (talk) 10:46, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Wright Camera

Help. Trying to wikify Wright Camera (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) but, it needs some math expertise. Thanks,  Chzz  ►  05:58, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Some Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy expertise would seem like a likelier choice to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:02, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Proofs at Taylor's theorem

The article Taylor's theorem has a largish proliferation of proofs. (It used to have three, and has recently had as many as five. Now it's down to four. At least I've recently simplified two of those considerably.) I can see the usefulness of having some simple proofs that illustrate the basic relevant techniques (like the Cauchy mean value theorem, and restricting to a line segment in the case of several variables). However, there is some discussion of including complete proofs of basically all the results in the article. To me this seems rather contrary to the well-established consensus here, but I'd appreciate some outside input. Thanks, Sławomir Biały (talk) 22:47, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't like the idea either. It's an encyclopaedia, after all, and not a mathematical text. References can be used for most proofs. — Fly by Night (talk) 21:46, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

But we also have the "Wikipedia is not paper" argument, as long as a proof is not really impairing the structure of the article and introducing other problem, it isn't really much of problem and can be tolerated in doubt.--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:28, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Circle (topology)

Circle (topology) currently redirects to circle group. Some knot-theory articles mentioning circles probably should link to circle (topology) but not to circle group. I've made circle (topology) into a "redirect with possibilities". So how about those possibilities? Should, or will, someone do something? Michael Hardy (talk) 03:11, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I see the article circle group has a unique reference, by one Hua Luogeng. I don't have access to his book so I can't tell if he uses the term "circle group". Even if he does, does anyone else? Usually this is called the unitary group U(1). We should check into this being a neologism, and if so redirect it to one of the other pages. Tkuvho (talk) 04:37, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I've definitely heard it called the circle group. RobHar (talk) 04:53, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

"Circle group" is common parlance - plenty of hits on MathOverflow, for example. Even more for "circle action". Charles Matthews (talk) 06:58, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with circle group, but I doubt circle (topology) ought to target there, because the circle group is an algebraic rather than topological structure (or, if you see it as a topological group rather than just a group, at least it's as algebraic as topological). It might make sense to just delete circle (topology) unless there's some more canonical spot to retarget it. (Say, if we have an n-torus article, it could redirect there, to a section on the 1-torus.) --Trovatore (talk) 07:39, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

But when a knot-theory article refers to an embedding of a circle, where should the word "circle" link to, if not "circle (topology)"? Michael Hardy (talk) 14:18, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Maybe it should redirect to unknot or vice versa. Tkuvho (talk) 14:28, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Redirecting to unknot doesn't make sense. Whether a topological circle is knotted or not depends on how it is embedded in 3-space. The topological circle is the same topological space regardless of any embedding. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:52, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

N-sphere seems a good choice, it does cover the general topological idea and the specific instance of the 1-sphere.--Salix (talk): 14:30, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I just found that circle action was a red link from quaternionic projective space, but nothing else linked there. So I redirected it to circle group. Michael Hardy (talk) 14:33, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that's a good idea. A circle action is a much more common term than circle group. If anything it should be redirected to torus action. Tkuvho (talk) 14:35, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Torus action currently redirects to toric variety. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:53, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Add a few words to circle group to define "circle action", then. Kill off at least one of these. Charles Matthews (talk) 18:42, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

For now I've redirected circle (topology) to n-sphere, while leaving the "redirect with possibilities" tag intact. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:03, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Also loop and free loop are related pages. Somewhere there should be a disambiguation of these. Tkuvho (talk) 04:45, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Sub-Project for Prime Numbers

What about creating something like WikiProject Prime numbers. I know there is already the sub project Wikipedia:WikiProject Numbers, but I (and I think some other editors as well) are especially interested in prime numbers. The project could serve as a centralized point of discussion for editors interested in prime numbers, but not working on other number related articles. The scope of this project would include all of the articles about the classes of prime numbers listed in List of prime numbers. It could also include articles where the number class includes a subsequence of prime numbers that do not have an own article (like for example Leyland number). Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 16:05, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm very much interested in primes but I have no interest in articles like 97 (number). Is this proposed project for me or not? CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:45, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Given that Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numbers seems to be near-deserted, I think we should not create further subprojects. List of prime numbers contains <100 articles, many of which are stubby (and will remain so), so having a project for them seems unnecessary to me. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 16:48, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The projects focus could be extended by including other articles related to prime numbers, such as Riemann hypothesis, Goldbach conjecture or Prime number theorem, just to mention a few. And is the fact that one WikiProject is (nearly) dead an argument against creation of a new WikiProject? Taking into account WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS I would say not. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 17:11, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, but <1000 articles even link to prime number. Creating a project with such a small scope requires time and energy that might better be spent otherwise. For example, bring prime number to GA status?! Jakob.scholbach (talk) 19:35, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

(ec) There is an ideal size for WikiProjects, and it's pretty close to the current size of WikiProject Mathematics. It's the size where communication on the project talk page actually happens. I.e. everybody finds the time to read everything, and that's not because almost nothing ever happens. WP:WikiProject Logic is an example for a WikiProject that is almost dead because it is too small. Your proposed WikiProject would be so tiny as to be almost certainly completely useless. Project space is full of the se attempted microprojects. See WP:WikiProject Mathematical and Computational Biology for a recent example (where I commented in more detail on the problem). Hans Adler 19:37, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the points given. It should really be possible to handle it through this WikiProject. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 19:44, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I tend to think that WikiProject Mathematics is not just larger but *far* larger than optimal for a WikiProject. Its success at this size is atypical, I think. (That's not to say that the proposed project would be large enough to work!) CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:55, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

WPM is large in terms of articles but not that big in terms of active members. A split might not hurt but I don't see what's broken that we need to fix. For example this page isn't overwhelmed with posts and we've done a good job with organizing articles so people can find articles to work on in areas they're interested in.--RDBury (talk) 04:55, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Point of information: I believe the Wikipedia term for a 'sub-project' is a WP:Task force. That might be more appropriate than an entire new WikiProject. --Qwfp (talk) 07:09, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

I might have proposed that as well, but even a task force should start with the momentum of a bunch of editors who want to work on a task. I am not seeing this (yet?) in the present case. Hans Adler 07:31, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

I would like to participate in that task force, if created. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 15:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

edits by Gustave the Steel

At Talk:0.999... inexperienced editors sometimes leave comments that are not directly related to improving the page. For this reason, a separate "arguments" page was created where such discussions can continue. Comments not directly related to improving the page are supposed to be moved to the "arguments" page. Recently, a couple of editors started a new trend of summarily deleting comments that are not to their liking. Furthermore, one of them threatened to "report" any further reinstatement of the deleted material. This would not appear to be consistent with minimal standards of politeness we expect at wiki. Tkuvho (talk) 04:42, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

I would suggest this is the sort of thing that is better solved by personal discussion, rather than a mass announcement. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:45, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Euler on infinite series

Euler on infinite series has been prodded for deletion. 64.229.100.45 (talk) 04:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

The topic is probably worth an article, but the present content of the article fails to demonstrate that. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:54, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Derivations in articles (again)

I'm actually coming back to this as a result of some discussion at Talk:The Prisoner of Benda (where the ridiculous suggestion that minor copyedits to a proof were "original research"). In the past, we've had many discussions on inclusion of proofs in articles, and now there is even the dedicated subpage Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs. A basic editing principle that I have always adhered to is that it's better just to say why a result is true than to give a detailed derivation of it. This often means communicating the main ideas of the proof, without going into details. (In some sense, to "talk about the proof" rather than give it.) I find that this produces more seamless prose suited to an encyclopedia article. I've always thought that somewhere this was codified in a guideline or essay. It's certainly a point that I bring up in most discussions about proofs in mathematics articles. But it doesn't seem to be in either WP:MSM or WP:WPM/Proofs. Is this idea, or something like it, something we agree on? Should it be added to WP:WPM/Proofs? Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:47, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Addendum: There's this is WP:MTAA: "For example, a detailed derivation of a result is unlikely to be read by either a general reader or an expert, but a short summary of the derivation may convey a sense to a general reader without reducing the usefulness to an expert reader." Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:08, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

In principle I agree with your suggestion. I'm undecided, though, whether this should be hard-coded into a guideline. Especially because surveying hard proofs in this way can be much more difficult than following them in a more detailed manner. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 15:42, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

The French WP has elegant proofs that can be expanded with a touch of a button.

{{démonstration|
* Si on prend un élément <math>x_n</math> dans chaque <math>F_n</math>, la suite <math>(x_n)</math> est de [[suite de Cauchy|Cauchy]]. En effet, pour un <math>\varepsilon>0</math> fixé, il existe un rang <math>N</math> tel que le diamètre de <math>F_N</math> soit majoré par <math>\varepsilon</math>, et en particulier <math>d(x_n,x_m)\le\varepsilon</math> pour tous <math>m, n\ge N</math>. Cette suite est donc convergente car <math>E</math> est complet.
* De plus, sa limite <math>x</math> appartient à chaque <math>F_n</math>. En effet, pour tout <math>n\in\mathbb{N}</math>, la suite <math>(x_m)_{m\ge n}</math> est à valeurs dans <math>F_n</math> (puisque <math>m\ge n\Rightarrow x_m\in F_m\subset F_n</math>) donc sa limite <math>x</math> aussi (puisque <math>F_n</math> est fermé). On a donc prouvé que l'intersection des <math>F_n</math> est non vide.
* Enfin, elle est réduite à un point puisque son diamètre est nul (car majoré par tous les diamètres des <math>F_n</math>, dont l'inf est 0).}}

(The French write so elegantly!) 17:20, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I think this also depends on ther context and scope of the proof in question. Occasionally giving the actual proof might be more accessible/faster to comprehend for readers than writing about it. But the biggest area of conflict (with non math editors for the most part) will be OR complains, so we should codify somewhere explicity that shortening/summarizing a (sourced) proof is not OR.--Kmhkmh (talk) 21:26, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

The editor at Talk:The Prisoner of Benda has become increasingly aggressive in his stance that summarizing published proofs and making slight copyedits to them is original research. I would appreciate it if someone uninvolved could have a look. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:13, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

This is a very liberal interpretation of the claim I'm making. The issue is that the proof in question isn't really a published proof at all, but a screenshot from a TV episode. Andrevan@ 14:30, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

You've been warring to remove a section against consensus based on a tendentious interpretation of policy. You should know better. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:42, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I hate to pull rank, but I do know better. I've been an admin on Wikipedia for almost 7 years. My argument is legitimate in the context of core content policies concerning verifiability, reliability, and original research. You may disagree with my interpretation, but you must assume good faith. Andrevan@ 15:14, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

More browbeating. I'm glad that, in reality, admins don't have any special status when it comes to interpretation of policy. It's pretty clear you have no idea how to correctly apply core policies to technical content, I'm sorry to say. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:22, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I think your use of the phrase "More browbeating" is strange, previously used by Gandalf61[42] and Protonk[43], two other participants in the original discussion. I don't understand what you are accusing me of. Andrevan@ 16:08, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

You refuse to participate in any constructive process or discussion. On the discussion page, you accuse everyone else of misunderstanding policy, rather than respond substantively to the points made there. (I "don't understand synth", I " don't understand how citation needed tags work", etc.). You maintain an editing environment that is hostile to anyone who disagrees with you, and exhibit ownership of the article. Should I go on? Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:20, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I believe what I'm doing is constructively participating in the discussion. You may disagree with me, but there's nothing wrong with the way I'm going about it. I stand by the statement that your position on the issue does not exhibit understanding of the core policies on synthesis and verifiability. I would also add that you don't understand WP:OWNERSHIP, which refers to being possessive about material that was added. In this case, I believe the material should be REMOVED! This isn't browbeating, this is simple policy argument. Andrevan@ 16:26, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Reverting to earlier versions despite consensus, trying to trump that consensus with obviously tendentious interpretations of policy, certainly interpretations unsupported by long-established best practices. Please, someone get involved and put a stop to this idiocy. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:34, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I believe that was a personal attack. Andrevan@ 16:36, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Umm... What was? Calling this episode "idiocy"? I suppose you'd better block me. You are an admin, after all, as you're so fond of pointing out. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:08, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The use of "idiocy" is certainly a personal attack. Obviously I'm not going to block you, simply advise you to take a step back and consider your words more carefully. Andrevan@ 23:05, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Andrevan has started an RfC at Talk:The Prisoner of Benda. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:07, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I think this ridiculous episode makes it glaringly obvious that we need clarity on whether summarizing proofs, or rewriting proofs in our own words without substantively altering them, or changing notation, is considered to be original research. It is painfully clear to me that, in the case of discussion, no original research has been committed at any time, in any version of the article under discussion. It has already been (convincingly, to my mind, by Kmhkmh), suggested that Andrevan has been misrepresenting the spirit, if not the letter, of WP:OR by insisting on an overly rigid interpretation of it. Also, a lot of this is explained by the fact that Andrevan is of the opinion that WP:V means that a lay-person should be able to verify the content of an article, without requiring any special subject knowledge. This is an untenable position for any encyclopedia that covers a wide range of serious topics, in my opinion. But there it is. Perhaps we need to formalize some clarity about that as well. Sławomir Biały (talk) 00:14, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Somewhat, off-topic: I agree that some editors have ridiculous views as to what constitutes original research, even for WP purposes. Someone complained at the FAC for logarithm that assembling list of examples, all of which can be individually sourced is WP:OR. Duh, ... We do have WP:SCICITE to "hit them back" with, but of course, it's only a guideline, so if someone is hell bent on rules lawyering... Tijfo098 (talk) 07:17, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Birkhäuser

May be a little off-topic here, but I don't know where else to ask. Can someone figure out what's the deal with Birkhäuser Verlag vs. the Springer math & science book series, which is still published under that imprint? We might need to create a dab for Birkhäuser. Tijfo098 (talk) 06:51, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Answered at Talk:Birkhäuser Verlag.  --Lambiam 19:52, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Obstructionism

Blackburne, of A. H. Lightstone fame, is now attempting to delete a brief quotation at Adequality on the grounds that it is a copyright violation. Help! Tkuvho (talk) 12:24, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Gopala–Hemachandra number AfD

There is a deletion discussion for this article which is getting a lot of attention. This is related to Fibonacci number which is #7 on our list of most frequently viewed (really more like #1 if you take out physics and statistics articles).--RDBury (talk) 18:10, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Ebbinghaus

Can someone improve Heinz-Dieter Ebbinghaus before it's nominated for deletion? Tijfo098 (talk) 09:12, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Clause (logic)

Maybe someone here has an opinion whether clause in logic only means a disjunction. Tijfo098 (talk) 16:14, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

DYK? for Ivar Ekeland (21 April)

The DYK nomination for the new article on Ivar Ekeland, which Tkuvho started (and which I expanded) should get a lot of DYK hits.

• ... that, by writing about chaos theory and fractals (like the Julia set, animated), mathematician Ivar Ekeland helped to inspire Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg?

• Comment: Ekeland wrote about the Feigenbaum bifurcation etc., but not the Julia set (whose animation would compel DYK attention).

• ... that, by writing about chaos theory and fractals (pictured), mathematician Ivar Ekeland helped to inspire Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg?

 Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 19:45, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

5x expanded by Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk). Self nom at 10:55, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

The DYK? appearance shall be 21 April, alas, without a picture. (An Easter topic will have an illustration.)  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 22:17, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Non-Newtonian calculus

There's a number of links to non-Newtonian calculus being stuck in to various articles by User Talk:Smithpith (contribs). He has warnings in the talk page but we should figure out exactly what link should be kept if any I think. Dmcq (talk) 20:02, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure that this has been a topic of discussion a long while ago. I don't remember what the outcome was. Is there a way to search the project's archives? — Fly by Night (talk) 22:00, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

The story is quite sad. A number of non-mathematically educated users protested the AfD for non-Newtonian calculus and multiplicative calculus, and they were kept. The articles have been a stain on Wikipedia ever since. As a rule I try to make sure that nothing links to them; giving them any prominence amounts to WP:UNDUE, and even if they were notable, Smithpith links other articles to them much too heavily. (Smithpith has also in the past admitted to being Michael Grossman, the co-inventor of non-Newtonian calculus). I've cleaned up again; but the long term solution is to delete these articles once and for all. Ozob (talk) 22:34, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Having said that, it does seem to have almost 80 publications as supporting references. What is to be made of that? Has anyone checked the validity of the references? — Fly by Night (talk) 01:02, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

At the time of the AfD, I checked all of the references that were then in the article. It appeared that Mr. Grossman had cataloged every mention ever made of his book. Frequently these were advertisements he had placed, and most of the rest were in lists of recently published books.

In retrospect, I was quite wrong. Mr. Grossman had not nearly cataloged every reference ever made to his work. He has industriously remedied that defect, and the article now has, as you say, almost eighty references. The article even tells you what kind of references they are: His book is "mentioned" or "reviewed" over and over. The prominence of "mentions" and "reviews" in that list and the relative scarcity of citations evinces the yawn with which the book has been received. But there are so many references I fear they will win over the voters at an AfD discussion. I think a successful AfD would have to be done carefully and with much support from this WikiProject. Ozob (talk) 01:54, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

From Michael Grossman: I thought those links were pertinent. If I was wrong, I'm sorry. I have no intention of violating Wikipedia's rules. Smithpith (talk) 22:58, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not XXXXX. Kevin Baas^talk 01:10, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I removed the personal attack by Baas, leaving XXXXX instead.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 19:43, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

This comment seems very inappropriate. I have no idea what it's supposed to convey. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:41, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

To Kevin Baas: Your comment seems to imply that you think that someone here has been acting like a Nazi. If made explicit, that would be considered a personal attack on that person. Left cryptic as it is, it unfairly impugns everyone in this dispute who disagrees with you. JRSpriggs (talk) 19:26, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Images for articles about integer sequences

I created an infobox for articles about integer sequences a while ago (see Template:Infobox integer sequence for the template and Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Infobox integer sequence for articles, where it is currently being used). I would like to include an image in every case, where the infobox is in use. For this purpose, it would be nice to have some input on which ways of visualizing integer sequences could be used for creating images for use in the infobox. My preference is in favor of ideas that can be easily realized using simple image editing software. Also I am aware of the visualization methods used by OEIS. Finally, the image should be interesting, without being distracting, even if only two or three terms of the sequence are known. Any additional input is welcome. Thanks. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 23:07, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

While we can always use more and improved images, mathematical concepts are often too abstract for an image to have any meaningful value. For example one of the articles that uses the template is Mersenne prime and I have a hard time seeing how an illustration would help make the concept more understandable. There are exceptions such as Ulam spiral for primes and Fibonacci spiral for Fibonacci numbers, but I don't think finding an image for every article is realistic. Perhaps it would be better to concentrate on adding the template to more articles since at the moment it's only used in 7.--RDBury (talk) 14:46, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Neil Sloane recently changed the legal status of OEIS. Are the images released under a compatible license with ours? That might present the easiest solution if so. If not, Sloane can probably be persuaded to release the media under the CCA license if we think that's worth pursuing. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:51, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

From here (see bottom of the page) and here it seems they are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 license. From what I know this is incompatible with a use on Wikipedia, since our terms allow commercial use. So if there were any chance to use them, we would have to do under our guidelines related to WP:FAIRUSE. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 15:15, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

On the other hand I am unsure if the images are eligible for copyright at all per the concept of Threshold of originality. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 15:48, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Licensing aside, Dr. Sloane's image probably isn't appropriate here. It's meant to represent that encyclopedia, not the general concept of an integer sequence. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:53, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that the proposal is to have a different image for visualization of each integer sequence. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:05, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. A different image for each sequence. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 23:31, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Error term

....currently redirects to errors and residuals in statistics. That obviously doesn't make sense. So:

• Disambiguation page?
• Different redirect?
• Article?
• whatever..........?

Michael Hardy (talk) 19:31, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I searched Wikipedia for "error term" and found that the statistical usage is much more common than all other uses combined. So if you decide to make a disambiguation page, then it should be listed first. Another use was for the Big O notation. JRSpriggs (talk) 19:47, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

To me an error term is a term representing the difference between the exact value of something and the approximate value given as some function (as in Taylor's theorem, where the error term is also called the remainder term, or in asymptotic results such as average orders of arithmetic functions). Often the error term isn't known that well, but a bound is known, which is the relation to Big O notation. I was pretty sure that on a measurement the error was simply called the "error", not the "error term", what do you mean by the "statistical usage"? RobHar (talk) 22:22, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

By "statistical usage" I meant the use of "error term" to refer to the observational error discussed at errors and residuals in statistics where it is called just "error". None the less, it is called "error term" in many of our articles, presumably because it is a term added to the theoretical value to get the measured value. JRSpriggs (talk) 07:35, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I've usually seen it in connection with analysis (like Taylor's theorem) or numerical analysis. Redirecting it to statistics seems a little bit odd to me, but I don't have a firm opinion. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 09:40, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to move Non-Newtonian calculus to Modifications of the calculus

I propose to move the controversial page Non-Newtonian calculus to a more appropriate title Modifications of the calculus. It can be decided later what to do about multiplicative calculus. The term "non-Newtonian" is a neologism coined by the author of the book that has not been widely accepted. The term makes it appear as if this approach is a significant modification of the calculus, somehow going against the Newtonian approach. Meanwhile, the main idea of this approach seems to amount to apply log to a product before differentiating. Whatever the possible applications of this method may be in engineering, the title should reflect the contents more precisely. Also in any future AfD the participants will have a more accurate picture of the intrinsic merit of the approach. Tkuvho (talk) 10:09, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

WP:TITLE says that, in general, an article's title should be "what reliable English-language sources call the subject of the article". So if the widely accepted term for the subject of this article is not "non-Newtonian calculus", then what is it ? "Modifications of the calculus" sounds both clumsy and vague - unless there is a source for this alternative title, are you not in danger of replacing one neologism by another ? Gandalf61 (talk) 10:24, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

No, this is not a new neologism, because the new title is meant to be descriptive. You claim that the name "non-Newtonian" is "widely accepted", but one of the editors above claims that the theory has received a lukewarm response and almost ignored. My main point is that the "non-Newtonian" business is very misleading, as it implies some major foundational innovation. Such an innovation is just not there. I looked up their 1972 book. In the introduction they claim that their theory is "very different" from that of Newton and Leibniz. How many people believe that? Tkuvho (talk) 10:55, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

But the article is "about" the 1972 book more than anything else. I don't think we should have an article about this book, given the utter lack of meaningful critical response, but it already survived an AfD since folks were duped by the number of references. Also, there are (presumably) other modifications of the calculus (nonstandard calculus, for instance), and just moving this article would be giving grossly disproportionate coverage to one (rather nonnotable) such modification. I would advocate simply redirecting the article to multiplicative calculus. Neither article is good, but I'd rather have one bad article than two. Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:15, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Other editors (in a subsection above) have similarly expressed the sentiment that the article is not notable, and also noted the difficulty of succeeding in an AfD. My point is that such difficulty is exacerbated by a misleading title, which might lead inexperienced editors to oppose deletion of what is presented as some kind of revolutionary alternative to Newton. I think the title "multiplicative calculus" is similarly misleading, as it suggests that we have some kind of a new calculus here. "Modification" seems to be the right description; whether or not such a modification is notable can be determined in a future AfD. Tkuvho (talk) 11:28, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The place to take notability concerns is clearly AfD. The previous AfD on Non-Newtonian calculus was over 2 years ago, so a long enough interval has elapsed for a second AfD. Present your arguments in a clear way that even those pesky "inexperienced editors" can understand, and establish consensus through discussion. FWIW, my view is that changing an established article's title in place of or before an AfD seems awfully close to gaming the system. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:51, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

A potential AfD is a separate issue. The current grandiose title is a neologism that has not been widely accepted. I am proposing a more modest title that's descriptive of the contents. The current grandiose title games the system in favor of a potentially unnotable article. Tkuvho (talk) 12:18, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The title of the article says nothing about its notability. It merely, describes the subject in the term most commonly used to describe the subject by people that talk about the subject. Your argument seems to be that almost nobody discussed this subject, that could very well be, but that is an argument for deletion not renaming. If you want to rename the article, you will have to provide some evidence of sources discussing this subject, which do not call it non-Newtonian calculus.

(And just for the record your proposed new name for the article is grammatically flawed.) TR 12:38, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion: move it to Non-Newtonian Calculus, and add {{italictitle}}. Then the introduction would be modified to make it refer just to the book of that name. That way, it is clear that it is the authors' choice of phrase. Otherwise you would have to have something cumbersome like Grossman and Katz modifications of calculus. Xanthoxyl ^< 12:54, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Good idea - Non-Newtonian Calculus, italicised in line with WP:MOSTITLE, is clear and unambiguous. Works for me. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:35, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Since it's clear that this article is primarily about the book, it's high time that it go back to AfD. This is not a notable book, receiving only 19 citations on Google scholar (five of which are self-citations). Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:42, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the italic version might be a move might be a good idea. One could also consider to the term in quotes or qualifiers in the article itself (for the first bold print). But moving it to Modifications of the calculus is not a good idea for the reasons stated Sławomir Biały & Gandalf61. The appropriate way to deal with a (unnotable) neologism is an AfD. If that fails we will have to live with neologism. However we still can indicate the neologism/lack of notability character in the article itself by using qualifiers and insisting on intext attribution wherever it maybe reasonable, but we should not change the name to something which isn't really used in the sources or by the few people actually refering to it.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:52, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The article has been nominated for deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Non-Newtonian calculus (2nd nomination). Please direct your comments there. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:38, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Are the proposed & rejected "Modifications" all standard in contrast to non-standard calculus following Abraham Robinson and exemplified by Jerome Keisler's introductory textbook? (I have reorganized the lead of that article but it will benefit from further rewrite. I have only slightly addressed the criticisms by myself and others. See multiple sections of Talk:Non-standard calculus.) --P64 (talk) 19:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with non-standard calculus, I believe yes is the answer to your question though of course one could always develop 'standard' calculus using non-standard calculus - that's what a lot of it is about! Dmcq (talk) 22:24, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

List of numeral systems

I've created List of numeral systems and would appreciate help making it somewhat complete. --Beao 17:36, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Radio 4 mathematics collection

The BBC has a collection of audio programs related to mathematics at [44]. Many of these are episodes of the radio series "In Our Time". Just mentioning it for general interest but I'm also thinking it would be a worthwhile project to make sure we have a link to each program in the "External links" section of the corresponding WP article.--RDBury (talk) 17:38, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Update: I added links to five of the "In Our Time" episodes so all are done except "Renaissance Mathematics" for which we don't have an article, just a section in History of mathematics.--RDBury (talk) 03:36, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for posting those links. I listened to most of them. I even forwarded the infinity one to a couple of non-mathematical friends. It's funny though. In all of the attempts to simplify maths for a general audience, I always find that the result loses all of its beauty. For me, the complexity and the structure of maths is what makes it so interesting. Sadly, some of those links perpetuated the myth of mathematicians solving equations all day. There were lines like "Mathematicians love numbers because…", and they interpreted Chaitin's constant as meaning that there are "infinitely many unsolvable equations." But, hey. what can we do? Once again, thanks for linking to those radio programs. — Fly by Night (talk) 20:55, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Radius one or diameter one in circle rolling

I'm looking for reactions to the idea at File talk:Pi-unrolled-720.gif#Radians. In a nutshell, the idea is to make a relatively minor change to that animation changing the radius from 1/2 to 1 and the circumference from π to 2π (I don't really know whether this would be controversial, but at least to me the reasons for it are pretty sound and in line with the mathematical tendency to deal with circles of radius one). The intro (where it lines up the circles) would probably best be changed to somehow visually emphasize the radius a bit more than the diameter. Whether the new image replaces the old one or just gets used places like Radian and Turn (geometry) is to be determined. If people like the idea, we can presumably get help from Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop and/or Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Photography workshop (I would have thought the former, but I guess the people at the latter are more accustomed to working with raster images). Kingdon (talk) 01:33, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Provably/probably

I expect most of us who have math articles on our watchlists see this from time to time -- an article contains the word provably, used correctly, and someone, usually an IP, changes it to probably.

I was just idly wondering if anyone else has an opinion on this. Is it a specific person who just likes to do this for fun, maybe figuring it's a subtle change that might escape notice? Or, is it that a lot of people just don't know the word provably and fix the "typo" in good faith?

Either way, it seems likely that some such changes go uncaught. Just thought I'd mention it so that the next time one of us sees the word probably in a math article, we might give half a second's thought to whether it's really supposed to be provably. (Or, I suppose, the reverse is also possible, but I don't recall an example of that.) --Trovatore (talk) 04:56, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I think the people who do it are honestly confused. I would expect that some spellcheckers don't know the word. And as Spanish speakers tend to conflate v and b it's actually plausible as an error. Hans Adler 16:05, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Suggest that when "provably" is used, it is linked to a definition (something on the Proof page, probably (no pun intended)).

On our (ugly) sister site ProofWiki we have the same problem with getting "iff" changed to "if" so whenever I see this I change it to a specific link to a definition of "iff" as I can't abide "if and only if". --Matt Westwood 05:18, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

It's a bit of a tangent, but I (for one) can't abide "iff" in formal writing such as we should be using on Wikipedia. I'll happily use it on talk pages and other less-formal contexts. MOS:MATH agrees (see the section "Writing style in mathematics"). So unless you want to build consensus to get the MOS changed, please just spell it out. (Also, I am a victim of the provably/probably thing — one of my papers uses "provably" in the title and it has occasionally been cited as "probably".)—David Eppstein (talk) 05:31, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree. By my standards iff is properly confined to blackboards or quick notes; its only function is to be able to be written quickly. I also don't agree with linking it (or provably). Links are primarily intended to enable in-depth reading on an important aspect of the topic being read. I dislike links whose main purpose seems to be to say "hey, this is a word I'm not sure you know". --Trovatore (talk) 07:26, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Just to set you all straight, I'm not talking about Wikipedia here, I'm not suggesting "iff" be used on this site, that would indeed be outrageous. I was talking about what we do on ProofWiki where the rules are different because we're doing a different job.

I replied to this post because I was able to offer a suggestion as to what to do in this circumstance. But okay, if the page uses a word which confuses people enough to want to change it "because it's obviously wrong", then you definitely need *some* sort of means to tell the reader: yes I *do* mean that word.

So, a further suggestion: how about a link to Wiktionary? --Matt Westwood 09:33, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

As for "provably", there are probably many cases where it can be dropped altogether. E.g. "The set of prime numbers is provably infinite." -> "The set of prime numbers is infinite." There are variations that might also cause confusion, "provable" vs. "probable", "provability" vs. "probability", and these might be more difficult to deal with. Perhaps in such cases a hidden comment can be added such as <!-- Please leave spelling as is. -->. If we start adding links every time there is a word someone might not understand the articles will fill up with distracting link symbols. Someday someone will add a browser feature where clicking any word will look it up for them on their favorite on-line dictionary; we shouldn't try to implement it here.--RDBury (talk) 15:52, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I recommend {{not a typo|provably}}. I think that's the "official" way to mark something as "meant". -- John of Reading (talk) 16:27, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

That looks good. Thanks! --Trovatore (talk) 17:03, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Haynsworth inertia additivity formula

I've created a new article titled Haynsworth inertia additivity formula.

That article and Sylvester's law of inertia treat of this particular concept of "inertia". Is this so called because of a conceptual connection with physical inertia? If so, those article ought to explain the connetion.

To do:

• Explain that connection.
• Otherwise improve the article.
• Link to the article from appropriate other articles.

Michael Hardy (talk) 18:07, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The connection is the inertia tensor, for what it's worth. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:44, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I wouldn't mind if some linear algebra textbooks at least mentioned that when they mention the word "inertia". Michael Hardy (talk) 00:33, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

List of matrix topics?

Should we have a list of matrix topics or list of matrix theory topics? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:15, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Navboxes are more useful than lists particularly for slow connections. You can see a navbox without downloading another page. Also, navboxes can be structured and thus carry more information than alphabetic lists. Tkuvho (talk) 21:39, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

But navboxes seem to be for navigating, whereas lists are (partly? largely?) for browsing. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:29, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Does Category:Linear algebra help? 69.111.194.167 (talk) 00:38, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Not really. It's merely a category, not a list. List of linear algebra topics is somewhat more to the point. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:21, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Branching random walk

Branching random walk is a stubby new article. Work on it. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:03, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Good luck! Shouldn't it be "branching random-walk", per MOS?  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 22:00, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

In most cases, modifiers right-associate by default, and you need hyphens only to mark exceptions from that. --Trovatore (talk) 22:02, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

My reading of the MOS, and my discussion of "real vector-space" with MF, suggests that the MOS mandates recommends the suggested hyphenation, which is consistent with Michael Dummett's book.

I already moved the page. However, "anybody attempting to use hyphens consistently shall go mad"!  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 22:25, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, I totally disagree with that move. Kiefer, are you a native speaker? To my ear/eye/whatever this hyphen is very jarring. Who is MF, and where do you see this in the MOS? --Trovatore (talk) 23:36, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Totally see my user page for information about me. For MF, search among the primary writers of featured articles on English WP. See the MOS, also.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 23:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't see on your user page where it says whether you're a native speaker of English. Oh, never mind; it was under a "show". You claim to have a "professional" level of English. This is not the same as having a native ear. How about just answering the question about MF rather than telling me where to search? Please point me to the clause in the MOS on which you're relying. --Trovatore (talk) 23:49, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Sweden has a number of probabilists analyzing branching processes and random walks. Perhaps it is not obvious that branching modifies "random walk"?  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 23:46, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

What else is available for it to be modifying? --Trovatore (talk) 23:49, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

The MoS doesn't mandate using a hyphen in every compound attributive, and it gives some examples where adding a hyphen changes the meaning. I would say that in "branching random walk", a hyphen is not needed because it is clear that "branching" modifies "random walk", rather than "random". By contrast, a hyphen would be necessary if we meant "branching-random walk" (whatever that could mean). A simpler example: we wouldn't write "hot chicken-soup" (to mean chicken soup that is hot), but we would need to write "hot-chicken soup" (soup made out of hot chickens). Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:58, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Sławomir, "branching" modifies the object "random walk". The problem for civilians is that "branching", like "halting", could modify "walk" directly.

Of course, we both think that almost all readers are familiar with chicken soup.

However, an undergraduate looking to write a B.S. thesis might read the branching random-walk article without familiarity with branching processes or random walks, and benefit from the hyphen. Please read the article in the state I found it, and tell me whether I was right to be concerned about the needs of civilians.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:25, 23 April 2011 (UTC) (There was an EC that prevented my direct answer before, 01:40, 23 April 2011 (UTC))

For MF, search among the primary writers of featured articles on English WP. Malleus Fatuorum and I discussed hyphens previously, with good humor, also. See the MOS, also.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 23:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Maybe George Bush has corrected others' pronunciation of "nuclear" the way you Trovatore offers advice on hyphens? The MOS states that hyphens are used to prevent ambiguity. Please see Dummett's book for clear and firm advice.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:10, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

"Branching", like "halting", could modify "walk" directly.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:10, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I suppose, in an utter vacuum. No one's going to hear it that way, though. I think this hyphen is completely ill-advised. I'm going to revert your bold move and you can raise an RM if you like. --Trovatore (talk) 00:13, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Your last sentences don't make much sense, and argue further that you should not be dispensing prose advice, at least not at this hour. Look at the state of the article before I copy-edited it.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:17, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Please contribute to the article, before edit warring.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:21, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

What edit warring? WP:BRD. --Trovatore (talk) 00:26, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Look, Trovatore. You have been insulting. Do you know anything about stochastic processes? Hardy certainly does, but the article's state was far below his usual standard. I fixed the prose, and provided links to the related areas. You have contributed nothing to the article. Let Hardy revert the move if he wants, when he next edits. I certainly will respect his judgement.

Did you check Dummett's advice. Have you, apparently a logician, heard of him?  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:32, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I have been insulting? That's pretty rich. I leave it to fair-minded observers to look at the exchange and see who has been more insulting and first. Maybe you got upset because I asked if you were a native speaker? It was a fair question, I think.

Sure, I've heard of Dummett. I don't necessarily agree with him on foundational philosophy, but I got a lot out of Cantorian Set Theory and Limitation of Size. I have never seen a style manual by him and would not take him as an authority on that. --Trovatore (talk) 00:52, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I dislike Dummett's prose style, but I find his comments thoughtful. Dummett favors clarity and hence suggests hyphens to avoid ambiguity and to save the reader's time.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 01:46, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Sławek is absolutely dead on. Your hyphenation is utterly tin-eared. Get consensus first. --Trovatore (talk) 00:31, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Who are you to question my English or to take that tone with me? I rewrote the article, repaying a small part of the kindnesses that Michael Hardy has shown me on hundreds of occasions. Write some content, as way to atone for your sins.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:53, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I stand by my characterization. --Trovatore (talk) 00:54, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

LOL  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 01:24, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Please fix the damage you did to my signatures. Thanks,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 01:32, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Done. Editing mistake; somehow I got the text in two places. --Trovatore (talk) 01:35, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 01:41, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Please, no hyphen, it is awful. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 18:25, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Without commenting on the other aspects of this discussion, I agree: the hyphen needs to go. CRGreathouse (t | c) 20:17, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

To comment a little further, I think older works in British English use hyphens more than contemporary or American works do. I can get the impression that Malleus Fatuorum is influenced more by dated British usage than a lot of the rest of us are, which would explain his take on this. To me (US English speaker) the hyphens come across as dated and maybe stilted. I remember an elderly physics professor from a Commonwealth country who wrote "wave-guide" and pronounced it with equal stress on both words, which came across to me as marked. Anyone I know would have written "waveguide" or "wave guide" and stressed "wave" when speaking. Perhaps this should be left up to Michael Hardy per WP:RETAIN. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 00:53, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

You may have misunderstood Malleus: He wanted consistency, and we had a polite discussion of hyphens. Malleus is an excellent writer---unlike the fellow who totally stood behind his synaesthetic complaint that my hyphenation was tin-eared ....

Ditto with David, who thought my hyphenation to be old-fashioned, at least with "real vector-space". :-)

I'm glad somebody agrees that we should let Michael decide, respecting his contributions.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 20:51, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm a fan of hyphens, where they go. For example, it wouldn't break my heart if we got rid of the rule that you don't hyphenate "adverb-adjective noun" when the adverb is a regularly-formed "-ly" adverb (and this one is explicitly stated in the MoS).

