Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2004

Nov 2002 – Dec 2003

Two suggestions

Two suggestions: add paragraphs for

• historical info (different historical views, famous contributors, postulates, scientific debate) and
• fields of application

Maybe defer lengthy proofs to the bottom of the page (or a subpage) ? Many readers wil take these for granted, those who want the whole story are willing to scroll forward. Erik Zachte 00:25 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

Some ideas

This WikiProject is well thought-out and appears to be consistent with current Wikipedia standards and conventions. In addition to Axel, Pierre, Toby and myself you should also request comment form JakeVortex, tarquin, User:Zundark, User:Gareth Owen, User:Forgottenvector, User:Valhalla, User:Alodyne, User:Steverapaport, User:Jkominek, User:Josh Grosse, User:Archibald Fitzchesterfield, User:Chuck Smith, User:Ram-Man, User:Andre Engels, User:Jheijmans, User:N8chz, and User:Kidburla2002. Also a link to this WikiProject page from the mathematics section of Wikipedia:Wikipedians by fields of interest would be great. --mav 00:46, November 18, 2002 (UTC)

On fine-tuning the appearance

I don't think that it's at all a good idea to try to fine-tune the appearance of HTML constructions on the screen, as with the "double sups to make the limit of integration higher". The reason is that the effect depends heavily on the particular characteristics of the reader's system.

In my case, putting in the double sups made the limit too high, too far from the integral sign (a problem already since HTML doesn't support multiscripts) and way too small. On Chas' system, it was presumably an improvement. Since we can't predict it ahead of time, we should stick with simplicity: one sup. (I take it back if one sup is for some reason illegible on Chas' system. That's a different matter.) — Toby 07:43 Dec 1, 2002 (UTC)

I concur; the double <sup> looks better (IE6, Win98/Win2K), but the single sup is still readable (although just at the edge of confusion for me). The Summation notation is much more bothersome:

∑_{i = 2}ⁿ x

reads ambiguously - is that 2ⁿ? or n_x? i = 2 to n? The alternative, although somewhat non standard, is at least unambiguous (although a bit computer-y). Oh when we will we have our LaTex to HTML conversion (he wailed)? Chas zzz brown 21:28 Dec 1, 2002 (UTC)

For sums in HTML, I prefer nowadays ∑_2≤i≤n x. But I guess the topic is mood now. AxelBoldt 00:00 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

TeX style

We should probably update our style guide for the new TeX feature. One rule that I would like to see there is this: TeX formulas should not be used inline: "Let $x\in \mathbb {R}$ be a real number". Because of the size issues, it looks bad, uses unnecessary bandwidth and makes it harder for non-graphical browsers. Similarly, don't use fancy fonts like fraktur ${\mathfrak {a}}$ if it can be avoided, so that HTML can continue to be used for all inline formulas. AxelBoldt 00:00 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

I concur with the inline comment; it makes it harder (in my opinion) to follow an argument when the font keeps changing. Chas zzz brown 08:50 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

I'll start to edit the main page to this effect a bit; feel free to jump in if anything is controversial. AxelBoldt 18:40 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

bold vectors

Note on vectors: my textbooks tend to have \mathbf{v}_1 rather than \mathbf{v_1}. (it seems obvious but it got me wondering). One for the style guide here, maybe? -- Tarquin 10:31 Jan 18, 2003 (UTC)

Differential d

I noticed that we no longer say to leave the differential d unitalicised. I guess that we don't really need an official style, but I'd like to go on the record as saying that I always found texts that didn't italicise it (chiefly from Brits IME) easier to read. -- Toby 09:53 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

Cyclic Groups

The pages for Cyclic group and Klein four-group use the notation C_n to denote the cyclic group on n elements. This seems strange to me; I've never seen this notation elsewhere. The notation I'm familiar with is to use Z_n. Has there been some agreement to use C_n? Dominus 06:29 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It's known in Cambridge, perhaps unknown in 99% of the mathematical world. Obviously it is supposed to stop some abuse of notation problems, as in assuming groups are rings, that there is a preferred generator 1, and so on. Charles Matthews 11:44 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

"Well, Im obviously not getting along with the mathematicians here …"

The following Copied from Village Pump by Theresa knott|Theresa knott 10:59, June 25, 2003 (UTC)

(Start of copied text)

Well, Im obviously not getting along with the mathematicians here; but, I think the "professional" mathematicians are so intent on outdoing each other with their rigorous mathematics that they fail to understand that the non-mathematician is the one who most needs this site, and nearly ALL of the math pages (even on some of the most "simple" and elementary of topics) are nigh-impossible for anyone without the proper training to understand. Kinda a Catch-22 if you see what Im saying.

Its not that I have a problem with rigorous mathematical definitions and proofs, but we also need to have stuff that is "un-professional" "idiotic" "silly", and the like, and of course (most important perhaps), we need "childish" articles on these topics. To be honest, I don't know (and right now I don't care to know) what real, general, and complex functions are. All I know is that every one of my calculus books talks about stuff which either isn't discussed on the wikipedia (or isn't discussed in language which the beginning calculus student is expected to understand).

Now Ill admit, Im not a mathematician. I don't want to be a mathematician. I don't even like math. I don't even understand why math is worth learning. But I do understand that, right now, the wikipedia is about the last place I would go to if I wanted to learn about a mathematical topic. Its not because the wikipedia is inaccurate; but, because the wikipedia seems determidly hostile (in such areas as mathematics) to expressing things "as if a moron had written it"

What Im trying to explain is, a lot of what Im doing in the math section is, to some degree or other, not correct. A lot of it is correct. But some of it definitely isn't. Unfortunately, I have been, more or less, attacked by certain users who remind me of the young John Forbes Nash, with their elitist attitudes, snobbery, and insulting degradation of others. One user actually had the gall to state that he was too busy with his real job, as a real mathematician, to read my crap anymore. He wasn't just referring to my various misconceptions, he was also referring to my inclusion of material which he felt was redundant, redundant to him of course, since he is a "real mathematician".

Let be clear, this wikipedia thing is a lot of work. But the wikipedia isn't going to get better simply by having a bunch of PhDs stroking their phallic egos. What the wiki really needs is a bunch of "ignoramuses" running amuck, trying to learn what the wiki is saying, trying to add to the article with their (frequently incorrect) newfound understandings, and most importantly, BEING CONSTRUCTIVELY CRITIQUED ON THEIR EDITS.

There is a substantial difference between what the wiki claims to be, and what it is. The wiki urges me to "be bold in editing" but the overwhelming response I have gotten, albeit from a handful of more boisterous editors, is a statement of "Get the hell out of here."

Indeed, I have thought about leaving, but I do see some great potential for good here at the wiki, and I do want to improve this site. So I am simply taking a moment to stand up and ask the Wikipedia what it thinks, does it really think that its appropriate to call people stupid because they don't capitalize something (or because they do) or because they forget a comma, or because they get somewhat confused regarding the implicit differentiation of inverse trigonometric functions?

I have made several new friends since I arrived at the wiki this spring; however, I have also met several people who are not friendly. I would like to know what it is that has turned them so sour.

Pizza Puzzle 23:48 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Agree, completely agree. The problem is that mathematicians are trained to do things rigorously, and they have to do it that way in order to protect the "correctness" of mathematics. Some may become intolerant to "misconceptions" from non-mathematicians, but I believe most of them are still friendly. Professional mathematicians (not just wikipedian mathematicians) need intakes from non-mathematians (like you, PP) to improve their way of introducing mathematics to general publics. -- Wshun

It should never be acceptable to call anybody "stupid" if they make a mistake; that is attacking the person, not the act. (If I were in charge, all ad hominem remarks would be grounds for banning.) However, we still need to be merciless about bad edits, and if you get constructive criticism, be appreciative, but don't expect it. If you don't know about something, don't put it in. If you're not sure, put it in italics or in the talk page. There are articles that are very good, and unless you understand the content very well, you're more likely to make the article worse rather than better. I have some math background; I can take a look. Stan 04:46 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I think I'm the guy that Pizza Puzzle is so annoyed at. And I can assure you I never called him `stupid'. The disputed page was calculus with polynomials and I suggest that anyone following this discussion go check out the history of that page, its associated talk page talk:calculus with polynomials, and pizza puzzles talk page User talk:Pizza Puzzle2 too. From my point of view, I found the page in a very sad state - lots of errors and mistakes - off topic - repetitious - inconsistent notation - strange headings -poorly organised - glaring omissions - all sorts of weird stuff. It looked to me like a page in serious need of a bit of fixing up. So I fixed it up, which is what you are supposed to do yes? Nothing personal in it. I never even paid attention to who had written the thing in the first place, in fact it looked to me like a page that lots of people had dabbled in without paying much attention to what they were doing. It was actually fun to find a maths page that needed something doing to it, since most of them seem to be quite complete.

Anyway I then get a number of notes from pizza puzzle seeming rather put out and asking me to explain what I had done. Which I then did on User talk:Pizza Puzzle2. Subsequently I find that over a period of several days all of the errors and strange stuff that I had weeded out had been reintroduced into the page, plus a bunch of other new errors and oddities so that the page is actually in a much worse state than when I'd first found it. Which was just about enough to make me conclude that wikipedia is a total waste of time™. But I thought I'd give it ONE MORE TRY. So I fix the page back up again (note that I did not simply revert, but considered each part of the article on its merits), and on the associated talk page I explain in detail my reasons for each change (once again) in the hope that this will finally dissuade pizza puzzle from reintroducing them (once again). And yes I was probably a touch short with the guy, mostly because I'd already done all of this - including the explanations - once again. It isn't that I think my prose is so deathless that I can't bear to see anyone tinkering with it. Actually I'm sure the page can still be greatly improved. But to see actual ERRORS reintroduced for no good reason ... well it is more than any sane mathematician should be expected to bear.

user:Hawthorn, please sign your entries with ~~~~

Normally I side with anyone who accuses mathematicians of arrogantly writing stuff which no-one else can understand. However in this case, I find Hawthorn's version makes more sense than Mr. Puzzle's. If PP wants to "add to the article with [his] (frequently incorrect) newfound understandings", he should expect expect to irritate mathematicians. I would advise you both to calm down and deal with the matter rationally. Don't take it as a personal insult when someone reverts your work. You'll have a more constructive debate if you talk for a while before re-reverting. See Wikipedia:Staying cool when the editing gets hot. -- Tim Starling 06:18 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

(End of copied text)

First let me say where I am coming from. I am reasonably good at maths, though I was taught it by physicists not mathematicians, so I think that I can give some insight. I have to say, PP does have a valid point {though s/he should not get so emotional about it}. I find many of the math's pages somewhat dry, and difficult. I think that on the whole they are too short, have too few examples, and are too formal. I would like to see some verbose text generally talking about the basic principles before a formal definition and proofs. That way the reader can get a feel for the idea before delving in. I am also somewhat worried by notation. I think that some peole are going to be be put off pages if they are unfamiler with notation. Theresa knott 10:59 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

"I remember the set theory edit wars …"

I remember the set theory edit wars, which ended up with two articles, naive set theory and axiomatic set theory. We could probably do the same thing for other topics, for example having an introduction to XXX article for topic XXX which started with a non-rigorous introduction designed to help beginners to understand the ideas and motivation for the rigorous article on the topic. For example, several of the calculus articles contain non-rigorous treatments which are then followed with rigorous treatments later.

However, there will always be fields of mathematics which are downright baffling for the uninitiated (including, often, other mathematicians who do not specialize in those topics).

Looking forward to reading introduction to topos theory, The Anome 11:14 25 Jun 2003 (UTC) (who has studied some mathematics, but is not a mathematician)

I may just take you up on that ... Charles Matthews 12:23 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

"I have great sympathy for those who want 'verbose'. …"

I have great sympathy for those who want 'verbose'. I want it, too, in relation with any advanced topic which I'm not familiar with. There is always a problem with dense texts in mathematics. That being said, there is no single answer: correct statements aren't actually improved by being made looser and less accurate. I've not been here long, but I can see that there are various 'modes' I have used: historical/genetic, examples, informal talk. I find excess emphasis on the category theory point of view to be unhelpful; but it is also clarifying in its way.

Put it this way, perhaps. The more 'pure' attitudes can sometimes be criticised for failure of NPOV. I wrote about that at multilinear algebra and Nicolas Bourbaki. So, let's do that criticism in a practical way, by editing in the other stuff. I don't think implications of snobbery help. I do think that the wiki way is about things other than de facto standards of definition, which is always a contentious area (cf. tensor).

By the way, I'm a published mathematician - but not recently.

Charles Matthews 11:22 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

"Let's put it this way …"

Let's put it this way: I have a tenuous grasp of category theory and am completely lost when it comes to topos theory. Now I think back to myself at age 13, just learning about things like calculus. Just as I needed a way in then, I need a way in for these other topics. It would be useful for many articles to have a header saying (for example, for integral):

Having difficulty understanding this article? Then you might want to learn more about algebra, functions and the theory of limits first.

Do this to enough articles, and we will have a mathematics road map for self-study. The Anome

This is a really cool idea. It would help prevent reiteration of all the prerequisite knowledge in specialized articles, and provide a nice path towards learning difficult stuff. Something like this may even be useful for non-mathematical subjects as well -- certainly the other science articles (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) would benefit from it, but it could even be applied to articles on history, politics, psychology, or anything else where a foundation of terminology and concepts is necessary in understanding the more complex ideas presented in specialized parts of those subjects. At the very least, some form of "Introduction to terminology" or "Glossary of notations" and the like would be helpful. -- Wapcaplet 12:26 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of putting the "difficulty" notice on articles, though until Wikibooks gets fully on its feet it may be useful. I don't think this idea meshes well with the encyclopedic concept of the Wikipedia. Dysprosia 05:27, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

"Oh and one more thing …"

Oh and one more thing.

WRONG: Articles that go "Let there be objects X such that (introduce new notation here without explanation). Then (notation) (notation) (notation) (notation)."

RIGHT: "(Mathematician) invented the concept of X in 18xx to represent (squeezy-pully-twisty things). A simple example, using modern notation is (example). (Explain notation). The idea has now been generalized to (stuff), which has uses in (other fields of math and science). The idea of X can be formalized as follows: let there be objects X such that (notation). Then (notation) (notation) (notation)..."

Not naming any articles in particular. ;-)

The Anome 11:50 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Applause! As a maths-untrained person with a yen to learn a little bit about this area from time to time, that is exactly what I would like to see! More strength to your pen, Anome. Tannin

Well, mathematical duckspeak is never going to be awesome teaching. Used between pros it has a high bandwidth; and isn't really so different from other tech-talk. Point is, it's never going to be brilliant prose.Charles Matthews 11:57 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

That's why it is so important to have an english {as opposed to notation}intor. The Anome 's page layout looks perfect to me. Theresa knott 12:07 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I have merged these changes into the suggested structure in the main project. The Anome 12:54 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

"The point is …"

The point is, the quickest and best way to stop somebody from reinserting material which you think is totally wrong, is not merely to state that its wrong, but to give some sort of explanation why its wrong. Most incorrect material can, in some way, be incorporated; as most of it is not only at least an attempt at expressing some correct concept; but generally the user is trying to express it because the concept is not expressed well enough within the article. In short, everytime a user edits a page and "makes it worse" that is a good clue that the article needs improvement. 209.56.25.241

Just as likely, there is a structural problem with a single article, or group of articles. Some comments are like weeds in flowerbeds: they're just in the wrong place. Why should everyone agree on what is relevant? One person's helpful aside is another person's red herring. Organisation of the material can definitely help. Charles Matthews 15:18 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

"Can all these people who are agreeing …"

Can all these people who are agreeing with Pizza Puzzle please read his revision? It really wasn't more understandable to non-mathematicians. By all means, make mathematics accessible, but don't make it nonsense. I've campaigned in the past for comprehensible maths (see Talk:Tensor product) but I'm not campaigning now. -- Tim Starling 05:39 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

As one of the people who agreed with him, I have to say- Yes his version was bad. Yes the new version was better. BUT he still makes a valid point. Maths pages need to be accessible to non mathematicians. Theresa knott 08:37 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Just wanted to add some general support for comprehensible maths, though I've not been personally involved with any of Pizza Puzzle's edits. Martin 21:46 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Well now, generalities are all very well. But if anyone has a general take on how hypertext (with random access) reconciles with the hierarchical way maths is built up, that would be an interesting separate discussion. I've just looked at the backlinks for calculus with polynomials, to assess who might arrive there. Only three: derivative, tangent, chain rule. All of which seem to need work, too: far from clear that there is a consistent level operating. Why no link from the calculus page? There is a 'first principles' proof on the calculus with polynomials page. Not the way I'd do it, given the product rule and induction. And so on. Charles Matthews 09:43 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Issue of readability and pedagogy

I was totally inactive for a year but I am getting back on Wikipedia and I'm glad to see this wikiproject going. On the issue of readability and pedagogy, here's my 2 Euro cents.

