Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2008/Jan

message: Tacit extension is a stub article on mathematical logic which, if legitimate, certainly does not say enough; it doesn't really make clear what the concept is.  So:
* If it's a valid entry, could someone who knows the material expand the article?
* Express opinions—either keep or delete, with reasons given— at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tacit extension. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:22, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The edit history is interesting, User:Jon Awbrey had some beef with wikipedia and started a discussion on wikipediareview  inviting others to blank this page (and several other). This led to a revert war and subsequent page protection. It may be worth examining the other articles mentioned
Ampheck (on AfD), Boolean domain, Boolean-valued function, Comprehension (logic), Continuous predicate, Descriptive science, Hypostatic abstraction, Hypostatic object, Inquiry, Inverse relation, Logic of information, Logic of relatives, Logic of Relatives (1870), Logic of Relatives (1883), Logical graph, Logical matrix, Minimal negation operator, Multigrade operator, Normative science, Parametric operator, Pragmatic maxim, Prescisive abstraction, Relation composition, Relation construction, Relation reduction, Relative term, Semeiotic, Semiotic information theory, Sign relation, Sign relational complex, Sole sufficient operator, Tacit extension, Theory of relations, Triadic relation, Types of relations, Zeroth order logic. Most articles seem to be protected as of now. --Salix alba (talk) 10:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tacit extension on AfD 

message: Boolean logic in computer science has been moved back to Boolean logic. It has been zigzagging a bit lately: .  --Lambiam 15:34, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I could see two articles, "Boolean Logic" and "Boolean Logic in Computer Science", making sense, just because of my respect-for/ fear-of the vast scope. An example of an item in the latter might be the use of XOR for fast, reversible varying-key encryption. Implementing boolean logic with electrical and electronic elements. A world of stuff. Historical items about Ada Lovelace reading George Boole. Pete St.John (talk) 19:16, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The current situation is clearly unsatisfactory, mainly because "Boolean algebra" is the common name for the topic being discussed (and unfortunately for a quite distinct one as well). But I doubt a separate "computer science" article is the way to go -- Lambiam is right that the proliferation of articles is out of hand. Discussion at talk:Boolean logic#Move/merge -- still unsatisfactory. --Trovatore (talk) 19:29, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boolean logic is back 

message: Oleg, do articles in :Category:Population genetics show up on the "current activity" page?  One could say that this is not mathematics per se and that maybe the fact that an article belongs in that category doesn't always mean that it's mathematical.  But nearly all of the articles in that category are on something in mathematics that is known almost only to those who apply mathematics to biology. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:45, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd argue that population genetics is a bit too far from math to show up in the list of mathematics articles, and consequently, in the current math activity page, but I am open to views to the contrary. (BTW, I did not add the information theory categories to the bot list, as agreed earlier, will do so soon.) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 07:32, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Population genetics on the "current activity" page? 

message: Looking at occurrences of the search term "tacit extension" I was led to our Relation composition article. What a complete and total mess! This is a phenomenal example of "mathematics made difficult". Is there something salvageable in there? Any reason not to change this into a redirect to Composition of relations?  --Lambiam 09:32, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I support the merge. There's no need for two articles on the same concept, and this particular article is a model of how to make a simple concept obscure. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:28, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. It's too bad about all the misdirected effort, but there doesn't seem to be anything worth keeping. (Except perhaps the idea to explain composition in terms of bipartite graphs.) --Hans Adler (talk) 22:57, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relation composition 

message: Hi all I am currently working on an Article Process Management (Computing) and I am having trouble with an equation that I want to put in as I cant get the format correct is there a tag or something that you use for such equations thanks in advance. BigDunc (talk) 08:46, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I would suggest starting by reading Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics)#Typesetting of mathematical formulas. --Cheeser1 (talk) 08:57, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I will thanks for the pointer. BigDunc (talk) 12:18, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mathematics Equation 

message: Stevan Pilipović has been nominated for deletion - after originally being CSD'd as non-notable. I have no idea about the notability of this mathematician; comments are welcome here. Mostlyharmless (talk) 23:12, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stevan Pilipović 

message: Various ways are in use for denoting the round symbol for composition using HTML markup:
;roman o:f o g; R o S.
;small roman o:f o g; R o S.
;degree sign:f ° g; R ° S.
None of these looks particularly good to me. The degree-sign solution is really ugly on the Mac OS X platform, as the little circle is kissing the f and shying away from the g, leaving a huge gap. I tend to prefer the small roman o, but recently, in an article where I used that, another editor changed it to degree signs. Is there any reason why I should not use small o's? Which is preferable in general?  --Lambiam 15:26, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps this gadget f○g  ? It's very big on older Firefox browsers, though. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 16:25, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  What about U+2218 "RING OPERATOR"? f ∘ g; R ∘ S. –Henning Makholm 16:27, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I was going to suggest that, but it doesn't display well for me.  Perhaps at home, where I use the STIX fonts, it will work. Ryan Reich (talk) 16:36, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