But only very rarely is it justified to hyphenate on the right, because that's the way modifiers associate naturally. --Trovatore (talk) 08:21, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Hadamard's lemma

Regarding the article on Hadamard's lemma. It is presented as a first order application of Taylor's theorem; which is fine. But then it assumes that the function is real valued. I'm sure that it works for functions from C to C. Moreover, I'm sure that the statement can be generalised in terms of other fields. Does the statement holds for functions from a field K to a field K? If not, then what are the necessary conditions? What is the most general form of the lemma? All we need is for a function from K to K to be continuous, and for its first order derivative to be continuous. I've listen to talks about p-adic differentiation and integration (i.e. where the field K is a finite field with a prime number of elements); surely the article can be extended. What do we think? — Fly by Night (talk) 21:40, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Over the complex numbers, the result is a trivial consequence of analyticity. I don't know about other fields. In order to define smoothness, some valuation is presumably needed. But (as far as I know) in the general setting of ultrametric fields, the theory of integration is either unsatisfactory or not really connected with the notion of differentiation, so the proof given in the article probably fails in that case. But, as I know very little about ultrametric analysis, it could be that the theorem remains true even in that case. However, that's far from obvious to me and would need a reference. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:41, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The article's proof doesn't carry over. Consider f(x) = x^p over a field of positive characteristic p. One of the first steps of the proof is to differentiate the given function, and when we differentiate f, the result vanishes. The proof then relies on the integral of the derivative being the original function up to a constant, but this is not true. I'm guessing that one could replace the f(a) term in the statement of the theorem with a function whose derivative is identically zero, and while I'm not an expert the result looks plausible to me. It could also be that there's a different proof that gives a stronger result, perhaps even the same result as over a field of characteristic zero. But again, I'm out of my depth here. Ozob (talk) 01:37, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

True, but theorems have more than one proof. Just because a certain proof fails to adapt to a given setting doesn't mean there is no other proof. As I said, and Sławomir implied, the result is a specific case of Taylor's theorem. We just need to understand what C¹(K,K) means for different fields K. It's obvious over R and C (maybe over H too), and I feel that it may be meaningful over Q_p where p is prime. Like I said, I have heard people talk about p-adic calculus. For example, the first hit on Google was this: p-Adic Calculus and its Applications to Fractal Analysis and Medical Science — Fly by Night (talk) 01:45, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

The statement of the Hadamard lemma isn't quite a special case of Taylor's theorem. Nothing in Taylor's theorem (for several variables) guarantees that the remainder terms will be smooth near the expansion point, and I think that's the subtle point of the Hadamard lemma. In fact, the Taylor remainder terms are non-unique, and we can always make them nonsmooth by subtracting some nonsmooth quantity from one and adding a balancing nonsmooth quantity to another (e.g., $x^{2}+y^{2}=x^{2}(1+|x|y^{2})+y^{2}(1-|x|x^{2})$). I agree that it is a consequence of one of the most common proofs of Taylor's theorem, with the explicit integral form of the remainder, but this proof fails in the ultrametric case. If there is a way to get it from Taylor's theorem directly, then that would probably go a long way to establishing it in that case. Sławomir Biały (talk) 02:11, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to overcome these obstacles? — Fly by Night (talk) 22:21, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Quasisymmetric map

In the article titled quasisymmetric map, this is given as the definition:

Let (X, d_X) and (Y, d_Y) be two metric spaces. A homeomorphism f:X → Y is said to be η-quasisymmetric or if there is an increasing function η : [0, ∞) → [0, ∞) such that for any triple x, y, z of distinct points in X, we have

${\frac {d_{Y}(f(x),f(y))}{d_{Y}(f(x),f(z))}}\leq \eta \left({\frac {|x-y|}{|x-z|}}\right).$

What does $|x-y|$ mean? Does it mean $d_{X}(x,y)$? Clearly the article needs work. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:11, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that is what's meant, though I'm no expert. I've changed the article accordingly. Ozob (talk) 23:11, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Template:Cubes proposed for deletion

The Template:Cubes has been proposed for deletion: {{cubes}} Please see the discussion regarding its deletion.

Also, consider expanding and improving the Cubes navbox, which was recently created and newly expanded: In particular, crystallography may have many cubic articles. (It was never meant for mathematicians, who are served by the fine navboxes on polytopes, etc., but for civilians.)

Thanks!  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 17:14, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

A confession: The former line of "ominous cubes" having the Klee-Minty cube, the Hellraiser cube, and the Cosmic cube was asking for deletion.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 17:20, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

The navbox has been deleted. (An archival copy is on my talk page).  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:43, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Shapley–Folkman lemma Review for A-Class

The article Shapley–Folkman lemma has been nominated for A-class review. Your comments are most welcome. Best regards,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:58, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Math contests medalists (was Peter Scholze at AfD)

The article Peter Scholze is at AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter Scholze. What do we think of this? (Initially I had missed that he was a Clay fellow, but this could tip the discussion the other way.) Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:14, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Another IMO related AfD discussion is here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Iurie Boreico. This one seems more clear-cut. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:46, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

There's also Gabriel D. Carroll and Reid W. Barton to consider. I see that Barton is notable for other stuff as well, and survived an AfD. Tijfo098 (talk) 03:28, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

David Rees (mathematician)

Can someone knowledgeable in commutative algebra add the details about Rees' contribution form some math source (and not a newspaper obit of someone else)? I've added the semigroup theory stuff I knew of. Tijfo098 (talk) 02:01, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Also the page of his (former) student Michael P. Drazin could enjoy more than a sentence. Tijfo098 (talk) 02:05, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

90-degree rotation in the complex plane

New article looks like it was done as an extra credit project. Well done for what it is but not really encyclopedic in style. Copy to WikiBooks?--RDBury (talk) 04:12, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Certainly the textbook style is more appropriate to WikiBooks. I have prodded it. Gandalf61 (talk) 08:28, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

multiplicative calculus

Does anyone have some details on Volterra's role in developing multiplicative calculus and to what extent this was influential? The impact of this subject seems to be not much greater than non-Newtonian calculus (see deletion page). Unless we can justify it as a historical page, it may be next. Tkuvho (talk) 04:58, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

My impression is that some people actually study this. But that could be because I've come to associate the moniker of "multiplicative calculus" with things like the product integral. I've not made any systematic effort to locate sources for this article that are independent of the (clearly WP:UNDUE) Grossman and Katz book, and the few other questionable sources listed there. It could go either way for me. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:55, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Monty Hall problem

Since the arbitration committee ruling, Monty Hall problem has become a much more cooperative place. Alas, it has also become a place where there are very few editors. If you walked away from the article because of the battleground it became, you might want to consider revisiting it. Guy Macon (talk) 12:52, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Should it be added to the list of common misconceptions? Tkuvho (talk) 14:00, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

That's a really good question. My first guess is no, based upon what I perceive (but cannot prove) as a failure to meet the "common" criteria. I would guess that most people have not heard of the Monty Hall problem. Totally subjective opinion, of course. Guy Macon (talk)

If the Parade magazine got 10 thousand protest letters, it is safe to assume that a much larger figure are aware of the problem, making it "common". Tkuvho (talk) 04:38, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:24, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. If we can have just one more editor interested I would take it up at the "list". A few editors there are (rightly) making sure there are no irrelevant additions, and it would be helpful to have the support of the project. The "list" carries heavy traffic (tens of thousands of hits per day sometimes), and gives nice exposure to an elegant math problem (hope I am not offending anyone at WP:probability). Tkuvho (talk) 08:59, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I support in principle , but the current article has POV tag on top due to years' long disagreement between the regulars as to which solution is wrong. More appropriately add it to WP:LAME for now. Tijfo098 (talk) 06:18, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I have added a non-controversial entry on Monty at list of common misconceptions that both sides should agree on, see there. Tkuvho (talk) 11:36, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

The delete elite troops are at work already at list of common misconceptions. Tkuvho (talk) 13:34, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

To Tkuvho: Rather than put the Monty Hall problem specifically into the list of misconceptions, you should figure out what general misconception about probability or statistics is responsible for the popular misunderstanding of MH and put that into the list. Then MH could be linked to as an example. That would make the entry much more useful and important. JRSpriggs (talk) 13:49, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

There is no way of sourcing such "generalisations", and they will certainly be rejected by the troopers. Actually, I disagree with the philosophical thrust of your remarks: the best way of explaining a misconception is by an example, not by discussion of general misconceptions that one thinks people have. At any rate, the recent reverts are by an editor who... has a misconception about Monty Hall Problem! See talk there. Tkuvho (talk) 13:52, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Category:Non-Newtonian calculus

Do we need Category:Non-Newtonian calculus ? Tkuvho (talk) 08:14, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

No, I don't think so. Neither do we need List of derivatives and integrals in alternative calculi. Ozob (talk) 10:20, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I think I complained originally about that article looking like it was generated by a program rather than summarizing any source. I see the creator was banned so perhaps a simple prod will get rid of it now. Dmcq (talk) 12:05, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Whatever material is appropriate for Product integral should be moved there. Tkuvho (talk) 12:12, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

It's hard to see what possible reference use such a table could serve. The sources are a bit dodgy, and do not seem to support the contents of the table. A prod on OR grounds might prove uncontroversial enough. I agree with Tkuvho that some material should probably first be merged to product integral, since that article would benefit from a few choice examples. However it seems silly to attempt any kind of list or table of such integrals, given that the product integral can be obtained easily from the ordinary integral. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:52, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't know much about product integrals, but with scalar-valued functions you can reduce their evaluation to that of ordinary "sum integrals". My understanding is that the thing that prevents that reduction from making the subject unworthy of further attention is product integrals of matrix-valued functions. With matrix-valued functions you can't just reduce them to sum-integrals that way. But there's nothing about product integrals of matrix-valued functions in the article. If someone is knowledgeable in that area, that material should be added. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:29, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

May 2011

Top importance, Start class articles

Loosely connected to the recent Signpost Interview, I was thinking about the project's aims etc. Taking the article assessment as a first (rough) indicator for where we are, I was looking at the most important, but worst articles. This is the list ("<500" means that the article is among the 500 most viewed math articles, vital articles are also bold).

1. Branches of maths / theories: abstract algebra, commutative algebra, group theory, homological algebra, linear algebra (<500), ring theory, differential calculus (<500), functional analysis, mathematical analysis, real analysis, optimization (<500), combinatorics (<500), discrete mathematics (<500), theoretical computer science, foundations of mathematics, pure mathematics, analytic geometry, applied mathematics (<500), mathematical physics, algebraic number theory, analytic number theory, class field theory, algebraic topology, general topology, topology (<500)
2. (Slightly more) advanced notions: commutative ring, Gaussian elimination (<500), isomorphism (<500), Cauchy's integral formula, differential equation (<500), holomorphic function, limit of a sequence, equation (<500), Markov's principle, sequence (<500), commutative diagram, diophantine equation, expected value (<500), probability (<500), probability distribution (<500), random variable (<500), statistical hypothesis testing (<500), stochastic process (<500), homology theory, open set
3. Misc/basic notions: 1 (number) (<500), equation solving, formula, subtraction, conjecture (<500), mathematical proof, Fields medal (<500), symmetry in mathematics, percentage (<500)
4. Biographies: Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Felix Hausdorff, Henri Lebesgue, Jean-Pierre Serre, Karl Weierstrass, Shiing-Shen Chern, Bernhard Riemann

After the Signpost interview the other day, I was curious where WP:MATH will be going etc. Given this list, I'm wondering whether we might want to identify particular target articles etc. For example, I'm personally most concerned/astonished about the group "branches of maths". I did not check each individual article above for its quality, but most are really crappy (or at least short). Another criterion might be "importance to the general public" (i.e., the <500 ones). Most of them are either basic notions or probability/statistics. What do you guys think about all this? I.e., 1) what aims do we have and 2) how do we get there? Jakob.scholbach (talk) 19:31, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

I like to refer to article that get a lot of views as highly visible; you can check page view stats to get an idea of this when the article isn't on the top 500. There are highly visible articles that are low importance and vice versa, but there is a correlation. For about half the articles on the list I have to disagree with the Top importance rating. For example "commutative diagram" may be an important concept, but it's not not something you can build a curriculum on. So perhaps the reason the article is still so short is that it already has most of what there is so say on the subject, or at least what there is to say that wouldn't be better placed in category theory. You're right in that it's a good idea to keep an eye on these articles and work on them periodically. It sets a bad example when a highly visible article is poorly referenced or badly written. Perhaps we could start by picking out one or two of these and making it a goal to bring up them to at least C standard. We used to have a collaboration of the month for that kind of thing, so maybe we can repurpose that.--RDBury (talk) 02:04, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Optimization should redirect to Mathematical optimization, now called optimization (mathematics).  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 06:23, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

@RDBury: I'm curious what else you consider not top importance. (I agree there is a couple of articles that will be difficult to improve, since their content is not well-delineated.)

Collaboration of the month: how about bringing topology (vital, highly visible) to B or B+ class? (Apparently the list above is slightly out of sync, the article is currently C-class, but clearly deserves attention.) This is a nice topic that might, at least in the long run, showcase both the beauty of mathematics and the performance of WP:MATH. So: who would join this effort (previous collaborations failed because of lack of particpants)? Jakob.scholbach (talk) 14:14, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

To respond to the inquiry: The entries in the Branches of mathematics all seem top importance to me; basically if it could be the title of an undergraduate course then there isn't much doubt that it should be Top priority. Conversely, most of the entries in Advanced/Basic notions I'd change to High rather than Top. Maybe "Probability" should be Top but there seems to be some overlap between that and Probability theory which is also Top. "Limit of a sequence", "Equation Solving", and "Percentage" I'd make Medium. Under biographies I'd at least question all but Cauchy and Riemann. Just my opinion and obviously not one I feel strongly enough about to actually change the ratings and it's not worth the bandwidth to argue about it if someone disagrees.

Topology might make a good article for CotM and it definitely needs work; right now I'd give it a C-. C makes a good standard for "minimum passing" quality, the major aspects of the subject should be covered, references in reasonable shape, understandable enough to make it worthwhile for someone to read it. So to me, getting an article from B to C is not as high a priority as getting an article from Start to C, given the articles have the same visibility/importance.--RDBury (talk) 17:06, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the importance of most of the biographies has been overrated. CRGreathouse (t | c) 18:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the vital articles (bold), a classification new to me: Apparently these 1000 articles have been identified by outsiders while "top importance" articles have been identified within this project. At the moment, Riemann's biography is not vital, merely vital(expanded), and "Equation solving" is not even on that list. On the other hand, the 987 vitals do include 62 "vital" Mathematics articles.

Fully 16 of those are now in Start class. I looked at four of them: Area, Constant, Digit, and Equation. I am not sure whether the latter deserves a Start or a C. It's outlandish that any of the first three is a Start.

Hastily I guess quality classification is so far out of date that its maintenance, rather than improvement of listed articles, may be the only immediately useful application of these lists.

(Btw, it appears that "expansion" of the list of vital articles from about 1000 to 7000 brings only 50% increase in math articles, from 62 to 92.) --P64 (talk) 19:35, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea how the "vital" article list was decided, but I think it should be ignored. The list includes combinatorics, game theory, and chaos theory, while leaving out much more important topics like calculus. Weird attention has been devoted to the most elementary notions of geometry as well, listing 15 articles on things like "line", "point", "shape", "conic section". Sure, these are important topics for understanding geometry. But they aren't vital to an encyclopedia. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:47, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that the vital list is decided by consensus and is limited to 1000 total, of which there are 62 math articles. Because of the limit you can't propose an article be added without specifying which article it will replace. There are similar lists such as Core articles and WP 1.0. WP 1.0 is based on a heuristic formula using article statistics such as page views and number of links, see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Article selection.--RDBury (talk) 15:01, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting we add anything. I'm saying the whole list is suspect. I mean, is "point" an important concept? Sure, we should have an article about it. But from the point of view of building an encyclopedia, it's not near the top of the list. In fact, in some sense the heuristic isn't even being adhered to: "point", "line", etc., all belong to Geometry, which is probably the only article out of those 15-16 that should be on the list. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:54, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I think the idea of having to nominate something to be removed when submitting something is very good. Now if only the government had to do that when it proposed new laws! You could always have a poll about which ones should be included I guess - if so I propose we use Single transferable vote and D'Hondt method to choose them but we probably should have a referendum on the voting method first. :) Dmcq (talk) 17:04, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

As far as I can tell "vital articles" has turned into a forum to discuss why what's important to me is more important than what's important to you. I agree with Sławek that it should be ignored. Any usefulness it ever had is long since past. Ideally it should be marked as "inactive" or some such. --Trovatore (talk) 00:41, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Articles every Wikipedia should have

I agree with what Sławomir is saying about the vital articles list. But as far as I can tell, the list is not used for anything important. A much more important list is at m:List of articles every Wikipedia should have. This seems to be used by those starting Wikipedias in other languages. The current list is:

1. Mathematics
2. Algebra
   1. Group theory
   2. System of linear equations
3. Arithmetic
4. Axiom
5. Mathematical analysis
   1. Differential equation
   2. Numerical analysis
6. Coordinate system
7. Equation
8. Function (mathematics)
9. Geometry
   1. Circle
      1. Pi
   2. Square
   3. Triangle
10. Mathematical proof
11. Number
    1. Complex number
    2. Number theory
12. Infinity
13. Set theory
14. Statistics
15. Trigonometry

Logic and probability appear not under mathematics but under philosophy. Algorithm appears under computers. This list seems okay considering its size, but I think there are improvements we can make. If it were up to me, I would:

1. Replace group theory with symmetry. The fundamental idea underlying group theory is symmetry, so an encyclopedia needs an article on the latter before it needs an article on the former.
2. Replace numerical analysis by calculus. Calculus is fundamental to modern engineering and physics; and as far as I can tell, about half of numerical analysis consists of approximating integrals.
3. Replace complex number by prime number. Both of these are fundamental concepts, but the basics of complex numbers should already be in the number article, whereas there is a lot to say about primes that does not fit well in that article.
4. Replace circle and square with angle, area, and Pythagorean theorem. Specific shapes aren't as interesting as concepts; and the Pythagorean theorem, besides being a classic and the only theorem most people have ever heard of, is at the heart of how we measure distance in the real world. (I'm keeping triangle because you can't have an article on the Pythagorean theorem without triangles. The same could be said of squares, but if I include them I have too many articles.)
5. Remove mathematical analysis and number theory. The list is too short to include fields of math.
6. Remove axiom. This has a lot of overlap with mathematical proof, truth, and logic (all on the list).
7. Add logarithm. Not only is this of great historical importance, but logarithms are extremely practical, even for laymen.
8. Add standard deviation under statistics. Seriously, this is the number 2 most viewed math article on the English Wikipedia (after Einstein, who doesn't really count as math).

Before I propose this change, I'd like some feedback. What would you like to see changed on this list? (Note that the size of the list is fixed; you can't add something without removing something else.) Ozob (talk) 00:34, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

The value of this list: Responses

Basically I think the same as I think about "vital articles". Bluntly, this is a useless exercise, nothing more than an opportunity to argue about what's more important. If you have an article you think is underserved, ask for help on it specifically. --Trovatore (talk) 08:41, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Ozob, I think the project you are undertaking is too broad in scope. How about focusing on a particular issue? Certainly standard deviation, which does carry heavy traffic, should be on the list if we are to take relevance to the public into account. What would one do about this? Tkuvho (talk) 12:11, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Isn't it a bit pretentious to tell other WPs what they should have?--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:15, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

It is advice based on our experience. They can ignore it, if they wish. JRSpriggs (talk) 13:04, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Does doesn't change the fact that it sounds rather pretentious. Of course it can only be a "advice" for structural reasons alone, as the other WPs have their separate administration and portals. Moreover if I understand the original reason of the discussion correctly, the goal is to identify the high priority math articles for en.wp and now we've ended up with that pretentious title above (the page already existed before, but still ...).--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:20, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind that some WP's are really small and the person (there may only be one) they have working on math articles might want a list of articles to give top priority. Anyway, the list is on meta so it's not one specific WP telling the others what to do. I agree with most of Ozob's changes, except I don't think you'd need articles that go beyond a typical high school curriculum so "Standard deviation" is probably not needed. There are some other nit picks as well but I'd say make the proposal there to work out the details.--RDBury (talk) 14:43, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I have no issue with the content and math is rather universal anyhow. I just find the title somewhat unappropriate due to being pretentious.--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:23, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's not my title; the person who originally selected it may have been pretentious, but now that's just the name of a page on meta. And the page does seem to serve a real purpose, because it gives small Wikipedias something to work towards.

Regarding my preference for standard deviation: Even though standard deviation is a more advanced topic than some of the others on the list, it is extremely practical. The same can be said of differential equations, which are already on the list, and of solutions to systems of linear equations, which are also on the list. Practicality isn't the only consideration, but it is important. But that doesn't mean that I've made the right choices, and if someone has other ideas for the list I'd love to hear them. Ozob (talk) 00:01, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm against this project entirely. But if it happens, I certainly disagree with replacing group theory by symmetry. The first is at least about some reasonably well-specified mathematical thing; the latter is more of a broad philosophical concept. Who says the fundamental idea of group theory is symmetry anyway? Not all important groups are most naturally understood as symmetry groups, by any means.

Also, I'm against replacing complex number with prime number. That's a personal thing; I don't care much about number theory, having always been more into infinitary than finitary math. Is there any objective criterion by which one should be included more than the other? I think not, which to my mind just shows the folly of the whole idea. I would like to see it dropped. --Trovatore (talk) 20:07, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

(unindent) I don't consider this question foolish, just difficult. Moreover, I think coming up with the best list of vital topics etc. is not what's most important. It seems that most (all?) people around agree at least that the topics listed above under "Branches/theories" are crucial (in order to use a word that is not "vital", "top importance" etc.). Yet, many of them are in poor state. For example, look at real analysis. I would love to initiate a drive that turns these articles (one by one, obviously) into decent articles. Does not need to be good, but maybe B-ish would be nice. Do(n't) you share this wish? Jakob.scholbach (talk) 20:28, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Probably the list you originally gave is the one that should guide which articles we as a project should focus on. I would like to add, though, that "start" class may not be the best metric for determining which articles need the most urgent work. I just picked at random combinatorics. I agree that this is a "start" class article (maybe "C", I don't know how such things are reckoned), but it really isn't all that bad, and gives basically an outline of the subject and links to other more specific articles. I don't think it's in urgent need of development. Maybe about half of the others are in a similar state, like group theory and Cauchy's integral formula, random variable. Perhaps we need an ad hoc metric to determine which of these articles are really truly dreadful, and make it a priority to work on those. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:54, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I still believe that Meta's list of articles every Wikipedia should have is important, but I agree that it is not so important for the English Wikipedia and for this Wikiproject in particular. Because of that, I think that part of this discussion is better held at m:Talk:List of articles every Wikipedia should have. I'll start a thread there some time soon. Ozob (talk) 01:00, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree, this here is the wrong place for discussing topics affecting all wikipedias.--Kmhkmh (talk) 01:01, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Specific proposals

• Numerical analysis can be generally viewed as computational approximation theory, with an emphasis on the computational representation and solution of problems in mathematical analysis (differential and integral equations, continuous optimization, simulation). See Kantorovich's essay, "Functional analysis and applied mathematics". Scientific computing and applied mathematics are wider areas.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:53, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Vital articles

The preface at Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded (level 4) implies to me that the Wikipedia:Vital articles have a function that others naysay (I don't like hyphens), underlying some cooperative effort across wikipedia editions. Unlike the level 3 list, this list is nowhere near being worked on across the various wikis for other languages.

I don't now have time to read more or to comment.--P64 (talk) 22:48, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Need to update ratings?

Going back to the list at the top of this section: we can see here that most of the ratings are some years old. Although many of the articles aren't in perfect condition, I think the majority have moved beyond start-class. How are the ratings used? Is there any value in going through this list and updating ratings where appropriate? Jowa fan (talk) 07:03, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

We didn't start using C until relatively recently so some of the Starts might actually be C's. Our system is idiosyncratic in other ways and imo gives more inflated ratings than the common standard, but one purpose is to suggest priorities by identifying which articles need the most work. I guess another purpose is to help measure progress in article quality with specific criteria.--RDBury (talk) 14:23, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Cross-classification

For example,

• List articles in Start-class assessed by the Mathematics project that carry the Statistics project banner —not the same as Start-class assessed by Mathematics that have {{maths rating | field=probability and statistics}.
• List articles in Statistics project, not Mathematics project.

Is there any such tool here at Wikipedia? --P64 (talk) 15:05, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

"We" again

Does anyone here think "we" is used improperly at powerset construction? The books cited use pretty much the same tone. Tijfo098 (talk) 23:25, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

The use of we in section Intuition is borderline, but "We will construct" (under Example) is where it gets really bad. None of the books cited is an encyclopedia. Hans Adler 00:04, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I was surprised to see that MOS:FIRSTPERSON seems to allow this, but I prefer not to use first-person here even in that sort of impersonal way. It does say in the MOS that "often such things can be rephrased to avoid the first-person pronoun" and I think it would be appropriate to do so in this case. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:04, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

It's called an 'inclusive we' in linguistics. There's an article about it—clusivity—and some google books searches indicate it's a hot research topic with respect to academic register. [45]. Tijfo098 (talk) 03:53, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

(When the MOS dash warriors take a break and the MOS is un-fully-protected, I'll change MOS:FIRSTPERSON to the use proper lingustic terminology and link to the right article.) Tijfo098 (talk) 03:57, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

This sort of "we" is often better rephrased. But a while ago various strange people were construing it literally as referring to the author of the article, and saying that makes it an expression of personal views, to be tagged as an "essay-like" article. That is absurd. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:24, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Besides the linguistic style issue, I think "we" mostly occurs in a section that doesn't follow the WP:NOTTEXTBOOK guideline. So before rephrasing the sentence it may be worthwhile assess whether the material belongs in an encyclopedia in the first place.--RDBury (talk) 16:10, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I can try taking a look at cleaning it up; I've been working on DFA minimization lately, anyway, and this is very closely related. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:53, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

to prod, perchance to help...

Is there a wiki policy that editors should try to help rather than prod? See generality of algebra. Tkuvho (talk) 20:23, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think a prod is appropriate. A single Google search turned up thousands of results. I've added a reference, and marked the article as a mathematical analysis stub. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:49, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the user that introduced the prod. There are not thousands of Google results associated with "generality of algebra" in the sense used in the article -- just a few. As far as I can tell, the term "generality of algebra" as used in the article is non-contemporary, used only by Cauchy in the 19th century to refer to certain non-rigorous arguments of Euler and Lagrange. As it does not appear to be a term in current usage, it can be described in the currently referencing articles without creating a new article in wikipedia. — Myasuda (talk) 20:58, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Regarding "just a few": how so? Most of the top search results used "generality of algebra" in the sense used here. Same with Google books and scholar search. Obviously, I'm not going to page through hundreds of pages of hits to see if they are all relevant, but my impression is that many are. See also the scholar search: [46]. The first six hits are relevant to the subject of the article. (Then there are some hits with the phrase "generality of algebraic groups".) Then there are some more relevant hits. This is clearly a bona fide notable notion that historians of mathematics are interested in. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:03, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

It looks to me like a reasonable topic and that there's a good chance of forming a reasonable article instead of the one liner definition that's there. Dmcq (talk) 21:09, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

There are probably more articles that are beyond help than ones that only seem to be. But people should be doing due diligence to make sure which is the case before slapping on a PROD tag. On the other hand, an unreferenced stub should probably be fixed by the author rather than relying on other editors to clean it up. It's like walking through a dark alley with a $100 bill sticking out of your pocket, maybe you don't deserve to get mugged but it shouldn't come as a big surprise either.--RDBury (talk) 21:13, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Write a decent article in the first place and it won't be prodded. The artice still doesn't tell us what this mysterious "generality of algebra" principle actually is. Gandalf61 (talk) 22:02, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

There is a further report at my talkpage that the article has been slated for deletion, but I have been unable to find any evidence of this at either generality of algebra or talk:generality of algebra. Tkuvho (talk) 04:07, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Just look at the article history. William M. Connolley (talk · contribs) prodded the article; Slawekb (talk · contribs), who also posts as Sławomir Biały, removed the prod notice (which any editor is allowed to do if they believe an article is worth keeping). Gandalf61 (talk) 08:13, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

π or pi?

What is our opinion of this edit? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:09, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with it very strongly. Doing it for the main article on the number is one thing, but when it appears in a phrase it just gets silly and ugly. If that's the general opinion here, I propose that the move is reverted and the user who did it is asked to use the WP:RM process for this controversial move. Hans Adler 17:49, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

grrr -- "propose that the move be reverted" -- end grrr Note that the main article has been at pi for a long time; this seems to have come out of a proposed move to π, which I wanted to support but in the end couldn't (the screen-reader problem was the deciding factor). Kauffner seems to be on a bit of a tear to generalize the non-result ("leave things as they are") from that proposal.

On another note, I don't like the {{pi}} or {{math}} templates at all. I think we should stop using them. On some screens they make things look better, at least marginally, but messing around with fonts is a hack. If running-text math in articles needs a serif font (why?) then maybe we should look for a way to put entire math articles into a serif font. --Trovatore (talk) 17:59, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

There was an RfC at Talk:Pi in which there was some consensus, based on accessibility concerns, that the article pi should not be moved to π. However, I see that some users have taken this to mean that the symbol π should not appear in any titles. And, moreover, the same editor changed the symbol into the word elsewhere in the text as well. This seems to go against well-established practices. No one writes out "pi" to refer to the mathematical constant. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:56, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

The same editor is lobbying to change this in all of our pi related articles. I agree with Hans: this is a silly idea. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:00, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

So no one writes out "pi"? Let's just look at journal articles, shall we? Any journal article on this subject will have equations with the symbol π, but we want to know how many use "π", but never "pi". proof π irrational -pi gives us 3890 math/engineering hits on Google Scholar compared to 9,230 hits for proof pi irrational. So consistent use of the π symbol is a minority taste even among the writers of journal articles on this subject.

Serif font pi ({{pi}}) is this: π. How many people really want to go back to this: π Kauffner (talk) 20:23, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Ummm, you may want to actually "look" at the journal articles, or at the very least consider that google might (be trying to) be smarter than you. First: Google uses OCR, so it will read in the greek character π and parse it and consider it as "pi". Second: In the first of the 9,230 hits, the "pi" returned is not an occurrence of "pi", nor in fact of π, rather it is a ρ (in ${\text{Proof that }}\rho _{k}^{\prime }>\rho _{k+0.8}$); in the second hit, the "pi" returned is actually p₁; in the third hit, "Pi" actually occurs and refers to the mathematical constant, though the occurrence is in the title of a book ("Pi and the AGM"), a book that uses "Pi" in its title and chapters titles, but not in its section titles nor its prose. In the future, please put a bit more effort into your googling. RobHar (talk) 21:25, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

In the browser I'm currently using, with the settings I'm currently using, the latter actually looks very substantially better. I'm quite willing to believe that the former looks better on your screen. That's part of the problem — font manipulations are incredibly non-robust; they don't give remotely the same experience for different users. --Trovatore (talk) 20:52, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

It does give the majority of readers an improved experience, which is the reason I advocate using serif for math and pi. But to go back to the original issue; I prefer the symbol inline, but not in article titles for reason of accessability. — Edokter (talk) — 21:20, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I would need to see evidence that it "gives the majority of readers an improved experience", and I'm not sure that would be enough even if true. Mixed-font stuff is just bad. That's the first thing any decent typography lesson teaches you to avoid.

Just to clarify what I'm reporting, here's what I see from Kauffner's text:

You can see that the serif-ized version doesn't render nicely at all — the two legs have different thicknesses. The sans version, although we might not be as used to seeing it in mathematics, blends more harmoniously with the surrounding sans text. --Trovatore (talk) 21:33, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

That is just on your display (noting you don't have Times New Roman, and a sans-serif font that strangly does has a serif pi. Also note that Kauffner uses <big> for his examples.) There will always be readers with deviating font- and screen settings. I crafted {{math}} (and by extension {{pi}}), to suit the majority of readers that have default screen and font setting... on multiple platforms. It is those readers we have to accommodate. And while your example may not be the prettiest to look at, it isn't unreadable either. That makes your objection purely one of personal preference, and we simply cannot cater for all personal preferences. (You can however specify your own font for math and pi in your personal CSS.) — Edokter (talk) — 22:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

And for the record, here is how it shows on my screen:

Note the atrocity of the sans-serif pi... just saying. — Edokter (talk) — 22:22, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree that we cannot cater to personal preferences. The simplest way to not cater is to use an unadorned π and leave the rendering up to the user's browser.

In addition, I would like to point out that this discussion has a lot of overlap with WT:MOSMATH#Request for comments: serif vs. sans-serif. While commentators there generally favored serifs, there was no strong consensus either way. It might be more fruitful to renew that discussion rather than focusing specifically on how we should write the ratio of the circumference to the diameter. Ozob (talk) 22:47, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, exactly (to your first paragraph). My main objection is not how it looks on my screen. It's using this ugly font-mixing hack to make it look better on some screens (not at all clear how many). With all due respect for the effort Edokter has put into {{math}} and {{pi}}, I do not think they are helpful, and I do not think we should use them. --Trovatore (talk) 23:08, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Perfect is the enemy of good. I think your argument is meaningless without better understanding of what the quantifier "some" really means. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:12, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Leaving it to the browser has already proven inadequate, hence why {{math}} was created. It is geared towards default font settings, which we can safely asume is > 90% of our reader base. But you point out, this belongs to WT:MOSMATH. — Edokter (talk) — 00:44, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

"Proven" inadequate? What was the proof exactly? --Trovatore (talk) 00:47, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Somehow this discussion has moved on to the merits of serif versus sans. The more immediate problem is whether the ratio of the circumference to the diameter should be represented by the ordinary string of letters "pi" (as some are arguing) or by the Greek symbol. (I don't personally care whether it has serifs). Sławomir Biały (talk) 22:52, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I think we should always use the Greek letter π, even in headings and titles. Provided that search engines and search bars know that if someone types pi then they may mean π. I would hazard a guess that the majority of people backing pi are laymen of the mathematical sciences. (What's next, changing every x to an eks?) — Fly by Night (talk) 23:20, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I suggest we make a list of all the math articles with pi or π in the title and then submit a formal multipart move request. Kauffner (talk) 23:34, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

The List of topics related to pi should have most of them. Note that all but two of the titles use "pi". Also note there are many other uses of pi that have nothing to do with the ratio, not to mention other Greek letters and letters from other alphabets, e.g. λ-calculus and $\aleph _{0}$.--RDBury (talk) 02:09, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Most of these seem to have been only recently changed in that list by Kauffner. Of these, a few of them are redirects to a different article, and Kauffner moved some of the remaining ones to the "pi" version. There were only one or two that used "pi" before all this business started. Sławomir Biały (talk) 07:44, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the screen reader argument mentioned above is a good one: we should be very careful about demanding our article content satisfy some limitations of certain pieces of software. Lots of examples come to mind with that thought, but in the case of the screen reader the solution should be to fix the screen reader so it pronounces π correctly, not change all of our articles so the screen reader pronounces things as expected. Personally I value consistency; in mathematics we overwhelmingly use the symbol π to refer to the constant and in Wikipedia our articles largely use the same symbol. I would prefer to be consistent and use only π (with obvious redirects from the spelling pi), including for the article title of the pi article (a brief note about the usage of pi is of course acceptable). I have no opinion on the choice of font. Cheers, Ben (talk) 03:09, 21 April 2011 (UTC).