Articles shouldn't be "dumbed down", because that assumes that shows disrespect for the reader by assuming they're dumb. Ignorant, maybe; unsophisticated, maybe; but not dumb. I truly believe that nobody is too dumb for mathematics, especially is they have the basic suriosity that leads them to read the wikipedia article. Now, mathematicians struggle with the same stumbling blocks as non-mathematicians, it's just that it was usually long ago, and they always make it past the stumbling block eventually. It would be helpful if, when writing about a topic, we mathematicians tried to remember what stumbling blocks we had to overcome and how we did it, and wrote about it in the article!

I have background both from mathematics and physics. Encountering most mathematical structures in physics first has the advantage that I am aware of more ways to justify to nonmathematicians why a concept is important. I have a keen interest in the history of mathematics, and I try to bring that to bear on my wikipedia contributions. However, both in mathematics and in science, I think things should be made accessible but without making wrong statements. I can't help it, but incorrect statements just make me cringe and I have to reach for the "edit this page" link. On the other hand, I have very strong feelings about the teaching of mathematics, so I genuinely try to make things understandable.

As for the layout of the pages, I tend to favour historical information near the top, not near the bottom. I agree with The Anome's proposed layout: first a short, gentle introduction, then the formal definition, then (in any order) history, examples, and formal development. In this way, the first paragraph of the page appeals to both mathematiciand and non-mathematicians.

By the way, a perfect example of what we are trying to achieve is function. That page does a pretty good job, but it is horrible on many counts. If I could put my finger on exactly what I don't like about it I'd come in and change it, but it's the result of so many people's work that I'd be wary of doing that, too.

I have created a few pages that start with an abstract definition, or contain little else. The reason is that I didn't want to stick the definition in the middle of a long, pedagogical section of another article. I believe none of these "dry" pages are linked from nontechnical pages, so I think they are not harmful. The motivation is in the longer, general pages.

I watch pages that I contribute significantly to, which means I also watch the talk pages. If someone posts a cry for help on one of the talk pages, I'll probably come to the rescue and, at the very least, add one of those having trouble with this page? Look here first! notes. Maybe I'll go in for a full rewrite.

-- Miguel 15:42, August 13, 2003 (UTC)

Styles of Mathematics Articles

I had independently created a page for similiar purposes as this one, because I was not aware of this page. It has some advantages over the format of this page. For the time being, I will informally link it via this talk page: Styles of Mathematics Articles, and leave it open for discussion whether or how it could be integrated or benefited from. - Kevin Baas 19:28, August 4, 2003

(UTC)

History of Mathematics

A public domain e-text of the book "History of Modern Mathematics" has just been completed. The book was published in 1906, edited by David Eugene Smith, Columbia University. It just has 75 pages, but some of the material may still be useful and valuable. Here's a link to the PDF.—Eloquence 23:05, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

"The beauty of mathematics …"

The beauty of mathematics is a topic that I would like to see developed on wikipedia. Maybe we can gather a commented list of the most beautiful things in mathematics, from the elementary to the abstract, as a way to communicate to the layman that mathematics is not accounting. -- Miguel 14:38, August 17, 2003 (UTC)

• The page has been listed for deletion by jimfbleak. Please see that page for justification and discussion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Angela (talk • contribs) 17:09, August 17, 2003

"Template for pages about probability distributions?"

Should we create a template for pages about probability distributions? I know templates exist for various types of content on Wikipedia, but I haven't found any centralised explanation on how to add one to Wikipedia. -- Miguel 15:05, August 17, 2003 (UTC)

"… looking for some help with TeX …"

Howdy folks. I'm working on a personal project (bits of which might make it to Wikipedia eventually), and am looking for some help with TeX. Specifically, how do I get the "model satisfies" symbol (which is like $\vdash$ but with an additional horizontal bar), and how do I get the reverse of both these two?

Thanks in advance,

Onebyone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Onebyone (talk • contribs) 21:37, October 19, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Onebyone. You probably want $\models$ (\dashv is the TeX thing for but it doesn't seem to work here), but I don't know the reverse of the models symbol... Dysprosia 05:51, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Lovely, thanks. I've actually kludged up a reverse models sign using something like {= \! \! | \>} (can't remember exactly what, it's at home), which will do me for the time being. Onebyone 10:03, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)

About 'iff'

Can I raise the question of whether we want iff in definitions? I don't. I think it's offputting to those not pure-mathematical 'native speakers'. And the idea that it's more rigorous is surely shallow.

Charles Matthews 16:28, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)

In the absence of an explicitly-stated convention, I think it's marginally more rigorous than "if". I have occasionally used "if" in a definition and meant "if but not only if", although not on Wikipedia as far as I remember. I'd suggest that if "iff" is undesirable, the best replacement for the non-specialist reader is "if (and only if)", since the rigorous alternative is to ensure that "if" is never used other than to mean "iff". Onebyone 16:49, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I don't accept the 'rigour' argument, anyway. Using 'if' there is an implied 'one can assert' in front of mathematical propositions - which no one writes unless in a very careful formal treatment. Those who care about this can imagine it all anyway. Better, I think, just to use normal language: 'an X is a Y with property P'. I haven't checked whether the definitions of legal terms on Wikipedia make a point of this type of care. On the whole I think it's wasted: it's hard to imagine the user who needs it. Charles Matthews 17:58, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Well, I agree that the pedantry is not worthwhile if it is off-putting for readers. On the other hand, I'll take no part in any kind of global edit to deliberately introduce ambiguity, even if that ambiguity can generally be resolved from context. You say "I think this care is wasted", but I suspect that for most mathematician authors it will require extra care to remember not to do this rather than extra care to do it!

"An X is a Y with property P" sounds good to me, especially in the standout definition at the top of the article. Nobody writes articles on topics other than maths saying "a person is a saint if and only if they have been canonised by the Church" or whatever. If there's a more formal section of maths in the article, I do think that "iff" and other jargon words should be used in that section exactly as the author would use them in any mathematical writing.

Onebyone 10:35, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

So, my understanding is that the Project isn't trying to prescribe, but is looking for some harmonisation. Charles Matthews 19:02, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

mathematical markup

Hi people. I would like to again raise the question of using mathematical markup (namely the <math> tag) versus plain HTML for mathematical content. I have read what pertains to the problem and I am still not convinced of the point of view explained in the guidelines on the main page WikiProject Mathematics. Here's mostly why.

1. Common ground
   • It seems we all agree that mathematical content should come in a different typeface from standard text, e.g. "Let a be a real number" rather than "Let a be a real number". It is my strong belief that it makes understanding math much easier.
   • The use of mathematical symbols is sometimes inevitable, and sometimes much shorter than plain text, e.g. $\sum _{i=k}^{p}u_{i}$ compared to "the sum of all elements in the sequence with indices ranging between $k$ and $p$". (Not to mention that the example above shows that the TeX processing is wrong: it does not treats the formula as inline.)
   • However, I fully support the opinion that the Wikipedia should try to reach the "layman" as much as possible, and that implies favoring text to formulas (with the exception of the item above).
2. Why imho the reasons against using mathematical markup fall short:
   • inline PNG looks bad because it is too big and not vertically aligned. True indeed ! it is ugly, but why stick with it ? Though I am not an expert, it seems simpler to configure ghostscript for size and centering. (Not too small for legibility purposes.)
   • mathematical markup uses unnecessary bandwidth. That seems overrated, since small png files (the ones that could be replaced by HTML text) are ... small, typically a few hundred bytes (in general much more than the text equivalent except in the example above), so one hundred of them in an entry means maybe 50Kb extra. While not negligible, this remains acceptable even for slow connections. Hence it only marginally slows download speed. However I admit that an increasing number of such files might slow down the Wiki server itself unless solutions are taken (see caching below). I'll be happy to learn more about this. Notice that steps against this overflow can be taken by choosing the HTML if possible or else PNG option, at the possible cost discussed just below. Question: shouldn't that behaviour be the default one ?
   • mathematical markup slows down the server because it has to create the png image through the complicated tex->ps->png method, or testing whether it can be converted to HTML first. Now that convinces me much more (and more or less mirrors my experience). Since it is quite true that a lot of inline formulas can be written using HTML, I believe the conversion engine could work much faster (all right ! easier said than done ;-) . If not, see suggestion HTMLmath below.
3. The argument in favor of mathematical markup is simple but stronger. Though my remarks above plead for conversion to HTML, the main reason for using mathematical markup is to obey the same principle that is behind HTML, XML, CSS, etc: separate meaning from display. By using the <math> tag, you indicate that the content is maths, no matter how you eventually display it (and that may depend who reads it too). You can always change the way it is displayed afterwards, depending on technology (maybe we'll have DSL in ten years :-), on your preferences, and so on. If in two years from now all browsers accept MathML, Wikipedia will obviously render math in MathML. What becomes then of all previously written articles ? If they contain expressions such as 'the real number ''x'' ', then they will have to be changed by hand, while 'the real number <math>x</math>' will be translated into MathML automatically and easily (even for more complicated formulas). And that's only one of the uses of the idea of separating content and display. In short, the main reason for preferring mathematical markup is to preserve the future, i.e. to build something that may last.
4. Solutions ? I do not know of course all the pros and contras of all this, but if you agree that mathematical markup has to be built in, but yields undesirable side effects (like slowing down the whole thing or displaying badly), here are suggestions.
   • Caching: (unless it is already done) if bandwidth remains an issue, why not cache the math pages, i.e. keep copies of rendered pages on another server which will (i) free the main server of outgoing flux (bandwidth problems) and computing time (conversion procedure). I then suggest a move towards the HTML if possible or else PNG choice for better display. If finding willing servers is a problem, why not ask math academic servers throughout the globe ? Many of them host mirrors of much heavier archives such as arXiv.
   • One simple thing: make a difference between inline and separate formulas (TeX users will know that). A better solution for all editors would be of course an automatic recognition of whether a math formula is inline or not (not too hard is it ?).
   • HTMLmath: a simple suggestion helping the rendering machine: add a tag (say <hmath></hmath> for instance) that caracterizes the content as mathematical but is written in plain HTML, with, whenever possible, some simple conventions: usual letters should be italicized, ^ means , etc. So that <hmath>x^2</hmath> will be displayed as the HTML <var>x</var>². That idea remains compatible with a future automatic rewriting, while speeding up the procedure for the moment.
   • At the very least, if the suggestion above seems too cumbersome, let us provide a tag that describes the content as mathematical (even without anything extra). Or replacing the <it></it> tag. I propose <mi></mi> for math italic.

I hope I have not bored you too much with such a longish article. Please excuse the newcomer's stubbornness (or maybe intransigence ?). : Pascalromon 23:12, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

New WikiProject, WikiProject Probability

I'd like to announce a new WikiProject, WikiProject Probability. I started this last week on my user page, and was convinced to move it to a more appropriate home amongst the WikiProjects. It is not quite a list of probability topics, but an effort to catalogue the articles on probability theory and applications, providing a guide (in the form of an annotated table of contents) for those who would like to know more about the topic. I hope such an effort would also expose any defiencies in Wikipedia's coverage of the subject. It is not intended to propose alternate formatting for probability articles. I'd appreciate any and all input from the participants in WikiProject Mathematics. Perhaps WikiProject Probability should even be a sub-project of WikiProject Mathematics?
--Ben Cairns 01:10, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Jan 2004 – Aug 2004

"This article assumes knowledge of" notices

Is it really that necessary to put those "This article assumes knowledge of yada yada yada and blah" notices at the top of pages? If the aim is to help educate the potential reader, it's rather inefficient, unhelpful and redundant in my opinion. Education material should go to Wikibooks. Reference material should stay here. Thanks Dysprosia 09:05, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It's a less-than-ideal solution to a genuine problem. Perhaps we could induce a bit of momentum towards top-down organisation of the whole Project, and get a better overall view, or even consensus.

In my opinion, and based on the fact that mathematical coverage here is getting fleshed out as the weeks and months go by, we could probably also define a more consistent view of the bottom-up 'needs'. There could be a single page telling people things like 'A depends on B' by major topic. One can't really label that exclusively as education; pro mathematicians also are in a constant struggle outside their speciality with questions like "I think this is answered by some bit of algebraic geometry but where does one look for the language and basic statements?" and "I don't understand why they look at X - why is it suddenly fashionable?". These are just upmarket versions of undergrad issues on organisation and motivation, and as soon as one hits the axiomatic approach there is a perceptible requirement to deal with them.

HTH

Charles Matthews 11:31, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Top-down organization is a good idea... perhaps we can instead say "This article is part of the subtopic series/topic/whatever of topic", instead of the "assumes knowledge of"? Dysprosia 22:37, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm ... that would work if you could be sure that manifold would be in the differential geometry series because serious differential geometry assumes knowledge of manifolds. Now quite a few people might say 'we look at manifolds for other reasons' (eg dynamical systems on them). This is actually fairly typical: the Lebesgue integral would be in both the Fourier analysis and stochastic process series. Taken to its logical conclusion, the map looks tree-like: the 'leaves' are the major research areas, which draw on auxiliary subjects (e.g homological algebra), which are based on more elementary subjects, and so on back to a small number of 'root' topics such as trigonometry, school algebra. Depending on one's philosophy of mathematics, this might give a completely unified map, perhaps with naive set theory as the 'root'. You then find that much of the combinatorics side has been left out in the cold, so in a sense this is too POV. I think it does correspond reasonably well to what a lot of people in the field understand to be the natural organisation. Charles Matthews 08:55, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ring theory pages

I would like to reorganize some ring-theory-related pages a little bit, specifically these pages:

• Algebra over a field
• Division algebra
• Rig (algebra)

I would like to redo them as follows:

• Move algebra over a field to algebra (linear algebra). Most of the links to this page are currently wrong, so I suspect the current page title is misleading.
• Add a page algebra (ring theory), that talks about (associative) algebras over an arbitary base ring, and mention that associative algebras are the special case of algebras over a field.
• Add a page for nonassociative algebras, to talk about the general theory of nonassociative algebras. While associative, Lie, and Jordan algebras are special cases, the general theory has a much different flavor. Move the discussion of nonassociative division rings here.
• For division algebra, move the discussion about associative division algebras to division rings, which it currently overlaps with. Move the discussion about nonassociative division algebras to nonassociative algebras.
• Redirect rig (algebra) to semiring, and mention that the term is sometimes used for semirings with zero and one. This is also not standard terminology. Semiring theorists call semirings with zero and one rigs approximately never. As far as I can tell, the term is primarily used by category theorists. -- Walt Pohl 16:56, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well, this is mostly OK by me. The non-associative stuff looks a bit as if it was imposed by a Cayley number fan. With due respect to Cayley, it's mostly as Walt says, and once Lie algebras and Jordan algebras are mentioned, the rest of the non-associative stuff is rather specialised. Charles Matthews 16:18, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

MediaWiki Side Tables

A week or so back User:Fuelbottle created the MediaWiki pages Template:quantity, Template:change, Template:space and Template:structure, containing side-tables of links, and used the msg: function to display the relevant side-table on each of the pages listed underneath each of these categories on the main mathematics page. More recently User:TakuyaMurata has removed the side-tables from all of the articles in the quantity and space categories. Net result is that some articles have side-tables, but others do not. Can we discuss, and maybe reach a consensus, on whether these side-tables should be (a) removed across the board; or (b) re-instated; or (c) maybe retained in some modified form ? Gandalf61 13:03, Mar 28, 2004 (UTC)

I would vote for (a) removed across the board. I also posted a reference at Wikipedia:Request for comments.-- Taku 00:29, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)

I agree - these boxes do nothing except take away space that would be better suited for tables and images that add content to the articles. Footers would be better if this type of navigation is needed at all, but frankly a link to the subject article which in turn has such a list would be better. --mav 07:41, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I appreciate the effort Fuelbotgtle put into making the side tables, but I don't think they contribute much to the pages. -- Walt Pohl 08:44, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Really (frankly) WikiProject Mathematics should have addressed navigation needs and issues quite some time ago. It seems that picky discussions always are going to take priority over crude needs for the general reader to find things. Well, such is wiki life: much easier to complain that sheaf theory is hard to understand, than to do something for the calculus student. More fun to lay down the law about the perfect article, too.