text: When I see them in my browser (Camino, a Firefox derivative, on a Mac), Jakob's circle is too big and Henning's is too small and too high. The Roman o is much closer to the right size and placement, and much more reliable, I think. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:37, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Henning's ring looks perfect to me (Firefox on Win32), but the small Roman o works just fine.  In no case should the degree symbol be used. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: For some reason what I see for Henning's ring is like a degree sign in size, but placed even higher, and with a huge blank area to the right of it. I just tried it in Safari, and get the same result, but Jakob's circle looks much better in that browser. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:41, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Henning's circle works for me with the STIX fonts; previously it was as CRGreathouse said, more like the degree sign.  Jacob's circle is too big for me (and not on an old version of Firefox!) and although Lambiam's small 'o' looks good here (but a little uncentered vertically), at work, in Firefox on a Mac, it was ugly.  This is one of those problems that is going to go away when Real Fonts are available; until then, I support the lower-case 'o' solution (either of Lambiam's first two is acceptable).  Ryan Reich (talk) 19:58, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  "Real Fonts"? CRGreathouse (t | c) 14:17, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  That was Tongue-In-Cheek for "fonts that do what I want", which in this particular instance is display mathematical characters.  I haven't heard that Real was releasing a font set :) Ryan Reich (talk) 13:33, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  HTML markup for composition 

message: It was recommended that I ask my question here. If I have an idea for a mathematics project where can I purpose it? The Isiah (talk) 13:42, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Here is a good place. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 14:05, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Every theorem in existence? This would be far too much, and would not be suitable for Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and what you are proposing is that an encyclopedia contain virtually everything ever published in Mathematics. There are millions of journal articles, books, unpublished papers, etc that this would include. It is impossible. Furthermore, Wikipedia is not an academically reliable source - you've got it backwards. We rely on and cite academic works - not the other way around. And this idea would be impractical because Wikipedia constantly changes. Any proof we have is subject to change, deletion, etc. and frankly, proofs we present here could reasonably (and legally) be reproduced elsewhere. Finally, there are already standard ways to cite Wikipedia that work just as well. Sorry if I'm "shooting down" your idea, but it doesn't seem like something appropriate to Wikipedia. What you suggest is essentially to transfer the entire body of mathematical knowledge onto Wikipedia, but only to provide a new way to do what standard citations do for us already. --Cheeser1 (talk) 11:51, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Interesting idea.  As Cheeser1 points out, Wikipedia isn't the place for that -- but have you looked at Metamath, which does want to standardize and collect mathematical theorems? CRGreathouse (t | c) 17:29, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Looking at that, Mizar is probably closer to what he wants. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:25, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Project Proposal 

message: I made a remak in the talk page about the intro but nobody considered the issue, so now I'm coming here.
In the intro of mathematical induction I read:
:Indeed, the validity of mathematical induction is logically equivalent to the well-ordering principle.
what is it referring to? We have a section "proof or reformulation of mathematical induction" where it is shown that MI can be proven assuming WOP and some other axioms, but this is something different from "logical equivalence". Shouldn't this be fixed in some way?--Pokipsy76 (talk) 17:35, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've simply removed this questionable sentence. It does only make sense to proclaim logical equivalence of two sentences if the logic is given in which these sentences are formulae, which is not the case here. In some logics they are equivalent, in some other logics they are not.  --Lambiam 16:04, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mathematical induction 