This is to re-propose an idea that has just been overwhelming voted down. Without some attempt to address the font or accessibility concerns of those who voted against, it would just be going around in circles. Kauffner (talk) 05:44, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I voted against that proposal as well, but I am against unthinking blanket application of the same argument to all articles with π in the title. It's one thing to accommodate screen readers in the main article. It's quite another to set aside all typographical niceties in all of our related articles. Let be add to a point that was already made. The solution here isn't to break our articles, but to fix the wikimedia software so that it supports alt text in titles, I would guess. Or, of course, to fix screen readers to pronounce π correctly, but that is clearly something outside of our controll. Sławomir Biały (talk) 07:35, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I guess I have say something about my motivations at this point since they seem to have been misunderstood. I was disappointed with the outcome of the vote on "pi", so afterward I considered what steps could be taken to lay the groundwork to reverse it. It occurred to me that cutting extraneous use of the pi symbol would show sensitivity to accessibility concerns and would also enhance the case for using the symbol where it is justified. Also, consistent use of the serif font would enhance the aesthetic value a move. Finally, there should be parallel naming of similar math constants. Kauffner (talk) 17:26, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Per Sławomir, please undo the moves. "Unicode, it works" (more and more of the time). I can't think of a time I saw "pi" spelled out in a math book, except in an expository sentence or two in an elementary book before going on to use the Greek letter. Screen-reader vendors should just fix their software; we should not mess up our articles to accomodate their bugs, with possible exceptions for very significant cases like the main π article that's likely to be accessed mostly by less mathematically oriented readers. If more extensive special measures really are needed for screen readers, it should be done by transliteration software (server side filter or client javascript) rather than by spewing "pi" through WP article space. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 09:53, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Added: I now think the buggy screen-reader issue can be handled completely with WP:WPUS. We shouldn't have to make any changes to article for it. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 10:54, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

So, some of the affected articles have been moved back to the versions with π in the title. I can't seem to move Liu Hui's pi algorithm back to Liu Hui's π algorithm, Chronology of computation of pi back to Chronology of computation of π, or List of formulae involving pi back to List of formulae involving π. This requires administrative powers, apparently. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:48, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Titles with special characters are on the page move blacklist because page move vandals used look-alikes of Latin letters to circumvent the page move blacklist. Another matter is cleaning up the articles themselves. I have just looked at Liu Hui's pi algorithm. More has been done there than just the π/pi swapping, and cleaning up after Kauffner's push for eccentric typesetting is going to take a lot of tedious work. Hans Adler 15:48, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I redid the section titles because two had the same heading ("Notes"). LaTeX was used in the running text, making the formulas much bigger than the surrounding text, e.g. there was an enlarged $\pi \approx {\tfrac {142}{45}}\approx 3.156$ (just like that) in the middle of a paragraph. I tried to correct this using either {{math}} or \scriptstyle. Now its π ≈ 142/45 ≈ 3.156. Earlier, the article opened, "Liu Hui's π algorithm is a mathematical algorithm "... I rewrote this sentence to avoid having the word "algorithm" appear twice. Kauffner (talk) 01:42, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that part of the concern here is over the recent wide-scale deployment of the {{math}} template. (I'm neutral to this, but it seems like it makes more work for folks wishing to typeset formulas in html). Also, I think there has been some consensus in the past that scriptstyle should be avoided if possible. Generally speaking, if inline <math> must be used, then just leave it as inline math, even if it looks a little too big in your browser. Support for inline math is getting better, but support for inline \scriptstyle isn't. There are other reasons documented in the archives of this discussion page. (Note that the MOSMATH no longer recommends scriptstyle, largely because of relatively recent discussions about it.) Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:26, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I have gotten rid of the scriptstyle at Liu Hui's π algorithm. In most cases, this was unnecessary, and only caused simple inline formulas to be rendered as a PNG by default, which we typically want to avoid. In other cases, mathematics typesetting like \frac or \tfrac caused the rendering engine also to render the inline formula as PNG by default, but these were most easily corrected by changing something like \frac{22}{7} to 22/7 rather than introducing \scripstyle. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:37, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I have proposed that the remaining articles be moved back at Talk:Liu Hui's pi algorithm#Requested move. Sławomir Biały (talk) 07:13, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

By the way, Kauffner also requested a move at Talk:Proof_that_π_is_irrational#Requested_move several days ago. Sławomir Biały (talk) 07:23, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Math MOS proposal

I propose that we clarify the math MOS to explicitly point out that the symbol π should not be spelled out 'pi' in running text when it is being used to refer to the mathematical constant. I think most people already expected that was the case, but recently there have been articles where the symbol was replaced by the spelled out 'pi'. Article titles are more complicated, and I prefer to handle them on a case by case basis, but in running text we routinely use lots of Greek letters without spelling them out. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

"Pi" is the overwhelming common usage, the way every dictionary gives the word.[47] Even the math symbols everyone understands, like "1" and "2", don't go into running text. Kauffner (talk) 14:25, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

That's not true in my experience. Someone already mentioned that many of the Google hits to "pi" are from OCR issues. I find the other evidence you gave somewhat unconvincing: a New York Times blog post, an Encyclopedia Britannica Online article, and a dictionary entry (which uses the Greek symbol in the actual text). This is less than overwhelming. I can say that, when I am reading a book and see "pi" spelled out, it is the exception rather than the rule. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:42, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Dictionaries also have entries for e.g. aitch. But we shouldn't write "Choose a value for aitch" in running mathematical prose, and neither should we write "We can approximate pi by using polygons". — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:56, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

If you are not convinced that "pi" is indeed common use, check out this ngram. Then type in "pi" on Google Books. Most of the hits on the first few pages are relevant: Pi, a source book, Pi: a biography of the world's most mysterious number, The Joy of Pi, Pi-unleashed: Volume 1, and on and on it goes. Put in "π" and you get equations and Greek text. Only one hit on the first page is a relevant example of the math constant being referred to in running text. Kauffner (talk) 15:25, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I asked you above to please be more careful in the future about incorrect uses of "the google". Now, you've done it again (as explained below by 69.111.194.167). Stop wasting our time with this incompetent argument. RobHar (talk) 22:32, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Kauffner, would you please clarify your view for me using the following examples? First, regarding 'Even the math symbols everyone understands, like "1" and "2", don't go into running text.': You mean that "I bought 2 doughnuts" should be spelled "I bought two doughnuts"? What if we change "2" to "34"? In my youth I was taught that the standard cutoff for spelling out numerals was 10. Do you have a cutoff? Second, in the sentence "The distributive law states that a (b + c) = a b + a c," would you prefer to have "+" and "=" spelled out? Third, please consider this sentence: "In a fiber bundle

$F\longrightarrow E\ {\xrightarrow {\,\ \pi \ }}\ B,$

the map π is called the projection." In your view should the "π" near the end of the sentence be spelled "pi"? Mgnbar (talk) 17:04, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

WP:ORDINAL seems pretty clear that π should normally be used instead of pi. If the normal non-math standard is that I don't see why maths would then go around using Engliah names. Dmcq (talk) 17:30, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Interesting — I learned a different cutoff. You write out twelve but cipher 13. Of course taking care to avoid "outright barbarisms" (i.e. you wouldn't say I think he ran twelve or 13 miles). --Trovatore (talk) 19:47, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm used to 12 as cutoff as well (same in German). But looking at various grammar sites on the web the actual recommensation varies slightly (see for instance [48], [49])--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:16, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I don't know what the general standard is in English, I was just commenting about the Wikipedia MOS which definitely tends towards us using π in running text. There are some other considerations for article titles as they specifically talk about being able to type things out on a keyboard but as with all guidelines circumstances might indicate one should do otherwise so I'll have to declare myself agnostic on the titles.. Dmcq (talk) 22:20, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually I think I was responding to Mgnbar, though I may not have realized that at the time. It's tricky to get these interleaved responses in the right place. --Trovatore (talk) 02:31, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

If you look at the cover photos of "The joy of π"[50] and "π: a biography"[51] they obviously both use π. The Borweins do use pi in book titles, but if you look in the Amazon Preview of the table of contets of "Pi: A Source Book"[52] (it is a collection of math articles), there are 2 articles that use pi in their titles; 3 that use π and 1 about Roger Apéry's proof that ζ(3) is irrational, that uses the greek letter ζ. If you look in the contents of "Pi and the AGM",[53] the Borweins themselves use π in the individual chapter titles, which might be taken as more akin wikipedia's constituent articles. There is also "π unleashed",[54] "π Algorithmen, Computer, Arithmetik",[55] and several movies like "π"[56] and on the other hand "pi Geschichte und Algorithmen einer Zahl" (tr. "pi History and algorithms of the number")[57] which (like Pi and the AGM) also uses π in its chapter titles. I get the impression that book and journal article titles are somewhat inconsistent and that Kauffner is cherry-picking sources, while chapter titles of math books use π more consistently. So I think that we should restore the earlier title and text. Opening an RM or talkpage discussion about article titles is much more acceptable than trying to impose a fait accompli. As for what dictionaries do: WP:NOTDICT. Similarly for other non-math sources. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 19:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Book covers are just art. The official title is the Library of Congress title, which is generally given on the copyright page. For material in English with the symbol π in the official title, there is the self-published edition of Beckmann's A History of π, Blatner's The Joy of π, the 1998 Aronofsky film π, and about half dozen unpublished dissertations. Out of 50,000 works in the English language with pi or π in their titles, that is it. The Boweins are the pi gods, but unfortunately inconsistent on this issue. However, they do use "pi" 35 times in their book. This is a problem with using "math sources" generally; They don't have a consistent style that would allow them to serve as a model. I suggest following the style of the more scientifically oriented encyclopedias such as Britannica or the Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia. I didn't notice anything in WP:ORDINAL that addresses this issue directly. It specifies that we should spell out "zero" to "nine" in running text. The less familiar the symbol, the more compelling the logic for spelling it out. Kauffner (talk) 02:37, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

"The official title is the Library of Congress title"? Why? What if that title disagrees with that registered in the government of another English-speaking country? Maybe the Library of Congress doesn't even like non-English characters in titles (I recently found out Massachusetts doesn't allow diacritics on birth certificates [58], does that mean that no one born in Massachusetts can be claimed to have an accent in their name?). This is silly.RobHar (talk) 03:07, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply that the titles of books have to be registered with any government agency. In the front matter of a book, there is typically a heading that says, "Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data" followed by title and publication information in a standard format for the benefit of librarians and booksellers. But no, the LOC won't register a title with a Greek letter. A π will appear as [pi] in their catalog. Kauffner (talk) 07:39, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

1) The cover (not the copyright record) is what the user sees, so WP article titles should be treated more like the cover. If there's some redirects that say "pi", that's fine and good. 2) Consistency is overrated. If sources are inconsistent, we can accept some inconsistency ourselves. 3) I haven't had a chance to go to the library and look at the actual EB; I'm not convinced that the "online EB" that you linked to is the same thing as the real EB. 4) The symbol π is perfectly familiar to readers of almost all math articles that mention it. The main exception is Pi which is left at that title (a redirect would also handle this perfectly well).

I haven't seen the Van Nostrand encyclopedia but other such books of theirs I've seen haven't been very impressive. The premier "math encyclopedia" whose quality we should IMO be striving towards is the The Princeton Companion to Mathematics. Its π article is called "π" (ironically alphabetized as if it were spelled "pi".)

All in all, things were fine the way they were and there was no reason to mess with them. If you want to open an RM discussion, that's fine, but once again, I think it is proper to undo all the moves first, rather than presenting a fait accompli. (edited) 69.111.194.167 (talk) 05:23, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I notice "π: Algorithmen, Computer, Arithmetik" is also inconsistent. Its cover says π, its title page says pi, and its copyright page says "[Pi] π [Medienkombination]" ("Media combination" since the book comes with a CD-ROM). "π: a biography" says π on the cover, Pi on the copyright page, and [Pi] in the online LOC record.[59] "π Unleashed" appears to be a translation of "π: Algorithmen, Computer, Arithmetik". Its copyright page on Amazon appears to give the German title but not the English one. The LOC record says "Pi-unleashed" with a hyphen. Overall this LOC and copyright info doesn't seem that authoritative. "The Number π" says π on the cover, [pi] on the copyright page, and mentions on the copyright page that it's a translation of a French book "Autour du nombre π" which says π on the cover,[60] doesn't have a preview with a scan of the copyright page, but says [pi] in the LOC.[61] I also notice that two of three books on π-calculus (a computer science topic, not related to the number π=3.14159...) that I found in the LOC say [pi] or [symbol for pi].[62] Anyway, Beckmann's and Blatner's books are obviously not unique. Could you please stop wasting our time with this stuff? 69.111.194.167 (talk) 06:44, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

If they want to raise a proposal then go ahead. Personally I'm against using pi in running text, I see no need to switch to linguistic mode for the maths and it grates as I shift gears. I find the business of even using a in running text and a in formulae causes a delay in my thinking. Dmcq (talk) 07:54, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Unless I've missed something, Kauffner is the only user arguing for "pi" in running text. Kauffner has not responded to my request for clarification of his argument. His argument is contradicted by dozens of math books and hundreds of math articles in my possession, and I'm sure that the other mathematicians here possess similar evidence. So I wholeheartedly endorse Carl's original proposal, that Math MOS be amended to say that "pi" should be "π" in running text. (I prefer "π" in titles for the same reason, but maybe there is a technical issue I'm missing?) Mgnbar (talk) 12:46, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I am not aware of any such technical reasons. I support this proposal. Hans Adler 14:21, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I have to wonder where all this emotion was during the pi move vote. Of course, that was quite an emotional discussion as well, but only those opposed to the symbol seemed to really care. Kauffner (talk) 15:49, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

There are thousands of mathematics articles in Wikipedia, and we can't all get involved with a single one of them. But once you start to edit against standard conventions and established practice on a wider scale, you shouldn't be surprised that you are getting opposition. Hans Adler 16:18, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

The move proposal was just about the title of the article, there was no implication it should be written as pi everywhere in text any more than 'Euler–Mascheroni constant' or gamma should be written instead of γ everywhere in running text. Dmcq (talk) 17:27, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

This is absoluteness ridiculous. We have a single, mathematical layman, trying to change all of the maths articles. There may be books with pi in the title, but they are books aimed at people that don't even know how to pronounce π. Kauffner, you in way above your head here. Give it up, and find a better use for your time. I can't believe you're here arguing with the maths wikiproject regulars that you are right and they are wrong. Like I said in my earlier post: shall we replace x with ecks? Of course not. You're being ridiculous. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you say anyway. Us mathematicians write the maths articles, and we're going to carry on using π. — Fly by Night (talk) 17:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Okay, but Kauffner is trying to be a good Wikipedian and resolve the issue through verifiable sources, so let's be civil about it. Even if math articles were mainly written by mathematicians, there would still be a place for non-mathematicians, to keep us from going off the deep end. Mgnbar (talk) 19:55, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Mgnbar: you're right, and Kauffner: I'm sorry. I didn't want to be uncivil, but I obviously was. I just feel strongly about the issue. Point taken, must try harder. — Fly by Night (talk) 20:47, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I think the stuff about looking at copyright pages is bogus (I shouldn't have spent so much time on it myself). By WP:COMMONNAME if we're writing about a book, we should use the name on the cover, since that's what people see, even if it says something different on the copyright page. Note that some of the books with "pi" in the title are high-level math, like the Borweins' book. But, overall, this is a case of "if it's not broken, don't fix it". I also don't understand Kauffner's post of yesterday[63] which sounds almost like this whole pagemove thing was some kind of pointy reverse psychology (but I doubt that's really what was being expressed). 69.111.194.167 (talk) 05:32, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't see anything about book covers in WP:COMMONNAME. WP:NCB refers to title pages and doesn't mention anything about covers. This article also includes an illustration of a title page, not a cover. You think the cover is more "common" because more people see it? That is not what "common name" means. The common name is the name that something is commonly referred to by other sources. So you don't need to look at the book at all to determine its common name. Just check the listing on WorldCat or Amazon. For our purposes here, the question arises, "Are these sources not using the π symbol simply for a technical reason?" Since the libraries and booksellers get their data from the copyright notice, this notice is the authoritative source. Kauffner (talk) 11:14, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Neither argument seems convincing to me. On the one hand, many library catalogs don't handle even diacritics very well, to say nothing of non-Latin letters. Looking at the WorldCat holdings for "A History of Pi" is not encouraging: one of these is "A History of [pi] (pi)", one is "A History of Pi", one is "A History of pi symbol (pi)" (!). Moreover, the entries seem to have the publishers wrong: the title of the Golem Press edition is very clearly "A History of π (pi)", but this is the one that WorldCat thinks was published by St. Martin's Press (and apparently in the wrong year). Clearly, I don't think we should be relying on library holdings as indicators of the "official" title of a work. Nor should we rely on the book cover either. Even the copyright page seems not to always agree with the library holdings. For instance, "π: A History of the World's Most Mysterious Number" has "Pi" on it's copyright page, "π" on the title page, and according to WorldCat, it is typically cataloged under [pi]. I think this needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis. There doesn't seem to me to be any natural candidate for the "official" title, and nothing that one can confidently say is supported by the MoS to the exclusion of the others. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:07, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

In all the cases you mention, the libraries and booksellers are using "pi", not π, even when the cover or copyright notice says otherwise. Someone must been asleep at the switch when this title got registered though. On Amazon, it's always "pi", never "[pi]" or π. So the common name issue is pretty straightforward. Kauffner (talk) 14:23, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The Amazon statement, does that refer to A History of Pi only, or is it a general statement about titles as they appear on Amazon? Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:30, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I think I have looked up enough books on Amazon to make such a "general statement" and I have not found any π or [pi] books. On the other hand, I did miss the two "[pi]-calculus" books in the LOC catalog, so my track record is less than perfect. Kauffner (talk) 15:52, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

If there are no exceptions, I would consider it a stylistic choice on the part of Amazon, rather than an indication of what the title actually is (let alone how we should treat it). Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:18, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

To summarize and hopefully finish this conversation, only one editor ever objected to π in running text, and he did so only briefly, and he has not argued for that position in 10 (oops --- ten) days. Is it fair to say that we have a consensus for altering Math MoS as proposed by Carl? (N.B. This is a different issue from π in titles, still being argued below.) Mgnbar (talk) 16:43, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Links to the "Gauss" disambiguation page

Something to work on:

Gauss is currently a disambiguation page. A very large number of pages link to it. Either (1) those links should get disambiguated or (2) the page should be moved to Gauss (disambiguation) and Gauss redirected to Carl Friedrich Gauss. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:32, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

(2) has been done, evidently by Michael Hardy. That has gone back and forth.

If I understand correctly, links to the redirect now called Gauss should be checked and many should be resolved, and there is a tool for semiautomation of that task. More than half of the incoming links are from article space; many are not. --P64 (talk) 16:50, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

"Discovered" vs. "invented" math topic

I don't think it's Wikipedia's business to solve that philosophical issue, but perhaps someone with more experience in side-stepping that should probably comment at the FAC for logarithm, which has been open for who knows how long, and seems to attract all sorts of nitpickers. Tijfo098 (talk) 22:04, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Isn't it this sort of thing that keeps people from trying to get math articles to FA status? I especially dislike the "the Google hit count on my version is higher than the Google hit count on your version so my version is correct" argument. Seems like we're wasting a lot of time with proofs and logic if all we have to do is to count Google hits to see if something is true.--RDBury (talk) 15:54, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

The best solution for discovered/invented is to use a neutral term such as "developed". It works every time. Tkuvho (talk) 16:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Reminder: Titles with π

There seemed to be a consensus above that for articles in the scope of this project, there is nothing wrong with "π" in the title and that this should not be replaced by "pi". There was even talk about updating MATHMOS to reflect this. This consensus is currently not reflected byanother requested move discussion, which is going on at Talk:Liu Hui's π algorithm#Requested move. To me this indicates that more (focused) discussion is needed, either in the relevant section above or in the new requested move discussion.

Also, I was going to move List of topics related to pi back to its correct title, but because of the title blacklist only an admin can do it. Hans Adler 08:19, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

This is a neutral notice? See WP:CANVASSING. Kauffner (talk) 16:39, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Done. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:18, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

To be honest this seems like a little inhouse push to ignore a wider consensus. The problem is because of the MoS requiring no symbols in the titles of articles. Should this not have gone for either wider consensus (via RfC) or another such process rather than in-house admins consenting to IAR? Chaosdruid (talk) 16:24, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

First, these were originally moved en masse from the WP:STATUSQUO without first attempting to get consensus. There is clearly no consensus for the original move, as evidenced by the thread at Talk:Liu Hui's π algorithm. Second, the MoS only cautions against using symbols that might render as square boxes because of a lack of browser support. That is a non-issue for Greek letters. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:29, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

No, that is not true, it does not say that. I suggest that is OR on your part.

From MoS: article titles — "* Do not use symbols: Symbols such as "♥", as sometimes found in advertisements or logos, should never be used in titles. This includes non-Latin punctuation such as the characters in Unicode's CJK Symbols and Punctuation block." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chaosdruid (talk • contribs) 16:43, 1 May 2011

As I explained to Kauffner before, and he has chosen to conveniently ignore, this is taken out of context. Greek letters are clearly not symbols in the sense of that rule, as is clear both from the surrounding rules and the talk page discussions from the time when the word "symbol" was introduced here.

In fact it's clear even from the text you quoted yourself: (1) π is less "symbol-like" than ♥. π is not normally found in advertisements or logos, and is much more often found in other contexts. π is not "non-Latin punctuation" because it is not punctuation. π does not appear in the CJK Symbols and Punctuation block and is unlike everything that appears there in that it has a lot less browser support. If this rule had been meant to cover something as common in English text as a Greek letter, there would have been plenty of more appropriate examples than a playing card symbol and CJK characters, both of which are much rarer in English text. Hans Adler 17:08, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

The "wider consensus" was entirely between Kauffner and himself until I made this comment. ("As you may have noticed, you haven't had much, if any, support yet but a lot of opposition. At some point it might be a good idea to just accept reality and disengage.") For some reason you suddenly became intested in this topic 14 hours later. (I am not saying there was any on-wiki canvassing. The only intervening edits by Kauffner were to push a new iteration of the Obama birth conspiracy and to support another of his contrarian page move votes in a different topic.) Hans Adler 17:00, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

This post sounds somewhat unhinged, like something that might not belong on a public forum. The thought that I might be canvassing in secret leads to obsessive behavior, but doesn't discourage you from canvassing openly yourself in the post at the beginning of this section. There is a page called WP:Requested moves that you might want to check out before you allow these conspiratorial thoughts to fester any further. Kauffner (talk) 10:02, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

This is nothing to do with support, the reality is that there is a guideline and you are ignoring it. You are also ignoring the processes to change the MoS and RfC. I have raised the matter for discussion on your behalf at MoS as none of the project members, apart from Kauffner who mentioned modifying MATHMOS, seems willing to try and at least follow any kind of proper procedure.

My interest? Lol - all page move requests are posted to a big list where all Wiki editors can see what are being proposed, your comment about "I am not suggesting canvassing" is exactly that and I find it a little ridiculous that you would imagine such a conspiracy.

Go and comment on the MoS talk page and get consensus to change it, or change the MATHSMOS, and then we can all be singing from the same songbook. It is silly that people are trying to dissuade people from following my posts and my oppose vote when if correct procedure was followed (getting the symbol allowed) my vote would have been Support :¬) Chaosdruid (talk) 17:12, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Greek letters, and other mathematical symbols, are clearly not "symbols" as defined in that section of the MoS. No change is required. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:31, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

E.g. 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + … has both + "symbols" and an ellipsis symbol in the title. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:34, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

It clearly needs to be moved to one plus one plus one plus one plus dot dot dot. </joking> In seriousness, though, from the (recent) discussion at the MoS that precipitated the "Do not use symbols" recommendation, this was clearly intended to refer to the sort of symbols that appear in the unicode symbols character set (a very motley crew of wingdings and other exotic symbols—not including commonplace things like the Greek letters). See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Symbols in article titles, specifically Pi. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:34, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

That should be "What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?" and attributed to the White Queen. Alice quite rightly said "I don't know, I lost count". ;-) Dmcq (talk) 13:06, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Please see also Talk:Leibniz_formula_for_pi#Requested_move. Cheers, Ben (talk) 08:13, 4 May 2011 (UTC).

Default TeX font size too big

Someone also opposed the FAC for logarithm on this. I'm curious if there's an easy way to fix that. I think Wikimedia use dvipng, which can probably be tweaked to make smaller pix by default. Tijfo098 (talk) 22:27, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

The developers have the technical ability to do this. In the recent past they have not given much attention to math display. I'd suggest trying to get a large number of comments on a village pump if you want to convince them that they should tweak the software. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:35, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Whether they can do this and whether they should do it are different issues. WP renders formulas as small PNG files and it's the browser that decides relative sizes based on screen resolution and user settings. Formulas might appear too big on one machine and too small on another. We've had long and intricate discussions here before on what can and should be done and we even have a sub-project for making the best of what we have. We're coming up on 2 years since the last math article was made FA (I just checked and updated the project page) and it seems to me that if this kind of thing can keep an article from being promoted then math articles are pretty much disqualified before the start.--RDBury (talk) 16:56, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

As we have been incessantly discussing since February 2003, there are lots of problems with using TeX in an inline setting on Wikipedia (whereas in a "displayed" setting it seems to work well). One of those is improper alignment, thus:

$a+b,\,$ $a^{b},\,$ $a_{b}\,$

Another is this:

$1+2=3\,$

.

The period at the end of a sentence appears on the next line. The same thing happens with commas. (Of course, this varies with the window geometry.)

Michael Hardy (talk) 03:53, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

MathJax

I recently came across User:Nageh/mathJax which is a wikipedia extension for using the MathJax javascript library for displaying LaTeX expressions. It uses the raw Latex input rather than the Texvc images. All rendering is done via javascript and it does take a couple of seconds to render a page, but this time is comparable to the time it takes to download all the png images. It does require downloading a font pack and setting a user preference to use.

I've been using this for about a month now and I'm very happy with the results, there are a few snag but the overall rending is good. I find it less jarring than the Texvc. It probably not ready for primetime yet but some more people trying it to spot any bugs. --Salix (talk): 22:36, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Boubaker polynomials

I just declined an AfC from an anon IP wanting to recreate Boubaker polynomials, which appears to have been persistently popping up and being deleted over the last few years. On closer inspection the content came from User:Rirunmot/User:Rirunmot/subpage6, which in turn must have saved from an old version of the deleted article (hence the cleanup tags), and I suspect the AfC was submitted by User:Rirunmot himself. He's apparently been working on several versions of it in his user space recently. Anyway, I have no idea whether the new version of the article is better or if the subject has recently become notable, I just thought there might might be people here who would want to keep an eye on it. —Joseph Roe^Tk•Cb, 13:13, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Previous deletion discussions can be found at: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Boubaker_polynomials, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boubaker polynomials (2nd nomination), and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boubaker polynomials (3rd nomination). Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

However, at this point there seem to be enough hits at Google scholar in decent places that this passes our notability threshold. This is, in some sense "unfortunate", since the article was really a dogged attempt at self-promotion (with all kinds of sockpuppetry, meatpuppetry, and vote-stacking), and I don't personally find the polynomial sequence to be especially notable (as it's a trivial variation of the Chebyshev polynomials IIRC). But I think there is probably no choice but to allow the re-creation of this article in some form. In any event, this will be something we definitely want to keep an eye on. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:25, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Per this slightly odd note on my talk page I would be on the lookout for yet more sockmeatpuppetry. —Joseph Roe^Tk•Cb, 14:37, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Dear Sławomir Biały, I was working on this page among several others, but it seems to me the most controversial among the pages I studied. Its lastly deleted version contained à 'zero' references... the actual one User:Rirunmot/User:Rirunmot/subpage6, is referring to more than 22 third party, independent, verifiable and academic sources, … there is something wrong and abnormal… at the last AFD !! as you said hits at Google scholar yieded thousands of links in decent places.

Your note about link to Chebyshev polynomials could be understood, but specialists say Polynomials are generally linked to each other, and ther are rules for differentiating (i. e; Chebyshev polynomials are linked to Luckas polinomials by a simple mutiplying act, nevertheless they exist separately) ). Please have a look on the references and give your opinionRirunmot (talk) 15:04, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, many polynomials are variants of each other. This one is an especially trivial variant of the Chebyshev polynomials and, in my opinion, doesn't really require its own article. There was some discussion about this eons ago at the now deleted discussion page. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:16, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes , but in one reference of that article , it is stated that a polynomial, in order to have an identity must have 1_ A generating function 2_ A recursive form 3_ an explicit form 4_ a characteristic Differential Equation and finally 5_a field of application.

According to references (from Encyclopedies and Books) the Boubaker Polynomials have these 5 Charecteristic Patterns !! and are applied in tens of scientific fielld (see §the page) . You know, Dickson are simply 2*chebyshev!!! Do one dare saying that Dickson are trivial?? what is your opinion??

Rirunmot (talk) 15:24, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd kill the Nova Publishers "encyclopedia" entry. As for the Dickson polynomials, these are only studied over finite fields, where they aren't related to Chebyshev polynomials. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I want to point out that User:Rirunmot recruited me to chime in on my talk page. I was one of the few people arguing to keep the article in the third nomination, but I wasn't exactly crying when the article was deleted because I am outright disgusted by the use of the page on this topic as a platform for self-promotion. Yes, I personally believe that it's technically well above the notability threshold. In my opinion, it doesn't matter that the only scholars to write about these polynomials are the original author and his friends. In my opinion, it doesn't matter that they're only a small trivial variant of the Chebyshev polynomials. What does concern me here is the use of Wikipedia as a platform for self-promotion. It seems to me that there is a clear conflict of interest here. I'd rather us semiprotect the article and ban any of the offending users from editing it. Then if some more impartial editor wants to re-create it, fine. But I'll say, even though I technically think it's notable, this whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth and I know I'm not going to put in any effort to re-creating this page. Cazort (talk) 16:00, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure why I've been invited to join in here. My only part in the last Afd was to stir things up a bit (now there's a surprise...). I wanted at least part of the discussion to be in English as opposed to Maths, and ended up hosting something on my talk page. Now I'm here, I'll leave the maths to the mathematicians, but as a writer I'm interested in the behind the scenes. What is so all-fired important about getting this stuff onto Wikipedia? Surely it can't lend kudos to the thing in the eyes of the world mathematical community (assuming there is one - no, must be). Is there a profit motive? Something like a book that needs pushing? How many other similar things are there, and what proportion of them is on Wikipedia? And finally, are they any use, or just a bit of mathematical frippery? Peridon (talk) 17:51, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Project Euclid identifier?

I notice that several references link to Project Euclid. A bit like how many reference link to Mathematical Reviews. I think we should give Project Euclid its own identifier (and its own article as well) so references can be tidied up like the others.

For example, a citation with a link to Mathematical Reviews like

{{cite journal
 |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried
 |year=2008
 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics
 |url=http://www.ams.org/mathscinet-getitem?mr=2413003
 |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]]
 |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239
 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828
}}

gets cleaned up to

{{cite journal
 |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried
 |year=2008
 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics
 |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]]
 |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239
 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828
 |mr=2413003
}}

I think that it would be a good thing to clean up

{{cite journal
 |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried
 |year=2008
 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics
 |url=http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.bsl/1208442828
 |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]]
 |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239
 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828
}}

to something like

{{cite journal
 |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried
 |year=2008
 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics
 |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]]
 |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239
 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828
 |euclid=euclid.bsl/1208442828
 |mr=2413003
}}

Which would look something like

• Gottwald, Siegfried (2008). "Mathematical fuzzy logics". Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 14 (2): 210–239. doi:10.2178/bsl/1208442828. MR2413003. PE euclid.bsl/1208442828.

or similar.

I've also made {{Project Euclid}}, similar to {{MR}} and {{doi}}. Appearance can be tweaked since I've no idea how a link to Project Euclid should be presented. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:59, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

See a related discussion at Template talk:Citation#Many things about identifiers. I think the distinction between identifiers like MR and doi that have their own parameters and identifiers like {{ECCC}} that do not is the frequency of usage: how many project Euclid references do we have? In any case, it should work to use your Euclid template within the |id= field of a citation template. But I'm not sure I see the point when the doi goes to exactly the same place. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:52, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah I remember that discussion, I led it :p. But as a point of comparision, There's a bit more than 500 articles with links to the Project Euclid website (524 articles, as of 17 March 2001), well over the threshold for inclusion. However, if these links are truely redundant with DOIs (as in dois will always resolve to the same location), then it would probably be better to convert these urls do DOIs instead of giving them their own identifiers. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:59, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately I don't think the doi does always work. At least, for example, PE euclid.em/1047565447 works, while the corresponding following the syntax of your example, doi:10.2178/em/1047565447, does not. I agree that standardizing the format of our Project Euclid links would be an improvement. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:17, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Link presentation

Any feedback on how to present the link though? Like which of pe:euclid.bsl/1208442828 (as the doi) vs. PE euclid.bsl/1208442828 (as most other identifier, but is PE understood to mean Projet Euclid as MR is understood to mean Mathematical Reviews?) vs Project Euclid: euclid.bsl/1208442828 vs... is best? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:36, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Anyone? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:26, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer the presentation PE for brevity (versus space-hungry "Project Euclid" and for consistency with Mathematical Reviews's MR.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:02, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Alright, since that would be one of my preferred option too (favourite would be "pe:" to match "doi:"), let's go with that. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Minimization of prefix?

Hi! This is a useful template.

• Nordström, Kenneth (1999). "The life and work of Gustav Elfving". Statistical Science. 14 (2): 174–196. doi:10.1214/ss/1009212244. JSTOR 2676737. MR 1722074. PE euclid.ss/1009212244. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1=, |2=, |3=, and |4= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

I would prefer the deletion of the (redundant) prefix "euclid." from the identifier. It would be useful to provide documentation and examples on its use; also, the documentation has 3 levels of parentheses, where I believe 2 are intended.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 13:10, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that "euclid." is part of the identifier, so you can't removed it. You could do something like euclid.ss/1009212244, but that means you input a partial identifier ("ss/1009212244") in the templates, which most people will not do. They will input "euclid.ss/1009212244", and it'll produce euclid.euclid.ss/1009212244, which is both uglier, and gives a bad link to the PE database. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:30, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I first tried "1009212244" (following the MR and JSTOR examples) then "ss/1009212244" and finally "euclid.ss/1009212244", FYI. Thanks for your clarification.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 13:47, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Boubaker Polynomials (Summary)

From the three pages: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Boubaker_polynomials, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boubaker polynomials (2nd nomination), and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boubaker polynomials (3rd nomination) it seems that two facts are admitted by everyone :

• The main criticism was initially about Notabilty and references, nothing more.
• The debate deviated to Editing Wars, some nonsense vandalism and odd behaviour.

Now the matter is neither the correctness; nor the mathematical value, these are problems of specialist as discussed in the accessible and verifiable academic refernces i.e. Meixner-Type Results for Riordan Arrays and Associated Integer Sequences, Chapter 6: The Boubaker polynomials (by Paul Barry, Aoife Hennessy and Modelling Nonlinear Bivariate Dependence Using the Boubaker polynomials (by E. Gargouri-Ellouze, N. Sher Akbar, S. Nadeem)... The real matter is about notability, which is quite admitted by the 3680 hits there [64]adn 163 there Scholar Publications along with the academic and encyclopedic publications. So please give your opinion on this particular question: Notable or Not-Notable. Thanks Rirunmot (talk) 19:03, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

My feeling is that, per WP:NPOV, an accurate article on the Boubaker polynomials would have to start out as saying something like "The Boubaker polynomials are a sequence of polynomials, a trivial variant of the Chebyshev polynomials, which due to relentless self-promotion by Boubaker and his colleagues have taken on an alternative name." Can we find adequate sourcing to support language like that? If not, then perhaps in the interest of primum non nocere we should say nothing at all. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:33, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. We can note that all the references which claim mathematical value are by B, and note that it doesn't have mathematical value. That doesn't mean we can't have an article, but it should note both that there is no established mathematical value and that it's a trivial variant of the Chebyshev polynomials. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:51, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I disagree too. I spent a lot of time on the references... Saying (as per the message of Arthur Rubin) that the refernces are from B or X is quite nonsence because the provided references are REACHABLE, and Simply VERIFIABLE even by a 7-years kid...So the single question is Notable or not Notable, it is not the standard of WP to state on Value or link to Chebyshev, this is up to specialists in the academic arenaRirunmot (talk) 21:07, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

For notability, we would need, at the least, evidence that someone other than B was using the term. No such evidence has been presented. Even if some "evidence" were presented that others were using it, due to B's known use of pseudonyms in publications, we would have difficulty verifying that, unless it was used by a well-known mathematician. But I don't agree that notability is enough. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:06, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I didn't say the references to B or X are nonsense. I said that they are evidence of non-notability, and are not evidence of established mathematical value. If they are published in real peer-reviewed journals, that still doesn't provide evidence of notability or relevance to any real field of mathematics, only of accuracy. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:14, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

There is a terrible error!! In the proposed page there is no mention about any particular relevance to any real field of mathematics  !!! , just the simple (referred) sentence :

The Boubaker polynomials have yielded several integer sequences in the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS). They have been widely used in several applied physics fields as Cryogenics, Biology,System Dynamics ,NonLinear Processes,Approximation Theory ,Thermodynamics, Mechanics,Hydrology , Molecular Dynamics ,Thermo-Physics , Manifolds , Functional Analysis... ,

So they seem to be multi-field items, no problem with relevance ...

About Notability, Arthur Rubin seems not interested in verifying the references,let's help him, i.e. ref 8 [65], The authors, Eminent Professor Paul Barry et al. Website presents as Chapter 6: (p 23): The Boubaker Polynomials... In i.e. Reference 15 [66] , Professor A. Yildirim Homepage presents (page 40) the boubaker polynomials as a tool for solving nonlinear science problems... and so on ...

So, finally, Notable or not Notable ??Rirunmot (talk) 23:01, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I see from Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Boubaker polynomials that someone has recently tried to recreate the page. I also see from User:Rirunmot/User:Rirunmot/subpage10 and User:Rirunmot/User:Rirunmot/subpage11 that you, Rirunmot, have copies of the just created French Wikipedia article fr:Polynômes de boubaker and what is probably an old copy of the Italian article (they've deleted and protected the article so it can't be recreated). And you've started canvassing for support for recreating this article [67].

Surely you know this will not go well. I suggest that you drop the subject. Ozob (talk) 22:48, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Stay cheerful, dear Ozob!!, you do not add so much information... The page exists in [68]since 2007 with no problem with notability or so...

The debate here is about notability of the page [User:Rirunmot/User:Rirunmot/subpage6] , so you can kindly give your opinion about that.Rirunmot (talk) 23:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I attempted to ask the French Math Wikiproject about Boubaker polynomials. It seems however that they loathe them so much that their anti-vandal bot Salebot revert edits with the phrase "Polynômes de Boubaker" on sight. Nevertheless someone noticed my edit, and less than a quarter hour after I posted, fr:Polynômes de boubaker was deleted.

I would like it if we adopted a similar policy: Boubaker polynomials are vandalism and should be treated as such. Ozob (talk) 00:57, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Stay calm dear Ozob!!, wher do you see vandalism? you are here in en:WP, are you just trying to avoid the answer to the question:

Notable or not Notable ?

So kindly answer to that question or wait for other users to answer to, then we will see...

Rirunmot (talk) 01:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Is there any reason not to lump Rirunmot with all the blocked users in Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Mmbmmmbm? —David Eppstein (talk) 06:47, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• Comment a DRV has been started on the page here. Yoenit (talk) 09:12, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Stochastic matrix

In the phase-type representation section, where τ is mysteriously chosen to be (0,1,0,0); am I right to assume that that is the initial condition? In other words, does the system start in state two? The end of the article needs a lot of explanation. It starts off nicely, but then there's jumps to using some scary looking formulas, lots of technical language, and zero explanation. There is a link to another article, but that doesn't help at all. — Fly by Night (talk) 15:19, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

As it says at Stochastic_matrix#Example: the cat and mouse, "...with a cat in the first box and a mouse in the fifth one at time zero". This starting state corresponds to state #2 as described. JRSpriggs (talk) 20:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm sorry, but that's still very convoluted. That state is a 1×5 matrix in the original set-up, and is implicitly carried forward into further subsections without any further mention. That illustrates my comment that the "...article needs a lot of explanation." It doesn't explain the mysterious appearance of a 1×4 matrix called τ. There is a link to another article, but articles should be as self-contained as possible. There is zero explanation. I only knew what τ was because I understood the topic of the article. Isn't the idea of an encyclopaedia to help those that do not already understand? — Fly by Night (talk) 23:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, you know more about this article than I do since I read today it for the first time.