From where we are, though. There is a subtopic structure now fairly much in place. Footers are definitely better. They would be worth adding systematically, in areas where (i) the existing article coverage is already fairly complete, and (ii) there are likely to be readers needing hints on where to go, rather than just a typical List of X topics. So, which areas are those?

Charles Matthews 07:51, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I am ambiguous for either (b) or (c). There are advantages and disadvantages to both side bar and footer. Side-bar is more prominent, footer is less intrusive. I appreciate the effort User:Fuelbottle put into making the side tables, and I think they are a great contribution to the pages. I think the mentioned actions of User:TakuyaMurata were uncalled for, rude, subtracted from the overall clarity and navigability of the Mathematics pages, and added nothing. Kevin Baas 16:34, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I have now changed Template:quantity, Template:change, Template:space and Template:structure into footers. They look better now, and I think they are a good way to navigate the main topics. The last few days someone have created Template:Linear_algebra and Template:Calculus, I think these work ok for navigating subtopics, but if they were footers they could include more topics. Fuelbottle 20:25, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I like a sidebar at the top of the page better -- (1) it shows related topics right away (put impt stuff up high where more people will see it) and (2) I think it's easier to read a vertical list than a row of items. FWIW, and thanks for your work on this. Wile E. Heresiarch 02:33, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

My 2 cents (I know no one asked...):

I don't just think the sidebars (or footers) are possible to work, I think they're necessary in some form. I think the people who are saying, "well, all these people have to do is go to the main topic page, read it, and find a bunch of list pages" haven't really thought the issue through completely. Pretend for a moment that you are learning calculus or linear algebra for the first time (I know...for many of us, this was a long time ago, but pretend). You have essentially no context in which to place articles, aside from the discussion given at the main page. But the most important point is something that I think Charles already pointed out, and that is that math is a cumulative subject with highly complex logical dependencies among topics. One cannot possibly understand the article on Fourier analysis without first knowing what a vector space or Lebesgue integration is. It's true that links are very helpful within an article (click the link if you don't know the term), but this can be very confusing after a while to the reader. For one thing, the reader has no idea the distance between his or her own knowledge and the knowledge needed to read the article; links can't provide this. For another, even with links, the reader may end up kind of blindly wandering around, not knowing the best order of topics that has proven pedagogically sound in the past. Yes, it's true, wikipedia is not a textbook, but the way I see it, in the "ideal wikipedia", it should be theoretically possible for a reader to understand any article by reading simple articles leading up to more complex, in a logically depending fashion. Providing sidebars/footers or organisation of this type isn't writing a textbook at all -- it's just making a tool available so that the existing information is more usable for everyone. After all, I'm thinking there could be sidebars/footers for category theory, homological algebra, or relatively obscure fields, in time. The longer one stays in math, the more one realises how little one knows, and trying to learn a new field without some kind of guidance to the topics and their logical interdependence is difficult for pros, so it certainly won't be easy for most calc students, say.

By the way, it doesn't seem to me there's any reason that an article can't be in more than one series -- e.g. manifolds was mentioned, why can't this be in differential geometry, differential topology, and so on? This would make it difficult to have sidebars, though, and even with footers it could get cluttered if it's used too often.

Revolver 09:26, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

What I think is that (a) wikis do overlapping and parallel systems quite well (redundancy isn't a serious criticism), and (b) centralising, as a point of view, really is POV here (might be my POV). There just needs to be some reasonable agreement on what would be 'clutter' on a page. One footer is OK, surely. More than that ... I'm not sure. So, I get a picture of 'ideal footer' as containing 'stratum before' as well as 'on the same level as these other pages' info. Charles Matthews 09:46, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Reminds me of a quote in Lang's algebra book, I think -- "Unfortunately, it's impossible to present a body of mathematical topics while maintaining a total order", or something equivalent. Really, the whole logical dependence thing seems to me to be something like a directed graph...just throwing out ideas, maybe a single footer, showing (a) the major topics (rarely more than 3 or 4) that are good idea to be familiar with to understand this, (b) similar articles on the same level/topic, and (c) major topics that lead from this. In the hypothetical manifold case, it would seem to me both diff geom and diff top could be part of (c), at least each of these in the modern formulation. If readers want to go "up" or "down" a level, fine, but they only need a handful of places to go. Up close, they may want to be pointed to trees, but at a distance, directions to forest make sense. Revolver 10:02, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Dynamical systems

Not sure if this is the best place to raise this, but our coverage of dynamical systems and chaos theory is pretty inadequate compared to the treatment of subjects like algebra and graph theory. Even the main article at "Chaos theory" suffers from some vagueness - it defines a chaotic orbit, but doesn't really define the terms it uses (dense orbit, sensitive dependence, etc). There are a lot of holes even in relatively basic topics (Poincaré map,box-counting dimension, and James A. Yorke, for example) and there are some other key articles (bifurcation diagram) that have very brief descriptions.

I've filled in a couple holes (the dynamics definition of orbit, for example) and I'll try to fill in some others, but there's a lot of work that needs doing and some of it will definitely require more background than I have.

Isomorphic 00:20, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Agreed that those topics need work. I'll put something on my to-do list. -- Is anyone interested in moving chaos theory to nonlinear dynamics and making chaos theory a redirect? (At present the redirect goes the other way.) "Chaos theory" sounds advertising hype, to my ears. Within the field, people call it "nonlinear dynamics" if I'm not mistaken. Not a content issue, I know, and therefore rather trivial. Happy editing, Wile E. Heresiarch 03:58, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I understand, from reading Strogatz: Nonlinear Dynamics, and a little red book on Chaos Theory which I forget the name of, that Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos Theory, although related, our distinct fields. Nonlinear Dynamics is theoretically prior, but does not discuss Chaos Theory topics, such as the application of ergodic theory. Perhaps Chaos Theory is heirarchiacly "under" Nonlinear Dynamics, but I believe it is a topic large and distinct enough in itself to deserve it's own page and treatment. Furthermore, as pointed out earlier, Chaos Theory is a (relatively new) part of Nonlinear Dynamics, and Nonlinear Dynamics is not Chaos Theory. Kevin Baas 17:15, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There must be bits of nonlinear dynamics that are not about chaos, though. What about all that 'qualitative theory of differential equations'? Well, big in the 1950s, I guess. The usual thing would be, yes, nonlinear dynamics as top-level (most inclusive) article, section in that talking about chaos theory to set it in its context (cf. singularity theory → catastrophe theory for the big-in-the-1960s analogue); and then 'please see main article chaos theory' from there.

The point about gaps is of course a good one. Sign of the times when WP starts looking less like a Cantor-set encyclopedia, mostly gaps. I don't believe we have the basic Frobenius theorem on matrix powers, which is linear dynamics, yet.

Charles Matthews 14:50, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I understand, from reading Strogatz: Nonlinear Dynamics, and a little red book on Chaos Theory which I forget the name of, that Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos Theory, although related, are distinct fields. Nonlinear Dynamics is theoretically prior, but does not discuss Chaos Theory topics, such as the application of ergodic theory. Perhaps Chaos Theory is heirarchiacly "under" Nonlinear Dynamics, but I believe it is a topic large and distinct enough in itself to deserve it's own page and treatment. Furthermore, as pointed out by Charles, Chaos Theory is a (relatively new) part of Nonlinear Dynamics, and Nonlinear Dynamics is not Chaos Theory.

If substance is at all restricted to the geometry of the medium, then wikipedia will always be "like a Cantor-set" - fractal (perhaps multifractal) and in a constant state of flux; emergent - like a dissipative system.

Kevin Baas 17:20, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Charles, I think qualitative theory of differential equations would be a great title. It is true that chaos is only one of several possible behaviors, but all the expositions I've seen describe it in the context of other behaviors, and they usually spend quite a bit of time talking about transitions from non-chaotic to chaotic behavior. Also, they typically say something like "here's a quick review of what linear equations can do, and now let's move on to what's peculiar to nonlinear equations"; it seems WP could do likewise. Anyway, there is a lot to do here. Happy editing, Wile E. Heresiarch 15:25, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

In putting up the bios for Lefschetz and Pontryagin, I noticed they both moved into that area at about the same time, after the work in topology for which they are also known. I guess at the time the theory started out asking for periodic orbits, which is like a conventional topological question, in that you might be able to prove existence theorems. Then, I guess, you get the Poincaré return map near to a periodic orbit, as a cross-section near a fixed point; and it is the mapping that induces that is typically the source for the discrete-time iterations that also are studied. Also J. E. Littlewood worked on the Van der Pol equation at that time. Smale went into Anosov flows and suchlike shortly after his topological work on the Poincaré conjecture. That's about global structure of flow on manifolds, and builds on Morse theory. When computing became more of commodity, things (it seemed) changed in the direction of being able to look much more closely at given examples; rather than having to be guided by mathematical analysis; there were more things that came up that were clearly true, but not provable. I never went into this field much; so post-1970 I have just heard the jargon that everyone else has. Charles Matthews 15:41, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

User:Charles Matthews/WikiProjectMathematics thoughts

I have posted a discussion document at User:Charles Matthews/WikiProjectMathematics thoughts; and invite people to comment (maybe there).

Charles Matthews 15:21, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

What to do with references?

Hi, Charles. You seem to be the cult leader for the mathematicians (!) around the Wikiland. So I will post my questions here, and hopefully I can get a feel on the consensus, if any.

1. Wikipedia's recommended style goes against the mainstream tradition in the mathematics community. Which one should we use?

Doe, John; Doe, Jane (1900). Some paper. Some Journal 1, 1–99.

versus

Doe J., J. Doe, Some paper. Some Journal 1 (1900), 1–99.

2. Wikipedia requests references from authors. And I did try to stick with their guidelines. But somewhere along the line I must ask myself: why bother with all the details if they are not going to help the target audience, which are mostly internet surfers who have no interest in digging up the real sources? Why shouldn't we just give them a general reference (some textbook) and be done with it? I fully understand that no one ever forced me or anyone to provide any references. But I still think it would nice if we can agree on a guideline here and get it out of the way.

What are your thoughts?

[bow] Peter Kwok 02:44, 2004 May 27 (UTC)

Well my thoughts are to not confuse the ==References== section with the ==Further reading== section. Use the first for actual references used to create the article and use the second for more general books people can read in order to get more information on the subject. But I leave this to the people actually working on this set of articles. --mav 05:31, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

Ummm ... well, this is just on my own behalf. The use of references to original papers should be fairly limited; it helps to cite the paper with the first proof of a theorem, not least because it makes clear that 'proved in 1935' is saying something about the publication date, rather than when a proof was first found. I don't think we have a standardised citation style. As mav said, other references are probably there to help with background reading — rather than try to give a full bibliography of a subject. There is some general pressure on WP to be ever more academic and scholarly; but footnoting and supporting everything with sources goes against the normal, good survey style. Charles Matthews 08:20, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

1. I assume Peter is refering to Wikipedia:Cite your sources. I use this style in the few articles that I've written (for consistency), but I don't really care.

2. Mav's point is a good one, which I intend to use in the future. Charles is also right that many references destroy the flow of the text. In my opinion, statements that are in "any good textbook" do not need to be referenced just put one or two good books at the end of the article. More obscure statement should ideally be referenced, so that the reader can check them. The underlying reason is that I'm personally rather distrustful towards the Wikipedia articles (no offense to anybody, but it's just too easy for a mistake to slip in and remain unnoticed), so I feel I need to double-check some statements and it helps then if a reference is provided. By the way, I don't agree that the target audience is "mostly internet surfers who have no interest in digging up the real sources," especially not for the more specialized articles in mathematics.

Jitse Niesen 11:22, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I think that settles the issue of using general references-- at least for basic results that should be included in most textbooks.

As for the style issue, I don't see any consensus yet. Not that it is an urgent issue now. But the longer it is put off, the harder to convert the references later-- especially when the servers are soo-oo sloo-ooo-oow. For now, I will go with Wikipedia's recommended style, but I will keep an open mind in case things change in the future. Thank you all.

Peter Kwok 18:24, 2004 May 27 (UTC)

Proposal on Chinese surnames

I was updating some information for Chern and encountered a typical problem in writing Chinese suranames. In most regions that use traditional Chinesee people put the last name last, just like the western names. However, in most regions that use simplified Chinese (except Singapore) people put the last name first. When the two styles are mixed, like Dan Sun and Zheng Sining in the Chern article, it becomes confusing. (In this case, Sun and Zheng are surnames. But sometimes Dan Sun is written Sun Dan; and Zheng Sining, Sining Zeng!)

This has been a well-known problem for identifying Chinese on passports. So what people sometimes do is to capitalize or put a red underline under the surname in passports. I propose that we do the same here and

capitalize the first instance of the surname of each Chinese mathemtician in an article-- at least when there is reasonable suspicion for ambiguity.

You can see whether capitalization is useful in the Chern article.

Thanks,
Peter Kwok 20:20, 2004 May 28 (UTC)

P.S. I mistakenly added an entry for "Dan SUN". Later I created another entry for "Dan Sun". So the former should be deleted now.

I took care of this deletion for you - I'm not sure if this followed policy but it seemed alright.

Derrick Coetzee 00:33, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Derrick.
Peter Kwok 22:02, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

I think, speaking only about usage in mathematics, that it is standard to have surname last. (When it comes to weiqi, this would be wrong, in my view! But the point would be to use here the name commonly expected.) Charles Matthews 05:40, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Do we have to begin every article with the word "In"?

I mean, yeah, it is a good style, but not the good style, right? How about a little tolerence for people who sometimes want to put the "in" part at the end of the first sentence (or not using it at all)?
Peter Kwok 19:01, 2004 Jun 29 (UTC)

Yes, it becomes dull. There are a few other ways. But in general: the first sentence is important to define the area; the first paragraph should be able to stand on its own as a summary. Charles Matthews 19:06, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I concur with Charles that we should keep this policy. Although it is banal, it has substantial benefits, not the least of which are consistency and contextualization. Kevin Baas 22:49, 2004 Jun 29 (UTC)

I have no problem with providing a summary in the first paragraph. But I also think that some kind of varieties can't be bad, especially when the first sentence already specifies the context. Right now people just go around and "fix" the first sentences of almost all mathematical articles so that they all begin with the word "In". This kind of practice only creates frustration and doesn't add value to the articles or to the readers. Since there is no ownership in Wikipedia, I think it is more important for all of us to be more tolerant of other people's style and focus more on the content instead.
Peter Kwok 15:12, 2004 Jun 30 (UTC)

Well, although I'm guilty of this myself, one shouldn't get too attached to one's "style"...as articles get edited over a period time, the style seems to morph from the original contributor's (if there was one major initial contributor). And, it's difficult to draw a line between style and content. I understand your concerns about how these little unwritten conventions can get boring or annoying. But, I think they're helpful if they're not applied blindly.

My own opinion is that differences in style or formatting tend to distract from content. It's not that any one choice of style is really bad, but when it's consistent, it's one less thing for the mind to worry about when reading. Keep in mind, one reason it may seem banal is because many of us are looking at many articles every day, editing over and over.

Re: "In mathematics,..." yes, it appears (it IS) banal after a while, but the reason it's there is to give a random reader contextualisation. If an article just launches into cohomology, or functional analysis, or even undergrad ODE's, a random reader may not be able to tell the general subject area, i.e. they may not even recognise that the article is mathematics. Of course, most people who manage to get to these articles will know it's mathematics, but a lot of people wander around exploring, or hit the random page button, or (most importantly) may reach the article because of an incorrect disambiguation.

Myself, I've wandered into some of the physical science, chemistry, engineering articles and actually not known what subject they fell under. It's easier in those areas to give more specific areas (i.e. physical chemistry, electrical engineering, cosmology, etc.) because even the general public is familiar with these terms. Most people have no idea of the subject areas in mathematics, beyond "arithmetic", "algebra", and "geometry" (all high school level). Very few will know that "topology" or "combinatorics" or "knot theory" are areas in mathematics (topology has another meaning in English, and knot theory sounds like something you learn while sailing on a boat), so beginning with these terms might not do much more than saying nothing.