message: (organized by Bill Casselman and David Austin)
=== CS's report ===
====Articles viewed (with summary of Casselman and/or Austin comments)====
Penrose tiling: overview of the article's development - article created with figure, additional figure violating parallelogram rule added, later fix of caption explaining figure violates parallelogram rule, eventual fix of the complete condition for Penrose tiling, removal of Richert claim. Casselman [David A, not me: Bill C] then attempted to demonstrate how to edit Wikipedia by editing a statement (which he disputed) that "Penrose tiling" usually refers to two special Penrose tilings with extra symmetry.  But he ran into an edit conflict, so moved on.
[Again from Bill C: I thought he recovered very well;
it must have been one of the audience who
made the change! after all.]
Floer homology: issues regarding readability of technical articles, made some quick comments about talk page discussion
Division by zero: briefly explained how this article had clearly been significantly improved upon, "don't know if Wikipedia needs an article like this" but said the article indicates quality on Wikipedia gets significantly better over time
Archimedes (and FAs in general): horrible article, not professionally written, many inaccuracies (explained how the historians of mathematics at the JMM had expressed their dissatisfaction with history of mathematics articles on Wikipedia), not enough about mathematical contributions
====Closing points====
1) Casselman had clearly prepared some material on who edits Wikipedia.  One slide, for example, (briefly flashed), showed a list of contributors, probably ranked by contributions.  But he chose to skip this, and early on, he made some comment like "it's interesting to see who the primary contributors are but I won't talk about that" or something to that effect.  I wonder if Arcfrk's comments had an effect here.  At the end, he expressed the opinion that real name usage was the way to go, "...it raises the level of discourse much more quickly to a mature level."
2) Casselman and Austin both seemed very knowledgable about how Wikipedia functioned, for example, comments on !votes as "the participants don't vote...it ends up being determined by committee somehow.  I wish I knew more of how it worked."  Interestingly, some very pragmatic advice on how to start editing Wikipedia was given.  The first step, according to them, is to avoid editing popular topics.  Pick a little worked-upon topic and work on it extensively before moving on to more major topics.
3) They expressed a desire to set up something where the AMS could help mathematicians learn to contribute to Wikipedia, possibly utilizing WikiProject Mathematics.  
4) One criticism I heard of the presentation (and one that occurred to me also) is that the abstract suggested the issue of disputes over mathematics articles would be investigated in some depth, but this did not occur, only some brief comments on "too many cooks".  There are a variety of interesting ways disputes arise over math articles (usually because of the "cooks" issue) but none of this was shown.  I know a number of people were disappointed by this.
[Bill C sez: we ran out of time, sorry about that.  Why didn't you ask
questions at the end?  In my talk I raised the topic that someone
had brougt to my attention,
a Computer Science guy who was investigating
how consensus was formed on Wikipdia.
Does anybody know about this?]
====Corrections/adjustments====
1) Casselman commented upon how Sanger advocated an "expert" approach while Wales advocated "anarchy".  It didn't seem to me he was aware of Jimbo's somewhat nuanced position on authority and credentials, per the whole Essjay controversy and his subsequent proposal to authenticate people's credentials.
2) WikiProject Mathematics and the Math MoS was discussed at several points.  The MoS was commented upon favorably, but the Project got a bit of a black eye.  Namely, Casselman (or was it Austin?) showed the ratings table and started discussing the math FAs.  His general conclusion (as mentioned above) is they had a lot of problems and were certainly far from the standard he expected from the FA criteria.  For example, he commented upon the many footnotes which do not actually act to make the article more reliable.  He did not mention (probably because he was unaware) 
[Bill C: yes, unaware.  Not mentioned 
in the ratings themselves, where FA lies on top of A class.]
any of the controversy about math FAs and the friction between FAC/FAR editors and Project members (particularly about this whole footnote issue).  He also did not mention the A class articles, which was set up to avoid FAC and some here may consider more representative of the best math articles on Wikipedia than the FAs. 
[I left a message on Casselman and Austin's talk pages linking this discussion.]  --C S (talk) 19:57, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  (Incomplete) Summary of Joint Math Meeting "Wiki Math" session 