However, it is apparent to me that the fifth position was dropped from the matrices because it was not helpful in the calculation. In particular, if it had been retained then he would have had to use

${\begin{bmatrix}1\\1\\1\\1\\0\\\end{bmatrix}}$

instead of

$\mathbf {1} ={\begin{bmatrix}1\\1\\1\\1\\1\\\end{bmatrix}}$

to represent the event that the mouse is still alive.

Also $(I-T)^{-1}=I+T+T^{2}+T^{3}+T^{4}+...$ is just a short hand to add up the probabilities that the mouse is still alive after 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... time periods. JRSpriggs (talk) 00:34, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Brilliant… now we're getting somewhere. That sort of explanation is what I was hoping for someone cold add to the article. But, how do we know that that det(I−T) ≠ 0? After all, the identity matrix itself is a valid stochastic matrix. That needs some justification. What do the higher order momenta represent? I too read the article for the first time myself today. That last section needs work, that's why I posted here. I'm a mathematician, but that last section lost me. Would you care to add some explanation along the lines of what you have just posted? I remember someone once telling me that the result of mathematical study is that hidden truths become obvious. (That's why "dropping" rows was apparent to you and me.) I'm sure some people working ergodic theory would call that article trivial and obvious; but what about a 13 year old high school maths student that wanted to expand his/her knowledge? The latter are exactly the group that we want to reach out to. We need to make mathematics more accessible. — Fly by Night (talk) 01:51, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

This is a geometric progression for linear operators, the sufficient condition for invertability of $1-A$ is $\|A\|<1$ — Kallikanzarid^talk 03:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Hilbert's eighth problem

Someone spammed my department's list with a link to the article on Hilbert's eighth problem. The claims on the page seem dubious and there are no sources to speak of, but I'm only just dipping my toes into Wikipedia and don't feel comfortable deleting a ton of stuff. Could someone pass definitive judgement? --Dylan Moreland (talk) 03:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I reverted to an older version but it's very stubby and could stand a lot of improvement. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:18, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Hilbert's first problem redirects to Continuum hypothesis; shouldn't this redirect to Riemann hypothesis? CRGreathouse (t | c) 04:45, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

But Hilbert's 8th also included the Goldbach conjecture and the twin prime problem, not just Riemann. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:12, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not clear to me that Hilbert's 1st should redirect to the CH page. If you look at what Hilbert actually said, it's a little ambiguous whether the problem is limited to CH. The first part seems to be about CH (in the weaker, no-intermediate-cardinality form), but the second part is about whether the reals can be wellordered (which of course follows from the stronger form of CH, the $2^{\aleph _{0}}=\aleph _{1}$ version). I kind of think in an ideal world we would have a separate Hilbert's first problem page that discussed these matters. I don't know whether there are any good secondary sources, though. --Trovatore (talk) 05:33, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Such redirects are "historically illiterate", I would feel. As part of upgrading the whole Hilbert problem area, they should certainly be reconsidered. (For one thing, you have to have an axiomatic set theory before CH is meaningful as a conjecture. We have Hilbert to thank, generally, for such clarifications. But I meander ...) Could we have a rating done for all those Hilbert problem pages, so that we know the worst? Charles Matthews (talk) 21:27, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, no, I don't agree with the parenthetical. CH was meaningful in Cantor's framework, which was not axiomatic. --Trovatore (talk) 21:30, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree with "Trovatore" on this one. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:47, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Indian History of calculus

Please help verify an existence claim for Indian derivatives in the 12th century. Tkuvho (talk) 10:55, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I heard David Mumford give a lecture on this once. According to him, they had extremely well developed theories of calculus for trigonometric functions, including Taylor series and the differential equation y′′ + y = 0. They'd done all this so that they could do astronomy, and they did astronomy for religious reasons. But they didn't pursue calculus for any other type of function. Ozob (talk) 11:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd believe even that they constructed the hyperreals if it is properly sourced, but currently the same Jaggedalia sourced in Ian Pearce is being added along with presumably accurate information. Tkuvho (talk) 11:19, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I haven't read it yet but you might begin with "Was Calculus Invented in India?" by David Bressoud, College Mathematics Journal, Vol. 33, No. 1, Jan., 2002. College mathematics journal usually has nice is a nice expository articles and the references in that article should give more details. If it helps is opening sentences are: "No. Calculus was not invented in India. But two hundred years before Newton or Leibniz, Indiana astronomers came very close to creating what we would call calculus." Though he is speaking about a time somewhat after the 12th century. Thenub314 (talk) 19:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

An IP just added a massive diatribe against Bressoud at Talk:Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics. Tkuvho (talk) 20:23, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

MOS and consistency b/w Hilbert space, Inner product space

The articles on Hilbert space and Inner product space use:

• different symbols (F vs. K) for the base field
• different styles (blackboard bold vs. bold)

The first is easy enough to fix (If one agrees that they should be the same symbol for consistency of notation between related articles, which I think they should be) but the Math MOS only states:

"...An article may use either boldface type or blackboard bold for objects traditionally printed in boldface. As with all such choices, the article should be consistent. Editors should not change articles from one choice of typeface to another except for consistency."

which I read to mean it's OK to change for consistency *within* an article, but not strictly OK to change one to the other for the sake of consistency *between* articles. Thoughts? Thanks. BrideOfKripkenstein (talk) 21:01, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the symbols for, say, a field should be made consistent in related articles. Doing this is just error-prone, time-consuming and may also upset those who have to clean up later. The same holds, I believe for consistency of different articles with respect to styles. However, of course, within an article, everything should be consistent, where possible. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 14:06, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

whole number

A new account (not, I think, a new editor) is trying to make whole number something other than a disambig page. My opinion is that there is no content justifying an article. Please comment at talk:whole number. ---Trovatore (talk) 23:58, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I've responded there. Things have gotten kind of heated, so I'm hoping that having an uninvolved party (or a few) explain things calmly and with reference to wikipedia policies and the like, in the spirit of Wikipedia:Third opinion, might at least help him see why he is getting reverted. Kingdon (talk) 01:55, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

The current situation is a little bit clumsy. Whole number refers to integer and natural number; the former doesn't contain the phrase "whole number" anywhere, while the latter lists whole number in the "see also" section as though it should be an article. I think it's appropriate that there are some references somewhere to demonstrate that the phrase "whole number" is indeed used in all three senses mentioned. Where else would such references logically go, if not on the whole number page? Jowa fan (talk) 08:08, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Those things are not really the concern of an encyclopedia. --Trovatore (talk) 20:59, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh wait, I see my comment was a bit unclear in context. Certainly avoiding confusion is a proper concern of an encyclopedia, so editing integer and natural number in such a way that they deal appropriately with the locution whole number is a defensible option. What I mean is that discussion of the phrase whole number in isolation is not an encyclopedic concern. --Trovatore (talk) 21:06, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Two envelopes problem, two children problem

Having fought for two years on the Monty Hall problem, almost getting banned from wikipedia for OR and COI, I am looking for a new brawl, and am getting stuck into the two envelopes problem. Have been accused of gross arrogance and incivility within one day (practice makes perfect! I didn't want to waste time with ritual dances but went straight to the nitty gritty). There is a big problem with that page, that a lot of people have been writing up their own common sense solutions (both sensical and nonsensical) but almost no one actually reads the sources. I just wrote up two mainsteam solutions to two main variants of the two envelopes problem, both "out of my head", ie without reliable sources. (Very evil, very un-wikipedian). After all, I have been talking about these problems with professional friends for close on fourty years now, and setting them as exam questions, talking about them with students, without ever actually carefully reading published literature on the problems.

Maybe some of you folk here can get access to some of those papers in journals where you have to pay a big tax to the publishing company before you can actually read the pdf. That would be useful.

Looks like the two children problem is equally much a mess.

Of course I could be completely wrong that what I think are the solutions to the two main variants of the two envelopes problem are indeed the solutions, or for that matter, are correct at all... Richard Gill (talk) 08:14, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Link? Ozob (talk) 10:36, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Someone made the links. The latest contributions to the Talk page for two envelopes problem are mostly by me. And two of the sections of the page itself were hurriedly and entirely written purely as uncited "own research" by me: [69], [70].

Well: I think I report the accepted wisdom / folklore in my community. What does the community think? What are the good references? Richard Gill (talk) 13:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

It may be useful to compare and contrast the featured article (already seven years ago!) "Infinite monkey theorem". Which articles on puzzles, etc, may accomplish what that one does? and why not ;-)

I have posted some long comments related to Richard Gill's enterprise at Wikipedia talk: WikiProject Statistics#Two envelopes problem, two children problem, where he posted in duplicate this morning, and some more at Talk: Two envelopes problem#Lead thoughts.--P64 (talk) 20:01, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I have collected my thinkings on the two envelopes problem on my Talk page at [71]. This must all be known. References??? Richard Gill (talk) 14:52, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Boubaker Polynomials (to:DRW)

Thanks Yoenit ! The link you provided here allows concentring debates of serious contributors (efforts and time) on the simple question: Sourced or not? --Rirunmot (talk) 09:35, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Sockpuppet investigation

I have opened a sockpuppet investigation at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mmbmmmbm. Ozob (talk) 11:44, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Gill polynomials

How to become a famous mathematician

1. Find a famous family of polynomials (e.g. Hermite, Chebyshev, ...)
2. Replace x by 2x
3. Check if you did not hereby hit another already existing family; if so simply repeat (replace x by 2x, again)
4. Rewrite the differential equation, generating equation, etc, etc, accordingly
5. Look for applications of the old family of polynomials. Every single application of the old polynomials, by appropriate substitution, yields an application of your new family
6. Publish the applications in appropriate hardly refereed electronic journals which provide publishing outlets for those who cannot publish in the serious journals, get yourself a degree and a professorship, if necessary at some only virtual university, get yourself students who write yet more articles about your polynomials
7. Write an article about your polynomials on wikipedia

Seriously, maybe this trick ought to be explained in the appropriate article on wikipedia. Then the article on Boubaker polynomials can simply refer to that article and to the article on Chebyshev polynomials. Similarly the article on Chebyshev polynomials can refer to this trick-article and mention Boubaker polynomials as an example. Richard Gill (talk) 16:22, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

PS the topic is clearly ignotable rather than notable (cf infamous, igNoble, ignominious, ignorable) Richard Gill (talk) 06:08, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Mathematical physics FPC

See Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Quantum Harmonic Oscillator.--RDBury (talk) 23:34, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Multiple mathematicians on AfD

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Karl-Theodor Sturm, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Emil Hilb, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephan Luckhaus, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ernst Hairer, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/K. David Elworthy, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Xue-Mei Li, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abhinav Kumar, and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alison Miller, and please weigh in. Several of these could use more mathematical expertise. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:15, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I've struck from the list those that have been closed already, so people don't waste time clicking on them. Tijfo098 (talk) 10:01, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Another spring FPC

The second one week, see Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Simple harmonic oscillator. It is May after all.--RDBury (talk) 22:25, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Reliability of MacTutor

I'm used to treating MacTutor History of Mathematics Archives (i.e., http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/) as a pretty reliable source for history of mathematics, especially of the biographical kind. But is it? If so, how do we justify that? The context is that William Connolley at Talk:History of calculus asked if it's just some blokes' web page. I am tempted to say, based on our article, that it has won many prestigious awards for online content. But how do historians of mathematics rate it? Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

While I have personally found MacTutor history pages to be valuable, it is hard to rely on it alone as it is not refereed. On the other hand, they tend to provide many sources, and in general it is possible to trace the information. As a rule of thumb, I would say material based on their history pages should not typically be deleted, but a tag should be attached that it would be preferable to have a refereed source. Tkuvho (talk) 14:02, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

As far as the specific link criticized by Connolley, it is indeed by a bloke. It's not their regular history page. Tkuvho (talk) 14:10, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I see. According to Charles Matthews, Connolley's link was to a student paper, so I think clearly not reliable. My overall question about the rest of the site remains, I guess. We even have a template {{MacTutor}} for this site, which is linked on many many biography articles. It seems important to get some clarity on where we stand with the site in general (and which parts of it are reliable, if any). Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Only biographies listed at http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Indexes/Full_Alph.html are reliable, I think. Tkuvho (talk) 14:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

That seems like a reasonable rule of thumb. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

For instance, they do have a biography of Bhaskara II at http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Bhaskara_II.html, which has nothing to do with a bloke named Ian Pearce. Tkuvho (talk) 14:55, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)As it happens I was just thinking about that the other day. According to our article they've won awards from some respectable publications such as Scientific American. It's also associated with the University of St Andrews which has been around for some 600 years, not some fly-by-night diploma mill. Our article does accuse the site of content bias, though I don't know if there is anything to back up that claim. To me, the material linked from their main indices (Biographies, History Topics, Additional material, and Famous curves) should be regarded as reliable. Whether it's encyclopedic or not is a different issue. I would hope we have an article corresponding to each article on the biographies index, but some of their other articles are somewhat essay like and we shouldn't be covering them on WP.

We have a page for mathematical referencing resources, it seems to me that the results of this sort of analysis should be added there for future reference. It not just MaxTutor but MathWorld, Springer EoM, Cut-the-Knot, OEIS, etc. For example we have links to OEIS a large number of pages, but I wouldn't regard it as a reliable source because basically anyone with an internet account can add their own entries (somewhat like like WP, we don't regard ourselves as a reliable source either). I started work on this idea (here) but kind of made a wrong turn at the start and am rethinking how to best do it.--RDBury (talk) 15:26, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Sidenote: While it's true that anyone can register for an account, every sequence in the OEIS must be approved by an Editor-in-Chief before appearing on the site. Usually it's reviewed by an Associate Editor as well. So it's not like Wikipedia. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:49, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

On the other hand, the OEIS is never an indication of notability, because it seeks to include sequences that are not appropriate (too narrow) for Wikipedia. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd probably put it [MacTutor] on a par with MathWorld, or maybe slightly more reliable. MathWorld also doesn't have any real oversight as far as I am aware, and its articles on many topics are deeply erroneous. Yet a lot of editors (mostly non-mathematicians) seem to feel like it is reliable. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The errors I've seen are minor, do you have example of "deeply erroneous". Much of the material is taken from a published reference and by WP standards at least those parts are reliable. They do have a form you can fill out to report errors, but though I've used it several times nothing was ever done about them as far as I know. Of course it could have been me that was in error. On OEIS, I'm going by an incident a while ago where, as I recall, there was an editor who was trying to generate references to an article. He submitted the sequence to OEIS and it appeared there a day or two later. So maybe you have to get editor approval but I'm not sure how thoroughly they check the math.--RDBury (talk) 20:31, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

(If anyone is interested, User:CRGreathouse has responded on OEIS here; I defer to the opinion of someone with more direct knowledge.)--RDBury (talk) 03:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

MathWorld's problems are usually omissions rather than errors, but for instance its Lattice article is hopelessly confused. (It seems to be trying to imply that all partial orders are lattices and that all lattices are distributive and modular). And Cubic Lattice links to and is linked from the wrong kind of lattice. My general preference is to link to MathWorld as an external link, and to check the MathWorld article to make sure there aren't important aspects of the problem or important references that we're omitting here, but not to actually use it as a source. On the other hand, I've never encountered any problems with MacTutor, and RDBury's description of the OEIS process makes it sound clearly within what we accept as reliable. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:36, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Check out Ian Pearce's piece on Bhaskara at MacTutor. It is a major problem. Tkuvho (talk) 04:45, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

You mean this? Because that's clearly (even in the title) taking a soapboax position. But when I refer to MacTutor it's primarily in their biography section, e.g. this and this. I don't think their other sections are as good. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Also not that the linked article by Ian Pearce is not part of the MacTutor reference. Although these student projects are hosted on the same domain, they are not link to from within the MacTutor hierarchy.

The MacTutor reference itself is directly linked to from the department of mathematics homepage. This is a reference that is published and thereby endorsed by St. Andrews University. As such, as far as reliability is concerned it is on par with published books on the topic. If this cannot pass a WP:RS, than we should stop using basically any published source.TR 11:01, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

As I already mentioned above, I have personally found MacTutor generally reliable. However, since we are not talking about a refereed publication, there will always be an ambiguity as to which of their pages are legitimate and which, bloky. It is still not clear to me where to draw the line. Why do they post these student projects at the same web address? Tkuvho (talk) 11:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Well I'd assume because they vetted them and found them correct and useful for others to read. Being a scholarly refereed source for WP (or other authors) is not really a primary concern or goal of MacTutor, that's our problem. Clearly we cannot treat those student project as reliable sources, however they still might be useful as external links and their quality probably still matches that of many "popular" math articles being published in newspapers, general interest (non math) journals, and even less prestigious teaching/educational journals/publications. --Kmhkmh (talk) 11:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Well I'm not math historian, but so far I found MacTutor relatively reliable on the topics I've used it for. It is indeed an expert website that has won some rewards and was also reviewed/described in math or science journals. It is definitely not just a website hosted by some bloke, to very least it would be a self published by notable experts (both principal editors/maintainer are math profs at one of UK's top rates universities (St. Andrews), where the project is hosted rather than on some private webspace/account). Most of their articles are carefully sourced and so far I've discovered only minor errors as you might find them in reliable/reputable literature as well (typos, small mistakes with non european dates, small errors in graphics). In particular as far as historic subjects are concerned I'd consider them much more reliable as MathWorld, which however I still consider as a reliable source for WP.

It is might be wortwhile to note however, that both editors are not trained (math) historians afaik. So they primarily compile material (available in English) written by others. In cases where an larger historic context knowledge might be required (in particular being able to read original sources in foreign and ancient languages) that can lead to errors. This might matter in individual biographies for (historic) non European mathematicians and related math topics. But then again this problem exists for many math sources we consider as reliable as well (any historic information in regular math textbooks, normal mathematician writing on historic subjects, etc.).--Kmhkmh (talk) 11:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Peer review is no guarantee of correctness, either. Experts in any field know of journals which largely consists of peer-reviewed rubbish, and journals which largely consist of fairly reliable material. Journals make editorial decisions concerning interest, relevance to the field, etc. Referees sometimes see big errors and hence published papers in reliable journals tend to have smaller errors only, but often plenty, and occasionally fatal errors. Finally the author themself is responsible for the "truth" of what is written in his or her articles.

More or less established mathematicians can easily author books and get them published by very reputable publishers. Such books are only globally reviewed. No one goes through checking every derivation or computation or reference, line by line. The already established reliability of the author is supposed to be enough guarantee of reliability. Fortunately in mathematics we can always in principle check everything, and mistakes get discovered and known and acknowledge and if possible corrected.

Hence whether or not MacTutor is peer-reviewed seems to me to be quite besides the point. I do know many researchers in the history of mathematics who regularly cite the site ;-) and use its resources. I've always found it very useful myself and on those occasional occasions when I had independent historical info, it seemed to be correct. Richard Gill (talk) 15:12, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I challenge you to produce a peer-reviewed book containing the kind of rubbish found in the Ian Pearce piece at MacTutor. Tkuvho (talk) 15:23, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

What parts/content if Pearce's piece do you consider rubbish exactly?--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:18, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Can we just get clear that the Pearce page under criticism is on the domain turnbull.mcs.st-and.ac.uk, not the MacTutor's mcs.st-and.ac.uk? If we are going to have this argument that the MacTutor "brand" is somehow contaminated because of student project work posted at a related domain, which I think is basically not a fair attitude, it should at least be in the context that it is very easy to tell apart the pages that are being used for a different academic purpose. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:04, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Here is another interesting item. The page Bakhshali manuscript contains a footnote, currently number 1, which reads as follows: "Ian Pearce (May 2002). "The Bakhshali manuscript". The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Bakhshali_manuscript.html. Retrieved 2007-07-24." If you follow the link provided, you indeed reach an article on the Bakhshali, but one authored by... J O'Connor and E F Robertson. Tkuvho (talk) 10:13, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Bhaskara's contribution to mathematics is beyond dispute. Pearce's claim that Bahskara's calculus was not inferior to Newton's is unsourced ("rubbish", in fact) and shows that he is interested in ethnomathematics rather than history. There is a large consensus in this thread that MacTutor's student projects are not reliable. Tkuvho (talk) 02:54, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Well going to the thread it seems to me we all agree that student papers hosted on MacTutor are not to be treated as reliable sources, that however the regular MacTutor entries can be treated as such.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:35, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Patrick Billingsley

I've created a new article titled Patrick Billingsley. Billingsley died recently at the age of 85.

The article is imperfect. Work on it! Michael Hardy (talk) 17:14, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Lamé's equation

At Lamé function, we find this:

Lamé's equation is

${\frac {d^{2}y}{dx^{2}}}=(A+B\wp (x))y$

where A and B are constants, and $\wp$ is the Weierstrass elliptic function.

and then:

By changing the independent variable, Lamé's equation can also be rewritten in algebraic form as

${\frac {d^{2}y}{dt^{2}}}+{\frac {1}{2}}\left({\frac {1}{t-e_{1}}}+{\frac {1}{t-e_{2}}}+{\frac {1}{t-e_{3}}}\right){\frac {dy}{dt}}={\frac {A+Bt}{4(t-e_{1})(t-e_{2})(t-e_{3})}}y$

which after a change of variable becomes a special case of Heun's equation.

But it doesn't say specifically what the change of variable is. Can some add that information? Michael Hardy (talk) 15:42, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

How about $t=\wp (x)$? (Just a guess). Richard Gill (talk) 16:24, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Richard Gill appears to be right. Do the substitution, have some fun with the chain rule (and logarithmic derivatives), and use the facts in sections Weierstrass elliptic function#Differential equation and Weierstrass elliptic function#The constants e1, e2 and e3. I have no reference for this though, if that's what you're looking for. RobHar (talk) 02:49, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I already started fiddling with this, and concluded that if it's right then it's probably fairly trivial, even if laborious, and then other things were demanding my attention. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:17, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Exhaustive discussion in Ch. XXIII of Whittaker and Watson; old references at p. 555 in my edition. (What do they teach in schools these days?) Charles Matthews (talk) 11:44, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, Charles, I volunteer you to edit the article accordingly. Click here: Lamé function Michael Hardy (talk) 15:29, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Lists of mathematics topics

Our page titled Lists of mathematics topics (notice that it's plural: lists) is a magnificent thing, unprecedented in all of intellectual history, just as Wikipedia is. It is a former featured list. We should work on returning it to that status. As I recall, all that was needed was references. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:13, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Does this list include itself? This could be a magnificent introduction to a current area of research, as well :) Tkuvho (talk) 10:26, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't tempt me to create List of lists of mathematics topics that do not include themselves. —Tamfang (talk) 15:20, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

It might be more in the spirit of Wikipedia to create a list of lists of lists of lists of articles on a particular topic Michael Hardy (talk) 15:28, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

FYI: Leibniz formula for pi

See Talk:Leibniz formula for pi#Requested move. Hans Adler 15:22, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

It seems that the discussion has been (inappropriately) closed. CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:48, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

That was the point of this notification. I am not sure how to proceed now. Restart? There seems to be no reason to close this discussion so soon, and there seems to be no reason for using the precedent of the pi article but not the precedent of numerous articles that have titles actually similar to the one under discussion. Hans Adler 21:37, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

The standard period is 7 days (Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions) and they can only be closed by no admins if there is clear consensus, which was not the case. I think a reopened request is the best way to proceed.--Salix (talk): 00:01, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I've now reopened the move request.--Salix (talk): 07:07, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Hello, I am the closing administrator of the discussion; it was listed in the backlog of Requested Moves because it was more than 7 days old (8d 6hrs+). There was no consensus to move the page, but if you want another debate that's fine by me. Best, Skomorokh 10:48, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

transclusion

“ Probably the hardest part of writing a mathematical article (actually, any article) is the difficulty of addressing the level of mathematical knowledge on the part of the reader. For example, when writing about a field, do we assume that the reader already knows group theory? A general approach is to start simple, then move toward more abstract and general statements as the article proceeds. The suggestions below are intended to help us achieve this. ”

The above passage is part of the project page. An editor inserted the following comment, which I now move here. —Tamfang (talk) 18:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I do not think, that such transclusions (e.g. explaining groups in an article about fields) improves an article.It may be useful to distinguish clearly between motivation and definition.Stephan Spahn (talk) 14:36, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The advice following that did not suggest explaining the underlying concepts, it mainly talked about doing things simply and linking to required concepts. We certainly need to say why something is notable and expanding on that as motivation is a good idea I think. Dmcq (talk) 19:29, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Musean hypernumber

The article Musean hypernumber is mostly the contribution of editor Koeplinger. A quick google scholar search reveals mainly a text "Modular parts of a function" by K Carmody - Applied Mathematics and Computation, 1990 cited by... one (1). Tkuvho (talk) 14:40, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

"The range of applications envisioned by Musès of his hypernumber concept is grandiose: A full and complete understanding of all laws of physics (in particular quantum mechanics[6][19]), a description of consciousness in terms of physical formulations,[1][4][5] spiritual growth, religious enlightenment, the solution of well-known mathematical problems (including the Riemann hypothesis), and the exploration of para-psychological phenomena (e.g.[20])." Tkuvho (talk) 14:42, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Something immediately fishy is that all of the citations are to the journal Applied Mathematics and Computation. I only seem to get two relevant Google scholar hits for "musean hypernumber", both of which are to Applied Mathematics and Computation, one of which is from Carmody (one of the two sole proponents of this number system). I'd say deletion probably seems appropriate, since these do not really seem to have attracted the attention of mathematicians beyond their two proponents. It would help if we knew that Applied Mathematics and Computation was a rubbish journal. But it's published by Elsevier, and claims a 5-year impact factor of 1.23 [72]. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:07, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Template:Math, Help:Formula, and WP:MOSMATH

I have noticed a recent trend to replace ordinary html formatted equations in articles with the {{math}} template. I noticed that our WP:MOSMATH barely mentions the use of this template (although some editors seem to act as though it is mandatory). Strangely, it does appear in Help:Formula as the only option for properly typesetting mathematics formulas. It seems like there should at least be some degree of accord between the recommendations of these two pages. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:55, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Help:Formula only describes the use of <math> tag, not the {{math}} template. The tag <math> is what's needed for anything complex. The {{math}} template is useful I think for simpler inline formulas and it uses the same fonts as the <math> tag but it is possible to use the <math> tag for everything. Personally I quite dislike having inline html maths not using the {{math}} template as the letters are different, it cause one to refer to a inline and then $a$ in the out of line formulas for instance. Dmcq (talk) 19:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I was referring to the table at the top, where the examples of "proper" formatting in html all use {{math}}. I think either should be regarded as acceptable, but this needs to be clarified somewhere. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:50, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm disagreeing with Dmcq: I consider the rupture between our usual HTML text font and the font used by {{math}} much more disturbing than the difference between the (often: few) complicated formulas which necessitate <math> and the HTML "formulas". I wish we would not use {{math}} at all. If a formula is simple enough to be rendered using HTML, there is no need not to do so, I believe. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 09:32, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

The reason {{math}} exists is because formulas rendered as HTML in the default (sans-serif) font is sorely lacking visual semantics, which are needed to distinguish certain symbols that can otherwise not be told apart; I + l = 1 is a whole lot more meaningfull then I + l = 1. — Edokter (talk) — 11:29, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

In my sans-serif font, I, 1, and l are all different, both in roman and italic. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:45, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Good for you. Wikipedia is however read by millions of people that do not have such a font; most of them use Windows and who cannot be bothered to change their browser font settings, thus pages are displayed using the default Arial font. — Edokter (talk) — 13:21, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I generally agree with Jacob Scholbach that, in general, plain HTML/wikitext is fine, without the additional use of Template:Math. If you edit the help page, you should also edit the original at meta:Help:Displaying_a_formula. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:45, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

This was discussed here a while ago, and while some editors were positive to the idea of encapsulating mathematical typesetting in a template for its semantic value, the consensus was that the template should not be used (there was even some talk of deletion). This was actually shortly after the recommendation was (rather silently) added to Help:Formula by User:Yecril, and this was apparently not noticed by any of the participants in that discussion. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:55, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with your conclusion. In a more recent discussion, there is a consensus in favor of using sans-serif font for formulas, for exactly the reason I pointed out above. Readability supercedes aesthetics, which means plain HTML formulas are basically out the door, so use either TeX or {{math}}, but never plain HTML. — Edokter (talk) — 13:21, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

There was certainly no such consensus in that discussion. There was a majority in favor of that option, but that is not the same as consensus. Ozob (talk) 15:13, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

By that reasoning, not one discussion with an opposing viewpoint ever has 'consensus'. — Edokter (talk) — 15:27, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Given that the discussion extended over a long period of time and that several votes for serifs were cast over a month after all the other discussion, I am not convinced that serifs have anything more than a slight majority. Furthermore, there is a substantial, unified minority position that finds sans-serif more legible. That's not the same as having a dedicated lone objector or a large number of uninformed, poorly-considered votes for sans serif. Ozob (talk) 16:20, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Unified minority position... I have read many ways to weasel around a majority opinion, but this one is new to me. It is already established that serif is more legible then sans-serif. Go read it again, and this time, also read the serif opinions. — Edokter (talk) — 17:50, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Edokter, you are pushing a point which did and does not gain consensus. Some are in favor of serif, others aren't. Both sides have some arguments (better legibility in a few select cases vs. simplicity of editing + aesthetics). We should do what we always do: every article should be consistently formatted, but neither serif nor sans serif should generally be predicted by MOSMATH. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 18:43, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Low-dimensional chaos

Low-dimensional chaos has been prodded for deletion. 65.95.13.213 (talk) 04:58, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Whole number (number theory)

Whole number (number theory) has been prodded for deletion. 65.95.13.213 (talk) 04:20, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Mathematical concepts named after geographic locales

A thread on mathoverflow compiled names of mathematical ideas named after places. I've listed them here: User:Michael Hardy/Named after places

Could this evolve into a Wikipedia article? Michael Hardy (talk) 15:27, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, but I have a feeling this falls under "Non-encyclopedic cross-categorizations" in WP:NOTDIRECTORY. On the other hand there is some precedent: List of minor planets named after places.--RDBury (talk) 20:23, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

My Polish friends assure me that Polish spaces remain Polish spaces in Poland, likewise the three Poles theorem (KKM). The Chinese remainder theorem remains Chinese in China.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:31, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I think this would make more sense as a list rather than as a category, just because "being named after a place" doesn't seem like a defining characteristic of a mathematical concept. But as long as there are sources attesting to the origin of each name (to avoid saying that something is named after a place when it's actually named after a person, as e.g. the Catalan numbers) I think it should be ok as a list. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:45, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it is OR since we don't have reliable sources which have listed maths in this way. Dmcq (talk) 23:16, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I suspect reliable sources can be cited for most of them. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:13, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I would have thought creating lists is precisely the kind of endeavour that encycolpeadists excel at. Although the article List of place names which sound a bit rude was deleted, I don't think it was for OR. Rich Farmbrough, 19:29, 16 May 2011 (UTC).

Usually with lists is not factual accuracy that's a problem unless inclusion may be a matter of opinion. The question is whether the concept is notable, in other words is it significant that a mathematical concept is named after a place or are they two sets with no particular relationship and we're finding the intersection. That's what the guidelines say at least, not that they really prevent anyone from creating a list on anything they want.--RDBury (talk) 19:58, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

And I would think this would qualify, since most bits of mathematics are named after people or other bits of mathematics. (Not counting the rotten banana at infinity.) Rich Farmbrough, 14:41, 17 May 2011 (UTC).

Um should I ask ... but what is this 'rotten banana at infinity' bit about please? Dmcq (talk) 11:36, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree, and would also propose that such a list clarify instances where a concept sounds like it is named after a place, but is actually named after a person, as with the Catalan example above. Having a section or some footnotes to that effect would help prevent well-meaning editors from errantly adding incorrect names to the list. bd2412 T 15:05, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

MOSMATH: This detail is too complicated

WP:MOSMATH tells people to write

<math>\sin x \,\!</math>

where I would have written

<math>\sin x \,</math>.

The purpose of the spacing at the end is to force png rendering. It doesn't actually add space between sin x and whatever follows it on the line, if anything, since nothing follows sin x inside the math tags. Why is the \! there? Doesn't this just complicate the thing pointlessly? I've seen this in lots of articles and wondered why it was there; by hindsight maybe I should have suspected it was in MOSMATH. Michael Hardy (talk) 14:14, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that if a user has set their preferences to render html whenever possible, the \, will not override this, but the \! will. However, it seems to me that we should generally try to respect user preferences, so /! should be used sparingly. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:55, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

David Eppstein and Cellular automaton: Second opinion

User:David Eppstein removed a (new) reference from cellular automata, questioning its notability. The other editor then questioned the notability of the David Eppstein article and has made a lot of comments about Eppstein, as editor and real-world person.

I have written some articles with David, so others should monitor this situation.

Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:08, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree with David Eppstein's removal of the paragraph from Cellular automaton. I have no feelings on the article David Eppstein but will monitor for vandalism. CRGreathouse (t | c) 22:33, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

The article David Eppstein was semi-protected by an adminsitrator, Ruud Koot.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:56, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I wrote most of the section in question and while I don't object to new results being added, it should probably be more of a survey and not single paper whose impact has yet to be evaluated. The four classes are useful heuristically but have somewhat fuzzy boundaries and I doubt there will be general agreement on operational definitions any time soon. So claims that the issue has been resolved should be viewed with a good dose of skepticism.--RDBury (talk) 11:16, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Agree, what is there is a study using compression and a clustering algorithm which managed to classify them with a bit of tweaking in the same way as Wolfram. It is and interesting and a common technique, I've used gzip myself to analyze something, but it is just a starter and a springboard to help with further study rather than any sort of result I think. Dmcq (talk) 11:30, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Update: The IP editor filed a notice about David Eppstein at the COI noticeboard. (For better or for worse, now he seems more angry at this rodeo clown.)  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:55, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

The filled COI has nothing to do with this discussion, it has to do with the fact that David Eppstein has has largely written and conducted his own Wikipedia article as an autobiography. Nothing else. Kieffer wants to mix things up in his own rodeo clown. Wasn't you who recommended me to fill the COI in Eppstein's talk page? Anyway, you only spread the word on the unethical behavior of Eppstein by coming everywhere to make your little show. I even agreed with the suggestion of a secondary source to confirm whether it was worth mentioning my contribution in the CA article, no need to semi protect the article, if I had wanted I would just go ahead an started an editing war, something that didn't happen. Yet you come to claim here and elsewhere that this has something to do with the acknowledged fact (by Eppstein himself) that he has written his long and cared Wikipedia article to push his notability inside and outside Wikipedia. You are not being very successful defending him... The COI is clear and now people will know disregarding whether the complain prospers or not. At least Eppstein will get a warning and people will start wondering whether he is really a Notable Wikipedian as he has been categorized in his own Wikipedia article (again mostly written by himself). 90.46.37.131 (talk) 00:06, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Dude, you should chill out. You seem to like rodeos, so I suggest taking a break and listening to this. Ozob (talk) 02:15, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Looking at the revision history of David Eppstein, it appears to me that he is only responsible for a tiny fraction of the edits; and he did not create the article. So I suspect that the criticism of his contributions to it is unfair. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:28, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Another editor, Johnuniq, has provided an annotated list of Eppstein's contributions to his own articles, noting their conformity to COI standards since his second edit.

(permalink)

He recommends removing further unsubstantiated attacks or chatter unrelated to improving the article. Also, the IP editor has been blocked for personal attacks, etc.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 12:21, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Current activity page

It's been several days since Current activity has been updated; is there reason why the bot might not be working?--RDBury (talk) 04:14, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Seems to be working again.--RDBury (talk) 02:38, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Merger of Tesselation and Honeycomb

We currently have two articles about the general topic of tiling: Tesselation and Honeycomb (geometry). The honeycomb article is rather short, while the tesselation article is, in my opinion, a horrible mess. The article almost completely lacks inline citations. Furthermore there is way too much trivia and a lot of totally inappropriate or unhelpful images. All of this stuff should be rewritten as one single article, either under the title Tiling or Tesselation. Honeycomb should be a seperate section in that new article, because it seems to be an often used term. Some sources:

• Coxeter, H. S. M., Regular Polytopes (Google Books link): uses the term honeycomb frequently for tesselations in three or more dimensions
• Coxeter, H. S. M., Regular Complex Polytopes (Google Books link): again uses the term honeycomb frequently for tesselations in three or more dimensions
• Coxeter, H. S. M., The beauty of geometry: twelve essays (Google Books link): again frequent uses of the term honeycomb
• Inchbald, G., The Archimedean honeycomb duals The Mathematical Gazette 81, July 1997, pp. 213-219: another use of the term honeycomb
• Conway, J. H., Burgiel, H., Goodman-Strauss, C., The Symmetries of Things: uses the term Tiling for the two-dimensional cases and Tesselation for higher-dimensional cases

In the context of aperiodic tilings, I have mostly seen the term Tiling do describe these arrangements (for example, Chaim Goodman-Strauss who is quite active in current research on aperiodic tilings never uses the terms Tesselation or Honeycomb and refers to all arrangements (even to the higher-dimensional ones) as Tiling).

I welcome comments on whether things should be merged and where and what would be the most reasonable title for the article. Thanks. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 16:04, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Coxeter seems to use honeycomb for a polytope space-filling of dimension 3 or higher, and tessellation for 2d polygonal space-fillings, whether spherical, planar, or hyperbolic. And in both cases these are topologically pure, edge-to-edge connections, linear edges, not just any space-filling. It looks like the tessellation article does use this exclusive 2D sense. While Conway uses the term tiling for 2d space-fillings of edge-to-edge polygons, and tessellations for higher dimensional space-fillings. The wiki articles I've worked on mix Coxeter and Conway, using Honeycomb for 3D or higher, and tiling for 2D. Right now tessellation is used in the Coxeter sense (2d). Anyway, so I can't support a merge, given the Coxeter definition. I think there's more material on the 2d surfaces whether called tilings or tessellations.