My general opinion is this: the first sentence should be useful and agreeable to both a random wandered and a person dislocated from a bad disambiguation. This usually amounts to a short definition or description, beginning "In mathematics". Not every article has to start that way. There's no need for the article on functional analysis to read, "In mathematics, functional analysis..." when "Functional analysis is a branch of mathematics which..." The first paragraph (or, introductory paragraphs) should be useful and agreeable to anyone who has the remotest chance of really understanding part of the article, and it should lay out the essential facts that you would want someone to read if they never got past the first paragraph. Then, the rest of the article can begin to assume where the typical reader is.

Revolver 00:08, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

> Not every article has to start that way

Thank you. That's all that I am saying. No one is going to tell a story about Little Red Riding Hood before he gets to the point. And everybody (including myself) agrees that the first sentence should put everything in context. The only problem is: do we have to all write exactly the same way? For God's sake, this is supposed to be an encylopaedia, not a piece of application form. Yes, there will be random readers who have no prior knowledge of the subject and may not immediately recognize the context. But all they need to do is to read through the first— I am not asking for even the second, just the first— sentence. Is that too much to ask for?

Readers are only one side of the equation. There are users (i.e. editors), too. Wikipedia allows users to freely edit articles. Everybody's work may be overwritten over time unless he wrote something that nobody ever reads. We all know that before we contribute. But isn't it exactly why it is more important to nourish mutual respect among users? Right now I find it hard to work in an environment where style police who have nothing new to add just run around to make other people write like them. (No, Charles, Kevin, and Revolver, I am not talking about you. But I suspect that veterans like you guys are already aware of what's going on.) What IF I do the same to those style police? Wouldn't they be pissed off as much as I am?
Peter Kwok 15:43, 2004 Jul 1 (UTC)

I think there is a house style; and I think there is also a wiki style, based on general tolerance, and not insisting on matters inessential to salvation. One way to look at it, is that style changes alone aren't so much; an edit to change the style is certainly better if it also adds some substance. Charles Matthews 16:12, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

So, for instance, a change in style that allows an argument to read more clearly or an example to be better understood is good "style change"; making a notational change that (the editor believes, at least) makes an equation read easier on the eyes or be more transparent, is good; reorganising sections so they follow a more natural order is good; changing tex or math expressions to conform to what's usually used is okay;, but...making cosmetic changes, rewriting a paragraph without making it much different or better, or constantly changing "generalisation/generalization", "neighbourhood/neighborhood" is prob not necc. Revolver 20:27, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Fair enough. I don't deny that some style changes are good, or even necessary, and I don't mind people overwriting articles with richer and better content. It is the ones that added no substance got me. I regard the "In mathematics" changes as cosmetic and think that we should give people more leeway on that issue. If you disagree, fine; but let's draw a line somewhere. Now some people even begin to change journals' standard abbreviations to long names, which is not even recommended by Wikipedia! Not to mention replacing HTML-styled formulae with <math> tags, or adding a line in the article which won't show up in the display, etc. (The intensity has been increased recently. I believe some of the later changes were made just to get me after I expressed my disagreement.) Do those cosmetic changes really do the readers any good? Even though it is not exactly vandalism, however, this kind of style vandalism is just as demoralising.

If this place really believes in the "everything goes" philosophy, then do let things go. However, if this place believes in maintaining a house style, then maybe we need some kind of guidelines or governing body to give users some protection. Right now I feel that I am being targetted up to the point that it is intolerable.

Peter Kwok 22:57, 2004 Jul 1 (UTC)

I see this is a thing with you and User:Michael Hardy, who is more or less a founding Wikipedian. It is unlikely that this is anything personal, actually. As you are both good contributors, I hope you will just leave this for a few days, first. Charles Matthews 07:20, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I understand why you said that. But after waiting a few days, then what? Style vandalism is not going to go away. I am not asking to put a restraint order on a certain individual— I am just asking to regulate a certain behaviour. May that viloator be Michael or me or even you or whoever, I just think that certain conducts are doing more harm than good to this place even though they might be unchallenged in the past.

I read the WP pages and have already learned all about "be bold", "edit and don't just talk about it", and that kind of things. But we all know it is how flame war (or, in Wikipedia's case, edit war) starts. I could have gone into a mud fight and rebutted line by line to see who was a better stylist. I could have even mass reverted articles. But I didn't. It is pointless to committ myself into making the place better if the place is not even what it advertises to be. I want to make things better. And in order to make things better, we need rules. I just come here to share knowledge as a hobby, not to compete with people to see who has more time and higher seniority to have the last say in style. And I can't freely express myself if there is no rule to prevent style vandalists from targetting newcomers and defacing one's work without adding any new and meaningful substance. This kind of behaviour defeats the purpose of Wikipedia and is a big turn-off for serious contributors.

I will take your words for now. But, man, if people don't get serious about this issue, then this place is no fun any more.

Peter Kwok 17:51, 2004 Jul 2 (UTC)

If you actually want me to discuss this with Michael Hardy, at any point, I will. You can send me email. Charles Matthews 18:07, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Comments on Peter Kwok's concerns

I agree with your statement that mutual respect is important. I have always been polite and respectful to you, and moreover, when I noticed your existence I was glad to see another person contributing articles on mathematics, and that remains my evaluation of your work on Wikipedia.

You seem to think that I have targeted you some how. I have not. I do not edit articles without intending some identifiable improvement.

You wrote: "Right now I find it hard to work in an environment where style police who have nothing new to add just run around to make other people write like them."

Would you tell me who those people are? You seem to think I am one such person. I have contributed a far larger number of new articles on mathematics than you and most others, and a far greater amount of substantive mathematical content to article initiated by others.

I also do minor edits such as a small spelling or punctuation correction in a long article. I did several of those in the article you created on the LYM inequality. You stated on the discussion page that those edits contribute nothing. I disagree. But if you don't agree that they contribute anything, that is not a reason to infer that I was personally targeting you. After I created uses of trigonometry, jengod made some small changes for which I saw no need. It is possible that that person knows some reason of which I am unaware why the changes were improvements, and it is also possible that they are not. Even if I disagreed with those edits, I would still conclude only that another person disagrees, and not that I am being targeted or attacked.

As for moving "In mathematics..." to the beginning, there is a reason for that that I tried to explain to you earlier; I did it because I think the article is in several respects better that way, and I would be specific about that if you appeared to be interested.

You wrote: "I don't deny that some style changes are good, or even necessary, and I don't mind people overwriting articles with richer and better content. It is the ones that added no substance got me. I regard the "In mathematics" changes as cosmetic and think that we should give people more leeway on that issue. If you disagree, fine; but let's draw a line somewhere."

Do you regard "cosmetic" as meaning unnecessary or bad? Making an article esthetically better makes it easier to understand and to remember.

You wrote: "Now some people even begin to change journals' standard abbreviations to long names, which is not even recommended by Wikipedia!" ... because some readers may otherwise not understand the abbreviation. If you disagree with that, you could say so, rather than acting as if there is something personal about it.

You wrote: "I believe some of the later changes were made just to get me after I expressed my disagreement." On this point I have good news that will reassure you. You suggested that I may be among those doing this. But I have not done this. When I disagree with the way someone edits or with their opinions about how others should edit, I address the actual content of the disagreement, saying why I think what I think. I do not personally attack them.

You wrote, "Do those cosmetic changes really do the readers any good?". I would say that if they do no good then they are _not_ cosmetic. "Cosmetic" by definition means they make an esthetic improvement in the article, and therefore they do some good.

You wrote "If this place really believes in the "everything goes" philosophy, then do let things go. However, if this place believes in maintaining a house style, then maybe we need some kind of guidelines or governing body to give users some protection."

_Some_ guidelines are in the style manual: usually the title word or title phrase is highlighted at its first appearance, one eschew's superfluously capitalized letters in section headings, etc.

You wrote: "I could have even mass reverted articles." Did the things you object to happen in more than one article? You have mentioned only one to me. What were the others, if any? - Michael Hardy

Michael - I'm sorry that my offer, made above, to deal with Peter's comments above by email was not taken up. This is really not a good discussion. I personally do think you have been stepping over the line recently, in edit summaries, and in other ways (I am not happy with a style change you made recently in something I wrote). Appeals to how many edits you make obviously carry a certain weight; but they don't actually make up for a constant refrain that others lack 'common sense', etc. 'Open sentence' is standard usage in parts of philosophical logic - whatever you may think of it. And so on. I think you should accept that irritation has been caused, and try to work out how to go forward from here. There is nothing to be gained by 'winning' such an argument. There is also a guideline on escalation. We have to accept that there will be friction, from time to time; and not treat such occasions just as a rebuttal-fest. Charles Matthews 19:00, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Clarification: I am not one of the founders of Wikipedia

I fear one of Charles Matthews' comments may be construed by some to mean I am one of the founders of Wikipedia. In fact, Wikipedia was founded early in 2001 by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales; the latter has put about $500,000 of his own money into the project. I first edited articles here in October of 2002, if I recall correctly. Axel Boldt was for some time the only person extensively editing mathematics articles here, and I surmise that he is the original creator of the list of mathematical topics. Michael Hardy 01:50, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Typesetting of mathematical formulas

I know it doesn't really matter, but I am always confused by how to write sentences with math in them and saying things like "where m is the mass, b is the buoyancy, and c is the charge") etc. Some people stick commas inside the tex markup and treat the whole thing as a continuous sentence:

If an equation, such as

$a+b=c,$

is encountered, then c is the sum of a and b.

some people treat the equation like a graphic, with lots of extra words necessary to keep it in complete sentences:

Summing two numbers is represented by the following equation:

$a+b=c$

In this equation, a and b are the summands, and c is the sum.

Some people put variable descriptions in a bulleted list below the equation, etc. Can we have a little blurb about a nice method of formatting sentences? I just want some advice for a clean style for myself. - Omegatron 16:05, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)

Links to surnames of mathematicians are often very bad things

Just as the untutored lay person knows who is being referred to when one mentions Shakespeare or Einstein by surname only, so mathematicians know who is being referred to when one mentions Abel by surname in the context of a math article. But a link to Abel is (of course) a link to the son of Adam and Eve who was killed by his brother in the book of Genesis. And how could anyone expect a link to Study to be a link to an article about the mathematician Eduard Study? Sometimes a math article, or substantial parts of one, are intended to be read by people who know little about mathematics, and in such cases linking to "Euler" does not inform the reader as well as if one links to Leonhard Euler. Consequently I think in most cases first and last names should be used. Michael Hardy 02:04, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There appear to be two points about this:

(a) that surname-only links may be ambiguous to the reader or require disambiguation as wikilinks;

(b) that fuller names in links carry more information to the reader anyway, in the absence of the problems noted under (a).

I'm sympathetic to the first point, as I imagine most people are. I find the second point less convincing, really; if there were no link then surname-only does offer much less, but the point is weakened when there is a page to refer to. It is partly a generation and background thing, but I'm happy with Swinnerton-Dyer, just as much as with Peter Swinnerton-Dyer who is really Professor Emeritus Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, Bart. when it comes down to it.

Charles Matthews 16:47, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The main reasons that it became standard to use only surnames for references in published text, have been for considerations of space, and the tediousness of typesetting. That is, they were publisher-centric. However, since, Wikipedia is (essentially) free from such constraints, we can afford to be more reader-centric. Thus, more use of full names is a good thing. The presence of a link lessens but does not eliminate the benefit to the reader of fuller names. Of course, judgment is required to know when more information is too much information. Paul August 15:48, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it's just a matter of publisher-friendliness. Readers take additional time to read long names too, and there becomes a time when "Leonhard Euler" looks uselessly long to them. So perhaps in introductory articles, the first appearance of Euler could be written "Leonhard Euler", and the next ones can be just "Euler". Otherwise really-big-names like "Euler" could stay as surname only. (Surname-only links like [[Study]] or [[Abel]] are another matter and should always be avoided, indeed, IMO.) --FvdP 19:18, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Note that according to policy, a link is only given when a name is first mentioned or when it is used in a new context. Thus, asking that every link use the full name isn't inappropriate — the ones that aren't links, which is most of them, can go right ahead and use just the surname. Link redundancy and first-name-redundancy coincide.

That said, an advanced article is justified in excluding the first name of well-known mathematicians, even from links, since it can reasonably expect a more experienced reader. Derrick Coetzee 23:18, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The case for LaTeX

In recent days, I have been adding <math>...</math> to every inline math expression I have encountered, starting with articles in Category:Curves and category:Bundles (mathematics). At the time, I thought that the HTML wikitext markup for equations was provisional, and that by TeXifying expressions, I was improving the articles. I didn't know about the existence of the Wikiproject Mathematics page. I'd like to offer my apologies for breaking convention.

That said, I'm perfectly astonished that HTML wikitext markup for inline equations and variables is an official recommendation (not truly "official," but you know what I mean.) I think it's a bad idea, so allow me to flesh out my case here. My proposal is that we should use <math>...</math> markup for any and every expression related to math, including formulae, single-letter variable names, and all inline expressions. Here's why:

1. Content != presentation. The entire reason that XHTML and CSS were created from the ashes of HTML 3.0 was to separate presentation from content. We can see the effectiveness of that design decision right here in the Wikipedia: I can change the "skin" of the site (which is just a CSS file) and the look of the site changes automatically, in spite of the fact that the content of every page remains the same.
   Doing this required tags that were solely devoted to presentation, like <i>...</i>, <b>...</b>, and <u>...</u> to be removed from the standard. They force presentation and content to mix. So why do we require mathematical expressions to be represented in the exact same manner? Why should a variable name be "italic?" What, precisely, does that indicate to the user?
2. Consistency. TeX is capable of creating beautiful PNG representations of math expressions, but the fonts and styles it uses for PNG do not match the fonts and styles used for the present "wikitext math" style. TeXifying everything will make all variables and equations look consistent. We won't be able to avoid TeX for more complex formulae anyway; we might as well let TeX choose the font for us.
3. TeX allows the user to decide. If we put all math expressions (including inline expressions and even variable names) in the <math>...</math>, any user will be able to change the look of all math-related pages with a single tweak to their preferences. They can view everything as HTML unless absolutely necessary, or they can view everything as PNG for maximum clarity. That all users' default preferences are not set to the latter is no reason to avoid LaTeX markup.
4. TeX allows the admins to decide. If, in the future, some brave developer decides to replace our LaTeX engine with MathML or some other more fitting standard, they can write a bot that automatically converts all LaTeX expressions on every page. Alternately, they may decide to change the default fonts for TeX (I don't know if this is possible, but I assume that it is), and again, all math expressions in the Wikipedia will respond to the change. Neither scenario is possible with "wikitext math," which would have to be changed by hand.
5. PNG images are small. That's the entire point of PNG, and why we use it in the Wikipedias in preference to GIF files. An expression like $\int _{0}^{\infty }e^{-x^{2}}\,dx$ only takes up 680 bytes; this post I am typing is much larger. It would be difficult to achieve better compression without throwing away image quality! In a giant page full of these types of expressions, the bandwidth "wasted" downloading the PNGs is negligible compared to the bandwidth required for (1) the article text, and (2) the Wikipedia logo in the upper left corner.
   Now, if you're using a graphical browser, right-click on the previous image and view its file name. Then compare that file name to the one on the WikiProject Mathematics page (where I got it from.) The filenames are exactly the same--5aa3fbdb28e2859859317b8a9d316fa9.png. So server space is not wasted for common expressions like variable names, either, even if they are forced to render as PNGs. There will be only one copy of the PNG file for $\,\!\theta$, and anyone viewing our math articles will have it cached.
6. TeX can emulate inline HTML, anyway. One objection to the use of LaTeX markup (and, in my opinion, the most legitimate one) is that some browsers cannot view inline PNG, and the resulting alt-text is incomprehensible. This is true; however, the MediaWiki LaTeX engine creates inline HTML already! Compare:
   • HTML style: f(x) = a₀x² + (a₁x)cos θ
   • TeX inline HTML: $f(x)=a_{0}x^{2}+(a_{1}x)\cos \theta$
   • TeX with forced PNG rendering (with \left, \right, and \!\,): $\!\,f(x)=a_{0}x^{2}+\left(a_{1}x\right)\cos \theta$

But it is true that mixing inline PNGs with ordinary article text can have a somewhat jarring effect; this is unavoidable, and I happen to not mind it at all (I have seen textbooks that have odd line spacing due to inline math expressions; they still sell well.) One possible compromise is to avoid forced PNG rendering unless absolutely necessary (that is, do not use "\!\," or other "artificial" spaces if you can possibly help it), so the user will see the maximum amount of inline HTML. They can still use their preferences to turn PNG rendering on, so we should expect that PNG versions of all of our expressions, equations, and variable names will exist.