If anything is merged, I'd consider honeycomb (geometry) being merged as a section of polytope since we have n-polytope, and n-honeycomb as parallel constructions of (n-1)-polytope faceted objects. (And while we're at it, merge some other short articles Vertex (geometry), Edge (geometry), Face (geometry), Cell (geometry), Facet (geometry), Ridge (geometry), Peak (geometry), Vertex-transitive, Edge-transitive, Face-transitive, Cell-transitive? Tom Ruen (talk) 21:15, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Mathbot has been blocked from editing "List of mathematics articles"

Mathbot has recently been blocked from editing List of mathematics articles (actually the {{nobots}} template was added to these lists). There is a discussion about this at User talk:Oleg Alexandrov. Apparently the reason is that Mathbot adds disambiguation links to these lists. Mathbot is essential to the proper working of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity page, which many mathematics editors rely on. What do we think about this? Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:29, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Apparently Mathbot will simply ignore the {{nobots}} tag. Still, if for some reason this is escalated, it seems like a good idea for the project to be aware. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:53, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm concerned how quickly he acted (using AWB to mass edit all the lists first and only posting a talk page notification of his action afterwards) while invoking MOS as "policy"—that kind of attitude ends in front of ArbCom. However, he is only one admin and WP:WHEEL should prevent any real damage should he rush to some other decisions. Tijfo098 (talk) 14:58, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I think he probably just didn't realize the purpose of these lists. It seems like every so often, someone suggests moving the lists to the project namespace, so they're exempt from this kind of trivial nitpicking. The editor in question suggested moving the dab pages to a separate list. This list could even be maintained in project namespace—it seems like a win-win situation. I, for one, think we should be discussing this possibility. Although it could be that there are good reasons against it. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:11, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I dropped a note on the (apparently unmonitored) bot talk page several days ago, and followed up with a similar request on the owner's talk page before I took any action. I indicated that I only placed the nobots tag on the lists as a temporary measure - to avoid the bot undoing the disambiguation work I had done - until a solution could be arrived at in this matter. I think the proposals to keep the maintenence lists in project space, or in any case to keep a maintenance list for {{mathdab}} pages in project space, is eminently sensible, particularly because the maintenance lists as they stand are indiscriminate collections of all links tagged with any kind of math category (therefore containing not only disambig links, but redundant redirects). If other articles need to link to a list of mathematics articles, a separate set of lists could be maintained in article space with a more discriminating set of links. Please look to the methods emplyed by other Wikipedia projects which have conducted bot-assisted maintenence without needing to maintain direct links to disambiguation pages from article space. I'm sure an efficient solution can be found for this problem. Cheers! bd2412 T 13:55, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I am sure we can work something out if everyone makes an effort to be nonconfrontational. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:17, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Seems silly to in effect robot edit the lists because one has the idea another robot is wrong without discussing with the robot owner first. Just stopping the robot is the usual first action if one thinks a robot is going badly wrong. It wasn't even badly wrong by the reasoning. Can we be confrontational, can we can we? Dmcq (talk) 17:47, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I had a look at the discussion and a reasonable suggestion there I think is to keep the list in project space. Also the list should probably include maths categories I think even though categories don't normally include much on the page itself. Dmcq (talk) 17:59, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

That seems reasonable to me. But I know we've had this discussion before, probably more than once. I don't know if there is some arcane reason these pages need to be in mainspace, or if the idea simply got shelved. Someone needs to look in the WT:WPM archives. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:00, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

One of the earlier discussion(s) is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive 20#Suggested move of List of mathematics articles. In any case one possible reason for not performing such a move is that other article-space pages link to it, and would not be allowed to after such a move: these include several other related list articles, but also non-list articles including logic and geometry. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:26, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't really seem appropriate to me for logic and geometry (or really any article, except maybe mathematics itself) to link to this list. RobHar (talk) 00:12, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

The Lists of mathematics topics links to it, at that is as it should be. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:09, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I see that some lists were moved to project space after Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of mathematics articles (J-L) and move discussion (now) recorded at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (A-C) Presumably not all of them?? Tijfo098 (talk) 09:37, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of putting it in the project space. Especially if other article-space pages could not link to it. The list is mainly for browsing, and at most secondarily for navigating. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:08, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

It has been proposed before that two lists be maintained; one for maintenance purposes which could be maintained in project space, and could permissibly have indiscriminate links such as direct disambig links, redundant redirect links, and other things that lists in article space are not supposed to have (under the theory that Wikipedia is not a collection of indiscriminate links); and a second, more user-friendly list maintained in mainspace. bd2412 T 22:03, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer one better-maintained list over two. CRGreathouse (t | c) 23:39, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I went ahead and took care of this:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (0-9)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (A)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (B)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (C)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (D)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (E)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (F)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (G)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (H)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (I)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (J)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (K)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (L)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (M)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (N)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (O)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (P)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (Q)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (R)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (S)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (T)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (U)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (V)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (W)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (X)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (Y)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (Z)

Now all you need to do is direct the maintenance bot to use these indiscriminate lists for its maintenance tasks. I will be glad to improve the organization of the alternate lists remaining in mainspace. I noticed that most of them are about twice as long as the recommended article length, which may make page loading difficult for people with older computers and on older computer networks (particularly our most vulnerable users in third world countries). I'd be glad to attend to that while otherwise restructuring these lists into a user-friendly format. Cheers! bd2412 T 23:48, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

So basically you completely ignored the project discussion above (including the fact that you're breaking other Wikipedia rules by creating links from article space to WP space by this move) and went ahead and did it your way? —David Eppstein (talk) 00:02, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

What move? I didn't move anything, and I created no cross-namespace redirects. Please investigate for yourself, before you accuse others of breaking rules. bd2412 T 00:43, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Ok, you performed a copy-and-paste move instead. Another no-no. And what do you think making two copies of the lists will accomplish? It's not possible to maintain these lists manually; they're too big. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:05, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

[Intellectual property attorney hat on] Cut and paste moves are only inappropriate if they deprive editors of attribution under the GFDL; these lists contain no creative content, and were assembled by a bot, not a person; they are entitled to no protection. [Intellectual property attorney hat off]. Furthermore, as you just pointed out, these lists are too big to maintain manually - there is no way they should be in article space if their existence in article space presents a problem like that. Wikipedia is not a collection of indiscriminate lists, and these lists are exactly that, too big to even be opened in some browser windows. What I would like to see is a more appropriate collection of narrowly targeted lists in article space that would actually be useful to someone looking for something, not just a wall of links. It has been explained to me that the reason all of these links, even the duplicative or deceptive ones that do not lead to math articles, must be kept on the list is that they are being used for maintenance purposes. No one has explained why lists used for maintenance can not be kept in project space, with a more appropriate set of lists in article space. I am very confident that we can come up with a solution that achieves all of this while taking those two or three hundred unnecessary disambig links off of the list of links requiring repair, so we won't have our hard working disambiguators (who I can personally attest are worthy of respect in this project) wasting their time fixing links that will only be made into errors again by a bot. bd2412 T 01:18, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

It is false that these articles were assembled only by a bot; they require occasional manual intervention to remove inappropriate entries. Anyway, you're sidetracking my point above, which is: what gives you the right to ignore any attempt at building consensus in the discussion above, unilaterally declare that we will do things your way, and go ahead and do it? It seems easier to simply ignore wikilinks from these lists while you're busy fixing dabs, rather than declaring them to be errors and going to great lengths to eradicate them. Anyway, the dab policy explicitly says that some links to dabs are ok, so your claim that all such links must be eliminated is also clearly false. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:25, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, David, intentional links to disambiguation pages are ok iff they are piped through a "foo (disambiguation)" redirect, per policy (arrived at by a thoroughly debated community consensus-building process) at WP:INTDABLINK. I have no technical problem with disambig pages being on these lists if they are piped in this way. There is simply no way to remove these from the "what links here" pages that hundreds of disambiguators count on to fix errant links, including errant links in math articles (which I presume you would like to see fixed). Cheers! bd2412 T 01:34, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Let me see if I understand your position: You changed the lists of mathematics articles so that the only links to disambiguation pages were to a page or a redirect ending in (disambiguation). You did this because this is recommended by WP:INTDABLINK. You later added {{nobots}} templates to prevent Mathbot from undoing your changes. Am I correct?

Assuming that I am correct, here is a response: Wikipedia:Disambiguation is an editing guideline, not a policy, and therefore occasional exceptions apply. I believe that the list of mathematics articles is one such exception. The list has a simple format and simple purpose: It lists all of the mathematics articles, with no attention to kind, for users who wish to browse. It furthermore serves some internal purposes. To fulfill both of these purposes, especially the last one, it is necessary that the lists be a faithful representation of what is stored in WP's databases. It's been suggested above that this second purpose should be performed by a second set of lists in project space. However, to facilitate browsing, we would still have to maintain the lists in article space. Therefore we would need to maintain two sets of lists. But having two sets of lists would lead to confusion and error. Our solution is to claim an exception to WP:INTDABLINK and to maintain the lists in article space. We believe that this is the least bad option, even considering the violation of WP:INTDABLINK.

I have the feeling that you aren't satisfied by this, but I'm not quite sure why. I think it has something to do with how disambiguators do their work. I've never done that kind of work, so I'm not sure what the issue is. Can you explain it to me (slowly and carefully, since I think few people here have done that kind of work)? Ozob (talk) 02:26, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

There is indeed more to it. Disambiguators are distributed editors, like everyone else here. They work individually and independently, seeking out and repair bad links (and most disambig links are indeed bad links, taking people to pages like Mercury and Greek when Mercury (planet) and Greek (language) are the intended targets. Usually, a disambiguator will find a disambig page with a number of links and use the "what links here" page to follow and fix all links in mainspace. It's impossible to know whether such a link is one of the rare intentional links unless that link has been piped through a "foo (disambiguation)" redirect, so it shows up on the "what links here" page as coming through such a redirect. For example, see the what links here page for Greek, which has a half dozen intentional incoming links. A random disambiguator is saved the time of chasing down those half-dozen intentional links and trying to figure out how to "fix" them. To put the whole of the problem in perspective, we have a daily report on the number of links to address, which indicates that as of today, there are over 97,000 disambig pages with incoming direct links, and more than three quarter of a million links to be fixed. New disambig pages and new links are added every day, and to be honest, we bust our tails every month and are barely breaking even. If any of our top disambiguators let up for a few days, we fall behind. Nevertheless, through this persistent effort, and in part through our policy of piping intentional disambig links so disambiguators don't waste time looking at them over and over again, we have made progress. So, every little thing we can do to clear away the chaff helps us to avoid wasting time running after intentional links. Going through the history of these pages, other disambiguators have "fixed" some of these links in the past [73], [74], and will continue to do so in the future. We can't just teach disambiguators not to edit these pages because there is no telling who will decide to take up such work. Instead, these pages will continue to show up as direct links on the "what links here" page of every disambig page pointing to them, and will prompt disambiguators to spend time trying to "fix" them by piping them through the "foo (disambiguation)" redirect. A number of proposals have been put forward to address this - teaching Mathbot to ignore disambig articles altogether, keeping the maintenance lists in article space, keeping disambig links on a separate page where they can be attended manually. There must be some alternative in that group, or some variation thereof, that will work for everyone. bd2412 T 03:14, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

I should mention that I'm involved with WikiProject Disambiguation (or at least I watch their Talk page and post there reasonably frequently), so I think that disambiguation is important. But not only do I not see what purpose is served by these changes, I don't see any sort of consensus for them.† The response has been quite universal: the page has a special purpose and should be kept the way it is.

Now there's no agreement on the proper location of the pages, so a bulk move of the pages, although probably not prudent at this point (needs more discussion!), would have been understandable. But reverting and template-blocking the bot seems clearly inappropriate, and creating new pages seems unhelpful -- I assume the purpose was to give yourself (viz., bd2412) carte blanche to alter the existing pages as you prefer.

† No doubt bd2412 would say that the consensus is embodied in INTDABLINK, but of course that is merely a general policy and not a discussion of the particulars of the case at hand. Pointing there is no more productive than pointing at IAR.

CRGreathouse (t | c) 02:54, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

I am trying to explain why it is general policy. Disambiguators fix bad links in math articles too, and I'm sure you don't want to impede them from being able to do that quickly and efficiently. I indicated when I put the nobots template on the pages that it was a temporary measure until we could sort out a solution, because Mathbot kept re-adding the direct disambig links (and mindlessly adding them in addition to the piped redirects that I had already created, so that there were now two sets of links to the same disambig pages). I specifically chose to not block Mathbot entirely, because I can see that it performs other useful tasks, and since it is the only bot that edits the math lists, temporarily restricting those lists to human editors seemed like the least disruptive way to prevent mindless duplication of disambig links while a solution was reached. I have proposed a number of routes which will alleviate this problem, and have offered to do all the work needed to implement them aside from the small task of refining the bot instructions, which other members of the disambiguation project can help with if needed. bd2412 T 03:48, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

This is getting very repetitive. I'm getting a very strong sense of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT from BD2412. Regardless of that, is there some way that the bot could be persuaded to link only to the "(disambiguation)" form of a mathdab page rather than whatever other form might also exist and regardless of which one is primary? That would seem to appease the disambiguators while still allowing the lists to function properly. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:11, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

That would be a fine solution. I find it distressing that you are getting WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, because I have been asked, and had to explain, several times in this conversation why this is useful to disambiguators (because it removes false positives), and why our "tools" can't be adjusted to ignore these links (because our primary tool is the "what links here" page, and intentional disambig redirects are the fix for that). If there is something else you think I didn't hear, please do point me to it, because I have yet to see a reason for not implementing some solution that would be beneficial to everyone here (this project included). I have offered several proposals that would both improve the utility of the lists for encyclopedia users, and preserve their utility for maintenance purposes. All I've been pointed to in return is a prior conversation in this project where it was acknowledged that these lists could be housed in project space, but which fizzled out with no resolution, and similar acknowledgment in this discussion that such a solution is feasible. bd2412 T 04:36, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Well you wouldn't like if somebody from maths went to the disambiguation project and started changing things there just saying that had to be the way and pointing at some guideline here and saying what you did was making work here. If we proposed various ways you could change and you rejected them all and then we just did them regardless of consensus there you'd be annoyed. Dmcq (talk) 07:46, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

You're right. I've long known about the need to do something about Mathbot and its disambiguation links, but put it off for over a year because I didn't want to stomp onto another project's turf and demand changes. Especially at a project that has always been so helpful with fixing those oh-so-difficult mathdab links. (Seriously, this project is the best I've come across in terms of helping fix dablinks.)

Like you say, it's neither sporting nor fair to demand maths to do all the work to accommodate the DPL project. But something does need to be done, and rewriting our scripts is an incomplete solution, since we can't possibly remove the math lists from "what links here". If it's possible for me to do all the technical work, and submit it for a Mathbot maintainer to review, I would be happy to give it a shot. --JaGa^talk 08:57, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Well my favourite solution would be the two separate pages one. I'm not sure how much manual work is involved in keeping the pahge in shape but it would be best if duplication of that effort could be minimised. For instance a number of files in project space could be generated for different things and then the article space version could transclude a selection. So the real question I see is how much and what type manual editing is wanted? As to the complaints from the dab group I'm sure there must be some way of marking links as deliberate and not to be changed. In fact I'd like to see that better described as there certainly have been cases where I've felt it was far more appropriate to point only at a redirect rather than a redirect target because the redirect might be written as a proper article at some stage. Dmcq (talk) 10:13, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

There is a way to mark disambig links as deliberate: WP:INTDABLINK. To implement it, we need to get Mathbot to use, for example, Sampling theory (disambiguation) and not Sampling theory (it currently lists both at List of mathematics articles (S) for some reason). I'm willing to help figure out how to make it work. I don't think it will be difficult. --JaGa^talk 17:52, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Dmcq, I am in complete agreement with you, particularly if the maintenance lists must have direct links to disambig pages to function. I think this would have the added benefit of allowing the mathematics project to present something in article space that would be better for our end-users than the unfriendly wall-of-links lists currently sitting there. As I have indicated before, I'll be glad to do the heavy lifting on this (and JaGa has offered to assist with whatever bot work is necessary. bd2412 T 22:16, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Here is an idea. Perhaps we could put a Wikipedia:Editnotice on each of the list of mathematics articles pages. It could say something like:

That would stop most people from editing the lists. But it wouldn't prevent manual maintenance and it wouldn't require maintaining two lists. Ozob (talk) 12:20, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

I do manual edits on these pages from time to time and I have no intention of altering that practice. Is that a problem? Michael Hardy (talk) 02:25, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Re a comment by David Eppstein: if we link to redirects instead of linking to the pages themselves, it makes the "related changes" tool not work for those pages, because "related changes" only looks at links, it does not bypass redirects. This is one reason the lists need to link directly to the desired pages. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:54, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

My current opinion, by the way, is that the people who go around changing dab links need to find a way to whitelist these lists. In the end: If they are editing manually, it is trivial to just skip these lists. If they are using a script, it is trivial to tell the script to skip them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:56, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Currently, no "whitelist" exists for pages in article space to link directly to a disambiguation page. Creating a whitelist (btw not a trivial task) would not solve our problem due to "what links here", the primary tool used by dab de-linkers to clear dablinks. Further, there doesn't seem to be a reason for an exemption from WP:INTDABLINK; the lists are already littered with redirects, which are intentionally and correctly there, so having redirects in the lists is already an established and accepted practice. I know it's not very nice for one project to demand another make changes, so I'm willing to do all the technical work if possible. I don't know what more I can do. --JaGa^talk 20:33, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Wouldn't an edit notice would solve the problem? A disambiguator would find the list, click "edit" to attempt to fix it, and find the above notice. That would not save them the time it takes to reach the page and click "edit", but it would save them from making a lot of changes. Ozob (talk) 01:39, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

If people are doing this by manually clicking on "what links here" it is trivial for them to just ignore the lists of math articles. Human brains are good at that sort of thing. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:44, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Human brains are also good at programming. Why not just fix the problem? --JaGa^talk 05:31, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Why doesn't an edit notice fix the problem? Ozob (talk) 10:36, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I think an edit notice seems like a fine idea. This is particularly because there is no problem with the lists themselves; they need to link directly to each math page to function correctly. The main problem is finding a way to let disambiguators know to spend their time on other pages. If they are doing the disambiguation manually, the edit notice should point it out. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:22, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

An edit notice is definitely a good idea, but it doesn't solve our problem. Disambiguators live in a tool-assisted world; we couldn't fix thousands of dablinks per month without them. Most dabfixers will use a tool such as Enkidu, WikiCleaner, or AWB to go through a list of pages that link to a disambiguation page. (And these are all based on "what links here" so a whitelist does no good.) Since we are editing pages with a tool and not clicking "edit this page" in many if not all cases the edit notice will go, well, unnoticed. --JaGa^talk 21:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Also, regarding the edit notice, I'd say it's a great step but not enough. Pages in article space that, for all intents and purposes, cannot be edited by humans is non-intuitive. The disambig project won't be the first to have a problem with this, we're just the first to show up. I would suggest a similar warning template on the top of the article itself, and adding each list to a category such as "Bot-maintained articles" so other bot-runners will have something to work with in the future. --JaGa^talk 21:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

They cab be edited by humans: if you add an article, the bot will respect it. What you can't do is remove a link to a math article and expect the bot not to add it back. That's intentional; the list should include every page categorized in one of the List of mathematics categories. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I pointed this out on a user talk page, but I don't know if it has been pointed out there. A key reason that these lists need to link directly to disambiguation pages is that the "related changes" tool does not bypass redirects. So this link [75] shows no changes, even though I did edit the disambiguation page that is indirectly linked from User:CBM/Sandbox. This link [76] does show the changes. We have no control over the "related changes" tool to make it bypass redirects. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:35, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

If the purpose of the lists is to serve project related maintenance and monitoring functions, and it must have this user-unfriendly wall of links to accomplish this, then why does it need to be in article space? A user visiting one of these pages will not know that a large number of links on the page are redirects linking redundantly to pages already linked to, nor will they know that many of the links are unannounced disambig links, that will not take them to the math articles they expect to see. In some cases, those disambig links lead to pages where math-related articles are buried in a pile of other things. As a rule, blocky wall-of-links type pages are ugly and inelegant, and could be maintained in a less visible location while something more logical and orderly could be set up in article space. bd2412 T 15:02, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

The list is also used for browsing, and it seems like the dab page issue is not serious enough to make it worth maintaining two lists instead of one. The criteria for inclusion is that the pages are categorized in a category in List of mathematics categories, or are particularly related to math even though not in one of those categories. The categories include "mathematical disambiguation", which is one reason that so many dab pages are on the lists. This is sensible; we want the lists to have a broad scope rather than a narrow one. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:47, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

If you don't want to do the two-lists solution, then I would like to look at Mathbot's code to see about implementing WP:INTDABLINK. All the work would be on me, so it would cost you nothing. Also, I wouldn't submit changes without review. And hey, maybe I'm not able to code the change, in which case you'd never hear from me again! :) --JaGa^talk 21:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I just explained above why that cannot work - it breaks the related changes tool, at least. This list is intended to link directly to the dab pages, not to bypass them via redirects. In principle it would be possible to make the Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity bypass the redirects, because that code can be edited, but the related changes tool is part of Mediawiki, we can't easily change it. But there is no reason to go to all this trouble; it's much simpler for humans to just ignore the lists when they look for links to dab pages. I have yet to hear a good reason why that would be difficult. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

P.S. even if we do update MathBot we would also have to update Jitse's bot that updates Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity. It's a significant amount of effort, which doesn't seem to have any strong justification. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:22, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Since you asked, the reason why it would be difficult for humans to just ignore the lists when they look for links to dab pages is that there are a large number of people who engage in disambiguation work, some sporadically, and short of altering Wikipedia to make a permanent banner perpetually telling all Wikipedians, "don't edit the lists of mathematics articles", there is no way to keep people from making these fixes. I grant that a banner atop each section would keep people from further wasting their time, but we generally only put banners on articles needing repairs, and it is unseemly to consider a set of articles perpetually signalling the need for repairs that can never actually be made. How significant is the amount of work involved in updating the two bots at issue? We have already offered to do the work, and it is always worthwhile to test out solutions to see if they can be made to work, even if they are ultimately not the solutions implemented. bd2412 T 03:47, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Unless you have access to change the source code of both Mathbot and Jitse's bot, you're not really in a position to "do the work". The suggestion to implement two separate lists seems like work that doesn't have general agreement anyway. Because there are reasons not to change the links to go via redirects, that work also would be premature at this point. Any changes to the system would need to be discussed and most importantly brought to consensus. There does not seem to be a consensus to change the lists at this point.

There was a suggestion to use an edit notice on the lists, which is only visible when editing; I don't think a banner visible to readers would be helpful. We do want people to edit the list of math articles to add math articles that somehow aren't there - we just don't want people to remove links to math articles. They can remove them, of course, but the bot will add the links back if the articles are categorized as math articles, with no permanent harm done. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:59, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Oleg Alexandrov says that he will "be happy to implement whatever consensus solution emerges". This seems to suggest that he does not find a two-list solution to be technically problematic. However, consensus must be developed based on facts, not speculations. If editors oppose a two list solution because they believe that it would cost more in terms of effort than tagging the various sections and letting disambiguators discover the tag once they get to the point of making the edit, then a correct determination as to the efficacy of that belief can not be made unless we test that argument with a trial run of a second list. I really don't see why we wouldn't give it a spin to see how it works, as it can be changed back just ickly. In any case, control of the bots is irrelevant to the question of whether the current situation conforms with policy, and all of the arguments about "exceptions" to the policy against intentional disambig links leave out the fact that the exception is that such links are permitted in mainspace if done through the disambig redirect. Neither the imprimatur of a project nor the inability of administrators to edit the bot's source code legitimize the deliberate introduction of error into the system. bd2412 T 13:56, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The current lists do conform to policy, full stop. There is no error, the links are intentional, and they are one of the forseen exceptions to the general principle not to link to disambiguation pages without the name "disambiguation". There is no unilateral policy that we may never link to disambiguation pages without "disambiguation" in the page name. Moreover, the banner at the very top of every MOS page, guideline, and policy says that there will be exceptions to the general rules laid out.

I don't see any strong reason to "give it a spin". It's a waste of effort to develop a new system and then switch back to the old one. You still seem to be ignoring the issue that it's not hard at all for disambiguatiors to just ignore these lists when they edit. There does not seem to be consensus here to change the current system, apart from possibly adding editnotices. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:12, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Our policy states

“ To link to a disambiguation page (rather than to a page whose topic is a specific meaning), link to the title that includes the text "(disambiguation)", even if that's a redirect – for example, link to the redirect America (disambiguation) rather than the target page at "America". ”

That is the ONLY way provided for intentional linking to disambiguation pages, and was arrived at by long-standing community consensus. To intentionally revert corrections conforming to that policy is vandalism. Full stop. bd2412 T 15:33, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

If you scroll to the very top of Wikipedia:Disambiguation, you will see: "This page documents an English Wikipedia editing guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply.". That applies to the entire page, including the part on disambiguation links. There is no policy violation in linking directly to dab pages when there is a good reason to do so, as there is here. We do not have absolute policies on Wikipedia, and "editing guidelines" are particularly far from absolute. As a disambiguator, it's up to you to make reasonable accommodation for the pages that will be the "occasional exceptions" to the dablink section of that page, rather than trying to eliminate all exceptions based on the false premise that every articles must follow every editing guideline to the letter. Wikipedia does not work that way, as admins like you and I should know. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

If we are going to make exceptions to policy, then the wiser route would be to just move all {{mathdab}} pages to their "foo (disambiguation)" titles, as we discussed on Oleg's page. That would be less grievous because (1) we already have many disambig pages which correctly sit at those titles (e.g. George Washington (disambiguation), so it would not appear out of place, (2) the community of disambiguators involved in disambiguation page moves is small and discrete (as a practical matter, since in most cases only admins can actually do the work), making it much easier to keep that community informed, and (3) it would not create confusion for disambiguators. I still think a two-list solution would be the best, as it would not require any exception be made to any policy (however strictly enforced), and the procedural change would only have to be made once. On a side note, whatever solution is arrived at, I still think the lists as they stand are unappealing and unweildy, and could be made much more elegant, but not in ways conducive to continuation of the current bot-editing regime. Also, as I mentioned in that discussion, there are a lot of {{mathdab}} pages that should be eliminated under WP:DABCONCEPT and WP:TWODABS, or for which a primary topic may be identifiable. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Why don't we give it a trial run for a few hours to see if it works? bd2412 T 02:20, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't follow; what are we trying for a few hours? — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

You know, I think we would have found a solution that satisfies everyone long ago except for this vigorous opposition from Carl. I would gladly contribute to update Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity, for instance, but I'm sure Carl has a reason this cannot be done. The disambig problem can be fixed, if only you were willing to work with us instead of against us. --JaGa^talk 16:04, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think such remarks are helpful. Paul August ☎ 02:25, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

You're right. Sorry, moment of frustration. --JaGa^talk 06:25, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

JaGa, would you be okay with the alternative of moving all of the {{mathdab}} pages to their "Foo (disambiguation)" titles? bd2412 T 16:19, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Let me try to explain this again, more clearly, since you seem to have completely missed the point of Carl's objection. It is necessary to include all of the redirects in these lists, because only doing it that way will allow "related changes" to report changes in which someone edits one of the redirect pages (say, turning it into its own separate article). Moving disambiguation pages around will not change this, because it will not change the need to link to the other names. And while we're explaining things, there's something else I still don't understand, so perhaps you can explain it to me again. Exactly why is it impossible for the people working on disambiguation to ignore the math lists? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:26, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Because we work with tools driven why "what links here" which we have no control over. BTW I'm perfectly fine with moving all mathdabs to (disambiguation) pages. --JaGa^talk 06:25, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

If the dab pages were all moved to end with the word "(disambiguation)" that would fix the problem that the disambiguators see, but it would violate the naming convention instead. There are hundreds of these dab pages, so I expect other people from the "name fixing" group would show up to complain about the wrong names being used. We do monitor redirects pages that are categorized as math, and we monitor math disambiguation pages, but not all redirects leading to math pages. Although that would not be difficult to make a list of. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:50, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The naming convention is more flexible than the convention for making intentional links to disambig pages because naming of pages is purely aesthetic, while the linking issue is functional. Linking through a page name including "disambiguation" also serves something of an aesthetic purpose on pages like these lists because it alerts readers who are simply browsing that clicking this link will not take them to a regular article, but to a disambig page. As for 'people from the "name fixing" group' - well, my ears are burning a little, but the "people" you would hear from if it the proposition was objectionable would probably be me, as I am the primary communicator of such concerns to other projects. There are only four other people who regularly work on that aspect of the project (I mentioned before that since it generally involves page moves over existing pages, participation is basically limited to admins), and I can easily communicate a mathdab exception to them. Within the project as a whole, we have had some closely contested discussions of late as to whether all disambig pages should sit at a "Foo (disambiguation)" title, or even be in a "Disambiguation:" namespace, but we've never mustered a consensus for any particular change. bd2412 T 02:47, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

First, if it is necessary to monitor all pages, including redirects, then why are none of the existing "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects in the list, other than the handful I added myself? The rest are currently unmonitored, but adding them will bloat these lists even further. If the whole point of this exercise is being able to monitor "related changes", it seems to me that function is fulfilled just as well by just looking at the page of Changes related to "Category:Mathematical disambiguation" - whatever reports on related changes the bots need to convey, changes relating to disambig pages are there, except for those involving the removal of the disambig tag or the category itself. I have a proposal for the latter problem below.

As to why we can't just ignore these: we are facing the same technical constraints that you are. For the same reason that you can't use a "Related changes" page without having direct links on the page being watched, we can't use a "What links here" page to see which links are intentional. Sure, I could choose to ignore mathematics lists when I see them, as could JaGa. We could tell JustAGal and R'n'B, and our other most consistent participants. We can not control, however, what random editors who are not regular project participants will seek to fix, any more than we can control who will decide to change common spelling errors. There are hundreds of editors who fix disambiguation links whenever they happen to come across them, or who search for patterns of disambig links to fix without coming through our project page. We have no more control over what they see or do, and it does nobody any good if such repairs are automatically undone by a bot.

User:Zundark thoughtfully proposed the solution of maintaining two sets of lists, and Oleg has indicated he would be happy to implement whatever solution we come up with. It occurs to me that it would not even be necessary to replicate the entire lists if we could simply add the "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects to the existing lists in article space (as is necessary if you wish to monitor redirects), and then instruct Mathbot to add direct links to those math-related disambiguation pages to a single list of disambig pages maintained in project space (or perhaps just to use the related changes key for the Category itself). Then you would have all links monitored with no actual duplication, and a minimum of fuss. Would that solution work for you? bd2412 T 19:23, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The reason that "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects shouldn't be in the lists is that they are not categorized as math articles. We don't monitor all redirects to math articles, just pages that are categorized as math. The idea of splitting the lists into little pieces appears excessively complicated and fragile. Simply ignoring the pages when you look at "what links here" is simple. If random people edit the pages and the bot fixes them, no long-term harm is done. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:50, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The list is already split into twenty-seven pieces, alphabetically and numerically, and already needs to be split further to accord with reasonable size constraints. If the fragility of maintaining separate lists was a genuine issue, you'd have one giant page running perhaps 1.5 MB. The long-term harm of bots undoing fixes by random people is that we end up with thousands of wasted edits, when the time and effort spent making those edits could have been spent making changes that would stick. By the way, it is David Eppstein's position, and not mine, that redirects need to be monitored. If you agree that redirects to disambig pages do not need to be included in these lists, then moving the disambig pages would be an acceptable solution. Cheers! bd2412 T 20:09, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

It would really be helpful to get a straight answer to this question, since different people seem to be suggesting that these lists have different strictures. If it is not necessary to include all redirects to disambig pages on these lists (and it would seem that it is not, based on the fact that they are not there already), then moving the disambig pages is a solution that can be effected through the disambig project without troubling this project any further. If redirects must be included as well, then I think we have a bigger problem with the lists themselves indiscriminately including links. For example, must a redirect to a theorem from a common misspelling of its name be included in the list? bd2412 T 00:13, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Just as a side note User:Femto Bot maintains a number of complete lists of pages by project, solely for the purpose of "related changes" checking. Of course it does rely on the WikiProject having and using some kind of banner, which I believe is another of WikiProject Mathematics unique features, doubtless a workaorund could be arrived at. Rich Farmbrough, 19:20, 16 May 2011 (UTC).

Would placing a WikiProject Mathematics banner at Category talk:Mathematical disambiguation work? --JaGa^talk 05:55, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it is necessary to involve another bot. This project already has a bot that maintains lists, and their bot master has indicated that he is able to implement whatever solution we reach. The solutions proposed thus far would require a trivial amount of work to implement anyway. bd2412 T 13:45, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

No, it it not necessary to include all redirects. Only the ones that are categorized as mathematics (see List of mathematics categories) need to be included. Misspellings and alternate capitalizations, for example, will not be categorized that way and won't be included. The reason some redirects are to dab pages are in the lists now is because someone recently added them by hand and I haven't gotten around to removing them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:53, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Straw poll

In light of the broad discussion of this issue, and the many proposals made by various participants, I have initiated a straw poll at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles. Please make your preferred resolution known there. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:46, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Whoever's theorem

Our article titled Miquel's theorem tells us that:

In geometry, Miquel's theorem states that, given any triangle ABC, and

etc.

At the very least, it should say

In geometry, Miquel's theorem, named after ??????? Miquel, states that, given any triangle ABC, and

possibly with a link to the article about ??????? Miquel.

Is there nothing in one of our style manuals that says this sort of omission is an error? There should be something. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:51, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Relatedly, I think grammar like <prepositional phrase x>, <part of sentence>, <prepositional phrase y> <rest of sentence> <prepositional phrase z> is awkward and hard to read. Yes, we should include this information in the lede, but we don't have to write quite so badly to do it. Much clearer would be <whole sentence> <prepositional phrase x>, <prepositional phrase y>, and <prepositional phrase z>. In this case, <prepositional phrase x> is the context ("in geometry"), prepositional phrase 2 is the eponym ("named after August Miquel"), and prepositional phrase 3 is a summary of the content of the theorem. I rearranged the lede sentence accordingly [77]. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:23, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree that either version is readable or that eponymy must be covered in the lede sentence. I agree with MH that it should be covered in the lede section (often in the lede paragraph, probably not often in the lede sentence). I agree with DE that the lede sentence may indicate the scope with a statement of the result to follow; it isn't necessary to pack a statement of the result into the lede sentence.

"Miquel's theorem is a theorem ..." is redundant but we do and should write that way here, when we think the keyword (theorem) needs a wikilink. --P64 (talk) 20:01, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Very often one should not put the statement of the theorem in the initial sentence, since the statement of the theorem can require a lot of prefatory stuff.

In geometry, Xmith's theorem, named after John Xmith, resolved a famous unsolved problem that had perplexed mathematicians ever since 2015.

seems OK to me.

I do think "In geometry" should usually come first, lest the non-mathematician reader fail to realize that it's not about politics, chemistry, mythology, etc. In the early history of the article titled schismatic temperament, I had to read into the second paragraph before I found out that it was not about a psychiatric condition, but rather about musical scales.

But if the article is called Fundamental theorem of geometry, then that context-setting initial phrase is superfluous.

And one should never write "In category theory" or "In representation theory" or anything like that, that will mystify the lay reader who's never heard of those things (a reasonable reader could think that "representation theory" is about politics). Michael Hardy (talk) 23:03, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, I once accidentally confused someone this way. She thought that "group theory" had something to do with how groups of people behave. Ozob (talk) 23:40, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

The person for whom a subject is named should appear somewhere in the lead section but it isn't necessary to put it the first sentence or even the first paragraph. For many articles, especially in math, the story is complicated enough that it should get a paragraph on it's own, e.g. Fibonacci number does this. I've mentioned this before but the habit of starting an article with "In ..." is an idiosyncrasy of this project. It's usually a good way of providing context but there are other alternatives if it becomes awkward.--RDBury (talk) 03:44, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I think usually it should be in about the first or second sentence, but there are cases like Fibonacci or Student where there may be a colorful story. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:30, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

A disagreement at Standard part function

At Standard part function, [PA redacted - WMC: summary: there is a dispute]. The editor does not seem to realize that the standard part was part of Robinson's solution of the paradox of the infinitesimal definition of the derivative by Leibniz, as criticized by Berkeley in 1734. Berkeley's criticism of infinitesimals as inconsistent entities was widely accepted until the 1960s. Certainly neither Weierstrass nor Cantor thought of the limit approach as resolving the paradox of the infinitesimal definition, contrary to what ill-informed editor seems to think. Claiming that the limit approach was a resolution of the paradox amounts to an unsourced, whiggish rewriting of history. The editor in question is pursueing a similar misguided agenda at ghosts of departed quantities, even after having admitted at a talkpage that he is not fully knowledgeable about the infinitesimal approach to the calculus. Tkuvho (talk) 22:02, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Furthermore, editor Connolly seems to be stalking a number of additional pages I have worked on, including a misguided AfC at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Mikhail_Katz. Input would be appreciated. Tkuvho (talk) 22:12, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

You have been escalating the situation unnecessarily. Especially calling William M. Connolley by his first name and then, when he objected to that and directed you to his subpage where he explains why, you outright refused to read it and addressed him as "William" again. Very bad idea. I also had to refactor a section title which was a personal attack, and the title of this section isn't much better, either.