I admit that such a proposal will require us to avoid the more traditional style; $x\cos \phi$ renders as "squashed" inline HTML, and would require parentheses if we did not allow artificial spaces: $x(\cos \phi )$ or $(x)\cos \phi$ or $x*\cos \phi$, etc. It's easier to simply allow PNG rendering for unsatisfactory expressions, but nevertheless, this proposal does address the inline objection.

I'm not surprised that my sentiments have been expressed before: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive1#Moved_from_Village_Pump (see comments by User:Pascalromon.) I echo his/her sentiments, but I don't think we need changes as drastic as those that he/she proposed. So how about it, everyone?

Ardonik 19:26, 2004 Aug 3 (UTC)

You write I happen to not mind it at all. If most people agreed, we wouldn't be having the discussion, though. Wiki tends to look provisional, and there's a reason (it is). Now, work on format is constructive; but I don't know enough TeX to be happy with it. We have a kind of compromise at present. I expect it to remain until there is a clear technical shift in rendering, making inline TeX the obviously right way to go. Charles Matthews 21:52, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The beauty of TeX is that we can avoid inline PNGs (which I am not opposed to avoiding) and still reap the other benefits of TeX mentioned above by keeping inline expressions in <math> tags. As for not knowing TeX, you don't have to! You add a lot of useful math content to the Wikipedia, Charles, and I figure that the job of less math-literate people like me is to follow in your footsteps, tweaking things here and there. TeXifying equations is one way to do that.
Perhaps it would be to everyone's benefit to mark the "old style" as provisional, so as to encourage intrepid Wikipedians to update it at their convenience to the "new format" without shunning the old style completely? --Ardonik 22:28, 2004 Aug 3 (UTC)

I think inline PNGs are ugly. I don't mind the use of <math> tags if they are properly translated in inline HTML; in fact, I prefer to type <math>f(x)</math>, rendering as $f(x)$, to ''f''(''x''), rendering as f(x) [side remark: I am surprised to see that both expressions render differently; on my display, I prefer the latter]. Unfortunately, not all mathematical expressions are translated into HTML, and I think that these expressions should be either translated by hand to HTML, or put on a separate line. -- Jitse Niesen 20:19, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I will admit that it often takes some degree of coaxing to convince TeX to leave some simple expressions as HTML (for instance, using \(space) seems to invariably cause PNG conversion.) TeX isn't perfect, but I still think the advantages of keeping expressions TeXified more than outweigh the disadvantages.

If the community consensus is to avoid inline PNGs, then the next step is to discuss strategies for keeping TeX from PNG conversion. I am assuming that the conversion program ultimately responsible is latex2html. As seen from this page in the official manual, there are any number of ways to induce image conversion, but there appears to be no option by which one can force HTML output. (Can someone who is more familiar with the world of TeX correct me on this point?) That rules out convincing the developers to change program parameters; I think we'll just have to come up with a list of TeX features to avoid or replace in order to ensure inline HTML generation. But now is the right time to discuss such things, and this is the right place to do it.

Ardonik 07:39, 2004 Aug 5 (UTC)

Use of \mbox

We can use \mbox{ } to force spaces without inducing PNG conversion. Compare:

	Appearance	Markup
HTML	a2b cos x	''a''<sup>2</sup>''b'' cos ''x''
TeX (PNG rendered)	${a^{2}}b\cos x\,\!$	<math>{a^2} b \cos x\,\!</math>
TeX (without \mbox)	${a^{2}}b\cos x$	<math>{a^2} b \cos x</math>
TeX (with \mbox)	${a^{2}}b{\mbox{ }}\cos {\mbox{ }}x$	<math>{a^2} b \mbox{ } \cos \mbox{ } x</math>

Can anyone think of any other HTML syntax that TeX can't handle without PNGs?

Ardonik 11:21, 2004 Aug 5 (UTC)

TeX/HTML currently incompatible

On line bundle, I attempted to view the article using all possible choices of user preferences, and none of them were able to convert things like the "Z/2Z", "RP2", "CP2", etc. (blackboard bold, fractions, etc.) to inline HTML. When strict HTML was selected, of course it returned tex code. The point is that there is no way to use inline math mode while avoiding PNGs. TeX and HTML simply "evolved" from different origins and haven't quite become compatible. I expect this problem will be solved in time. In any case, there's no telling that the solution won't require detailed combing over and editing in the future, anyway. So, I agree completely with you in principle, but think it's too early to work in practice. And I don't think it's that big a deal...it will be a lot of work to make the switch when HTML and TeX become compatible, but with enough people working on it, shouldn't be a problem. Revolver 21:02, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If the \frac notation cannot be used inline, then we should employ a forward slash instead. TeX understands it; see http://turing.une.edu.au/~amth247/Lectures_2003/Lecture_03/lecture/, and in particular the section of fractions and roots. It recommends that the slash notation be used in favor of \frac wherever it would make an equation easier to read; thus "Z/2Z" would become $Z/{2Z}$. In order to prevent the "RP" and "CP" in line bundle from rendering inline as PNGs, it suffices to avoid switching to fonts like \blackbb (and it makes perfect sense that HTML would not be able to handle those.) Again, we can reap the benefits of TeX without generating PNG files. --Ardonik 02:33, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)

If the community consensus is to avoid inline PNGs, then the next step is to discuss strategies for keeping TeX from PNG conversion....That rules out convincing the developers to change program parameters; I think we'll just have to come up with a list of TeX features to avoid or replace in order to ensure inline HTML generation. But now is the right time to discuss such things, and this is the right place to do it.

Maybe so. I don't know, maybe this comes from seeing articles evolve over months or a couple years, but I don't think this is a urgent problem in any case. Try to avoid the most obvious problems (e.g. I think blackboard bold should be entered as bold for the moment) but it's nothing to get too uncomfortable over. For now, it's probably enough to sit back and wait for the inevitable HTML/TeX compatibility to happen, and then let things sort out. None of these articles are really going to look like they do at present in 2-3 years, anyway. Adding good content and improving some of the weaker "elementary" articles (fundamental thm of calculus, etc.) seems far more important. (BTW, why is FTC listed first in the "calculus" box, before derivatives even?) Revolver 21:15, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It's not urgent (what is urgent in this Wikipedia?) but I feel that we do need to address it. LaTeX is not some relatively new technology waiting for extra features to be added by enterprising programmers. It is mature and fully featured; latex2html itself was around before 1993. There is nothing to wait for. The TeX tools were designed to empower those who love math, and now that they have been enabled in the MediaWiki projects, they are at our disposal. They do everything we want. What reason do we have to avoid them?
Of course I agree with you that adding content is more important than worrying about style, but by formalizing a system now, we ensure that future Wikipedians will know what guidelines to turn to when creating new math and science articles, and that people like me will know how to TeXify articles without ruining them. A thousand times over do I prefer consensus to inaction. --Ardonik 02:33, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)

P.S. FTC? Calculus box? --Ardonik 02:33, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)

Fundamental theorem of calculus. Look at the "topics" box on the right. FTC is the first topic. Revolver 19:55, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree that <math>f(x)</math> is more logical than ''f''(''x''), and that content is more important than format, but I also agree that the HTML version looks better. Supposedly this will all be resolved when mathml is working. Should we just wait until then? (and how long will that be, anyway?) - Omegatron 02:47, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)

Well, we have "experimental" MathML support right now, but as for how long we'll have to wait before MathML becomes a widespread standard, the answer is perhaps indefinitely. How could a company that failed to correctly support even CSS 1 be bothered with adding MathML support? Sure, Mozilla might get it eventually (or someone might develop a fork of Mozilla that supports it), but until aforesaid company makes Mozilla or Firefox the default desktop browser, few people will be able to view MathML. Additionally, when MathML support is fully enabled, we won't be able to take advantage of it without putting our expressions in <math> tags first, so we will be better off TeXifying our expressions now than continuing to use raw HTML and piling up the amount of conversion that will need to be done later.
Honestly, what do we stand to gain by waiting? --Ardonik 03:37, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)

A few points. (1) Actually there is a free plug-in for Explorer available and Mozilla et al. have already a reasonable support for MathML (but you need to download some fonts). (2) What happens to <math> is determined by a home-grown transformation that might be changed if desired. (3) MathML is not really functional right now. I think the last point is important. There should be at least one way to see the ideal end-result. -- Jan Hidders 11:22, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I used the MathML player when I was still in IE. It seemed to work fine, and is free. MathML is probably the ideal future solution, but ideals are commonly nonviable.

Maybe we can make some sort of compromise? add an attribute "inline" to the math tags ( <math style="inline">, etc. )to make it format as HTML if at all possible, or in small-lettered, center-aligned TeX if not? And when converting to HTML, change the span.texhtml { font-family: serif; } to something that renders prettier? Perhaps just leave it in the default font? - Omegatron 13:36, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)

From what I can gather, TeX's chief weakness is its inability to guarantee the generation of inline HTML (by default, of course; user preferences would always be able to force PNG generation.) I am convinced that this can be worked around, but I openly admit that the solutions (like using \mbox{ } instead of a space) are cumbersome. Another weakness is that the inline HTML is rendered in a different font than the HTML that surrounds it. Only the developers can fix this problem, as they control the MediaWiki CSS.

At the same time, responders seem to generally agree that there are tangible benefits to preferring the <math> markup to ordinary HTML.

I see the workings here of a possible compromise:

1. Content and accuracy are more important than anything else. Compared to these, the beauty of a page's math should be an afterthought.

(I'm afraid I can't agree that considerations of beauty "should be an afterthought". Of course content and accuracy are of paramount importance, but if an article is so off-putting, that it isn't read, well … Paul August 16:34, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC))

1. Allow people to continue creating and formatting equations in the "wikitext math style" currently described on the WikiProject Mathematics page, but recommend use of the <math> tag for future entries.
2. When using LaTeX, the "house style" will be to avoid generating PNG images for inline equations and variables. Anyone TeXifying wikitext math must be careful to preserve the HTML format for all inline expressions and variables; when this cannot be done, they should leave the expressions and variables as they are. Conversely, if the TeXification of a page's math expressions is done correctly, there should be no reason to remove it.
3. The WikiProject Mathematics page will feature a tutorial on how to keep LaTeX from generating images so that Wikipedians can share tricks like \mbox{ } with others. I can help to write this.
4. Expressions on their own line may freely be converted to PNG, so house style will be to prefer that complex expressions remain on their own line whenever possible.
5. Convince the developers to use a prettier font-family, font-weight, font-style and font-size for inline HTML conversion (what specific settings would be ideal I do not know.)

Does this sound like a reasonable set of guidelines? Would anyone be opposed to them, and if so, what can I do to improve them? --Ardonik 19:10, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)

"Well, the ideal solution would be …"

Well, the ideal solution would be to just have any and all articles that use mathematical expression to jettison HTML entirely and have the whole thing be a LaTeX file. This would eliminate all the problems. (I'm being facetious, of course...but also trying to indirectly point out what the problems are short of doing this.)

From what I can gather, TeX's chief weakness is its inability to guarantee the generation of inline HTML.

It's a bit more than that. For people who dislike the ugly "discontinuity" of alignment between HTML and PNG, and find it personally disruptive, solving this problem would still these people to choose "always HTML" and so give up inline PNG images altogether. But why should they have to do that?

The guidelines sound alright. I still believe that for relatively simple things, it's best to leave in HTML as we've always done. I'm talking about the greek letter "π", for instance. Or, single variables, like "x" or "y". Nothing gets me more than seeing a variables that stands out nearly TWICE AS TALL as the text size I'm reading. For more complicated inline expressions, I have a lot more tolerance and understanding. But, even something like Z/2Z, doesn't seem to need texifying. Of course, I'm sure I draw the line much farther than most other people.

Revolver 19:50, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Here is where you and I disagree--I think anything related to math should be TeXified, so as to indicate that the information being marked up is math and not prose. I've already outlined my reasons for preferring this, so I'll have to accept that we will differ on this point. But remember that with inline HTML generation, the user should not see any drastic difference between &pi; (π) and <math>\pi</math> ($\pi$). The only real difference to the user will be that they can change the look of the second one on the fly with a single change to their preferences. --Ardonik 20:48, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)

Your assertion is just not true. Obviously, you have never attempted to do this on IE personally, or you wouldn't claim this. Here's the problem: too many math expressions are not changeable (or won't change) to HTML. So, even after changing preferences, the user is STILL bombarded with a ton of inline math expressions, esp. at articles like curve and a lot of the category and algebraic topology articles. These things can't be changed to HTML, and given that there will always be a wide variability in the size people choose for their fonts, someone will be left looking at disruptive text. Revolver 17:45, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Crazy idea

This may seem like a crazy idea, but it would be something I would be willing to contribute time toward. There is a company which makes a semantic interface onto LaTeX (Scientific Works), which you can enter into directly (not WYSIWYG, but logical interface). It takes very little time to enter stuff, about as fast as using a word processor. Then, there is a viewer that comes with it which is free for anyone to download on the internet. So, once you make a file, you just direct someone to download the viewer and view the file with the viewer. There is absolutely no TeX code involved at all.

While this is clearly not workable for the wiki pages that people work on, it might be possible to do periodically for some of the more important math and technical pages, I'm thinking of Wikipedia 1.0 in particular and its updates. The number of articles here wouldn't be too much, it would be much better visually, and both the wiki-HTML-PNG version as well as the Works version could be available for people to choose.

Otherwise, I'm just starting to think, while the CD-ROM viewers of 1.0 will have the option of which way to see it, the people reading the paper version will not.

Revolver 20:10, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The best way to integrate any document-viewing plugin is with XHTML's <object> tag; say, something like

 <object data="proof.tex" type="text/plain" width="400" height="200">
   alternative text (i.e. inline HTML for the proof)
 </object>

sort of like an "applet" for math pages.

Yet I would still prefer the current system of integrated LaTeX to this--the user doesn't have to know that we're using a LaTeX back-end, and we can swap it out with something more effective (read: MathML) at any time. It's definitely not as easy to use as a WYSIWYG editor, though.

Ardonik 20:57, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)

My own two cents: In principal, I completely agree with the idea of writing all math code in TeX. That being said, I must object to actually doing this at present. I personally think that all inline TeX—whether rendered as HTML or PNG's—looks terrible. More than once I've avoiding reading a math article (let alone bothering to edit it) simply because I don't want to get a headache trying to wade through the changes in font sizes. In principal, the TeX->HTML shouldn't look bad, but it does. Yes, I know this can be fixed by a simple change to the wiki CSS file, but no one seems to be doing this. In the meantime, I'd much rather have a article that I can read rather than one which is semantically "correct".

Point 2: I think the real push should not be towards getting everyone to TeXify everything, but rather towards getting the wiki developers to implement MathML output. I believe that MathML is a viable solution now! Not some distant future. MathML looks reasonable in Mozilla browsers and plugins are available for other 'less competent browsers'. If you ask yourself why there isn't better browser support for MathML, the answer is pretty obvious: there just isn't much demand for it. What's needed is a site like Wikipedia, with its large quantity and quality of math content, to start outputing things in MathML to increase demand. Who should we be talking to, to push this matter?

In the meantime, I will continue to use pure HTML for everything inline simply so I can read it. I will starting inputing TeX as soon as wiki starts outputing MathML. As to having to rewrite all the articles when this happens, I don't think it's such a big deal. It's not like it has to be done all at once. Articles are getting edited all the time, they can be converted piece by piece. And until they are, it's not like they're going to be unreadable.

Fropuff 04:08, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

For changes to the CSS file you could do a request at the wikitech-l mailing list [1]. I suspect that if you make clear that this is a common complaint in the math community there will be a quick response. I'm not really an expert on CSS matters, so I cannot do this myself. As far as real support of MathML goes, see the discussion on this in this newsgroup last week (in August 2004) with subject "Status of MathML support". -- Jan Hidders 09:51, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fropuff, you think that neither TeX's PNG rendering NOR its inline HTML look good? Honestly, is the serif font on your browser that ugly?

I've performed an experiment in the interest of furthering this conversation. I have just TeXified the entirety of the determinant article, trying as much as I could to keep inline statements from rendering as PNGs. I will disclose now that in four areas, I failed to accomplish this task, though not for lack of trying:

1. The \approx symbol in TeX apparently forces PNG output, in spite of the existence of the &asymp; entity in HTML. I could not find a suitable replacement for this.
2. I was unable to specify a bold font for the "R" characters in ${\textbf {R}}^{n}$ without generating PNGs. From the documentation I read today, it seems that the command to do this is \textbf, but it apparently has the same effect as \mathbf in the MediaWiki.
3. The correct way to prevent $|A|$ from looking spaced out is to use the \left and \right commands, but for reasons unknown to me, <math>\left| A \right|</math> displays as a PNG: $\left|A\right|$.
4. I couldn't find an inline sqrt or a square root symbol. Using \sqrt{} guarantees PNG output.

Anyway, here are links to the old version and the current version. Compare the way they look. Except for the places I mentioned above, how similar are the two articles? Do those of you who dislike TeX's HTML output still dislike the text that you see?

It took me several hours of browsing through manuals and latex files to fully TeXify the article (I'm still learning TeX, too), but if any of you feel that I've mangled it or inserted something contrary to fact, please revert my changes.

Ardonik 11:33, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

Determinant#Derivative is somewhat messed up. The first two expression render differently of the last two... IMO major, i.e. long, expressions should (be allowed to) render as PNG and be placed in a new line, for clarity; there should be no "tricks" when writing <math> so that it is easy to edit and convert to some later format; expressions and/or single letters/symbols inline with text should be <math> also, although uglyer it is more clear.--Nabla 12:40, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

I honestly think the old version of the determinant article looks far better. If there isn't a whole lot of inline TeX, the effect isn't too bad, but take a different example with a higher density: compare the current version of Representable functor to the last unTeXified version [2]. Again, I think the old version is far more readable.

"Honestly, is it the serif font on your browser that's ugly?" No, I actually approve of the serif font. It's the size that bothers me. PNG's are too large, the text of the TeX/HTML is too small (hard to read in fact). When the two are used side by side its just a mess. I know this may sound nitpicky, but I honestly get a headache trying to read that stuff.

Fropuff 14:26, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

I agree with Fropuff that the inline PNGs are very ugly and with Ardonik that it would be preferable to use <math> tags to deliminate maths expressions. The discussion that Jan pointed to shows that we will probably not have MathML output in the near future. The only satisfactory resolution, as far as I can see. is to improve the translation of <math> environments to HTML, so that for instance <math>|A|</math> automatically renders as |A|. -- Jitse Niesen 18:19, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Is it just me, or do the HTML sup constructs show up really low? Compare x² to $x^{2}$. This makes articles that contain many superscripts very hard to read because the superscripts are hard to distinguish from regular text. TeX/HTML renders the superscripts much better in my opinion. Gadykozma 14:14, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The both 2's look to be at the same height for me - the bottem of each "2" just below the top of the "x". Paul August 16:33, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

The TeX version looks awful -- the x of x^2 protrudes far below the "baseline" of text. The HTML version is balanced in height and more readable. Revolver 09:00, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Maybe it was a linux problem, or the specific version of Mozilla/Galeon I usually use. Now I'm on windows and both look fine. Gadykozma 18:59, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

A clarification

A Clarification -- one more reason I prefer HTML. Besides lots of things not being able to render in HTML, there is another big problem. Many people urge me to change my preferences. But then a lot of expressions I wish were KEPT in TeX get changed to HTML when I don't want them to!! This happens for example at the article pi. Long, single-line expressions get chopped up and rendered often in a silly manner. Besides, for single-line, I WANT TeX. Why should I be force to give it up?? Revolver 09:04, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Good point. The preference "HTML if possible or else PNG" renders fractions as HTML, which looks terrible (at least in my browser). A possible solution is to change the software so that all single-line expressions are rendered as PNG, even if they could be rendered as HTML. With single-line expressions, I mean lines that contain only a <math>...</math> construct, and possibly white space. I do not know how feasible this is technically. What do people think of this idea? -- Jitse Niesen 10:22, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Its strange nobody seems to have mentioned the project for a paper version of wikipedia, meta:Paper Wikipedia. This seems very relevant to the question whether LaTeX or html markup is to be preferred. Gadykozma 18:23, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Editing the articles on set theory.

Although I've been editing for about a month, I've just discovered this page.

I've been doing more and more edits to the articles on set theory, and I'm contemplating rewriting the article Set. I posted some discussion concerning my proposed changes at Talk:set and Talk:naive set theory but so far no one has responded. Perhaps no one is watching these pages, or has nothing to say regarding my posts ;-) However, at the risk of being accused of not being bold, I'm reposting them here, just in case anyone cares. If not I will go on blissfully editing to my hearts content - until someone objects.

(The following comments and proposal is now pretty much moot, as I've made the changes I proposed below. Paul August 21:00, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC))

I think there is too much overlap between the articles Set and Naive set theory.

In reviewing the change history for Set, I find that the earliest versions of this article (can anyone tell me how to find the original version, the earliest I can find is as of 08:46, Sep 30, 2001) contained the following language prominently placed in the opening paragraph:

"For a discussion of the properties and axioms concerning the construction of sets, see Basic Set Theory and Set theory. Here we give only a brief overview of the concept." (The articles referred to have since been renamed as Naive set theory and Axiomatic set theory resp.)

As subsequent editors, added new information to the beginning of the article, the placement of this "brief overview" language, gradually moved further into the article, until now it is "buried" as the last sentence of the "Definitions of sets" section. Consequently I suspect that some new editors are unaware that some of the material being added to this article is already in, or should be added to Naive set theory or even Axiomatic set theory (e.g. Well foundedness? Hypersets?).

If it is agreed that, Set is supposed to be a "brief overview" of the idea of a set, while Naive set theory and Axiomatic set theory give more detail, I propose two things:

1. Add something like: "This article gives only a brief overview of sets, for a more detailed discussion see Naive set theory and Axiomatic set theory." to the opening section of the article Set.
2. Move much of what is in the article Set to Naive set theory or Axiomatic set theory.

Comments?

Paul August 20:23, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

I have moved the sections on "Well-foundedness" and "Hypersets" to Axiomatic set theory, which I think is a more appropriate place for them - based on the idea expressed above that the Set article shold be a "brief overview". Paul August 07:34, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)

I should have added a third item to my proposal:

3. Rewrite the remaining parts of Set in a more elementary style. (The idea being that Set would be at the elementary/high school level, Naive set theory would be at a high school/college level and Axiomatic set theory at a college/graduate school level)

If you want to look at a first draft of a rewrite of Set, see: Paul August/Set.

I've now completed my rewrite of set Paul August 21:00, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

lastly, a couple of questions about notation. Why is "{}" preferred over ∅ for the empty set? "{}" looks kinda ugly to my jaundiced eye. Also is A\B preferred over A - B for set theoretic difference?

Actually I've got lots more questions, (especially about markup - are there any standards?) but that's enough for now. If this is not really the right place for all this, then my apologies. Paul August 03:47, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)

Have at it. Your changes sound good to me. I think ∅ is far more common than {}. I've always preferred A - B to A \ B, but the latter seems more common and is used (presently) in the article Complement (set theory) — Fropuff 05:03, 2004 Aug 19 (UTC)

(Note: I've taken the liberty of moving the disccussion on "{}" versus ∅ which used follow here to the following new section below. Hope that's koser ;-) Paul August 18:14, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC))

A friend of mine recently pointed out to me another article that should be considered in a revision of our set theory coverage: Language of set theory. It's a poor article currently, but you might be able to take it somewhere. I was thinking perhaps that it should highlight how other mathematics can be built using set theoretic language (for example, how relations, functions, and ordered pairs are expressed as sets.) Isomorphic 18:05, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes this article needs some help. I'll see what I can do. Paul August 21:00, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

Notation for the empty set: "{}" vs. ∅

(Note: I've taken the liberty of moving the disccussion on "{}" versus ∅ from the previous section to here. Paul August 18:14, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC))

Why is "{}" preferred over ∅ for the empty set? "{}" looks kinda ugly to my jaundiced eye. Paul August 03:47, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)

… I think ∅ is far more common than {}. Fropuff 05:03, 2004 Aug 19 (UTC)

The reason that some prefer {} over ∅ is that many popular browsers such as explorer and konqueror cannot display ∅. -- Jan Hidders 08:46, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

hmmm all my browsers Safari, OmniWeb, IE (all on Mac OSX) display it fine. Paul August 12:29, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)

My IE under Windows XP doesn't and neither does Konqueror (on Mandrake Linux). For the record: IMO we should use ∅ anway. In fact, I think that if looks are important there is no problem as long as there is a free, open source browser that can be easily installed on several platforms, is standards-compliant and displays the article as it is suppposed to look. But that's just me. :-) -- Jan Hidders 13:06, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Based on the above It looks like there might be an emerging consensus that &empty is better than {}. any objections? I wouldn't mind going around and changing {} to &empty. But it's a little work, and I don't want to do it if anyone is just going to change them all back. Paul August 20:17, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)

You have my vote. But we/you should probably first try to formulate a policy on the project page. That gives you something to point to when watchers of articles who didn't follow this discussion start complaining. Formulating such a policy and trying to make it sound sensible is IMHO a good sanity check to see if this change is ad-hoc or can be fitted in the broader picture. -- Jan Hidders 21:46, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Jan makes a good point. I've frequently included HTML entities for various symbols in my posts, and sooner or later someone will come along and change them because they don't display in browser X (almost always IE). A few of the named entities that won't display in IE (with default fonts on my Windows 2000 system) include

&empty; (∅), &notin; (∉), &lowast; (∗), &otimes; (⊗), &lang; (⟨), &rang; (⟩), and &alefsym; (ℵ)

The unnamed symbols that I most frequent want are U+210F (ℏ) and U+21A6 (↦). These I've avoided using altogether as I think support for them is probably worse (although they both dispaly fine in my default browser). My personal vote is to say anything in Unicode is fair game (it's valid HTML after all), but I may be in a small camp on this one. -- Fropuff 23:04, 2004 Aug 23 (UTC)

It's very annoying that on some browers I use (I use multiple computers and multiple browsers) many of the set theory articles or just articles with lots of HTML set theory notation are completely unintelligible, because they read as "A (BOX) (B (BOX) C) = (A (BOX) B) (BOX) (A (BOX C)), unless A = (BOX) or B = (BOX).", or worse "(BOX) (BOX) A = A if and only if A = (BOX)". With many of these, I don't even bother to read them, I just leave. I suspect lots of other readers do as well. Revolver 17:29, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Having said this, there are some symbols that are impossible to render HTML (intersection?) and so I often end up using it anyway. Revolver

So Revolver, does this mean you prefer we stick to using "{}"? Paul August 18:14, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

For now, yes. It's not as good as << empty set >>, but it's better than << (BOX) >>. Revolver 07:32, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'd say it is better to use the TeX version ($\varnothing$) than {}. This is, at least, both standard notation and universally visible, if somewhat ugly when set inline with normal text. -- Fropuff 21:48, 2004 Aug 27 (UTC)

Well I also like $\varnothing$ better than {}, just about anything would be. Should this be the preferred way? Paul August 23:56, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

I make a very strong vote against &empty;. Why? Almost all our readers use IE, which doesn't support it! I like <math>\varnothing</math>, because the software can render it according to user preferences and HTTP browser information, which is the best solution for everyone (if it doesn't do this now, at least the potential is there). Derrick Coetzee 01:39, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. I'm only wondering if there is a difference for you between $\varnothing$ (<math>\varnothing</math>) and $\emptyset$ (<math>\emptyset</math>). On my Mozilla (under the pref. "HTML when possible" for math) the latter renders better. -- Jan Hidders 01:56, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The same difference there is between $\epsilon \!\,$ and $\varepsilon$, between $\phi$ and $\varphi$ and between $\sigma$ and $\varsigma$. — Miguel 23:21, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

Oh, yikes, Firefox's math HTML rendering is inconsistent with TeX! — Miguel

Depend's on what you're preferences are. When they both render as PNG's I like the \varnothing one better. But certain preferences will convert \emptyset to the HTML &empty;. So maybe that's the better one to use. -- Fropuff 02:17, 2004 Aug 28 (UTC)

For me, under Safari for any math rendering preference setting:

• ∅ (&empty) looks like a circle with slash - my preference
• $\varnothing$ (<math>\varnothing</math>) looks like a circle with a slash- a little bigger circle, slightly more horizontal slash - my second preference.

With either "recommended for modern browser" (not sure what this pref means exactly) or "Always render PNG", then

• $\emptyset$ (<math>\emptyset</math>) looks like a rather ugly oval taller than wide with slash. - don't like this one much, but better than "{}"

While with "HTML if possible or else PNG"

• $\emptyset$ (<math>\emptyset</math>) looks the same as &empty.

How does IE render <math>\emptyset</math> ? Paul August 04:18, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

IE, with default preferences renders both <math>\emptyset</math> and <math>\varnothing</math> as PNG's. The former looks like a tall, skinny oval with a slash through it, and the latter as a circle with a slash through it. -- Fropuff 04:33, 2004 Aug 28 (UTC)

Given all this, I vote for $\emptyset$, because it yields HTML where settings allow it and works in IE. It's also very common in LaTeX documents. Do we have consent? Derrick Coetzee 04:38, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I support a <math>...</math> based solution. Personally, I would prefer \varnothing over \emptyset, but if the majority style here is \emptyset, I can stick with that, too. FWIW, in my LaTeX documents I usually have a global redef in the global preamble, as in \def\emptyset{\varnothing}, and then use \emptyset later on. BACbKA 23:25, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think the notation {} is too confusing. We should use some variation on the slashed O sign, even if it doesn't render properly everywhere. Gadykozma 05:03, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In my opinion {} or { } is better because it still has a connection to the set notation due to the braces. whereas $\emptyset$ is a completely new symbol and the connection with emtpy set has to learned and cannot be inferred. MathMartin 22:28, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If by "completely new" you mean "widely used in papers for decades"... keep in mind this is the default LaTeX empty set symbol. Derrick Coetzee 23:12, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This was my personal opinion (I should have said so). Of course we should use the symbol which is most common, if this is $\emptyset$ so be it. MathMartin 21:41, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I would say that {} is the empty set, while $\emptyset$ is a symbol for it. Which notation to use should depend on the context. — Miguel 18:01, 2004 Nov 26 (UTC)

Out of curiousity could you provide an example where it is better to use $\emptyset$ than {} ? MathMartin 22:00, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sure: $\{\emptyset \}$ is more readable than $\{\{\}\}$. — Miguel 23:06, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

Avoid notational conventions! Sometimes "{}" works better, sometimes "∅" works better; sometimes TeXvc works better, sometimes it doesn't. There are special circumstances; if a common browser cannot render a version, then it's justified to warn writers against that version. Still, the only basis for debate in that case is to determine whether the special circumstance obtains, and the only conclusion to draw is that the number of options is lowered by one. Of course, people that are interested in æsthetics are free to discuss their personal preferences as much as they like; I have my own opinion on this matter, which I'd be happy to chat about on my talk page or even by email. But Wikipedia does not need a standard for every notational debate. -- Toby Bartels 23:55, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

∪ symbol displays as box?

Someone edited the set article, changing each set union symbol "∪" (i.e &cup) to an uppercase U, because they were displaying as boxes. Is there a problem with rendering ∪? It looks ok for me (Safari, IE, OmniWeb on MAC OSX). Does anybody else have problems with this? Paul August 19:48, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)

The right thing to do if your browser does not display "& cup ;" is to use <math>\cup</math>, never to replace it with "U". — Miguel 23:41, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

Schaun MacPherson

At User_talk:ShaunMacPherson, I have invited that person to discuss on this page his implicit decision to move hundreds of articles titled ABCD's theorem to ABCD's Theorem with a capital T, and similarly for conjectures, lemmas, axioms, etc. In case anyone can be more effective in persuading him that I can, I mention that here. (If you are Schaun MacPherson and do not wish to pursue the matter, please feel free to delete this section.) Michael Hardy 20:40, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think the word theorem, lemma etc. should be capitalized in this context. But it's a minority view. A number of editors threw out my preferences and capitalized them. Gadykozma 23:51, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sep 2004 – Dec 2004

New Article: The algebra of sets - request for comment.