As far as I can see there is some very normal disagreement between the two of you of the kind that should normally result in improvements to the articles that satisfy everybody. I don't understand why that shouldn't be possible. Hans Adler 01:15, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

That's what his page says? Fine, I will call him Connolley from now on. It is a bit odd to choose a user name that... you expect people not to use. As far as the content disagreement, note that I explained the matter at talk a few weeks ago, without getting any reaction from him other than reverting my edits. I recently explained it again, without reaction. Tkuvho (talk) 01:37, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

The page does not say that it's OK to call him just Connolley. Where he lives, and also where I live, that's very rude. In the years that I have been on this project I remember only one user who insisted on addressing me as "Adler", and another who made a point of using "Herr Adler", which I also consider offensive in an English context. I would consider "Hans" or "Mr Adler" fine, but WMC has spent a lot of time fighting with morons who think because they have read a blog they know more about climate science than an expert, so I think it's quite reasonable that he insists on "Dr Connolley" if you insist on using his real world identity to address him. But don't do what I am telling you. Just read the short page that explains how not to be rude. Hans Adler 01:45, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

P.S. Checking the history, I see that I addressed him as "William" two weeks ago here, and he seemed to think that's just fine. The change of heart with regard to William appears to be sudden. Tkuvho (talk) 01:49, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

It is entirely up to WMC to decide who he is on a first name basis with. Maybe he was initially not sure in your case, or maybe he thought it wasn't worth mentioning as you were not likely to interact much, or he wanted to wait whether you were going to see how people who are not his friends usually address WMC around here and adjust your usage. This is all incredibly silly. While part of the silliness is on WMC's side, most of it is on yours. Hans Adler 10:08, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, Hans Adler, how silly of me. Could you please respond to the substance of my remarks concerning unsourced history? Tkuvho (talk) 10:13, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, no. Whether the paradox was resolved or side-stepped is of no particular interest to me. With a bit of good will there should be no problem finding a clear explanation that is acceptable to both of you. Hans Adler 10:22, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

OK well thanks for your input at elementary calculus. Tkuvho (talk) 12:43, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem with both pages ghosts of departed quantities and standard part function still persists. Both pages have been degraded by non-expert edits recently, and my explanations at talk went unheeded. Input by editors familiar with non-standard analysis would be appreciated. Tkuvho (talk) 19:11, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Can't say I much appreciate the section title here, so I've retitled it. Also, I would have expected T to have the bare minimum of courtesy required to have informed me of this discussion. As to the substance: T appears to have appointed himself the expert, and disses everyone else's expertise should they have the temerity to disagree with him. The person with the "agenda" (since he chooses to use that term) is T: and his agenda would appear to be non-standard analysis William M. Connolley (talk) 20:19, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

AfD: Mikhail Katz

There is a discussion about WP:Notability/PROF (for mathematicians), now that the article on Mikhail Katz (a student of Gromov's) is up for deletion.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 00:57, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

One small point to make is that notability is not inherited. It doesn't matter who someone's supervisor was. — Fly by Night (talk) 17:01, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

As an aside, I would encourage as many people as have the time to review the article and the deletion discussion. These kind of discussions set presidents, and it's important for the mathematical community on Wikipedia to have a say. So far the AfD is being discussed by non-reference desk and non-wikiproject editors. We really do need more people from the maths project to give some input. We should be involved in possible mathematical president-making discussions. — Fly by Night (talk) 17:23, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Ray Yang, Tkuvho, Kiefer Wolfiwitz, and Thenub314 are all practicing mathematicians I believe, and are certainly no strangers to the math project. 166.137.141.96 (talk) 17:35, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I haven't noticed them, but that may well be an oversight on my part. If so then please accept my apologises! Either way, that doesn't alter the merit of my point. — Fly by Night (talk) 19:04, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

President-making discussions. Awesome! ;) Nageh (talk) 17:42, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

How does pedantry help the discussion? I mistyped a word… get over it. — Fly by Night (talk) 19:04, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't forget to smile. :) Nageh (talk) 19:35, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I am staying out of the discussion because I have never heard of Mikhail Katz outside Wikipedia and have the impression that he is a borderline case even under WP:ACADEMIC – which is so permissive that I have on occasion not created an article on someone who I felt passes it because there wasn't really much to write about. That's not to say that people who pass it aren't necessarily important, but there just may not be any biographical information available. Hans Adler 18:44, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I mentioned the advisor rather than writing "differential geometry and metric space theory, presented in an engaging mix of seminar talk and formal proofs, with interesting graphics". Nonetheless, being a student of Gromov, like being a student of Garrett Birkhoff, is a predictor of notability, and Katz appears to be performing even better than one would expect from a random student drawn from that elite group, imho.

The following article is worth your attention, on WP and professionally. It appears in Statistical Science (paywall-ed Project Euclid), which has many comments by distinguished mathematical statisticians or bibliometricians.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 18:54, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

• Adler, Robert; Ewing, John; Taylor, Peter (2009). "Citation statistics: A report from the International Mathematical Union (IMU) in cooperation with the International Council of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS)" (PDF). Statistical Science. 24 (1): 1–14. doi:10.1214/09-STS285. MR 2561120. Project Euclid.

I'm not sure how it is a predictor of notability. Looking at Birkoff on the Maths Genealogy Project, only 27 out of 52 students seem to have become notable. (Almost all notable mathematicians have at least one PhD student, while 25 of Birkoff's students don't seem to have had a single student.) But that is beside the point. I was making point about Wikipedia policy: notability is nor inherited. That didn't stop me !voting to keep the article in question. — Fly by Night (talk) 19:11, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Semiregular 4-polytope

Semiregular 4-polytope was prodded for deletion. 65.95.13.213 (talk) 06:00, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Polytope articles

I've raised this issue before, but we have a large number (in the hundreds) of articles on specific polytopes and more are being added all the time. I looked at one of the more dubious ones, Bipentellated 8-simplex, and found no reliable references and it seems to be largely original research. Most of these seem to be the work of a single editor and judging from the red links {e.g. Pentistericated 8-simplex) present on the page it looks like the final tally for these articles could be in the thousands. I find it difficult to believe that the majority of these articles meet the GNG so perhaps there should be a review to decide on a few dozen articles that are worth keeping.--RDBury (talk) 16:42, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

"Bipentellated" doesn't seem to be a term used outside wikipedia. At least, there are no hits on Google scholar or Google books, and most (all?) of the Google hits seem to be Wikipedia mirrors. Maybe it follows some systematic way of naming these polytopes based on compound words formed from the Greek, but sources that address the subject directly are needed. I think most of these articles should be transwikied to wikibooks if sources cannot be found, since it seems to be clear OR. If anything the nomenclature is very non-standard. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:10, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I think some of the glossaries listed in External links section define the terms and the author is applying them to generate the names. If so then these would definitely come under the heading of original research. I'd settle for consolidating the articles since much of their content seems to be boilerplate and the actual information they contain can be summarized in a table entry, assuming that is that the information can be verified.--RDBury (talk) 20:54, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Even if we accepted that glossary as reliable, it doesn't seem to support the nomeclature "bipentellated". This seems made up. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:59, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Fully agree. Also just because something has a name doesn't mean it has independent notability. There's lots of people with different names, that doesn't mean everyone iis notable as far as Wikipedia is concerned. The should only be in some notable topic. Dmcq (talk) 21:05, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Another popular "word" in all of this business is "bicantellated", which also gets zero Google books and Google scholar hits. The naming conventions in these articles, and the overall program, seems to be inspired by the "uniform polychora project" of Norman Johnson (mathematician) and George Olshevsky, but this project no longer seems to exist. I can't seem to find any published materials from the project that these articles can be sourced to. However, I also feel that a lot of work has gone into making these articles, and that we should make every effort to preserve this content. Even if it is original research, it seems like worthwhile and possibly useful original research. So I think that rather than deleting, all of these articles should be transwikied to WikiBooks. (I assume they allow original research.)

If there is consensus that either deletion or transwiki is appropriate, then I think the next order of business would be to make a list of all of these articles. There are various subcategories and subsubcategories of Category:Polytopes that are populated primarily with these sorts of articles. Does anyone (*cough* Carl *cough*) have a script that will unwrap a few levels of a category into a list? We can then go through this list and strike the ones that are either obviously OK, or ones for which there are good references. The remaining ones can be transwikied or deleted by the appropriate process. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:37, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:WikiProject Uniform Polytopes that gives some greater context for these articles. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:46, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Since language and logic seem to be important to this topic, I thought I would point out that there seems to be a conflation of two issues here.

One is the introduction of NOR questionable naming associated with well known mathematical operations on hyperdimensional geometric objects. It would seem too broad a brush to simply eliminate pages from WP for want of more common naming schemes. I suggest due diligence by those interested in taking action to understand and correct the specific issues with finer strokes than a house painter.

The second is the GNG as it pertains to visualizing the many permutations of hyperdimensional geometry. While one might replace all the amazingly beautiful visuals contained herein with a table, I suspect the public would not be well served. Think of the need to stimulate the minds of our youth with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)). Math tables are important, direct, and accurate but tend to be dry. Please consider the right half of the brain when pondering the elimination of these pages - they do provide another way to look at the world to the extent they represent valid geometry.

Jgmoxness (talk) 16:05, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

There is quite an active community of people working on these high dimensional polytopes which seem to be a bit outside the mathematical mainstream. Their main communication channel seems to be the polyhedra mailing list and I think there are some meetings. I would suspect the names reflect those of this community rather than one WP editor. As it seems to be outside the mainstream the work tends not to get published in traditional journal sources. So while not strictly "original research" it would still fall under WP:OR unless there are sources we don't know about. I would say wiki-books would be a good solution for much of this material. Anyway I've notified the main author of these pages User:Tomruen and it would be good to wait until we gat a reply from him.--Salix (talk): 17:15, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

The terminology all comes from Norman Johnson, in the context of uniform polytopes, Coxeter's term for vertex-transitive polytopes with uniform polytope facets. Johnson studied under Coxeter, wrote his dissertation in 1966 on uniform polytopes and honeycombs, and has a long delayed book called Uniform Polytopes on the subject, which has been referenced as an unpublished manuscript, and his terminology used in various polytope sources. The polytopes are named with a prefix notation corresponding to the Coxeter-Dynkin diagram, graphs where each node is a reflection mirror, and each edge is a dihedral angle between the mirrors with a given reflection order. Each Coxeter graph has a set of regular and uniform polytopes by unique permutations of rings around the nodes. So the names are defined by the ring pattern, as well as a t (truncation), notation, like t₀ forms a regular polytope (on the linear graph families), t_0,1 is truncation (named by Kepler), and Norman named bitruncation for t_1,2, Cantellation for t_0,2, runcination for t_0,3, etc, and mixed term like t_0,1,2 is a truncation and a cantellation, so he calls that cantitruncation, etc. So that's where the names come from for uniform polytopes dimension 4 or higher.

Printed references for these higher polytopes are still rare. George Olshevsky claimed to be the first online reference for the uniform 4-polytopes, and the only printed book which I know that uses the terminology is the 2008 The Symmetries of things by Conway et al. Richard Klitzing has the only online source for higher dimension uniform polytopes, so I've used that as my primary, [78]. He uses an inline (ASCII) Coxeter diagram, which are a bit hard to read, and references the polytopes by Jonathan Bowers, so I've included those names as well, but use Johnson's truncation terminology for the article names.

My goal was first to get the basic families, summarized in this table Template:Polytopes, listing families by dimension, and the regular polytopes (or end-ringed quasiregular forms for the bifurcating families). I was hoping to at least get the uniform 5-polytopes completed, and didn't expect to expand articles on all the higher ones, since they approximately double on each higher dimension. I have generated the graphs for each family, orthogonal projections in Coxeter planes for each family which have the nice symmetry, and give a chance for visualization of these polytopes.

Each uniform polytope can be projected in its family Coxeter plane, or any of its subfamilies, so I made tables for each family, and you can see the number of images increases rapidly.

• Simplex: List_of_A5_polytopes, List_of_A6_polytopes, List_of_A7_polytopes, List_of_A8_polytopes
• Hypercube: List_of_B5_polytopes, List_of_B6_polytopes, List_of_B7_polytopes, List_of_B8_polytopes
• Demihypercube: List_of_D5_polytopes, List_of_D6_polytopes, List_of_D7_polytopes, List_of_D8_polytopes
• (subset) E_n: List_of_E6_polytopes, List_of_E7_polytopes, List_of_E8_polytopes

All these shapes are well known by Coxeter even 60 years ago, but it wasn't until Johnson that they were named. These are the easy ones since they are defined by symmetry. Harder ones are called non-wythoffian, like the grand antiprism in 4D, found by Conway, and unknown beyond 4D. Also less known are uniform star polytopes with rational-ordered mirrors, like Coxeter's 3D Uniform_star_polyhedrons and regular Kepler-Poinsot_solids. A list of 2000+ are known for 4D, which wikipedia articles haven't touched, and are not published ANYWHERE, but given in Rob Webb's software Stella_(software). The only listing of those wikipedia has (from Stella images) are the 4D regular forms Schläfli–Hess polychoron.

Anyway, I agree it is hard to defend these on wikipedia, or where to draw a line. As far as I know Norman Johnson (and a few collaborators) are the only ones working on the subject. If it wasn't for wikipedia (seeing the original articles I worked from), I wouldn't have even bothered trying to learn about any of this, since it seemed too hard, and too few resources to help explain what they are. I saw Magnus_Wenninger polyhedron models in the 1990's at a math convention and thought they were beautiful but had no idea before wikipedia before I found out they are mostly "simple things" that look complex! Tom Ruen (talk) 19:00, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the 'list of' articles could possibly be defended but the individual ones just lack notability. They really should all have been in a wiki of their own. What could possibly be done for the moment is to move the pages to commons and reference them from Wikipedia with 'Wikimedia Commons has media related to: xxx' for each of them. Probably not really a proper long-term solution but it would avoid deleting everything till someone decides they deserve their own place elsewhere along with all the various knots and all the various graphs etc. Dmcq (talk) 19:10, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

The primary reason I support individual articles for a subset of forms (possibly complete up to 5 or 6 dimensional, and single-ringed forms for 7 or 8), is because of the recursive definition, higher dimensional polytopes are constructed from lower dimensional facets. They might be linked to family tables, but pages load slower and harder to find. Also no singular table can contain all the information. And on notability, many of these polytopes are related to sphere-packings, and kissing numbers of densest packings. So all the uniform polytopes with circumradii as equal to edge lengths are the vertex figures of uniform lattices (or as root systems of infinite Lie groups). I hope to expand those relations at some point. Tom Ruen (talk) 22:35, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Well just taking a fairly simple one at random Truncated 5-simplex I'm afraid I just cannot see the notability of that article never mind getting up to the Bipentellated 8-simplex. Lets start with general notability guideline "Significant coverage" means that sources address the subject directly in detail, so no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source materia" So where is the truncated 5-simplex mentioned in respect to anything else except being just one in a list? Is there something saying it specifically occurs in sphere packings or a kissing number of densest packings or a root system of infinite Lie grpoups like yous said they were? Dmcq (talk) 23:48, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Nope, you're right on that random example, and no more important than one of its facets, truncated 5-cell, or one of its cells, truncated tetrahedron. (The Stericated_5-simplex#Root_vectors in contrast vertices represent the root vectors of A5, but just a quick reference there.) Probably all but a handful of the uniform polyhedra and polytopes are not defendably notable if you apply strict standards. The Uniform polyhedron compound (which another editor compiled) is largely just a list as well, possibly just overlapping other lists as being stellations as well as compounds. Tom Ruen (talk) 00:11, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

My initial thought when I saw this was that someone, somewhere on Wikipedia must have dealt with this somehow before. With a little work I found Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects, which has topical archives on tables of asteroids. With more effort I found that Wikipedia:WikiProject Algae has a large number of articles which seem to have been created by importing parts of AlgaeBase (see for instance Category:Algae genera and Category:Algae stubs). It's not clear to me whether there is a community consensus for articles which can be created essentially by rote and in some cases by machine.

I think the present situation is partway between the asteroids (where almost all articles were expected to be hard-to-maintain database dumps) and the algae (where I think the long term goal is to eventually add real content to every article). Some of the polytopes are notable and should be kept, but I'm not sure which ones. Ozob (talk) 01:21, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

There has been an effort to maintain statistical information by "template databases" (idea started by another user, and continued by me), for example the regular polyhedra at Template:Reg_polyhedra_db (can be converted to/from Excel spreadsheets), and used for stat tables: Template:Reg_polyhedron_stat_table. The databases can be used for different table formats and allow new fields to be added. I did an initial tests for 6-polytopes at Template:Uniform_polypeton_db and tested on Rectified_6-simplex. The main reason I delayed from expanding is deciding how much information to include, so far only included basic summary counts and symbols. I've done the same thing for the solar eclipse articles for 1900-2100, which I hoped would allow a framework for notable past and future eclipses to be expanded. So the same is true for these uniform polytopes. The less notable ones can just have basic information, and the full lists (of the lower dimensional families) allows browsing cross-linked exploration of these beautifully symmetric objects. So far we have mostly Coxeter plane projections which have a number of graphs per polytope, but there's also perspective and stereographic projections that can be added, and too much to be summarized in a single table or article. Tom Ruen (talk) 01:47, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Maybe we can borrow from Wikipedia:Notability (numbers)#Notability of specific individual numbers? If a polytope has three or more unrelated and distinctive properties (e.g. its skeleton is a Cayley graph, it has a record-high genus for its number of faces, stuff like that, not "it is the teratopentellation of the dodecadodecahedron"), if it has obvious cultural significance, or if it is treated individually and nontrivially in published works such as Wells Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry, then we can include it, otherwise not. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Expressions of notability can end up as original research as much as anything, like the the n-permutohedra (described atTalk:Permutohedron) being clearly related to the omnitruncated n-simplex polytopes, BUT I have no sources that state the connection. Similarly the root vectors of the simple lie groups are drawn in lower dimensions as related to uniform polyhedra, but to my sources its inductive OR to state the uniform polytope connection to higher dimensions. I have limited ability to express these connections, although I have some book sources like Conway's Sphere packing, lattices, and groups, its tough reading. So anyway, for me my strength is merely to express the uniform polytopes as defined by Coxeter and Johnson, construct them computationally, and draw their symmetry projections. I do hope I can understand more in time, but for now their amazing symmetry is what attracts me to showing them. My interest would suppport (1-done) All convex and star uniform polyheda (~75) (2-done) All convex uniform 4-polytopes (~55), (3-done) All nonprismatic uniform 5-polytopes (~105), (4) A subset of convex uniform polytopes from 6,7,8, mainly the smaller ones 1-2 active mirrors, and summary tables of all convex forms. (5) Summary tables for 1-2 ringed forms for 9D, 10D. 9D is a good place to stop with the E8 lattice and the highest uniform hyperbolic honeycomb, and 10D and higher have no new special symmetries. (Although Conway and others would claim still more interest up to 24D!) Tom Ruen (talk) 02:04, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

p.s. Documentable notability within the field of uniform polytopes would mainly come from Coxeter himself, and his historical references of previous discovers, like Ludwig Schläfli and Edmund Hess who identified the (full) list of regular polytopes, and Thorold_Gosset and E._L._Elte who independently described semiregular polytopes by different definitions that eventually Coxeter expanded to the uniform polytope defintion that was complete. Tom Ruen (talk) 02:15, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I like David Eppstein's suggestion. I have no objection to keeping lists of polytopes up to 9D; you gave a good reason above why 9D is a good place to stop (namely, that's the dimension where E₈ appears). I think we should have articles on all the uniform polytopes of dimension less than or equal to 3 (regardless of whether interesting properties can be found), and I could possibly be convinced push that to dimension 4. But all the other polytopes are going to need some interesting properties. (You mentioned Johnson's manuscript Uniform polytopes above. Maybe that has some interesting facts about these objects?) Ozob (talk) 11:13, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I couldn't disagree more with Ozob. Stopping at 3 is like burning geometry books after Euclid. 4D polychora are merely the beginning of modern geometry. Visualizing as much modern geometry up to E8 is needed to show the public how to percieve something they probably thought was impossible - but there it is! While I understand the debate over OR & GNG as potentially interesting - what POSITIVE purpose is being served by moving these particular articles? Reorganize and rename - YES! Move'em out - NO! Jgmoxness (talk) 13:42, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, if I recall correctly, we require evidence of notability for numbers outside the range −1 to 101. The first positive integer that doesn't have its own article, however, is 218. All I'm saying is that three or four dimensions should be the limit of where we should accept notability without justification, just like the number 101. I'm confident that there are good reasons to keep most of the polytope articles that have already been created; I just think that those reasons need to be added to the articles. Ozob (talk) 23:57, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I UNDERSTAND your logic, but disagree with the analogy. It is precisely the value of undersanding how to visualize dimensions greater than 3 (or 4) that MUST be incorporated into the human knowledge base (not relegated to the trash heap of just another number or dimension). Indeed, all of physics may depend on this type of information (up to some dimension much greater than 4 or even 8). So there is your justification! Jgmoxness (talk) 00:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I still disagree. I would like to hear more opinions. Ozob (talk) 01:39, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm with Ozob on this one. I agree that dimensions greater than 3 or 4 are important. So are numbers greater than 101. But we have to draw the line somewhere—we don't want to see millions of separate articles appearing on either topic. I think Ozob is proposing a reasonable compromise here. We're not proposing mass deletion of a lot of articles, only that each case past a certain point needs to have some individual merit. Jowa fan (talk) 06:53, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Here's an analogy. The multiplicative inverse is an important operation on numbers, important enough to have its own article. And many small integers are important enough to have their own articles. But we do not have articles on the multiplicative inverses of very many integers — many fewer than the articles on integers. So, truncation is important, and simplices are important, but that doesn't mean we need a separate article on seven dimensional truncated simplices. There just isn't that much to say about them that is different from six dimensional truncated simplices or whatever. The parts that are different (the f-vectors, for instance) can probably just be summarized in a table. I can't think of any justification for having an article on this particular polytope and not having an article on the number 1/21. And I am perfectly happy not having an article on the number 1/21 — there's not much to say about it that wouldn't be in the article 21 (number) — but I think that Truncated 7-simplex is even less worthy. And that's one of the less baroque ones. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:34, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Agree completely. If somebody wants all that they should set up a separate wiki where they can be looked after properly. If you're willing to have ads Jimbo will give you space free for anything like that at wikia.com for instance. It's the thing to do for knots and graphs and groups and suchlike which can be listed out but aren't in themselves of much note. Want the Alexander polynomial of your knot with 12 crossings?, I don't think Wikipedia is the right place really. Dmcq (talk) 07:20, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

While DMcq might find it difficult to find "much to SAY" about seven dimensional truncated simplices, that doesn't mean there isn't value in showing the patterns emerging from it's geometric permutations (treated together on a page). These are unique and interesting (even to those outside of the math community - the main customer of Wikipedia BTW). I suggest we stop at 8, but using the integer analogy we could stop at 218. For the life of me I can't understand how anyone can see value in a position in a decimal table as more significant for a page than a beautiful set of geometric permutations resulting from hyperdimensional objects. Before proceeding with removing pages, I encourage you to suffer through reading EACH of the integer pages up to 218 - they have a LOT to SAY on those pages!

Wait- maybe you're right - thus we PROD all the integer pages that don't provide salient info that can't be put in a table. I think above 21 decimal would do it.

You've (tried) to make a point about GNG, but I suspect there's another bur in your saddles here. Anyone care to talk about it? To quote HAL in 2001 - "What seems to be the problem Dave?"

BTW - among MANY others who have tried to make legitimate arguments on these math pages, I fully understand that attempts to change the opinions of this collusive gang are hopeless, I just think someone on the planet needs to at least try to right a wrong so at least it is on record what is happening here).Jgmoxness (talk) 13:49, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

What have you got against setting up a separate wiki where the notability guidelines don't matter and where there can be more control so the pages don't just become a burden in the fight against vandalism? There could be any amount of original research and provided it looks reasonable and is mainly okay I'd still be perfectly happy to have pointers to it from Wikipedia. What is this wrong you are talking about? And what kind of a burr do you suspect? Dmcq (talk) 14:19, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it sounds like an excellent idea. I know that this is our default attitude when someone posts "junk" to Wikipedia, but in this case I genuinely believe that this is a worthwhile project that should be continued. However, it just doesn't seem to be a project consistent with our mission here. I'd help in any way I can to make this a viable project elsewhere, perhaps on another Wikimedia site. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:44, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Ugh. I can defend facts, but not value. I did consider putting content on higher polytopes on Wikia or Citizendium, but immediately felt frustrated that hundreds of wiki hyperlinks suddenly go nowhere, or have to be converted to web links, or have article contents completely duplicated in the other wiki, and then have two independent, nearly identical copies to be kept updated. The BEST solution from my side would be if a large set of geometry articles and images from wikipedia could be copied to wikia. At least then I'm at ground zero on a parallel source. But then there's still the question what should stay. And as soon as you draw a line, you're taking out something someone cares about, and blocking interest in future improvement, and reducing the number of eyes to keep the vandalism out. Tom Ruen (talk) 21:33, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Tom, this is not about the burden of vandalism. I doubt there will ever be undue burden on anyone interested in polytopes WRT vandalism (unless you try to add a visual to the tesseract page that Dmcq doesn't like). What I don't understand is how the logic defending moving these articles based on integer pages up to 218 defends the original premise that these need to be moved at dimension 3 or 4. In fact, this analog supplied to defend removal is in fact an argument that supports MY argument. I would like someone to actually address my questions rather than ignore them.

No one on this forum is arguing for PROD of 218_(number) (which if you notice is misdirected to 210_(number) - now THERE is a mess that we should WORRY about. But NOooo! We are worrying about polytopes and not integer pages!). Why NOT? Please read it and tell me why this polytope movement is more important to act on than that! The info is certainly able to be put into a table (except I see NO interesting visuals WRT the number 218 decimal or any other for that matter). I don't get it. Why this? Why now? Even IF the GNG argument were valid (which I don't concede), it can't explain this prejudicial analog with integer pages. Call me cynical - but somebody has a bone to pick with new and interesting polytope visualizations. Jealousy?, NIH?, academic arrogance or pride?, not sure.... it sure isn't embedded in any logic being provided thus far. I hope this answers Dmcq's questions on what is wrong and what the possible bur is - I can't make it any clearer than that (sorry, I don't have an equation for it). Jgmoxness (talk) 01:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I see you were trying to stick some animations into the tesseract article and I objected. People can read Talk:Tesseract#New Animations themselves and have a look at what you were trying to do and judge for themselves. The number 218 redirects to 210 because 210 has a short bit about 218, 218 was not judged to have enough in it to justify having its own article. The online encyclopaedia of integer sequences is a good example of a site that provides a good service but Wikipedia should only have that tiny proportion of the sequences described there that pass notability guidelines. Dmcq (talk) 08:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think we are all successfully communicating. Let me ask a question: Can anyone name one higher-dimensional polytope with one property that is not shared by other polytopes of the same dimension? For example, "This polytope has the smallest number of vertices of any polytope with this symmetry group," or "This polytope has the largest number of cells of any self-dual polytope of this dimension." These are the kinds of properties I'm talking about. The existence of interesting properties is why we keep the numbers 102–217. We don't have a separate article on 218 because there isn't much to say about it. I am sure there are interesting things to say about regular and uniform polytopes. Before continuing this discussion I would like to know what some of those interesting things are. Ozob (talk) 10:43, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Ozob, most of the integer properties you suggest are valid GNG are not mathematical properties. They are mostly rather meaningless correlations (which could be found via search). That is a very low bar for the precedent of GNG. I would imagine it should be easy to find similar (rather meaningless but true) idiosynchracies in polytopes up to order 8. Let's try. If not, each removal shoud follow proper procedure and get consensus individually before moving or removal. Have fun! As for the opinion of Dmcq and his meat puppet minions, you can see I tried and failed to sway their consensus OPINION. You can find the animation living on the 24-cell page (as the Tesseract is embedded in it). Jgmoxness (talk) 13:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I would like time given for the articles to be given a proper home and I do not intend to immediately stick AfD's on them. I would have already done so if I had though that was best. However if there is no intention of moving them and just this idea that each deletion will be resisted then I will start sticking AfDs onto them. What is it to be? Dmcq (talk) 15:45, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that this is a low bar. It ought to be a low bar. Honestly, I want most of the polytope articles to stay, but notability is policy. It is not something we can forget about when we find a topic interesting. So yes, please find similar meaningless but true idiosyncrasies about each of the polytopes up to dimension eight. Then they will meet the GNG. If there is a polytope where nobody is able to do that, then that polytope would appear to be not notable and its article ought to be deleted. Ozob (talk) 22:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I can't support any deletion (or moving) unless all the polyhedral geometry articles are treated as a whole and clear standards are defined for which are allowed individual articles. You can say "things that are a part of a class" should be listed in collective articles. That might be easy, but ultimately there's no easy "notability" for any specific polyhedron/polytope to have its own article. Take for example, Coxeter's icosidodecadodecahedron - the only thing in this article that's not in the larger list List of uniform polyhedra is the related polyhedron section which cross links to other polyhedra and compounds which share the same vertex arrangement. If you take away the individual articles, there's no space for comparisons. I just don't see any clear distinction to say 27 of 76 uniform polytopes are notable and the other 49 are not. For me, they are a set, and if ONE of the set is not notable, then none of them are notable individually. Tom Ruen (talk) 20:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It is in the list List of uniform polyhedra. You can sort the tables by clicking the title at the top of a column and that will bring all the entries with an attribute the same together so if there is something that collects a bunch of things together they can have the same identifier in some column. Dmcq (talk) 20:50, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

A singular table is insufficient, sorting or not, is insufficient to show relations like vertex arrangements, especially when they cross-categories, some are polyhedra and some are compounds. Tom Ruen (talk) 03:44, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

If we're going to start deleting/moving, let's start from the bottom and plan comprehensively! Here's a bunch of categories on polyhedra alone: Some are "finite sets" and some are open-ended sets. Should all 75 of the uniform compounds, compiled from a single paper be included? Should all 92 Johnson solids have their own articles, again, compiled from a single paper that enumerated them. Should all 53 nonregular star uniform polyhedra be included?

• Category:Polyhedra ~189 articles, mixed polyhedra and related articles
  • Category:Catalan_solids - 13 of 13 models
  • Category:Archimedean_solids - 13 of 13 models
  • Category:Johnson_solids - 92 of 92 polyhedra
  • Category:Polyhedral_stellation - 15 of ??? stellations
  • Category:Polyhedral_compounds - 75 of 75 uniform models
  • Category:Uniform_polyhedra ~50(?) of 53 star uniform polyhedra (Cat not used on all apparently)

How about adding a Category:Polytopes to be moved? Maybe a bot can be created that can download them for moving before deleting? Tom Ruen (talk) 03:44, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

At this stage I would leave the three dimensional ones its more the higher dimensional polytopes which are in question.

• Category:Polychora (3 C, 101 P)
  • Category:Honeycombs (geometry) (1 C, 57 P)
    • Category:Space-filling polyhedra (15 P) - 3D models again so keep
  • Category:Polychoral image (83 F) - keep if used
  • Category:Polychora stubs (66 P) - all of these exist in parent categories
• Category:5-polytopes (67 P)
• Category:6-polytopes (60 P)
• Category:7-polytopes (91 P)
• Category:8-polytopes (43 P)
• Category:9-polytopes (11 P)
• Category:10-polytopes (6 P)

From these the definite keeps are the various lists

• Polychoron - Schläfli–Hess polychoron - Convex regular 4-polytope - Uniform polychoron
• 5-polytope - List of A5 polytopes - List of B5 polytopes - List of D5 polytopes - Uniform polyteron
• 6-polytope - List of A6 polytopes - List of B6 polytopes - List of D6 polytopes - List of E6 polytopes - Uniform polypeton
• List of A7 polytopes - List of B7 polytopes - List of D7 polytopes - List of E7 polytopes - Uniform polyexon
• List of A8 polytopes - List of B8 polytopes - List of D8 polytopes - List of E8 polytopes - Uniform polyzetton
• Uniform polyyotton
• Uniform polyxennon (someone above suggested we stop at 9D)

Also of greater significance seem to be those mentioned in Template:Polytopes which are the "Fundamental convex regular and uniform polytopes in dimensions 2–10"

• 5-cell - 16-cell - Tesseract - Demitesseract - 24-cell - 120-cell - 600-cell
• 5-simplex - 5-orthoplex - 5-cube - 5-demicube
• 6-simplex - 6-orthoplex - 6-cube - 6-demicube - 1_22_polytope - 1_22_polytope - 2_21_polytope
• 7-simplex - 7-orthoplex - 7-cube - 7-demicube - 1_32_polytope - 2_31_polytope - 3_21_polytope
• 8-simplex - 8-orthoplex - 8-cube - 8-demicube -1_42_polytope - 2_41_polytope - 4_21_polytope
• 9-simplex - 9-orthoplex - 9-cube - 9-demicube
• Uniform 10-polytope - 10-simplex - 10-orthoplex - 10-cube - 10-demicube
• n-simplex

The various honeycombs seem to be of some significance including:

• 3D/4D: cubic honeycomb, alternated cubic honeycomb, quarter cubic honeycomb...
• 4D/5D: tesseractic honeycomb, demitesseractic honeycomb, pentachoric-dispentachoric honeycomb
• 5D/6D: penteractic honeycomb, demipenteractic honeycomb, Hexateric-dishexateric honeycomb
• 6D/7D: hexeractic honeycomb, demihexeractic honeycomb, 2 22 honeycomb
• 7D/8D: hepteractic honeycomb, demihepteractic honeycomb, 3 31 honeycomb, 1 33 honeycomb
• 8D/9D: octeractic honeycomb - demiocteractic honeycomb - 5_21_honeycomb - 2_51_honeycomb - 1_52_honeycomb
• 9D/10D: 6_21_honeycomb - 2_61_honeycomb - 1_62_honeycomb

Beyond that I don't know enough about the subject to know which ones deserve special pleading.--Salix (talk): 06:45, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

(I added most the other primary honeycombs above.) Tom Ruen (talk) 07:20, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Here's another question. One of the ways we establish notability of a number is if there have been published papers about it. Which of the polytopes (or classes of polytopes) not listed above has gotten a lot of research interest? Ozob (talk) 11:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Ozob, that should probably read "any research interest". I would ask it differently- what pages contain ANY references in ANY published research. Upon finding those pages that don't meet that criteria, look for unique statistical or coincidental correlations that relate to unique patterns. (e.g. ...is the only xxx to contain yy vertices with zz overlaps in the bb projection basis). This answer is certainly above the low bar precedent example in the 213_number where the only notability is listed below:

• Area code 213 is one of the first three area codes created in California. This was the primary telephone area code for Los Angeles County, California during the 1960s and 1970s. Eventually it would be reduced in size mostly to cover the downtown area of the city of Los Angeles. See also 818, 714.
• 213 Lilaea is a main belt asteroid.
• 213 was the name of a hip hop group, active 1990-2004.

...

If no unique correlations such as these can be found to exist - then move it out. Jgmoxness (talk) 15:16, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

OK then, any research interest. Please, show me even a coincidence involving these objects. Ozob (talk) 17:56, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

As in the 213_number example, where its GNG stems from the number showing up as a unique and verifiable enumerated NAME of a member of a set- the main asteroid belt (or is a verifiable member of the set of first LA area codes). So taking Dmcq's proposed example for lack of notability using the same low bar, the Truncated 5-simplex, one can easily demonstrate it as being a unique and verifiable member of a set:

a truncated 5-simplex is THE ONLY uniform 5-polytope with 30 vertices,...

Even more interesting, it shows up in the abstract of published research [79]

Jgmoxness (talk) 18:48, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

p.s. On that paper, and a similar one,[80], looks a truncated k-simplex lattice is like the quarter cubic honeycomb of 3D (k=3), with cyclic A~_k-1 Coxeter group symmetry, with two adjacent rings, a honeycomb with k-simplex, truncated k-simplex, and bitruncated k-simplex facets. (Not currently listed!) Note: I'm not 100% sure how a lattice is defined, but it seems to be more a set of points in space, while a honeycomb is defined by the convex regions (as polytopes) between the lattice points. Tom Ruen (talk) 19:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

WP:OTHERSTUFF is no argument for keeping something, that would just lead to Wikipedia being a dumping ground for the most useless of trivia as everyone thinks theirs is more interesting. If somebody wants to stick an AfD on 213 please feel free to go ahead, I'll just sit on the sideline for that as for instance I can see that 213 is the 9th entry in Levine's sequence which grows especially fast and is mentioned in My Favorite Integer Sequences by Sloane [www2.research.att.com/~njas/doc/sg.pdf]. And for the numerologists 213 is one of the six different permutations of 1 2 3 which also sums to six and multiplies to six so giving the number of the beast :) Personally I feel it should just have been stuck into 210 like 218 was and there should be citations anyway. What should be done is what Tom Ruen is trying to do which is to find some decent reason for keeping separate articles complete with citations. Personally I'm happy with all the list of type article for starters. Dmcq (talk) 09:44, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

What about merging rather than deleting? For example merge the content of Bipentellated 8-simplex into 8-simplex, rather than simply deleting it. In order to prevent the article from becoming too long, tables such as Bipentellated 8-simplex#Related polytopes could be made collapsible. Of course citations directly describing these polytopes would be needed such that no original research is required to extract the presented information. For example, there should be a source that calls the Bipentellated 8-simplex by this name, otherwise the most common name used by the sources should be used I think. As I don't have access to most of the references used in the Polytope articles, unfortunately I could not help with that. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 14:48, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

There is already a partial merge, List of A8 polytopes does contain some details of Bipentellated 8-simplex which shows its Coxeter diagram and orthogonal projections. The only information which is not in the list are the number of faces and edges and the coordinates of the vertices, an a couple of lines in the intro which state a few properties.--Salix (talk): 15:24, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I also considered merging, but as the 8D families show, the amount of uniformation, numbers and images, becomes too large. You could make groups B8 uniform polytopes (quasiregular), B8 uniform polytopes (truncations), B8 uniform polytopes (cantellations), B8 uniform polytopes (runcinations), B8 uniform polytopes (sterications), and have one section per polytope, each of which could have tables and larger images, BUT it only reduces the number of articles, but a huge cost of making it slower to download articles AND loading images that won't even be looked at.

On the issue of notability per article, that's why I went down to polyhedra for consideration. Like the 75 uniform compounds, from ONE paper, with no other references and individual articles for all. Like Compound_of_twelve_pentagrammic_crossed_antiprisms_with_rotational_freedom. That's a nice descriptive article title, but is it notable? Most are tiny stub articles. A few have interesting information that relates them to others, and some have coordinates.

I suppose one measure for notability is cross-referencability. If an article is only linked to the source list (like most or all of the uniform compounds), then its not defendable. BUT then we have shared properties between the compounds and stars, and they ARE cross referenced, and its annoying to cross reference from one huge table to another huge table, and just see tiny images in each. An

Similarly for the Johnson solids, 92 polyhedra, again, all compiled from a single paper, and all have individual articles. Perhaps 20% of them might be cross-linked, and the other 80% are only referenced from the original list. But some articles have unique information (like coordinates) that can't be put into a simple table, so that might be "appended" to sections after a summary table, with an anchor link in the table. BUT if this approach is done, if the "nonnotable 80%" are deleted, some one in the future is going to get the great idea to expand them all back out as articles, or one favorite that looks pretty, so how is this process managed?

On uniform polytopes, if the Johnson truncation prefixed names are not notable like, Bipentellated 8-simplex, we could use Coxeter's truncation notation t1,6 8-simplex, or Conway's ambo notation 1,6-ambo 8-simplex. At least the number notations make it clear they are apart of a numeric sequence. Whatever the naming convention, they all map back to ringed Coxeter diagrams which are graphical in nature and can't easily be made as names. Tom Ruen (talk) 20:57, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I've completed a first pass merge, moving polytope article contents into shared groupings under a single operator. I converted 5D-8D into shared articles, so birectified X, trirectified X, etc, are given as sequential sections of rectified X. This makes the number of articles much smaller, and puts less demand on exact names for all the permutations generated by Johnson's prefixes. I've retained the single-operator articles like pentellated 8-simplex, but it could be renamed as "t0,5 8-simplex" if Coxeter's truncation notation is more acceptable. I give a graphical summary on each article with the Coxeter diagram so that's the fundamental identification, so readers who know about uniform polytopes have an immediate visual symbolic identication of each. The list of potential articles are given temporarily at User:Tomruen/testxx. Tom Ruen (talk) 21:35, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

While I'm still not fully convinced of the noteworthiness of all of these polytopes, I think this is a good solution for the moment. I am not currently planning to object to any of these articles (or any of the potential articles given in your list). Ozob (talk) 01:36, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Can you help the newcomers with some easy tasks?

Hello,

I am working with the Account Creation Improvement Project (my latest report is here). Now I need your help to find some easy things for newcomers to do.

To guide the new users into working on the articles, we have created a step-by-step process that starts right after the new user has provided a username and a password. Here is the first step. If you click on "mathematics", for instance, you go to a page where you are asked to state your skills. And based on your choice there, you go to a page that combines these two choices. Here is what it looks like if you choose copyediting.

Right now, that list of articles that needs copyediting in the field of mathematics, has been created manually by a rather small set of users. That is not a scalable solution. Especially considering that these articles could very well be edited by the time we have created all the lists.

That's why my question to you in WikiProject mathematics is if you could create four templates for each of the four skillsets: Copyediting, Research & Writing, Fact checking, and Organizing - and keep them updated? We could then transclude those templates in the account creation process.

This is probably one of the most efficient things you can do in this project. Yes, really! There are roughly 5-7000 new users - each day. Around 30% of them start to edit. So if only a sixth of them sees the mathematics templates, that's around 250 potential new editors in your field - each day. Possibly more. And they want and need something easy to do. Some of them will continue to edit if they think that the tasks are fun and they are welcomed into the project.

So, what do you say about those templates?

I will gladly answer any questions you may have about this question or the project. Best wishes//Hannibal (talk) 16:42, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I became an editor because there was a specific article that I wanted to improve, to wit Ordinal number. I think having someone thrust an agenda upon me when I had just registered would have caused me to quit immediately. I hope that is not what you are doing. JRSpriggs (talk) 17:41, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. No, we are not forcing anyone to do anything. These are only suggested ways forward. We know that many who come to Wikipedia feel that they don't have anything to contribute, that it's almost finished. This is a strategy to get them to notice that there are plenty of work left. And industrious and knowledgeable new users will probably just skip these suggestions and go wherever they feel. We cannot think of them only, though :-) Best wishes//Hannibal (talk) 18:11, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity might be of some use. This lists the articles which have recently had a tag added to them. --Salix (talk): 07:56, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Mathematics/Lists certainly has raw material. A certain scepticism is in order about "easy tasks", where graduate knowledge is a prerequisite. But can we show willing, by moving from those lists some way towards the requested templates? It will probably not be harmful. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:57, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah, that was a good source, Charles Matthews. I'll take a longer look at it.//Hannibal (talk) 11:21, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach: the AfD

AfD for Elementary_Calculus:_An_Infinitesimal_Approach. Please comment here.--Kmhkmh (talk) 21:15, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't need to be here

Yet another tiresome AfD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_Calculus:_An_Infinitesimal_Approach Tkuvho (talk) 00:55, 22 May 2011 (UTC) Tagging of articles? Tkhuvho has been writing a paper today on Gromov's famous book, and it's already being slapped with cn and unreferenced tags, by what looks to be the same group of editors. If there is a problem with Tkuvho's contributions (and I don't believe there is), then it should be discussed here, rather than by such edits, which I hope don't start to constitute harassment.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:41, 23 May 2011 (UTC) The article was tagged (not by me) as unref'd, because... it had no refs. What exactly is the problem that you see with that? OTOH, the problem I see with your edits is a false claim of witch hunting William M. Connolley (talk) 20:49, 23 May 2011 (UTC) Given your conflicts, you are imprudently escalating things by tagging his article on its day of creation. Look at my articles if you want to tag something! ;)  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:00, 23 May 2011 (UTC) I don't accept that. As I said, I didn't add the unref'd tag, and given that the article was indeed unref'd when it was added, you shouldn't be complaining about it. As for complaining when uncited statements get cn tags: that doesn't seem reasonable either. The problem was the article itself. If T wants to work on an article in his own userspace, then he can. Once he has added it to mainspace, it can be and should be commented on William M. Connolley (talk) 21:09, 23 May 2011 (UTC) Listen, you have been in a conflict, and now you are appearing at Tkuvho's articles, not to drop off another pint of the milk of human kindness. Give it a rest for a while, please.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:16, 23 May 2011 (UTC) I don't see anything here that can't be resolved on the talk page of the relevant article (although the tone there is less civil than it could be). How many more of "Tkuvho's articles" (cf WP:OWN) related articles have been tagged? Jowa fan (talk) 01:37, 24 May 2011 (UTC) ETA: since the section heading above has changed since I commented, I wish to make it clear that Tkuvho has not actually claimed ownership of any articles. Jowa fan (talk) 04:08, 24 May 2011 (UTC) Let's avoid a tempest in a kettle. I don't mind other editors' interest in page I work on obviously. They are not my WP:OWN. What I find disappointing is when editors ignore the explanations I provide on talk, for instance at ghosts of departed quantities and standard part function. Tkuvho (talk) 03:47, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikilink for term "boundary" in article Klein bottle?

Klein bottle says:

Whereas a Möbius strip is a surface with boundary, a Klein bottle has no boundary.

(For comparison, a sphere is an orientable surface with no boundary.)

I'd like to Wikilink "boundary", but I'm not sure what article we want.

The obvious choice seems to be Boundary (topology), but I'm not sure. (Also see the disamb page Boundary.)

Does anybody know for certain on this?

-- 186.221.141.36 (talk) 21:58, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

You were right to be unsure. The correct link is Topological_manifold#Manifolds_with_boundary. I've added that to the article. Ozob (talk) 22:10, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

(ec) The most appropriate link seems to be manifold with boundary, which is a section link. However please do not pipe that link to the single word boundary; that violates the principle of least surprise. Instead, you should either reword the sentence to include the phrase manifold with boundary, or create a redirect (if it isn't there) from surface with boundary, or (third, or maybe fourth or fifth, choice), pipe it to an entire phrase, so no one will expect the target to be an article. An example of the last possibility would be

Whereas a Möbius strip is a surface with boundary, a Klein bottle has no boundary.

HTH --Trovatore (talk) 22:14, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Please don't link the whole clause!

Whereas a Möbius strip is a surface with boundary, a Klein bottle has no boundary.

would be more appropriate.

CRGreathouse (t | c) 21:21, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Better than the pipe is to make the redirect point to the right place, which is what I did. Well, at least it's arguably the right place. Redirects in general are better than pipes. But if you must pipe, at least pipe something that the reader will not expect to be a standalone article, per WP:EGG. --Trovatore (talk) 23:24, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Scratchiness on this page

Could we go back to assuming good faith, and all that stuff? This project is not alone in facing notability issues that are on the margin, and other contentious matters that can generate lengthy debate. But there is a fairly good consensus about what we should be doing, in general. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:32, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes. Paul August ☎ 20:03, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

New page on Canadian mathematician

Help at Larry Guth would be appreciated. Tkuvho (talk) 04:17, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

RfC for Combination

This RfC discussion could use a another viewpoint or two. At issue is the use of notation such as $52^{\underline {5}}.$--RDBury (talk) 19:00, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Relisted AfD: Relation reduction

The AfD discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Relation reduction as been relisted to get more participation.--RDBury (talk) 02:30, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Cyclic permutations: need to consolidate multiple articles?

There is currently what looks to me like a mess of duplicated content between the five pages cycle (mathematics), cyclic permutation, cycle notation, transposition (mathematics) and cycles and fixed points. I'm not sure where to begin dealing with this, but I think it could use some attention. Suggestions welcome. Jowa fan (talk) 08:47, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

The first two seem to be a merge. I'd leave the others for the moment. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:49, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Tangent vector question

The page Tangent vector currently is a disambiguation page with two entries; both of these entries discuss tangent vectors but neither one is an article about tangent vectors as such. It is not clear to me whether tangent vector really has two distinct meanings, or whether it is a single concept with one meaning but with applications in multiple areas of mathematics. If the latter is true, then this should be an article, possibly listing the relevant fields in which tangent vectors are used, rather than being tagged as a disambiguation page. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 12:06, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

It's a single concept. A tangent vector is simply an element of a tangent space. (But to confuse things a little, there are at least three different but equivalent ways of defining "tangent space".) The discussion at differential_geometry_of_curves#Tangent_vector is a special case of the definition given at tangent_space#Definition_as_directions_of_curves. My feeling is that "tangent vector" should just be a redirect to "tangent space". Disambiguation sends the wrong message: there is actually no ambiguity here. Jowa fan (talk) 13:11, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

But saying a vector is an element of a vector space is probably unhelpful, pedagogically speaking. On the other hand, isn't a tangent vector essentially the same as derivative at a point? -- Taku (talk) 14:27, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, there are arguably two notions, one extrinsic and one intrinsic. When a manifold is embedded, there is a mapping from intrinsic tangent vectors (in the tangent bundle) to extrinsic ones. This isn't really an excuse for that disambiguation, but a way of explaining how to speak about the geometry. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:50, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

There is a certain amount of trade off between having the most general definition possible and having articles that are understandable to their intended audience. There is a definition of tangent vector that's taught in undergraduate calculus and a definition that taught in a course in smooth manifolds, and one could argue that one is a special case of the other. But if an undergraduate calculus student is looking up the term I would hope they could find some help without having to know what a second countable Hausdorff space is.--RDBury (talk) 16:50, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

It feels to me like tangent vector should be a real article, but tangent space already covers most of what would go in that article. Maybe it would be better if tangent space were moved to tangent vector and made more elementary? Ozob (talk) 20:09, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

"elementary calculus"

Currently Elementary Calculus (with a capital "C") and elementary calculus (with a lower-case "c") both redirect to Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach, the article about Jerome Keisler's book. Lots of pages link to the lower-case version. I think possibly the lower-case version should become a disambiguation page, with the capital version redirecting to it, and then the ones that should link to the book's title should link there directly. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:28, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea to me. I don't think that sending people who are looking for a general article on elementary calculus to the article on a specific and controversial text is consistent with the principle of least surprise. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:50, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

A dab page is a bit excessive for two items: on the same principal it might be better to send the redirects to Calculus then add a hat note to that page, e.g.

"Elementary Calculus" redirects here. For the book, see Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach.

--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:04, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I like JohnBlackburne's idea, but I am fine with a disambig as well. Thenub314 (talk) 18:57, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I prefer the disambiguation page, as I don't much like this particular hatnote (almost as bad as the one at Axiom of choice). But I'm fine with either version. CRGreathouse (t | c) 01:44, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, I've

• created the elementary calculus disambiguation page;
• redirected Elementary Calculus (with a capital "C") to it;
• directed the one link to Elementary Calculus (with a capital "C") to Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach, the article about Keisler's book.

Still to be done:

• Go through the list of (currently 9) articles that link to elementary calculus. Figure out which ones should link to Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach and link them directly to that article. Figure out which ones should link elsewhere, or nowhere, and edit accordingly. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:36, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

....and now I've edited the one at logarithm so that instead of

[[elementary calculus]]

it says

elementary [[calculus]].

Maybe the others should link to the book........ Michael Hardy (talk) 02:39, 28 May 2011 (UTC) ...and remember: book titles are italicized. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:42, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Done. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:50, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Ghosts of departed quantities

At ghosts of departed quantities, a few editors are attempting a whiggish rewriting of the history of the calculus. George Berkeley criticized both the infinitesimal and fluxional procedures of the calculus, which he claimed amounted to the same thing. Weierstrass and his followers in the 1870s did 3 things: (1) they largely accepted Berkeley's critique of infinitesimal procedures; (2) they sought to eliminate infinitesimals; and (3) they developed infinitesimal-free foundations for analysis, namely foundations based on the real numbers and epsilontics. Then in the 1960s, Robinson came along and restored infinitesimals to respectability, in particular removing whatever logical inconsistencies were present in dy/dx style definition of derivative. He was thus the first one to resolve the paradox of the infinitesimal procedures criticized by Berkeley.

The paragraph above is agreed to by all the historians I have read. Now a few editors have come along and rewritten history. The page ghosts of departed quantities no longer mentions Robinson. Instead, it claims that Weierstrass resolved Berkeley's paradoxes. This does not compare favorably with Jagged's efforts, to the extent that Jagged at least left the old material in while adding his new material. Some input would be appreciated. Tkuvho (talk) 13:39, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

This is nothing to do with Jagged85, thank goodness William M. Connolley (talk) 14:01, 25 May 2011 (UTC) [Wondering why I said that, when no-one is mentioning it? Because the section got re-titled [81] William M. Connolley (talk) 22:39, 25 May 2011 (UTC)]

This seems to be a disagreement over language/semantics - did Weierstrass "resolve" the problem highlighted by Berkeley, or did he "avoid/sidetstep/bypass" it. We all know what Weierstrass did - the issue is over how to describe it. Tkuvho - can't you work with the other editors to find a compromise form of words that you are all happy with ? Gandalf61 (talk) 15:27, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree it primarily seems to be an argument over the "best" wording, rather than a "real" factual or mathematical dispute. However apparently it has escalated into a personal conflict between the involved authors, that seems to impair a rational discussion or an agreement. Maybe all involved should take a step and rethink what they are doing or simply leave it to a 3rd party to come up with an appropriate formulation.--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:03, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

It is a "real" factual disagreement about history. User Thenub claimed in a recent edit that the phrase "ghosts of departed quantities" was not meant to refer to infinitesimals. Tkuvho (talk) 16:42, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Facts in the matter is that Bishop George Berkeley's criticism was 100% correct. This was an embarrassment for mathematics for a long time. Weierstrass removed the embarrassment. What Robinson did was to somewhat restore the honor of the mathematicians that had thought in terms of infinitesimals by showing that it is possible, after all, to make a consistent logical model including infinitesimals. This undoubtedly casts new light on the history but it doesn't make the old calculations involving infinitesimals more correct. They are still 100% wrong. So in my opinion Weierstrass was the first one to solve the problem by simply removing the troublemakers. Robinson solved the problem in another way by reshaping the troublemakers and make them respectable. So they both solved the problem posed by Berkley but in different ways. Weierstrass solved it first. iNic (talk) 17:03, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

The prize-winning popular book The Mathematical Experience has a chapter on the history and math of infinitesimals vs. epsilon-delta. Weierstrass "resolves the paradox" by sidestepping it entirely; Robinson "resolves the paradox" without sidestepping it. You might take a look, to see how good writers handle the topic for a general audience. Mgnbar (talk) 17:06, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Exactly right. The Mathematical Experience is a remarkable book. Weierstrass solved the problem of providing rigorous foundations acceptable to the mathematicians of his time. Meanwhile, Robinson solved the paradox of the infinitesimal procedures of the calculus. This is roughly what the page used to say, namely both Robinson's solution of the paradox, and the traditional solution of rigorous foundations. This is not at all what the page says now. Tkuvho (talk) 17:58, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

(outdent) (@Tkuvho: Oy! Why is this linked to from every place except the talk page of the article, and if I am the one who made the controversial edits, why hasn't this tread been pointed out to me. Also I have no idea what Jaggedalia is supposed to mean, could you explain?) Anyways, it was I who removed Robinson from the article on Ghosts of departed quantities. I should explain, I noticed there was alot of activity at this page on my watchlist, so I went by to read what was going on. I decided to try to help, so I got out Boyer to refersh my memory. According to him the phrase was not about infinitesimal quantities, but rather Newton's ultimate ratios (aka limits of the form 0/0). Since the page was about this specific phrase, and the reference said it was not infinitesimals, and no other references were given to support statements. I tried to rewrite the article in as verifiable form as I could. The was no attempt to re-write history and I resent the accusation. I specifically supplied a reference to a math history textbook. How exactly is that writting history? Thenub314 (talk) 18:22, 25 May 2011 (UTC) (PS: I also don't know what whiggish means, but I will leave that one alone. My blood pressure probably couldn't handle it.) PPS: Also I did explain this on the talk page immediately after making my edits.

I have renamed this section, as the old title was nondescript. I would like this discussion to be calm and peaceful, so please, everyone, take a deep breath before posting. Ozob (talk) 21:03, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

For Jagged 85 see Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Jagged 85 if you can bear it. But you don't need to bother, as it is completely irrelevant William M. Connolley (talk) 22:37, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

One thing to keep in mind is that infinitesimals were still in common use as late as the 1890's, see e.g. [82]. So, as with many paradigm shifts, it took a generation or so for it to become universally accepted. I also would not say calculations were "100% wrong"; the real paradox is that the method of infinitesimals gave correct answers even though there wasn't a firm logical basis for it. People would not have kept using it if it wasn't useful.--RDBury (talk) 01:31, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Of course the methods were 100% wrong. This fact is very central here and the key to be able to understand this old debate at all: A method can be wrong and yet yield the correct results. This was what Berkley's critique was all about. He never for a second doubted that the results the method produced was correct. But the method in itself was contradictory and thus unacceptable at a philosophical/rigorous mathematical level. And of course everyone involved at the time knew that this was the case. The only difference between Berkley and the mathematicians in this respect was that the mathematicians kept silent about it because it was embarrassing to them. They, Newton for example, tried eagerly to solve it instead. Berkeley, on the other hand, used this predicament for the mathematicians in order to attack mathematicians in general, and Edmund Halley in particular. (Berkeley's religious beliefs had previously been hurt by some comments by Halley, why his book The Analyst was dedicated to him, an "infidel mathematician.") iNic (talk) 21:14, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree. An editor above suggested following the presentation in The Mathematical Experience, and I think that's a good idea. Part of the problem is that some of the editors at ghosts of departed quantities are relying on hopelessly outdated history books such as Carl Boyer's. Boyer wrote his book half a century ago! The recent re-printing seems to be a commercial venture trying to cash in on name recognition of Boyer, but that hasn't improved his history. Relying on Boyer amounts to re-inforcing silly cliches that have been thoroughly discredited both by mathematical developments and recent historical studies, such as Jesseph's that has long been cited at the page. I would like to ask the participants here to express themselves as to the apprpopriateness of basing the presentation at ghosts of departed quantities on The Mathematical Experience, so as to resolve this unnecessary and uninformed conflict. Tkuvho (talk) 03:52, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that Boyer's book is not very good, but not simply because it's old. There are newly written books that are not good either. iNic (talk) 21:17, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Good, we agree then. It would be helpful to try to agree upon a text to base the page on. Can we go with The Mathematical Experience? An editor at ghosts of departed quantities is still pursuing what seems to be his novel way of interpreting the expression as not referring to infinitesimals, and unless we can base the page on a specific published source, it will be difficult to come to an agreement. Tkuvho (talk) 03:45, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but you shouldn't cherry-pick one source as the sole basis for an article - that would breach WP:NPOV. If Boyer is discredited then there ought to be reliable sources that say so, and the correct approach is to present both Boyer's position and the opposing arguments, with sources. Gandalf61 (talk) 08:39, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

That's fine in theory, but currently the page is based on Boyer's viewpoint almost exclusively, with the currently active editor asking incredulously if I really think Boyer is unreliable. Boyer's book was written well before the hyperreals were developed, at a time when "historians believed uniformly that infinitesimals have been proven to be inconsistent". We needn't use The Mathematical Experience exclusively, but it would be helpful if we could agree on a primary reference, as a way of moving forward. Tkuvho (talk) 09:11, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I have to say that I have a problem with the post facto style of argument here. I don't much like the advocacy. If there are different historical accounts, then I don't think it is ultimately helpful to have anachronisms of any sort. If you are talking about people who were neither doing Weierstrassian analysis nor model theory, then it is bad history to read either of those things into the mathematics they wrote. One way to deal with "historians believed uniformly that infinitesimals have been proven to be inconsistent" is to name names, reference facts, and state clearly what historians' accounts consisted of. The "uniformly" there should be setting off all sorts of alarm bells. In any case we have a perfectly good set of protocols for dealing with different accounts of the same history, under NPOV. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:59, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Exactly right. Right now we have an old page that has been essentially deleted, and a new pages replacing it that's based on an erroneous notion that the phrase "ghosts of departed quantities" refers to derivatives. I have cited a number of authors rejecting this at the talkpage of the article. Now that Thenub has cited the relevant passage from The Mathematical Experience at the talkpage, perhaps we can again discuss the possibility of starting from there, without of course limiting the sources to that particular book. Tkuvho (talk) 20:24, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the best way to move forward is to simply merge the ghosts of departed quantities page into the page about The Analyst. The expression "ghosts of departed quantities" might deserve a section of its own at that page, but that's all. I don't think that this expression is of such importance, neither historical or otherwise, that it deserves a wikipedia page of its own. If you disagree please speak out now. In addition, to explain what the expression is all about from scratch, which is what we need to do if the expression has a page of its own, becomes a huge task. But placed in the correct context the expression is a very simple thing to explain. iNic (talk) 17:01, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree fully and had mentioned so at the talk page a day or so ago. Thenub314 (talk) 18:50, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

In reference to comment "Boyer's book was written well before [..] inconsistent". I fail to see how putting infinitesimals on solid grounds has any impact on a historian writing that the passage was about limits. Also Edwards and the other references used cited were written after the Robinson's work, and Edwards discusses Robinson's work in the context of its impact on the way we view history. On another note, for anyone following along, I got a hold of The mathematical experience mentioned here. It didn't seem to say anything different from the other references about this particular phrase. I have typed up the passage from it at Talk:Ghosts of departed quantities for anyone interested. Thenub314 (talk) 19:55, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Category:Mathematics articles with no comments

The category Category:Mathematics articles with no comments was recently deleted; see the discussion here. Unfortunately this has left a lot of article talk pages with red links in the category: 8,587 precisely. The category Category:Mathematics articles with comments still exists, though with only 544 members.

So, is the comment mechanism actually deprecated? I've not come across any discussion on it though I've never seen the pages used or referred to. The only time I've had to look at them is to fix a talk page TOC problem caused by headers in a comments subpage. If it's deprecated both categories should be removed from Template:Maths rating which is inserting them, and Category:Mathematics articles with comments should probably also be deleted. Otherwise the deleted category should be reinstated, perhaps via deletion review.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:22, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

As I recall there was a lot of fuss about this last year, the archives are here. Many articles had a comment page that consisted only of a sig and many editors (including myself) did not know what would go on a comment page that would not just well be put in the talk page. On the other hand there was already a number of pages with comments and people objected to that information being lost to posterity. I think the compromise was that for pages with existing comments they would still be visible, but the red link would not be shown for pages that don't have comments. I'd say leave the category since the comment pages themselves will probably not be going away (soon, at least).--RDBury (talk) 20:28, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

There is a page, Wikipedia:Discontinuation of comments subpages, which outlines the process that was supposed to be followed, which, as it appears, was not followed in this particular CfD (since the deletion should have been preceded by a discussion at the talk page of the affected wikiproject). I am not sure what is the best thing to do now, but something needs to be done to remove the redlinks to a nonexistent category - or else the category needs to be re-created for the time being. Nsk92 (talk) 20:35, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

We probably just need to adjust the maths rating template. Someone with some template editing skills could probably do it in a few minutes.--RDBury (talk) 20:59, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

I have removed the category from {{maths rating}}. The category is now empty. Algebraist 21:23, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

A novel interpretation of Berkeley's criticisms

According to this edit, Berkeley wasn't criticizing discarded error terms in his famous criticism of the calculus. A quick check at the French and other wikis reveals that they have not yet caught up with this novel insight. Seriously, we are going to be the laughingstock of the whole of internet if we let him get away with this. Tkuvho (talk) 14:08, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

I thought Bishop Berkeley was criticizing the use of infinitesimals and in particular dividing one infinitesimal by another where one got a definite result rather than an undefined one. I didn't think he was talking about error terms. And I wouldn't worry about being the laughing stock of the internet and wouldn't care either. Dmcq (talk) 20:19, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

The editor removed and unsourced statement which is perfectly acceptable. If the statement can be verified then find a reference and add it back in. As for being a laughingstock, try watching Stephen Colbert sometime, he regularly pokes fun at WP and the Elephant article was protected after he got viewers to put bogus information in it. What can be done to counter this is to maintain standards of verifiability by, for example, removing unsourced statements.--RDBury (talk) 20:50, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Our custom is to label statements as unsourced before deleting them. Tkuvho (talk) 14:18, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Buddhabrot at PotY

One of the finalist images at the current Picture of the Year contest is one of the Buddhabrot: File:Buddhabrot-W1000000-B100000-L20000-2000.jpg. A similar image File:Buddhabrot-deep.jpg was formerly a featured picture but was delisted due to low resolution. The English WP is not currently using the current candidate; the article already has a number of of good images. One concern I have with images such as these is that while they make pretty pictures, they may be of questionable mathematical significance and it is difficult to verify correctness. Also, it may be worthwhile to take a critical look at the article itself since it may be getting more attention in the immediate future.--RDBury (talk) 14:23, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Jun 2011

Straw poll, ending June 2

In case you missed the link in the section above, there is a straw poll at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles which is scheduled to end during June 2. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:35, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

• This straw poll is set to end in about two hours - anyone else wishing to opine, speak now or forever hold your peace! bd2412 T 04:17, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Straw poll closed with a consensus to move the lists of mathematics articles to project space.

The straw poll at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles has closed with a consensus to move the lists of mathematics articles to project space. I have implemented this consensus, and I have temporarily retargeted all redirects from mainspace to the new page locations in project space; these cross-namespace redirects will eventually be deleted, unless the project opts to set up some non-maintenance lists at the original article titles. In retrospect, although this idea was not raised before, I don't think anyone would object to these being in Portal space either, which might be the most natural fit if you want people to be browsing them. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:01, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I was proposed three or four years ago to move it to the portal space. Everyone opposed it except the person who proposed it, and he went ahead and moved it anyway. I moved it back, after pointing out that the consensus was for not moving it. But not before Oleg Alexandrov told me the consensus was for moving it. Oleg is too credulous sometimes. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:50, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Is the move to project space the reason why Jitse's bot has not done the most recent update of the list of new articles at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Current_activity? "bd2412", have you communicated with Jitse Niesen about this? If not, then do so. Fast. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:54, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Have you looked at Jitse's page to see whether I communicated with him about this? bd2412 T 03:01, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I apologize for the snarkiness of that response. Yes, I have communicated the situation to both Oleg and Jitse. If it takes a day or two for bot maintenance to get back up to speed, no irreversible harm will come of it. If there is anything I can do to assist in the interim, please let me know, as I will be around. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:06, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Arithmetic surface

Arithmetic surface is a new article that could use some work. I've put a "no intro" tag on it. The only category it's in is Category:Arithmetic; probably at least one other should be there. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:00, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

This is a reasonable test case for the idea that we should make at least the lead section accessible to non-experts. If what I have added falls between two stools (the usual hazard), could we at least discuss it at Talk:Arithmetic surface? Such remarks have in the past been cut out of leads, in my experience, but the onus really should be on those doing that to do better. I don't really want to hear that basic heuristics are OR. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:15, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Stochastikon articles

Editor Stochastikon-bernoulli (talk · contribs) has recently created the following series of new articles:

• Bernoulli space
• Bernoulli stochastics
• Causal thinking
• Ignorance space
• Quantification of randomness
• Random structure function
• Reliability level
• Stochastic measurement procedure
• Stochastic prediction procedure
• Stochastic thinking
• Variability function

(there may be more), all of which have few or no sources outside of the works of one Prof. Elart von Collani, and all of which contain links to the web site of Prof. Collani's company Stochastikon. The coincidence of user name and company name suggests at least a conflict of interest; there may be concerns about the notability of some of these topics or the narrowness of the sources; and this may be an attempt to promote Prof. Collani, his books and his company via Wikipedia articles. I have placed a note about these concerns on the editor's talk page. Any thoughts ? Gandalf61 (talk) 08:26, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

There are 11 articles listed as created by the editor, so your list seems to be complete. Bernoulli stochastics especially sticks out because it's basically the name of the editor switched around and it seems to be an OR invention/concept the editor is trying to push. The other articles I looked at seemed rather essay-like though statistics is not my area of expertise. I'd say COI is a reasonable conclusion.--RDBury (talk) 10:25, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Recognized content

The Logarithm article was recently promoted to Featured Article so congratulations to the folks that made that happen. It is our first FA in two years, a long time considering we once averaged an FA every 2 months.--RDBury (talk) 10:02, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

True. As the nominator I now also know better why there are few FA's: pushing an article to FA level is usually fun, pushing it through the FA process is quite time-consuming and requires a fair amount of patience to satisfy those reviewers who like to nitpick about MOS aspects and the like.

Please note that the article will be on the main page on Sunday (June 5th). A few math guys watchlisting this would be good, I think. (I will be unavailable during most of the day.) Jakob.scholbach (talk) 16:42, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, FA seems to be about meeting meaningless requirements rather than improving articles. MY experience with Wikipedia:Requests for feedback has been much better.

It's good that you were able to make it through the process, but I doubt I would have the patience.

CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:46, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Don't be polemic. If you disregard the MOS folks I think you can get some very good feedback. Personally, if an article is aiming to be among the best I rather invest the time needed for a serious review at FAC than at intermediate levels like GA, Peer review, or RfF. But I agree the process is a pain, wouldn't go through it either. Nageh (talk) 20:23, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I'll change my views as soon as I see a FAR on a math article where at least a quarter of the suggestions are content-related. Until then... CRGreathouse (t | c) 20:44, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

CRG is right: very few reviewers are able to judge whether a math article is comprehensive and factually correct. I don't consider the review process as meaningless, though. My experiences are this: the quasi-totality of reviewers has the best intentions. Most of them are lay people (much the same way I'm a layman in almost everything). Interested, positively tuned lay reviewers do help the articles become more easily understandable; a few, on the other hand, have unrealistic or unactionable expectations as far as the accessibility of "technical" articles is concerned. Another kind of review that I often find problematic is people just reviewing the lead section of an article.

Instead of whining more :) I'd like to urge people around to participate in FA reviews. The FA review process seems to be run by a rather small group of regular reviewers. Having reviewers well-accustomed to the FA criteria is not bad, but WP will also benefit from a broader input for FA's, especially when it comes to scientific topics most people are scared of. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 21:31, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I did not mean to imply bad faith on the part of the reviewers. CRGreathouse (t | c) 01:13, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

FAC is not really the venue for comments on content. That is typically what peer review/projects are for. The difference between a good article and a featured article is not in the content, but in the presentation of that content. When articles reach FAC they are usually pretty OK contents wise. A lot of the reviews focus on presentation, which for technical articles means a lot of talk about accessibility, etc.

In my experience with FACs both for this project and for physics is that articles come out of the process a lot more polished.

As to the latest abomination that was called the logarithm FAC. That seemed to be mostly a problem of a lot of run by reviewer that did not follow up on responses to their comments.TR 07:50, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Integral of the secant function

I've created a new article titled Integral of the secant function, mentioning that

• It was first calculated numerically in the 1500s for the purposes of cartography;
• Its closed form was a well-known conjecture from the 1640s until the 1660s;
• The conjecture was proved by Isaac Barrow;
• The proof was the first use of partial fractions in integration.

As usual, further work should include at least these two things:

• More work within the article;
• More links to the article if appropriate. (Currently eight other articles link to it.)

Michael Hardy (talk) 02:11, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be better to create a secant article, with this as part of it?TR 05:48, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what else one would say about the secant function. If the content were to be moved, I think it would make more sense to put it under partial fractions in integration. But I don't see a problem with it existing as an independent topic, it looks notable enough. Jowa fan (talk) 06:51, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Khan Academy links

I'd like to get a second or third opinion on whether it would be worthwhile to add links to Khan Academy to relevant articles. It's a non-profit which produces short educational videos delivered through YouTube. Many of them are math related, usually high school or middle school levels. I think Introduction to Functions makes a good example. The style is informal, some might say extemporaneous, but they might provide an answer for those who complain that you can't actually learn a subject from a WP article. I checked WP:ELNO and I think it meets the criteria, but some confirmation would be nice. A couple of articles (e.g. Integral) have already been done. If it's is deemed worthy then the next step would be to create a template for the site.--RDBury (talk) 09:42, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Well they are definitely suitable for external links and if many authors start using a template might be useful (though imho not necessary). The only thing I might be a bit wary about is a mass adding of it and replacing other suitable links by it. Khanacademy has the advantage of being relatively well known by now, but principally I'd treat it as any other good learning site or private math site (the huge of number of them out there).--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:07, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

The videos seem to provide a good complement to what Wikipedia does so they're fine by me. Most of the maths sites I've seen are just rubbish doing practice in addition with a pile of ads so I'm very glad to see this one giving a good service. Dmcq (talk) 15:47, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

G space

Could someone perhaps have a look at this article? It looks fine, just that it cites a huge amount of publications from what seems to be the article creator. Perhaps justified, perhaps a bit of self-promotion, I don't know enough about this to judge. --Crusio (talk) 14:34, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

It looks a little odd to me, but I can't tell whether that's because the author is not a fully fluent English speaker or because he's engaging in self-promotion. I suspect the latter, but I don't know any numerical analysis so I'm not a good judge. Can someone familiar with numerical PDEs help? Ozob (talk) 23:34, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

It looks like all the references are to primary sources except for one textbook by the same author. The cite doesn't give a page number and it seems like it's only given as general reference on FEM's, not the subject of the article. So imo it fails to meet notability guidelines, even if you ignore conflict of interest issues.--RDBury (talk) 00:44, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

The user is responsible for a number of new pages:

1. G space
2. Weakened weak form
3. Smoothed finite element method

He's also made contributions to meshfree methods, functionally graded material, and finite element method, but those articles existed before him and they cite secondary sources. None of the ones he's created do (except for his own textbook). I think they should be prodded for lack of notability. Any objections? Ozob (talk) 10:58, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Circumference of an ellipse

In Ellipse#Circumference, an anon has changed the formula for the circumference of an ellipse from $C=4aE(e)$ to $C=4aE(e^{2})\,\!$. Since there is no edit summary and since the old formula has been there for at least two years, I reverted the change. Can someone who knows make sure this is right? Thanks. Duoduoduo (talk) 14:26, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

You were right to revert. I think I've come across this before, perhaps there is some book or site with it wrong somewhere Dmcq (talk) 14:56, 9 June 2011 (UTC)reversion was right

Diagrams in Kernel (category theory) confuse me

It seems to me that these cannot pertain to an equalizer. Is it just me? — Kallikanzarid^talk 19:54, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

They look correct to me. However, they are not diagrams of equalizers. Ozob (talk) 20:04, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I got it now, it's just that zero morphisms absorb other morphisms. This should be mentioned in the article, IMO. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kallikanzarid (talk • contribs) 00:00, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Packing articles

Four new articles, Circle packing in an isosceles right triangle, Circle packing in an equilateral triangle, Square packing in a square, Circle packing in a circle, basically lists of optimal packings of geometrical shapes, were recently created. My feeling is that these lists were borderline WP:IINFO when they were in Packing problem, the article from which they were taken. So creating separate articles for them raises notability issues as well as opening the door for articles on similar dubious subjects. Any thoughts? (I'm adding Notability tags for now.)--RDBury (talk) 10:16, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

What kind of literature is there to back up such articles? If such problems are rarely treated separately from more general packing problems, there is little reason for separate pages. Tkuvho (talk) 11:46, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I think this information is good to have in Wikipedia and not indiscriminate information. But there's no need to break them out into individual articles as far as I can tell. CRGreathouse (t | c) 14:46, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I expanded the circle packing in an equilateral triangle article based on five different published journal papers about that specific problem (two of which concern an Erdős conjecture about it). I think that's enough to justify its separate existence, at least. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:21, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:00, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Notability of Boubaker polynomials?