I've just created a new "set theory" article: The algebra of sets I'd be interested if anyone has any comments. In a sense it's an expanded version of Simple theorems in the algebra of sets the latter being primarily just a list. One could argue that consequently the latter article is no longer necessary. But I can see the possible use of an article which simply lists results. Comments? Paul August 03:53, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm - a few questions relative to the integration with the rest of WP. What you mean mostly is 'here is some explicit information about the Boolean algebra of sets'. Which might be useful to some people, indeed. Since the 'set of all sets' is chimerical, your 'algebra' is not precisely a Boolean algebra; the subsets of a given set X would give a Boolean algebra. I think this kind of placing would be helpful; and probably renaming the page. Charles Matthews 08:07, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Charles, thank you for your comments. As to the title, I took my lead from Simple theorems in the algebra of sets. The word "algebra" here is not being used as a technical term, as say in "Boolean algebra" or "linear algebra" but rather as a descriptive term, for this collection of facts concerning "the basic properties and laws of sets, the set-theoretic operations of union, intersection, and complementation and the relations of set equality and set inclusion." The motivation for using the word "algebra" beyond it's descriptiveness, is to help the reader make the connection to the perhaps more familiar notion of algebra of numbers. It is a relatively common way of describing this material. For example Robert R. Stoll in Set Theory and Logic has a section titled "The Algebra of Sets", as does Seymore Lipschutz in his Set Theory and Related Topics (Schaum's Outline Series). Having said that I'm not opposed to finding a better name for the article. I had also considered simply "Set algebra" as an alternative name. What name are you proposing? As you say, and as is pointed out in the article, the power set of a given set is a Boolean algebra. As to your other suggestion of "this kind of placing would be helpful" I'm not sure what this means, could you please be more specific? Thank you again. Paul August 16:41, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

I would like to see even more analogies with usual algebra. A) You never say explicitly which operation is the analog of addition and which of multiplication (does this make sense? If not, the article should explain that too). B) Analogs of (a <= b) => (a+c <= b+c) should be highlighted. C) perhaps to put to the right of every inequality the anaolg (if it exists) in usual algebra? Arrange everything in comparison tables? I feel I'm starting to float. Think about these. Gadykozma 12:13, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Gadykozma, thanks for your comments. As far as the analogy holds, union is the analog of addition (in fact the union of two sets has been sometimes called their "sum") and Intersection is the analog of multiplication. The article used the order of their mention to try to make this clear (perhaps a well placed "respectively" is needed.) As I partially said above, the use of this analogy is to help motivate these ideas for the reader, and to help place these facts concerning set theory in an appropriate setting. Including the fact that A ⊆ B ⇒ (A ∪ C) ⊆ (B ∪ C) is probably good in it's own right, that it continues the analogy is also nice. But I think we should be careful about relying too heavily on the analogy. It is not meant (by me at least ;-)) to be an article about the analogy. Paul August 16:41, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

cdot and times

In LaTeX markup, does \cdot equal \times?, that is do they represent the same mathmetical function or is it just a center-aligned dot? -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 13:08, 2004 Sep 12 (UTC)

\times: $5\times 5=25$ ; \cdot: $5\cdot 5=25$ -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 13:08, 2004 Sep 12 (UTC)

Yes, they are both multiplication. \cdot is more appropriate for advanced texts and \times for beginner level texts. Also \times is used in advanced text to denote "special" kinds of multiplication like vector product or Cartesian product. Gadykozma 14:49, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

variable letters

Probably doesn't matter, but is there any standard for variable letters? For instance, most people use i for the imaginary number and f(t) for a function vs time, but I am used to engineering convention, which uses j for the imaginary number (because i is current), and x(t), since f is frequency in fourier transforms, etc. should we just use whatever variables are conventional in each specific topic? and what about a topic like fourier transforms which are used in contexts with i for current but also used in unrelated contexts where the majority of people would be used to i for imaginary number? - Omegatron 01:34, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)

• Don't use j for the square root of -1, unless the article has a strong engineering flavor, and in this case warn in the beginning.
• Other issues you raised are pretty free. Not that I like x(t), but I don't see it as very distracting to understanding. Gadykozma 02:11, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

ok. should you mention this on the wikiproject page? yeah, and x(t) is confusing because of f(x). but then it would be confusing when you transform to X(f), etc. etc. - Omegatron 02:21, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)

In some cases, x(t) is the most appropriate, e.g. the vector-valued function of time x(t) = (x(t), y(t), z(t)). Revolver 05:48, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Simple formulas

Some of what you say just isn't true: "If you enter a very simple formula...this will not be displayed using pgn but html, like this:", but this does display as a PGN for me. If you ask me to change my preferences, then many legitimate LaTeX formulas will becomes emasculated (see pi.) To see what I mean, you say the L^infin is "horrid", but it looks exactly the same as the L^p above to me! Why is one horrid and the other not?? Revolver 20:43, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC) (Moved from project page 23:15, September 22, 2004 by Gadykozma)

It depends on your preferences, browser rendering of HTML, etc. I have tentatively converted to the "everything in math tags no regular text in italics" camp, and even switched my preferences to "render everything in PNG". It takes a couple articles to get used to but then I liked it. Most math websites look like that anyway. - Omegatron 20:46, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC) (Moved from project page 23:15, September 22, 2004 by Gadykozma)

That's what I have now!! I've had it for weeks or months that way and still hate it. Perhaps it's my HTML text size relative to PNG. The PNG's are just TWICE as tall and FOUR times as big as HTML. This is what he meant above by "horrid". Revolver 21:16, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC) (Moved from project page 23:15, September 22, 2004 by Gadykozma)

Actually, I think they were showing that the HTML rendering of TeX (not the PNGs) and the plain old HTML letters look different. The TeX rendered into HTML is in a serif font and kind of weird sizes, so it doesn't match with the rest of the text. I guess some people like it like that. You can change it in your user css if you really want, although you, Revolver, have always PNG, so it doesn't matter. - Omegatron 23:56, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

Also, does it do this for you?: do the PNG's go below the bottom justification of the HTML text? It does for me. It's just the size of them, it's that they protrude below the line of text, so that e.g. the "p" in L^p is no longer a superscript, it reads horizontally on the same level as an HTML "p" (or very close). Revolver 21:19, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC) (Moved from project page 23:15, September 22, 2004 by Gadykozma)

They look centered in the middle of the line to me. I used Firefox. Bigger than the rest of the text, but I am used to it, and it looks better than the TeX rendered as HTML. You see it like that on webpages all the time. - Omegatron 23:56, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

OK, I guess I didn't write it quite as well as I intended. What I had in mind was to convey two points:

• How Wikipedia displays simple formulas with the default parameters, which is what most users use (this need to be said!)
• That people don't like when you change their text from one to the other (the only thing that everyone agreed on in the very very very very very very very long discussion).

Anyone has a better idea how to convey this information? Gadykozma 23:31, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Upright differential operators

I was extraordinary happy when I saw that subscripts that are not variables should be upright Far from everyone has understood that. Another thing people, even here at Wikipedia, don't put uphright is the differential operator, and I dislike it from the bottom of my heart! ;-) Wouldn't it be a good idea to advocate such "d":s, in integrals and derivatives, too be put upright rather than in italics? - Jolson 17:40, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In my experience, the "d" is upright in England but italicised in the United States. Being a United Stateser myself (my own personal conventions notwithstanding), I've seen quite a few examples of italics in the US and no exceptions. (More precisely, every time that I've ever noticed an upright "d" in published material, it turned out that the material was published in a foreign country.) Speaking more broadly, I'm against instituting unnecessary conventions on Wikipedia, and caution you (to avoid upsetting some people) against editing articles to fit your conventions. But by all means make your own "d"s upright when you write a new article (or rewrite an old one), if you wish. -- Toby Bartels 01:10, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Pages for review

Hi guys. Could you review my page Marcinkiewitz theorem for correctness, fullness and especially readability? I tried to write it so that it will be readable (enjoyable?) by any graduate student or equivalent. Thanks Gadykozma 15:09, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the name is usually Anglicized as Józef Marcinkiewicz. I've changed the links accordingly. Terry 06:01, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, sorry. Gadykozma 14:01, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Here is another one I'd love input on, especially since I have no clue about the topic: Hearing the shape of a drum Gadykozma 14:24, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OK, you want research pages here is one loop erased random walk. Tell me what you think. Gady 19:00, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Another to review, if you please, for completeness and especially accuracy: Small set.—msh210 22 Nov 2004

And another: Modulo. —msh210 21:32, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Math 1.0

I found Wikipedia:Math 1.0 in a dusty corner. I think the goals and information needs to be merged with this WikiProject. Please take a look and salvage what you can. -- Netoholic @ 19:45, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)

Well, it's kind of optimistic. It would be great to have the mathematics of the 1990s, and the twenty-noughties even, properly covered here. In many cases that would involve just writing articles with 'long words' in them: red links to concepts that we don't have. So, sometimes it looks like we should just expand coverage of 'core areas', with the long-term goals of getting to the frontier of research. Sometimes I add surveys of topics, to move things ahead; or add isolated (at present) theorems or conjectures. What really does need to happen is that the coverage as a whole stays balanced, even if it's a bit humiliating that the Atiyah-Singer index theorem is 40 years old, and we really still can't state it exactly, yet. Charles Matthews 19:57, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thue-Siegel-Roth theorem

Looks like the math formula need some work in this article - Thue-Siegel-Roth theorem, figured someone here could fix them. -- Netoholic @ 04:41, 2004 Nov 2 (UTC)

Yes, the second had an inequality reversed, thanks. Charles Matthews 07:51, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Computability logic

As I have been editing a lot of articles in theoretical computer science lately, I noticed many references to computability logic on the pages. The ones I checked were inserted by User:Kntg. He is also the main editor of the computability logic article. My guess is the real name of the user is Giorgi Japaridze and he is hyping his own stuff [3]. I am unable to decide whether his ideas should be included in wikipedia or not, they seem to be relatively new. What do you think ? MathMartin 18:06, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Since nobody responded, I looked into the matter though I do not know that much of either theoretical computer science or Wikipedia policies. As the article on computability logic explains, it is a new theory proposed by Japaridze in 2003 (MathSciNet lists only two papers on computability logic, both by Japaridze and published in 2003 and 2004; I've found no other references). User:Kntg has inserted a lot of references to Japaridze's work: they may be the same person or related (academically). I think there is no harm in having the computability logic article, though the status of the theory should probably be explained better. In my opinion, some links to the computability logic article are over the top (for instance, those at algorithm and computer science). Can somebody please give some further guidance to MathMartin? -- Jitse Niesen 13:22, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've had my eye on this for a while. The papers (or at least the one(s) in Annals of Mathematical Logic) are respectable. The links are not worth the prominence they are sometimes given; but I haven't done much about it except to tone down the coverage a little. At the moment it falls into the category of being a little bit annoying. We do have at least one active logician (User:Chalst) who could be consulted. Charles Matthews 13:38, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My main objection are the links he inserted in many computer science articles not directly related to the computability logic article. I will remove them where necessary. I will leave the computability logic article as is, althought I do not think recent research material (2003, 2004) is appropiate for wikipedia inclusion. MathMartin 14:03, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Japaridze and Computability Logic

I only just noticed this discussion. I had seen the disproportionately high profile the topic has taken, and wondered if maybe Japaridze was promoting his own material. A few points:

1. While I'm sure that whoever did these edits has some investment, careerwise and/or emotional, in the topic, there are reasons to doubt it is Japaridze, namely whoever it is hasn't done a terribly good job of summarising the topic; I would normally expect a researcher to do a better job than this;
2. I don't follow the detail of Japaridze's work myself, but a close colleague of mine does, and it is the real thing: solid research work that is well-motivated and perhaps has the potential to make a real impact;
3. The edits are gung-ho and lack perspective but they were not abusive and they have stopped. Take care when reintroducing appropriate perspective not to throw away perfectly good content: that cure would be worse than the disease. ---- Charles Stewart 21:55, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

PS. A point about the "no research" rule: the interpretation given at the authoritative Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not says:

Primary research such as proposing theories and solutions, original ideas, defining terms, coining words, etc. If you have done primary research on a topic, publish your results in normal peer-reviewed journals. Wikipedia will report about your work once it becomes part of accepted human knowledge. But of course you don't have to get all of your information on entries from peer-reviewed journals. See Wikipedia:No original research.

which I understand as saying that once ideas have passed the test of peer review, they are fair game for summarisation on Wikipedia. So Japaridze's work passes that test. ---- Charles Stewart 22:01, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. I think the business has been handled adequately, so far; the edits have been 'POV', obviously, but the WP response has been 'professional', i.e. proportionate, patient, and not too reactive. Charles Matthews 08:32, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Trace

I'm wondering if we have an article on trace as it pertains to my understanding of it in crypto. That is, if $\beta \in GF(2^{m})$ then $\operatorname {Tr} (\beta )=\sum _{i=0}^{m-1}\beta ^{p^{i}}$ (forgive the crappy LaTeX, this isn't an article, just trying to get my point across ;)). I see trace (matrix) and field trace, but neither seem to be a good fit. If someone who understands these trace articles better can confirm that neither is what I'm speaking of, let me know and I can write up an article about the trace and its properties. Thanks. CryptoDerk 00:09, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

It's the special case of the field trace appropriate in a finite field of characteristic two (notation here: I think you mean that with p = 2, or GF(p^m). That's because any trace map is the sum of images of an element when you apply all elements of the Galois group to it; and here the Galois group is cyclic, generated by the p-th power map. Charles Matthews 08:45, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. CryptoDerk 15:46, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Zech?

Does anyone know who Zech's logarithms are named after? I tried various google searches and the only thing I can find is that there's some guy Boris Zech who published something in 2004 (although since the title is in German, I don't know what it's about), but MacTutor doesn't seem to have any info on anyone named Zech. Mainly, I'm just curious but it'd also be nice to have that info in the article. CryptoDerk 20:26, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Category:Topological spaces and List of manifolds

It seems to me that Category:Topological spaces and List of manifolds largely duplicate one anoher. (More accurately: they would duplicate one another if they were full.) Seems like an unnecessary redundancy. Perhaps we can do as follows: Add Category:Manifolds as a subcategory of Category:Topological spaces; list manifolds only there (not in the parent category, per WP:CG), and get rid of List of manifolds. What say you all? —msh210 15:00, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

No. We have had a similar discussion. Lists are in general more useful and flexible than categories. I don't understand the argument, actually. Redundancy is not a criticism on a wiki. Charles Matthews 17:02, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

SKI combinator calculus

I just created the beginning of this article and would like to invite my fellow mathematicians to contribute and edit. I've just started to learn Wiki LaTeX, but I think I did a pretty good job with things. --L33tminion | (talk) 04:01, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry to break the news, but it doesn't seem that there's anything in SKI combinator calculus that wasn't already in the article on combinatory logic. Perhaps SKI combinator calculus (and SKI calculus) should redirect to combinatory logic, and anything in SKI combinator calculus not already in combinatory logic should be merged there. -- Dominus 18:03, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Looking at the two articles, I'm not sure that they are redundant, even though they do cover some of the same information. If a merger is necessary, I don't know where to begin. However, I think that an article on the SKI system could exist independently from the article on combinatory logic in general. --L33tminion | (talk) 15:41, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Spoof edits alert

User:Jim Slim vandal attack

User:Jim Slim, clearly mathematically literate, has been adding plausible nonsense to general topology and functional analysis page. Please will all look out for 'tweaks' of mathematical articles that are jargon-filled rubbish. There was a whole hoax page. This is an exploratory vandal attack, testing us. Charles Matthews 14:23, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Since the user page claims that none of his edits are good faith, I suggest that we don't seek any good addition he has made amidst the rubbish, but rather have an admin block the account and do a blanket automatic revert. BACbKA 14:49, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I blocked him right after Charles put the note on the page. CryptoDerk 15:27, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

There was another hoax page created recently, which I deleted. Can anyone verify that Cayley-Newbirth operation matrix is genuine? I now think it is suspect. Charles Matthews 22:00, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I checked it on google (and also "Bayleigh equivalence") and only references I found were copied from wikipedia. I think it's a hoax. Samohyl Jan 00:43, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It is now at VfD: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Cayley-Newbirth operation matrix. Please come and vote - there are good reasons. Charles Matthews 22:47, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

We now have an 'admission' of the hoax nature of the page. I am taking this forward at User talk:ExplorerCDT. Charles Matthews 12:55, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It appears this isn't the first issue with this user, see Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/ExplorerCDT. Terry 13:44, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Current position re User:ExplorerCDT

See User:Charles Matthews/Hoax investigation for deleted user talk

User talk:ExplorerCDT is now being purged of what I write there, allegedly unread (fingers-in-ears and adolescent abuse). The current and unsatisfactory position with this user and hoax material is this:

• claims has edited here only since September, and as an anon only as the presumed User:66.171.124.70;
• claims no sockpuppets;
• claims mathematics background not much more than some calculus;
• claims has not edited mathematics pages;
• claims not the author of the hoax CNOM page;
• claims no knowledge of that page;
• claims no associates or easy access to mathematically-educated persons;
• claims no knowledge of other recent hoaxes here;
• no explanation of behaviour at Vfd;
• no explanation of allusion to 'clues' at Vfd.