There is a new discussion about notability of Boubaker polynomials, the article were deleted here and at many other projects due to lack of notability. I hope someone could help me about this. I'm not sure how should I evaluate the notability of this article and what notability criteria should be used for such articles. the page currently exist at Turkish, Chinese and Arabic Wikipedia and some users trying to create/restore it on other projects too. please take a look at sources at Wikiversity and Turkish Wikipedia, apparently there are more pages on the web referring to "Boubaker polynomials" than back in 2009. in short, I want to know does Boubaker polynomials meets English Wikipedia policy or not?   ■ MMXX  ^talk  18:18, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

They're not considered notable by the standards of the English Wikipedia; other projects can do as they wish. The polynomials are a simple re-invention of a special case of Chebyshev polynomials; their "interesting properties" are essentially just those inherited from the Chebyshev polynomials. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:13, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

The user is trying to restore the deleted article at Farsi Wikipedia and their policy is almost same to English Wikipedia, I just find this discussion too.   ■ MMXX  ^talk  19:35, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mmbmmmbm/Archive some of the accounts behind the repeated attempts to include this material have been globally blocked from all wikimedia projects for cross-project sockpuppetry. I don't know the procedure for requesting new attention on the case but perhaps whoever is behind the wikiversity and Turkish and Farsi cases should be brought to the attention of the people who do global blocks. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:08, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

At this point, even if it were considered notable, the further generalization from one of the sources would be even better. And they're not called "Boubaker polynomials". A section of Chebyshev polynomials would be all that would be appropriate, even for that concept. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:52, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

From this [83]and this[84] It is clear that the problem began between a FR:WP administrator and an obstinated user. The FR:WP administrator who initiated the earliest AFD in fr:WP and EN:WP... (who is now banned for abuse and racial issues) was,as he declares frankly and proudly :Motivated by Hatered, Racim an Vengence!!:(according to his own speach on his own page: )

The FR:WP administrator :

• Initiated AFD on several WP claiming NOT-NOTABILITY (cross-wiki).
• Vandalised the page by erasing sources,and was each time inserting nonsense sources and bloking any positive correction.
• Lobbying some users who intervened without even knowing the subject (see his talk pages)

Now the page could have been considerd as an encyclopedical one ONLY when a securised copy has been provided[85](far from this users' vandalism, He tried desparately to delete it, he was TERRIFIED that people could see the relevant, verifiable and independent sources!!! See his ridiculous attempt to delete it !!a miserable begging for deleting a page!!)

Hi!, Now everyone in intersested in the persons but not in the matter: The existing sources in the securized page are clearly, obviously and verificably in concordance with Notability in Wikipedia; so what is the remaining problem, and what is the real motivations of users wanting desparately to kill this page?? , not difficult to guess --Techala (talk) 09:33, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I wonder why you're trying so hard to promote this article by using multiple accounts in many projects in different languages! you just copied everything that you said on my talk page in Farsi Wikipeida here too, and you are attacking other editors by falsely accusing them as you did on my talk page in Wikimedia Commons. please notice that the related WikiProject can make the final decision whether an article is up to our standards or not, this discussion have been raised here many times and community decision was that your article is not notable by the standards of the English Wikipedia.   ■ MMXX  ^talk  10:05, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I have opened a new sockpuppet investigation at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mmbmmmbm. Ozob (talk) 10:53, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

User:Techala and User:Balakyo (below) have been blocked. Ozob (talk) 23:30, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

• That is wonderful!! the page of the so-called Boubaker polynomials is just DELETED from ARAB wikipedia after a four-years resistance !!

After instructions message from   ■ MMXX to ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/مستخدم:Abanima: [86]

• This deletion from ARAB wikipedia is a good warning against any future ARAB fellow who dare claiming any notability or overdue weight in other wikis. Congratulations.

--Balakyo (talk) 20:40, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Don't worry, it has been rescued and is now safely tucked up in ProofWiki where it won't get deleted for any arbitrary reason. --Matt Westwood 21:06, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

No No Matt Westwood, you shouldn't. These things are not notable at all, they aren't present in any valid source and they are a declinaison of Chebyshev and their mathematical value is quite miserable.

By allowing this rescue you may encourage other arabs to infest latin and francophone wikis. Take an example from the french wiki and the incident there [87].--PoPo Le Chien Contrib (talk) 03:03, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

So who made you God? Who allows you to tell the whole world who is or is not allowed to edit a wiki? If you're typical of wikipedia editors I hope this site destroys itself. --Matt Westwood 09:41, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I had a look at that wiki and it was set up by a user called 'Prime mover' there. Interestingly Wikipedia used to have a user called Prime mover but they were indefinitely blocked in 2006, I don't know why as can't even see what they tried to contribute. Anyway I only hope Proof wiki doesn't get plagued by vandals and people hungry to have their name in lights and idiots with a mission to fulfil like Wikipedia has. Dmcq (talk) 09:35, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Don't worry, vandals get blocked - forever. --Matt Westwood 09:41, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

We need to stay focussed on whether the topic is notable. It doesn't matter what country a contribution comes from. People of any nationality are welcome to contribute to this wiki as long as they respect the policies here. Jowa fan (talk) 04:07, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

• I disagree with Jowa fan, a tpoic with an arab name could be of relevance in Arabic Wikipedia but never in latin or francophone Wikipedia.--PoPo Le Chien Contrib (talk) 08:47, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

An English language wiki should never allow someone to contribute with such a stupid name as PoPo Le Chien. Stupid mutt. --Matt Westwood 09:41, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mmbmmmbm again. Ozob (talk) 10:47, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

natural map

While doing some miscellaneous edits on Matsumoto's theorem (group theory), I came across the term natural map, and linked to it, and found it to be a red link. So I redirected it to natural mapping, and then looked at that, and found that "The real function of natural mappings is to reduce the need for any information from a user’s memory to perform a task. This term is widely used in the areas of human-computer interaction (HCI) and interactive design.[1]". So I left the redirect intact but directed the link from "natural map" within the article to natural transformation.

So some questions arise: Should we move "natural mapping" to "natural mapping (somethingology)" and redirect "natural mapping" to something else, or create some new disambiguation page, or what? And what should I have linked to? Michael Hardy (talk) 04:53, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

It's pretty clear that the term "Natural map" should be linked to "Natural transformation" when used in a math article. The current "Natural mapping" article is basically an orphan so I don't think there would be too much objection to moving it to Natural mapping (interface design) and creating a dab page. We should cross post this to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Graphic design as a matter of etiquette though.--RDBury (talk) 10:10, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Update: I've made natural mapping into a disambiguation page after moving natural mapping to natural mapping (interface design). I fixed the links to natural mapping so that they point to the latter article. Nothing (in the article space) except redirects now links to natural mapping. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:58, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Numerical Analysis (book)

Numerical Analysis (book) is about the book by Burden and Faires. It's a complete orphan: no other articles link to it.

Now it is nominated for deletion. Opinions? Michael Hardy (talk) 05:02, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

While reviewing WP:NBOOK for this is struck me that that guideline does not really apply to textbooks, for example it talks about literary awards and being used as a movie plot. So for math books it seems to me that the fallback WP:GNG should be used. Are there considerations for math/technical books not covered in the GNG?--RDBury (talk) 10:21, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I think WP:NBOOK does gives us something to go on. Under the heading "coverage notes" we see the phrase "this guideline may be instructive by analogy". The fifth criterion can apply to academic books with no problems. For criterion 1, it ought to be clear that book reviews in mathematical journals (not necessarily for a general audience) are worth something. For criteria 2 and 3, there exist awards for mathematical exposition, and it's possible for a textbook to have significant impact in its field. There's also a paragraph Wikipedia:NBOOK#Academic_books. But yes, it would be nice to have a little more detail on the page. There's some inconclusive debate at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(books)#Proposed_revision_to_criterion_.233_language. Jowa fan (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:07, 11 June 2011 (UTC).

The potential for Mathematics featured lists

On a tangent to the recognized content section above, which focuses on Featured Articles, I was wondering if members of this project had considered the potential for Featured Lists? At the moment there are three FLs under this project's banner, but all of them are people and/or event oriented. To my knowledge, there are no Featured Lists that focus on mathematics. Looking through Category:List-Class mathematics articles, I believe that there is the potential for some fantastic ones that do focus on the subject itself. I also feel that some topics actually lend themselves better to a list format than an article one. For instance, a merger of Prime knot and List of prime knots (renamed Prime knots) might improve our overall coverage of the subject, as well as setting the ground work for a future push towards featured status.

Now that Today's Featured List is up and running, there would also be the potential to get a maths list on the main page, exposing the work to the millions that visit the page every day. As someone heavily involved with TFL, I can say with certainty that a list based on a mathematical concept would be looked upon very favourably there.

It's undeniable that Featured Lists do place a degree of emphasis on presentation. The main thing to worry about is writing a well-sourced lead that introduces the topic. Beyond that, I would be very happy to take responsibility for all the minutiae of reference/table/image formatting. I wouldn't be seeking a co-nomination for the work: I'm simply determined to play my part in diversifying our selection of FLs. Feel free to drop me a note on my talk page if you might be interested in taking up the offer.

I hope to see some of you at WP:FLC in the future. Warm regards, —WFC— 15:22, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Lists of mathematics topics is a former Featured List, as you will find if you look at Talk:Lists of mathematics topics.

It is definitely one of the best things ever done on Wikipedia. I think of it as not primarily for navigation, but for browsing, i.e. looking around to see what's out there that you hadn't thought of. It lost its featured status because of a lack of references. The references are in the articles ultimately linked to, two clicks away. I'm not sure how to compile references for a thing like this. It fits no genre; it is unique in the whole history of the printed word. It differs from things like the AMS subject classification system in including things like the list of factorial and binomial topics, the list of circle topics (each of those is fascinating in itself!), and there's lots of stuff like that. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:34, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Lists of mathematics topics is indeed a fantastic resource. I've sought extra opinions on what would need to be done to restore it to featured status. Although I couldn't help but notice that List of mathematics topics redirects to a different article, which is a bit confusing. —WFC— 23:11, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Addressing a more important point than what I addressed above: Lists within the scope of this particular WikiProject are among the best on Wikipedia, or for that matter within all of history. (Yeah—I know—you're going to say that's a hyperbolic exaggeration. But really. Wikipedia is truly unprecedented, and I don't think there's actually any exaggeration in this instance. 'nother words, I agree with the original sentiment here. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:31, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Bplus-class

Hey there! I'm from WP Elements, and we want to start using Bplus-class for our articles, but without any idea how to introduce it. I noticed you use it, so could you help us to do it? Help is surely appreciated--R8R Gtrs (talk) 09:36, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Imo we should be phasing B+ out in this project. Math guidelines are a bit less stringent than most projects, so a B+ here corresponds roughly to a B elsewhere. The fact that we have our own guidelines when nearly every other project uses standard WP 1.0 guidelines causes confusion for people for other projects who want to add our banner to an article. So unless you have a really compelling reason that your project needs to be a maverick and have different standards then everyone else, I'd say you're better off forgetting about the idea. I think the reason we're different is we were one of the first projects created, before there was much of a standard to go by, and since then inertia set in.--RDBury (talk) 10:51, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Delisted FA

The Monty Hall problem article, one of our longest standing featured articles, has been delisted. From what I gather this was due to long-standing and apparently unresolvable editing disputes, see Wikipedia:Featured article review/Monty Hall problem/archive3 for the full discussion. I'm also a bit surprised that until now this hasn't appeared either here or on the article alerts page. (Correct me if I'm wrong, though I do try to keep an eye on both.) Any ideas on getting the article relisted?--RDBury (talk) 20:00, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Redirection of equivalent norms

Currently, Equivalent norms redirects to norm (mathematics), which doesn't describe norm equivalence. Is there a better article for it to redirect to? — Kallikanzarid^talk 23:00, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Aren't they described in Norm (mathematics)#Properties, or did you mean something more specific? Thenub314 (talk) 23:05, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

OK, now Equivalent norms redirects to Norm (mathematics)#Properties. Does that solve the problem? Jowa fan (talk) 02:49, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, thanks. Looks like it was my poor eyesight :( — Kallikanzarid^talk 04:22, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

FFD: File:Sine Cos Proofs.pdf

The file File:Sine Cos Proofs.pdf has recently come up at WP:FFD. There may well not be a place for this file on WP; but it does seem rather a more useful self-contained take-away than the section of our current omnibus article Proofs_of_trigonometric_identities#Angle_sum_identities, which there might be a case for breaking into smaller self-contained chunks. Jheald (talk) 21:57, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

We've had many long discussions here on how an whether proofs should be included on WP, the results are given in Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs. Keeping that in mind, "Proofs of trigonometric identities" is not exactly an example of the what proofs should be in WP and how they should be presented. It might be split up and incorporated into a wikibook on trigonometry, but to me it's not an encyclopedia article.--RDBury (talk) 07:30, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I have to say I utterly disagree.

In my view "trignometric angle sum identity" is an appropriate topic for an encyclopedia; and in the context of treating such a topic in an encyclopedic way we should be trying to convey not just that there is an identity that exists, but also an instinctive understanding of why the identity exists -- including how it can be related to a geometric construction; how it follows directly using Euler's formula and considering real and imaginary parts; and how it follows directly from matrix multiplication (the last two of course being very closely related, but that is an additional bit of understanding). Proofs for the sake of proofs are not appropriate; but that sort of instictive understanding of why is something we should be aspiring to in a potential topic like this; and, indeed, for any mathematical topic for which we can provide it. Jheald (talk) 08:38, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Compare for example the Wolfram article. Jheald (talk) 09:09, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

We have Angle sum identity which is, at the moment, a redirect. Perhaps it is a topic which should be expanded to an actual article, assuming that the material isn't already somewhere else that I missed. Proofs are good if they are sourced and have encyclopedic value. Unfortunately many proofs we have here unsourced exercises in algrebra/calculus/geometry and much of what I see in "Proofs of trigonometric identities" falls under the latter category. In many cases, if a reason "why" should be added for an identity/theorem, it can be incorporated into the exposition rather than separated out as a formal proof.

We probably shouldn't be using MathWorld as an example either. Overall it's a good resource but it also has a lot of material that isn't encyclopedic by WP standards.--RDBury (talk) 11:46, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the exposition is the important thing, and that most of the time setting things out in the shape of a formal proof is probably not appropriate for us, unless that really is the most effective way to get the "why" background across.

I'm curious about your comment about Mathworld. That article on Trig addition formulas seemed entirely in keeping with how we might give an article here. I'm not particularly familiar with Mathworld more widely, but is there anything in that particular article you would view as non-encyclopedic? (And why?) Jheald (talk) 12:10, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

What I meant was that in general we shouldn't be using a MathWorld article as a example of what a WP article should look like. There have been many discussion here on MathWorld, just do a search in the archives. One that comes to mind for me is Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive 65#Missing science topics, the issue was basically there are many MathWorld articles where the subject does not meet WP:GNG criteria.--RDBury (talk) 15:19, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

It isn't just notability, unless that word is stretched pretty far. My biggest issue with MathWorld is actually neologisms. My impression is that it more or less makes up words, or repeats terminology used in a nonce sense as though it were accepted and standard.

Now, there's nothing wrong with making up words — mathematicians do it all the time. But they do it in research papers, and the new term is either picked up by others, or it isn't. Encyclopedias are in a different position and really should not make up words. Since MathWorld claims to be an encyclopedia, this is a very serious flaw. --Trovatore (talk) 23:20, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Pickands–Balkema–de Haan theorem

Pickands–Balkema–de Haan theorem is a complete orphan: No other articles link to it. Work on it! Michael Hardy (talk) 03:27, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Um, well, OK, if you say so. It was trivial to create three useful links, I'm not sure why you couldn't have done it yourself. But perhaps people who actually know something about statistics will be able to contribute more here. Jowa fan (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:51, 17 June 2011 (UTC).

Just that there are only 24 hours in a day...... Michael Hardy (talk) 16:59, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Constructive ordinal

I found constructive ordinal to be a red link, so I've redirected it to ordinal notation and labeled it a "redirect with possibilities". Should we have an article with this title? Michael Hardy (talk) 04:47, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

The redirect seems like the best choice; a constructive ordinal is just going to be an ordinal notation in the end. I don't think it's worth starting a separate article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:04, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Nothingness and the empty set discussion

There is a nothingness and the empty set discussion at the Nothingness article. That article can use a lot of improvement as to both content and sources. PPdd (talk) 15:01, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

LivingBot

LivingBot is adding a number of dubious tags to some article talk pages, such as this [88]. Does anyone know about this? I'm inclined to revert... Jakob.scholbach (talk) 19:33, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I've come across this "Betascript Publishing" before, I think they are people who take wikipedia articles package them as a book and sell them on amazon. I think the bot might be tagging articles that have been so packaged to indicate that these articles are not copyright violations, rather a published book copied their content. But this is all guessing. I do find the tag annoying though. RobHar (talk) 20:01, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

There is a recent long discussion on this and related issues: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 87#Wikipedia articles being sold by book companies. This is a growing trend to and somewhat unscrupulous since these publishers sell the books to unsuspecting people. Apparently it's legal as long as you put a link to WP somewhere in the book, even if you don't put it anywhere that's accessible on Amazon of Google Books. It's going make detecting things like circular referencing and copyright violations more and more difficult in the future. Tagging talk pages is supposed to help but I'm not sure what good it will do since if the trend continues (both profitable and legal so I expect it will) a large number articles will end up being published this way. The good news is that most of us will be "published authors" pretty soon.--RDBury (talk) 21:47, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

It strikes me as a reasonable way of handling an unpleasant situation. I don't see any problems with the tags remaining there. Jowa fan (talk) 01:11, 21 June 2011 (UTC) (revised opinion below)

Ah, I get it. That wasn't quite clear to me from the tag itself. Anyway, the only way to turn this into a less pleasant situation in the long run might be to have WP articles that are good enough so that respectable publishers publish them in a reasonable way. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 06:41, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I take it back. Given the number of such books appearing (see table at VDM Publishing, currently about half a million titles), it won't take long to tag every single Wikipedia page. So we should probably try and stop the tagging before it gets out of hand. Jowa fan (talk) 07:18, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

There's some discussion at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/LivingBot_17#Review Jowa fan (talk) 07:35, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

This kind of spam seems to have finally reached the level where Amazon can no longer ignore it. [89] So hopefully we will soon see an end of this nonsense. Hans Adler 08:41, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

These things tend to be like whack-a-mole; if Amazon stops it then they'll pop up on Nook and Google Books. E.g. our Fibonacci number article was copied into books on sale at Google books here ($15.63) and here ($9.99). But people don't stop using e-mail because of e-mail spam and I expect it will be similar with this kind of spam; filters will be put in place and spammers will find ways around them, but people will put up with it because downloading a book at home is a lot easier than schlepping to the local bookstore. For WP editors I think it will mean more going to the library instead of looking stuff up on Google, in other words we need to add spam filters of our own. In the first example, the book has an ISBN number, has a 2005 copyright (before the content appeared on WP) and has links to buy at Barnes&Noble and Borders. The give-aways are that the content has little to do with the title, it's written WP's trademark summary style, and the sections begin with the Math Project's "In...". Obvious to a WP editor but it's hard to see how an automated filter would pick up on it.--RDBury (talk) 15:10, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Google recently changed their ranking algorithm to penalize "content farms", sites with very low quality content that are mostly filled with ads. It seems to have worked, because one big content farm just had to lay off 10% of their staff [90]. Now content farmers seem to be moving into ebooks [91]. If Amazon and Barnes and Noble penalize farmed ebooks, then they won't be profitable, either. The people who publish these "books" only do it because it's profitable, and if it isn't, it won't be long before they vanish. (When was the last time you saw a Wikipedia mirror at the top of a Google search?) Ozob (talk) 00:08, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

To avoid fractured discussion, please continue at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/LivingBot_17#Review rather than here. Thank you LeadSongDog come howl! 04:32, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

New essay on Wikipedia editing for research scientists

I was prompted by some recent off-wiki email (asking me for advice on getting started with Wikipedia editing) to write an essay on Wikipedia editing for research scientists. It's in my user space for now but it seems reasonable to move it to Wikipedia essay namespace at some point. Any feedback would be welcome. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:27, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Are you aware of this paper? I know some of the people involved. Seems to be well thought through. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:02, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of it, no. Looks quite helpful — thanks for the pointer. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:08, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Mention using your watchlist and, in particular, putting appropriate project talk pages on it. JRSpriggs (talk) 08:46, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Done, thanks. I've now moved this into Wikipedia namespace: Wikipedia:Wikipedia editing for research scientists. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:36, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Horn angle

The new article Horn angle, is basically a DICDEF with inaccuracies (see the talk page). There is an obsolete term translated as Cornicular angle, or horn-like angle and Heath gives more than 3 pages of material on it (in small print) in his commentary on Euclid Book III Prop. 16. Mathworld also has a "Horn angle" article which has more modern references. I'd like to either change the article to a summary of Heath or change it to a redirect if no one thinks it's worthwhile.--RDBury (talk) 14:37, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Does seem important enough for an article, although I guess it is more of an obscure historical issue than anything else. There are slightly longer discussions at [92] and [93] but without doing more reading I couldn't really confirm or deny my first impression that various people asked questions about whether this kind of "angle" makes sense, and that noone really gave much of an answer. Kingdon (talk) 23:25, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

List of winners of the Mathcounts competition

There is a new weekly section on the main page called "Today's featured list" and I have nominated List of winners of the Mathcounts competition to have a spot here. There has been some opposition to the nomination and it looks like the list could become a removal candidate very soon unless the quality of the list is improved. If you are interested in maintaining the list's featured status and seeing a summary of it up on the main page, your help in improving the article would be greatly appreciated. Neelix (talk) 03:37, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Charles Paul Narcisse Moreau

A new article titled Charles Paul Narcisse Moreau, created by user:r.e.b., is one of the more unusual biographical articles, in that identification of the person seems to be a moderately intractable problem, and the intractability itself seems somewhat well-documented. These three people seem to be known to have existed:

• A French military officer who organized a course of instruction on artillery and did various other things;
• A mathematician who introduced Moreau's necklace-counting function and wrote various other papers;
• A Colonel Moreau who is renowned as one of the losingest players ever in tournament chess, who lost all of the 26 games he played at a tournament in Monte Carlo in 1903.

The question is: Are all three the same person? Considerable circumstantial evidence that these three are the same has been published.

In the unlikely event that somebody knows something, could they further edit the article accordingly? Michael Hardy (talk) 23:50, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

There's a bit more here; NB that the later items are presumably a different Charles Moreau. CPM Moreau is at Calais in one case. May need specialist research. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:50, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Ricci Tensor

The introduction of the article seems to say that the Ricci tensor is symmetric for all pseudo-Riemannian manifolds. In a book I'm reading at the moment, it says that an affine connection ∇ with zero torsion has symmetric Ricci tensor if and only if ∇ is locally equi-affine. Where we call an affine connection locally equi-affine if around each point x of M there is a parallel volume form, i.e. a non-vanishing n-form ω such that ∇ω = 0. Which one is correct, the article or the book? It seems to me that there are some missing hypotheses in the article's statement. — Fly by Night (talk) 17:04, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

I think you are forgetting that for a pseudo-Riemannian manifold it is assumed that you use the Levi-Civita connection, which is always equi-affine. (The Levi-Civita tensor always is a parallel volume form for the Levi-Civita connection.)TR 20:10, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

But that's my point: it's not assumed; the Levi-Civita connection's not even mentioned until much later in the article. Reading the introduction, there's absolutely no reason to believe that ∇ is the Levi-Civita connection. Moreover, in general, it is not assumed that a connection on a pseudo-Riemannian manifold is the Levi-Civita connection. Take the book I linked to, for example. It would be a good idea to add this, and more detail to the article to avoid confusion. — Fly by Night (talk) 20:55, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

The Ricci tensor of pseudo-Riemannian manifold is by definition the Ricci tensor defined by the Levi-Civita tensor defined by the pseudo-Riemannian metric. It never is anything else, even when you calculate the Ricci curvature of some other connection on that manifold. As to the Ricci curvature article, it does (implicitly) say in the last line of the definition section that up till that point the Levi-Civita curvature had been assumed. Looking, at that article in general, not clarifying that earlier seems to be the least of its problems. As the article is currently written it is most likely useless to anybody that does not already no what the Ricci curvature is.TR 21:39, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

The Ricci curvature associated to a general affine connection is something that is only studied seriously by a very small group of people, whereas the Ricci curvature associated to a pseudo-Riemannian manifold is one of the most important objects in relativity theory and Riemannian geometry. I think it's appropriate to focus on these cases, and I have consolidated the discussion of the Ricci tensor associated to an affine connection to a short section at the end, since it doesn't seem appropriate to treat this in parallel with the classical Ricci tensor (the two have completely different properties, and are used for completely different things).

I agree that the article is not very good. I've tried in the past to improve it, but progress has been slow. There hasn't really been much wider input, and I've not really been willing to devote the time to get the article into satisfactory shape on my own. It seems from the discussion page that the article historically has been pulled in different directions by mathematicians of different stripes, and physicists. It might be helpful to have a constructive discussion at Talk:Ricci curvature. Sławomir Biały (talk) 22:03, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

TimothyRias: the definition of the Ricci tensor is relative to an affine connection; any affine connection. The Ricci tensor is defined as the trace of the curvature tensor, i.e. Ric(Y,Z) = trace{X → R(X,Y)Z}; and what is R well

$R(X,Y)Z=\nabla _{X}\nabla _{Y}Z-\nabla _{Y}\nabla _{X}Z-\nabla _{[X,Y]}Z\,.$

If you're only interested in the Levi-Civita then that's one thing; but it's wrong to say that "the definition" of the Ricci tensor is with respect to the Levi-Civita connection. Sławomir Biały: Thanks for you edits to the article. But there still needs to be some mention at the beginning that we assume the manifold to carry its Levi-Civita connection. The article on pseudo-Riemannian manifolds does not make a big deal Levi-Civita connections either. It mentions some parallel with the Riemannian case, but also some big contrasts. It seems to be a very unnecessary assumption that most people hold; probably because of the way they leaned the subject. I'm not sure only a small number of people are interested. There has been a large increase in research involving projective, affine, equi-affine and centro-affine differential geometry over the last 20 to 30 years. — Fly by Night (talk) 22:49, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't really think the Levi-Civita connection needs to be overly emphasized, but it's probably appropriate to mention it in the Definition section. There's a potentially greater risk of fuss over the curvature conventions. (Our sign convention for the Riemann tensor is the opposite that of Besse, which is used as a reference for the article, but our sign convention for the Ricci tensor is such that spheres are positively curved.) I've added text to resolve both issues I hope. Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:25, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

I've added a little footnote, but it doesn't look quite right next to the Harvard citation style. My footnote is indicated by a superscript number in square brackets. Not sure if you want to change the style… — Fly by Night (talk) 23:41, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Notability of books

Discussion on the notability guidelines for specialized books, such as math or programming is going on at Wikipedia talk:Notability (books)#Criterion out of context. Some editors maintain that book that have not been covered in-depth in venues for a general audience, such as the New York Times, should be deleted from Wikipedia. However, recent AfD discussion on math and programming books ended up with such books being kept if they pass the less restrictive WP:GNG. I'm aware that every book in the Springer Graduate Texts in Mathematics, for instance, has probably been reviewed in some math journals, so passes GNG, but whether it passes NBOOK is open to interpretation. Please voice your opinion in that discussion. FuFoFuEd (talk) 01:24, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Discrete Green's Theorem: is it really notable? and who did it first?

I was surprised to come across an article for Discrete Green's theorem. This isn't exactly a deep result; I suspect that it wasn't published much earlier only because noone thought it worthwhile. The "history" section of the article claims that the theorem was introduced in 2007. A MathSciNet search turns up something from 2005 with a reference list suggesting that the same authors published on this subject in 2003. I wouldn't be surprised to find that others independently had the same idea earlier.

My main concern with the article as it stands is that it reads too much like promotion of Finkelstein's work. There's also some potential conflict of interest with User:Amiruchka (who identifies himself as Amir Shachar) editing the page. In particular, it's unusual to have a link to a YouTube video in the lead paragraph. Does anyone know enough about the topic to improve this article? Jowa fan (talk) 07:45, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

There is no way this is new. Manifolds with corners are a little obscure (they are what you get when you e.g. take products of manifolds with boundary), but nevertheless they are not a new topic, and Stokes's theorem for them is not a new topic, either. See [94] for this very subject; it provides references to several books. Ozob (talk) 10:29, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

It's not really Stokes' theorem (or Green's theorem for that matter). It's just the ordinary one-variable fundamental theorem of calculus applied to the double integral of a function on a rectangle. It seems like the sort of thing that could be given as an exercise is a calculus textbook. Also, I note from his homepage that Amir Sachar and Amir Finkelstein are the same person. Sławomir Biały (talk) 10:41, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, on a rectangle, Green's theorem is the ordinary one-variable fundamental theorem of calculus. :-) Ozob (talk) 10:47, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, of course. But calling this result "Green's theorem" in that very special case is a bit disingenuous (e.g., like referring to the Fundamental theorem of calculus on the interval [a,b] as "Stokes's theorem for the oriented manifold [a,b]). There's certainly no need to invoke manifolds with corners. Sławomir Biały (talk) 10:56, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

There is a paper by Yang & Albregtsen which uses the term and seems to be used as a reference fairly often in the literature. The article doesn't seem to mention this at all though. As used in the paper the notability is arguable but I'd come down on not notable. The article claims it's using a different version based on Power Point presentations, not even arguable notability.--RDBury (talk) 11:30, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the theorem's significance: The theorem was formulated as a key theoretical result in both and . The importance of the ICCV conference and the Springer journal are undisputed. Further, Wang et al.'s work from 2007 (where the theorem was first formulated, see Theorem 1 in ) was already cited 37 times (June 2011). Within four years from its publication, at least two generalizations of the theorem were published (see in the "extensions" part). Note that the theorem generalizes both the Fundamental theorem of Calculus (into two dimensions, in an intuitive manner), and the Integral Image algorithm (into continuous domains and finite unifications of rectangles). Thus, the theorem generalizes both a classical result in Calculus and a fundamental algorithm in computer vision. Regarding the "who did this first" discussion: I never saw this theorem before I saw Wang et al.'s work. Even the authors were surprised that it was not found in the literature:

“ To the best of our knowledge the integral computations have been used only when the region D is rectangular. ”

(see ). I was familiar with the works you have mentioned. Throughout the years, many discretizations were suggested to Green's theorem (such as Tang's work from the 1980's) - however, to the best of my knowledge, none of them introduces this specific theorem. Regarding the claim that "this theorem could have been given as an assignment in a Calculus course" - well, it wouldn't be the first simple and elegant mathematical result. Regarding the YouTube video: it forms an introduction to the theorem and to the article. It is highly relevant to the article. It helps researchers understand it instantly, and explains the motivation behind it; the video receives encouraging comments from Wikipedians weekly. Regarding your concern that this article stands for a promotion of my (Finkelstein's) work: Note that my own original work is barely stated there, apart from the 'extensions' part, where my colleagues' work, Pham et al.'s, is given the same amount of credit. My contributions to Wolfram that are cited in this article do not aim to promote my work, but rather to help researchers better understand the theorem. Last, regarding my name - it used to be Amir Finkelstein, and I recently changed it to Amir Shachar in the memory of my beloved mother, Sarit, who unfortunately passed away one year ago.--amiruchka (talk)

Being a lemma in a paper cited a few times does not make a result notable enough for an article in an encyclopedia. Also, they don't seem to call the result the "Discrete Green's theorem". In fact, Green's theorem doesn't even seem to be mentioned anywhere in either of the papers you cite. I think the article should be deleted because it is not notable as a mere lemma appearing in a paper (a trivial calculus exercise), and elevating it to the level of a "Discrete Green's theorem" seems to be pure original research on your part. That's fine if you want to write a paper about the "Discrete Green's theorem" and publish it in a peer-reviewed journal, but it's not ok to write an encyclopedia article about the theorem beforehand. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:13, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Now at AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Discrete Green's theorem. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:24, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Links to Pentagram map

How do we feel about this edit to vector field? Someone seems to be adding links to the article pentagram map to any article that is even vaguely connected with it (including some high profile articles like Non-Euclidean geometry, Projective plane, Golden ratio). A Google scholar search for "Pentagram map" (33 hits with the highest citation count being just 17) indicates that while there are some people who study this concept, it certainly isn't significant enough to be spammed across so many basic mathematics articles. Do we revert these changes? Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:58, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't give a damn. This is not WP:spam, and you are not being WP:civil. I think this is an important article that has just been totally rewritten by a noted scholar in the field, and linking to it may alert readers to its existence. But I do not have a dog in this fight so I will defer to the consensus of the group. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 13:06, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

It's not User:RichardEvanSchwartz (i.e., Richard Schwartz) whose edits I am questioning. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:10, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

You may be right about "undue weight." The countervailing argument is that this article was a WP:orphan, and it would be good to address that problem. What should be done is something I leave to the mathematics professionals -- not you alone. Develop a consensus and do what you think best. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 13:23, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion the relation between vector fields and the pentagram map isn't close enough to justify that edit. I note that WP:SPAM refers to adding references with the aim of promoting the author or the work being referenced. In this case I wouldn't say it's clearly spam, but it's close enough to make me feel a little uncomfortable. If we're going to allow such things, then why not just add "See also: 3" to almost every single mathematics page? On the other hand, I think the links from Dynamical system, Pentagon, Desargues' theorem and Poncelet's porism are reasonable. And for what it's worth, I don't see any lack of civility in User:Sławomir Biały's comments above, so let's leave personal attacks out of it and hope for a constructive discussion. Jowa fan (talk) 13:53, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I removed the link from golden ratio since I didn't see any reason for it to be included there, but left the one from Branko Grünbaum since he is mentioned in the lead of the pentagram map article. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:28, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I am really disappointed when you again evoked that my edits are "WP:SPAM refers to adding references with the aim of promoting the author or the work being referenced. There is no promotion. Whatever happened to WP:AGF? Is my Wikipedia record relegated to the Ashheap of history so easily?

I would like you to please use your professional judgment to decide where there should be links. Please do not merely UNDO the edits, as some of them had other work (e.g., alpha sort).

Consider (based upon your professional judgment and looking at the encyclopedia as an integrated whole) where there should be links, and add them if you think there should be additions. I make no pretense of having your mathematical subject matter expertise: but as a Wikipedian, I don't like to see really good article be buried so that no one can find them. That we have such a vastly improved article on an obscure (but perhaps growing in interest) subject by a world reknowned scholar should be a source of pride.

Please address the problem of WP:Orphan.

I am sure that you can come to the right decision, based on the collective needs of our readers. Thank you. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 15:53, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Respectfully, I would suggest that we all wait for a consensus to form, and then it would be acted upon. Preemptive and unilateral edits such as the one bty David Eppstein unintentionally WP:AGF subvert the collaborative process. The issue is joined here, so please discuss it, work it through, and act as a body, not disjointed parts of a mob. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 15:59, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Actions such as mine are exactly the "R" in WP:BRD. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:10, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

David, with respect, WP:BRD might apply eventually. But this was hardly an endless or unproductive discussion, as it has been open a matter of mere hours. To expect it to come to fruition without an opportunity for interested parties to respond (we are coming up on July 4th weekend) is, I think, preemptive. Best wishes. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:20, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

The point of BRD is that the discussions go on with the status quo ante in place. --Trovatore (talk) 16:53, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

FYI, this is what Richard Alan Schwartz recently wrote on the subject. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:57, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I must admit my AGF evaporated pretty quickly looking at the exchanges above. I looked at what has been done and this is my opinion. An article which looks like it was written by the author of the original paper has been spammed round various irrelevant article by you. The only thing I don't get is that the the original paper is pretty straightforward whereas the article just looks like a hyped up mess. Dmcq (talk) 16:58, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Just taking a look a the "What links here" page for the article, it looks like about half the links are questionable to inappropriate. The "See also" section should contain related topics where "related" is strictly interpreted. Two articles that both happen to mention projective geometry do not meet the standard.--RDBury (talk) 18:18, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Dear RDBury, apparently you believe that half are appropriate. Please specify which. It would be better(I respectfully suggest) to do this discussion on the retail level (case-by-case), not wholesale. Thank you. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 19:07, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Instead of arguing case by case I just removed the links I thought didn't fit in the respective articles, leaving seven in place.--RDBury (talk) 15:53, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi everyone. I am the person who wrote most of the pentagram map wiki page, and I thought it might help if I made some remarks about it. The pentagram map is certainly a small subject inside mathematics. It is a topic that sits inside the intersection of dynamical systems and projective geometry. I would say that maybe 6 authors total have written articles on this topic, though the interest in the topic seems to be increasing. Perhaps twice that many people will be interested within a year. The reason I edited the wiki page now is that the few people working on the subject (myself included) felt that it would be nice to have an accurate and up-to-date article that grad students and researchers in nearby areas could benefit from. I believe that what happened was that 7&6=thirteen (who was quite helpful to me and quite supportive of my foray into wiki editing) liked my effort and thought that the page should be better tied into wikipedia as a whole. I definitely like his suggestions and ideas, though it looks like he made some links that a mathematician would probably not make.

It is hard to say exactly which links should be made. One algorithm might be to follow something like the AMS 2010 math subject classification and choose articles in closely allied areas. Certainly, there is no need to have links to it either from very fundamental pages or from very high-profile pages, and those should probably be erased. I suppose that it might be reasonable to have links to it from projective geometry and integrable systems, but if and only if those pages have links to other pages having the same specificity. Likewise, it seems plausible to have links from theorems about configurations in projective geometry, like Pascal's theorem, which involve both polygons and projective geometry. It might take me, or the others working on this small topic, or other mathematicians, some time and effort to figure out exactly which links should be made but I hope that over the months we can occasionally put in things that are both useful and unobtrusive.

One reply I'd like to make about the comments above is that it is not fair to compare the wiki article to the original article I wrote, calling the former a hyped up mess. The wiki article is much more dense because it summarizes 19 years of development beyond the original article. Nothing there is supposed to be hype, just a summary of all results currently on the topic. The original article was quite simple and straightforward because I didn't have much to say. Now that I and others have thought about the thing for a long time, there is much more to say and the picture is more intricate. I suppose that this could be said of any subject of math that evolves over time.

I'd like to apologize to people for my part in causing this controversy. I gave the page a complete overhaul without pausing to get critiques from more experienced wiki writers. That caused a number of other editors to offer both criticism and help and the thing seems to have gotten a bit out of control. I think that the pentagram map is a small but beautiful piece of mathematics and I'd like to see it get exactly its proper weight inside wikipedia. RichardEvanSchwartz (talk) 01:01, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Request for feedback: free boundary problem

I started the article free boundary problem and had a volunteer editor look over it. He suggested that I ask here for some more targeted feedback from the experts. I think I've included enough content that it should not be regarded as a stub. Also, it's linked to from other articles (Stefan problem, Obstacle problem) so as to avoid orphanhood.

Any suggestions on the content or organization would be appreciated; I think it could use some of the categorization links and so forth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Compsonheir (talk • contribs) 16:41, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Jul 2011

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2011/Jul

Aug 2011

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2011/Aug

Sep 2011

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2011/Sep

Oct 2011

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2011/Oct

Nov 2011

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2011/Nov