Certainly no apology at all. Standing against this user are a number of things. User page has a number of loudmouth points, in particular against civility and 'hatred' of conventions on lower-case (a possible gripe?). In effect it admits user has tested the system with pages to see how quickly they are deleted.

The 66.171.124.70 edits include vandalism and cutting mentions at Vandalism in progress. Starts with edits to a secret society page, a recurring interest (which is one reason why thinking a 'conspiracy' to hoax is not really far-fetched, at least to me). Abuse in edit summaries, edit wars, tasteless edits, generally obnoxious behaviour. There is no real reason to doubt this is the same user (cf. continuity of the Rutgers University edits) given that the first half of the IP number has been admitted.

The whole pattern is suspect, to me. There are some scholarly edits. If you asked me 'is this a potential malicious and disinformative editor?' I would say yes. No smoking gun as far as hoax mathematics, though.

Oh yes, and claims inside knowledge of the Mafia.

Well, happy holidays everyone.

Charles Matthews 19:12, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't need to answer to you, with your Torquemada-esque Inquisition, sneakily worded insinuations, and boldfaced accusations (without merit). I've given you the answers your required. No matter what I say, you will still think I'm responsible for the CNOM hoax. I didn't even know Wikipedia existed when it was created. Sure, this is going to be rude and hostile behavior but take it on its face value. Go fuck off you pompous windbag! —ExplorerCDT 20:34, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It is being mooted that the ArbCom should be brought into this. Now, that really would be inquisitorial, and an adversarial process where just about anything you ever wrote here could be brought up. Think about it. Charles Matthews 20:56, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have, and everything points to you on a crusade, and being an ass about it. —ExplorerCDT 21:10, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think that disinformation added to WP by bad faith editors is a potential problem to which there is no single, simple solution. I think hoaxes are no joke at all. What do you think, sir? Charles Matthews 21:13, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I would agree, except I take your question as a loaded allegation that I'm responsible for the hoax (which I am not). —ExplorerCDT 21:46, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hard to explain your behaviour at VfD, then. You don't have a particular interest in mathematics here. You don't have that much background in it. You decide to make circumstantial claims that the page is genuine, citing a classic text which just happens to be one of the longer works you could have mentioned. Given your remarkably arrogant approach generally, and your specific evasiveness about the 'clues' ... Ah yes - reminds me to ask, what were the 'clues'? The thing does fit together like a crossword; while

matrix = womb

is general knowledge, the

John von Neumann -> John Newman -> James Newbirth

and

Bayleigh -> Cayley, Caesar cipher/caesarian

things (assuming I'm not imagining it all) requires a certain kind of puzzle-oriented thinking.

Charles Matthews 22:13, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• The user page itself didn't sound that aggressive to me, but ExplorerCDT certainly seemed like he tacitly admitted he knew about the hoax. His behavior since then has been very odd. -- Walt Pohl 22:24, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• I agree with User:Waltpohl. I left a comment at ExplorerCDT's talk page, which was quickly deleted [4]. Dbenbenn 22:27, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Yes, ExplorerCDT's actions seem very odd. I, like many other editors I suspect, would like some explanation of them from him. Paul August ☎ 22:40, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)
• At this point in time, I don't trust ExplorerCDT enough for an explanation by him to be sufficient. I feel that a third-party investigation should be undertaken. --Carnildo 08:39, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• He has claimed that his initial support of the hoax was based on a misreading of Ablowitz & Stegun, and has almost promised to back this up with a page reference, see User_talk:Paul August and User_talk:ExplorerCDT, although he claims currently that his copy of A&S is packed away due to a move. If that page reference is provided and checks out then I think that would be a satisfactory explanation of events and no further action or investigation would be necessary. Benefit of the doubt, etc. Terry 23:58, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • In my opinion, he's obviously lying. Here's why I think so: Anyone with even a moderate amount of mathematic sophistication would have immediately recognized that article as being pseudomathematical nonsense, and a number of the other participants in the VfD discussion did point this out. ExplorerCDT not only claims to own a copy of A&S, but also implies that he spends enough time actually reading it that he can not only recognize that the topic is covered there, but also that he can recolect that it is referred to in "several mentions and footnotes", without even having to check. But someone who owns and browses A&S with that degree of seriousness has far more than enough mathematical maturity to immediately recognize that the CNOM article was nonsense, and that even if it weren't nonsense, it is not the sort of thing that is covered in A&S. What we have here is someone who has heard of A&S but who is not sufficiently familiar with its contents to realize that his claim was an obvious lie. -- Dominus 01:32, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • In my opinion, Dominus, you're a jackass who hasn't seen straight for years...that's the problem with your head so far up your ass. —ExplorerCDT 02:09, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
      • Your comment would be more convincing if you actually refuted his argument. I suggest you try this before resorting to insults. Isomorphic 07:08, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
        • Sorry, but there's no sense refuting the deluded close-minded rantings of someone (Dominus) who should have been institutionalized long ago. Only the insane engage in exercises of futility, and I'm not close to being driven insane (yet). Just rage. —ExplorerCDT 07:11, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Further point, though. 66.171.124.70 comes up as Herndon VA when I do a whois search. Given the data below, do you really expect us to regard that as a coincidence? Charles Matthews 11:28, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• Yeah, I wonder if in your investigative work, Detective Matthews, you came to realize that IP address is one of a block of IP addresses owned by Verizon. The Virginia legislature gave benefits an tax write-offs to computer companies, and most large internet providers have located their headquarters there (including AOL, fyi). For someone who appears to be somewhat intelligent, you really are clueless. I live in NYC and haven't been to Virginia in 4 years. —ExplorerCDT 18:09, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I realized that my limited technical knowledge might be exposed. This was, however, one way in which your lack of complicity might have been supported. I am still interested in the Virginia connection. Charles Matthews 17:37, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Traceroute indicates a location for 66.171.124.70 near Newark, which would be consistent with the interest in Rutgers. Geobytes confirms this with a Jersey City result (right near NYC). Michael Ward 17:57, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've opened an RfC on this: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/ExplorerCDT 2 --Carnildo 23:01, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

User:199.248.201.253

This IP number clearly had a close interest in the CNOM page, wikifying it and linking from Arthur Cayley. Later this IP number created the hoax Bryleigh's Theorem page. Other vandal edits (I'm going to ban anyway on the strength of a long track record), including impersonations. Geography: Maryland/North Carolina? I'll do a whois on some of these IPs. Charles Matthews 10:29, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That's Frederick MD for 199.248.201.253. 65.177.73.18, original creator, comes up as Reston VA. Charles Matthews 10:41, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Text of the Bryleigh's Theorem page:

In differential equations, Bryleigh's Theorem is associated with the existence of and validity of solutions to these equations.

In general, Bryleigh's Theorem states that if we have a solution to a differential equation, and this solution satisfies the differential equation, then the solution is a "valid and true" solution, no matter how we may have obtained this solution. Among other important guarantees, Bryleigh's Theorem guarantees the validity of the guess-and-check method of solving differential equations, in which we try to guess elementary antiderivative solutions.

Bryleigh's Theorem is first noted in a 1785 work of English mathematician Jayne Bryleigh (1720-1801). It is an important generalization of Kimber's Third Theorem and Bonnie's Slope Field Lemma.

Bryleigh's Theorem is often also applicable in other realms of mathematics, such as linear algebra and group theory.

Charles Matthews 11:10, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Also a possible link to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Charles Matthews 11:16, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Qualculus

"Qualculus is a branch of mathematics involving the modeling of changes in state...." Google turns up only 5 hits, none to academic sites. search. This smacks of hoax to me. See also Roidiphidol by same anon author, with no Google hits. If none of the math experts around here have heard of Qualculus, I will vfd. Michael Ward 18:36, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This has actually been used to design computer systems but is not well known. Some companies where it has been used are Lucent, IBM and OCLC.

The update to this shows some significant material which demonostrates factual computer knowledge. It also has examples of how it would be used to design a database. This is not out of line with computation.

The past projects this has been used on include IBM's Corepoint SA, Lucent Technologies 7RE PTS switching system, and OCLC RMS intergration project.

It has been mostly used by computer consultants. There have been some white papers on this but not widely distributed. Since it was originally developed by University of Wisconsin students, it is regarded as public domain.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.145.133.16 (talk • contribs) 19:14, December 27, 2004

Note, above comment is by 24.145.133.16, one of the two anon ip's to Qualculus. Both ip's resolve to Columbus OH, suggesting the possibility that this anon is actually the orginal author of Qualculus. Michael Ward 19:21, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Both articles look bogus to me. A couple of "white papers", do not, a branch of mathematics make. Either a hoax or "original research". Unless better references are provided both should be deleted. Paul August ☎ 19:38, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

Looks very bogus. I'll ask a friend who's at Wharton later today, since this isn't my area, but "baka" (the Baka matrix) means stupid in Japanese, I believe. CryptoDerk 19:45, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

In this case, Baka is a person: [5] 24.145.133.16 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.145.133.16 (talk • contribs) 06:42, December 28, 2004

I agree that it is very suspect. Note that Qualculus says that the project was listed in Apple Computer's "Wheels for the Mind" in the winter 1986 edition, while [6] (follow the link, then click on "Wheels for the Mind" in the sidebar) suggests that the first issue of this magazine was in Nov 1998. However, I would recommend waiting a few days and making absolutely sure that the article is bogus before listing it. Note that we also had to argue a bit before the article on Cayley-Newbirth matrix was accepted as a hoax.

Wheels for the Mind came out about the time the Macintosh came out, which was around 1984. 24.145.133.16 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.145.133.16 (talk • contribs) 06:42, December 28, 2004

To the anonymous contributor 24.145.133.16 (cross-posted to User talk:24.145.133.16): This should be rather easy to resolve, since you are apparently familiar with Qualculus. Could you please give some verifiable information, like precise references to the white papers or the participants of the Wisconsin project and any reports they wrote? Thank you.

Jitse Niesen 20:26, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

24.145.133.16's answered as follows:

"A draft of the white paper can be be found at: http://www.angelfire.com/movies/heme/Math/Nadair.htm

David Baka was the lead of the project.

The discussion on "Wheels for the Mind" is incorrect, It was started well before 1986. I have hard copies of it. Of course that was before the internet."

I verified that the magazine was indeed around in 1986. However, I'm still looking for more verifiable information, like answers to any of these questions. Do you know the title and/or author of the article in "Wheels for the Mind" in which the Wisconsin project was described, or perhaps the page number? Where did you get the magazine (separate editions are published in different countries). Is this design methology described in other professional or scholarly journals? In which department and context did the Wisconsin project take place? What is the current occupation of David Baka, and what was his position in Wisconsin? Thanks again, and sorry about giving you such a hard time. -- Jitse Niesen 15:27, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

OK, I asked my friend who is getting a Ph.D. at Wharton. He states "This is bullshit. I've never heard of any of this and... my area IS matching supply with demand". CryptoDerk 20:49, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

This has got to be a hoax. It looks like they took SQL as the model, and then added a bunch of vague verbiage. -- Walt Pohl 05:52, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

SQL is a common database language so any subject about databases would probably fit SQL. The purpose of the example is to use something that is familar and build on it. I have used this method to design databases. I have also used it to design Java programs.

I have found it much more useful then flow charts or UML because it lends easily to asking questions, where as other methods tend to pigion hole you into a particular design.

If no one here uses it, that's fine with me. I don't need a PHD from Wharton to figure out how to design something.24.145.133.16

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.145.133.16 (talk • contribs) 06:42, December 28, 2004

Compare details above with details from this profile of a David Baka with those of a David Baka listed as a speaker for the 2011 Columbus Code Camp (CCC) which has a presentation on Qualculus. 204.210.242.157 (talk) 15:28, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

White paper

The "white paper" written by David Baka and posted at [7] seems to be somebody's (bad) attempt to model a query access and processing language. Whatever it is, that white paper is very badly written. David Baka appears to be a real person, however. According to his summary at Amazon [8]

Dave Baka has written code for almost every major telephone company in the US. He has been a consultant to several Fortune 500 corporations including IBM and Lucent Technologies.

However, whatever Qualculus is, if it is anything at all, it is not "a branch of mathematics involving the modeling of changes in state. It is related to computation and discrete mathematics". The way it is described in the article, it is at best a graphical database query access language for commercial use. Also the following post at [209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/838576/posts free republic] makes the whole thing look very suspicious.CSTAR 18:05, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A search for "Baka matrix" finds only the Angelfire pages. A search for "Baka matrices" finds nothing. This is either an idiosyncratic concept with no references elsewhere, or a hoax. And this [9] suggest pseudomathematics at best. -- Anon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.168.225.12 (talk • contribs) 18:09, December 28, 2004

Yep, basically agree. Although I was more inclined to regard it as an idiosyncratic concept, the URL path is certainly strange...movies? www.angelfire.com/movies/heme/Math/Qualculus.htm. There is no reason to be sure it is even Baka's "white paper" at all. CSTAR 18:54, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

BTW, baka in Japanese means crazy. Charles Matthews 13:47, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"I am taking this to vfd"

I am taking this to vfd. None of the math-savvy editors here have heard of it. Possibly some computational experts over in vfd will recognize it, but I doubt it. No verifiable info given. No references given. No google evidence found. Article is not intelligible. Sole anon defender is likely orginal author (based on ip location). Original research at best. Probable hoax. Michael Ward 18:51, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Using images from the St.Andrews Uni. they believe are public domain?

There are a lot of mathematicians' biographies at the Uni. of St. Andrews, featuring photos that they believe are in the public domain, yet haven't kept appropriate records about every image history. Is it OK to upload such images to Wikipedia? How should I tag them? BACbKA 21:25, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I can't provide a reference page on this, although maybe someone else can, but I recall a user contacting them about using materials from their website and they said no. That being said, I'm not sure if that applies to materials that even they may not have permission for, or if they were referring to text only. I believe that the user that contacted them did post their reply on their user page or a subpage of their user page. CryptoDerk 13:20, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Look at User:Wile E. Heresiarch, bottom of the page, for this. Charles Matthews

Thanks for your reply. I would presume this is about the biographies proper though, and not the images they themselves describe as public domain to the best of their knowledge. Have you followed through the above link on copyright and read what they say themselves about their images? BACbKA 14:20, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

My opinion, FWIW, it that a fairuse tag would be appriariate, since its wording mentions the public domain; and I would take the trouble to point back at (and copy the text of) the St. Andrews webpage in the Image page. In the event that an issue is ever raised, at least we will have an audit trail which supports our contention of fairuse. Just my opinion, though. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Why fairuse and not pd, if the wording mentions the public domain? I've tagged commons:Image:Aleksandrov_Aleksandr_1950s.jpeg as PD meanwhile and did like you suggested wrt pointing back and copying the text. Everybody is welcome to re-tag/re-annotate there if I did smth wrong. Thanks a lot to everyone for the guideance! BACbKA 22:28, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Considering that they seem conscious of image copyright issues, I'd wager that these images are quite likely to all be public domain. We have enough images falsely marked public domain that if we did use them in print, some careful filtering would be necessary in any case. Independent verification for each wouldn't hurt, though. Deco 20:33, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. OK, I've asked around various people about the only specific image I have uploaded from there so far for the Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov article, and they also think the image is in the public domain since they believe they've seen it in the Soviet media back in the 50s. Independently, I am working to get a solid specific permission to use a much better image from [1] depicting A.D. in 1952, so it's temporary in any case. BACbKA 22:21, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I came across the University of St Andrews site independently (googling Paul Halmos), then remembered this discussion. I agree that what they say about PD is probably fine. While at st-and.ac.uk, I looked up Eugene Dynkin, an old advisor of mine. The picture they have of him is just a lower-quality version of the picture he has on his personal web site. Just another data point to keep in mind. Dbenbenn 02:15, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)