message: ====Articles viewed (with summary of Casselman and/or Austin comments)====
Penrose tiling: overview of the article's development - article created with figure, additional figure violating parallelogram rule added, later fix of caption explaining figure violates parallelogram rule, eventual fix of the complete condition for Penrose tiling, removal of Richert claim. Casselman [David A, not me: Bill C] then attempted to demonstrate how to edit Wikipedia by editing a statement (which he disputed) that "Penrose tiling" usually refers to two special Penrose tilings with extra symmetry.  But he ran into an edit conflict, so moved on.
[Again from Bill C: I thought he recovered very well;
it must have been one of the audience who
made the change! after all.]
Floer homology: issues regarding readability of technical articles, made some quick comments about talk page discussion
Division by zero: briefly explained how this article had clearly been significantly improved upon, "don't know if Wikipedia needs an article like this" but said the article indicates quality on Wikipedia gets significantly better over time
Archimedes (and FAs in general): horrible article, not professionally written, many inaccuracies (explained how the historians of mathematics at the JMM had expressed their dissatisfaction with history of mathematics articles on Wikipedia), not enough about mathematical contributions
====Closing points====
1) Casselman had clearly prepared some material on who edits Wikipedia.  One slide, for example, (briefly flashed), showed a list of contributors, probably ranked by contributions.  But he chose to skip this, and early on, he made some comment like "it's interesting to see who the primary contributors are but I won't talk about that" or something to that effect.  I wonder if Arcfrk's comments had an effect here.  At the end, he expressed the opinion that real name usage was the way to go, "...it raises the level of discourse much more quickly to a mature level."
2) Casselman and Austin both seemed very knowledgable about how Wikipedia functioned, for example, comments on !votes as "the participants don't vote...it ends up being determined by committee somehow.  I wish I knew more of how it worked."  Interestingly, some very pragmatic advice on how to start editing Wikipedia was given.  The first step, according to them, is to avoid editing popular topics.  Pick a little worked-upon topic and work on it extensively before moving on to more major topics.
3) They expressed a desire to set up something where the AMS could help mathematicians learn to contribute to Wikipedia, possibly utilizing WikiProject Mathematics.  
4) One criticism I heard of the presentation (and one that occurred to me also) is that the abstract suggested the issue of disputes over mathematics articles would be investigated in some depth, but this did not occur, only some brief comments on "too many cooks".  There are a variety of interesting ways disputes arise over math articles (usually because of the "cooks" issue) but none of this was shown.  I know a number of people were disappointed by this.
[Bill C sez: we ran out of time, sorry about that.  Why didn't you ask
questions at the end?  In my talk I raised the topic that someone
had brougt to my attention,
a Computer Science guy who was investigating
how consensus was formed on Wikipdia.
Does anybody know about this?]
====Corrections/adjustments====
1) Casselman commented upon how Sanger advocated an "expert" approach while Wales advocated "anarchy".  It didn't seem to me he was aware of Jimbo's somewhat nuanced position on authority and credentials, per the whole Essjay controversy and his subsequent proposal to authenticate people's credentials.
2) WikiProject Mathematics and the Math MoS was discussed at several points.  The MoS was commented upon favorably, but the Project got a bit of a black eye.  Namely, Casselman (or was it Austin?) showed the ratings table and started discussing the math FAs.  His general conclusion (as mentioned above) is they had a lot of problems and were certainly far from the standard he expected from the FA criteria.  For example, he commented upon the many footnotes which do not actually act to make the article more reliable.  He did not mention (probably because he was unaware) 
[Bill C: yes, unaware.  Not mentioned 
in the ratings themselves, where FA lies on top of A class.]
any of the controversy about math FAs and the friction between FAC/FAR editors and Project members (particularly about this whole footnote issue).  He also did not mention the A class articles, which was set up to avoid FAC and some here may consider more representative of the best math articles on Wikipedia than the FAs. 
[I left a message on Casselman and Austin's talk pages linking this discussion.]  --C S (talk) 19:57, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  CS's report 

message: 1) Casselman commented upon how Sanger advocated an "expert" approach while Wales advocated "anarchy".  It didn't seem to me he was aware of Jimbo's somewhat nuanced position on authority and credentials, per the whole Essjay controversy and his subsequent proposal to authenticate people's credentials.
2) WikiProject Mathematics and the Math MoS was discussed at several points.  The MoS was commented upon favorably, but the Project got a bit of a black eye.  Namely, Casselman (or was it Austin?) showed the ratings table and started discussing the math FAs.  His general conclusion (as mentioned above) is they had a lot of problems and were certainly far from the standard he expected from the FA criteria.  For example, he commented upon the many footnotes which do not actually act to make the article more reliable.  He did not mention (probably because he was unaware) 
[Bill C: yes, unaware.  Not mentioned 
in the ratings themselves, where FA lies on top of A class.]
any of the controversy about math FAs and the friction between FAC/FAR editors and Project members (particularly about this whole footnote issue).  He also did not mention the A class articles, which was set up to avoid FAC and some here may consider more representative of the best math articles on Wikipedia than the FAs. 
[I left a message on Casselman and Austin's talk pages linking this discussion.]  --C S (talk) 19:57, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Corrections/adjustments

message: I see, á propos, that nobody commented on the FAR of Gauss, except me, briefly. There's a case for ignoring FA completely; but if we do, we should cease to note it in the project statistics, and we should probably lobby for another way to pick front page articles. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:10, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  WPM Discussion 

message: On a related subject, the Joint Math Meetings in San Diego will feature the AMS Special Presentation Wiki Math, organized by Bill Casselman, Tuesday January 8, 2008, 2:15 p.m.–4:15 p.m. The abstract sounds very intriguing, and I think that the Math Project should send its deputies (incognito?) to check it out. Arcfrk (talk) 15:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Curiously, I can't find this mentioned on the AMS web pages on the Joint Mathematics Meetings, but you can find the abstract in the November issue of the Notices on page 1228, and online (as a PDF document) here.  --Lambiam 17:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure, the more the merrier.  Both David Austin and I will be happy to let anybody speak.  Tuesday 2:15 - ? (BUT I want to go to Terry Tao's talk at 4:00), in the large lecture hall Convention Center 6AB (last minute change 'cause that's the only room with an Internet connection). But why incognito?  I'll ask that again - why incognito?--Bill Casselman (talk) 20:56, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Some people register and contribute under their real name; others prefer to contribute under a nickname pseudonym. Do you want to force them to reveal their identity? Arcfrk (talk) 04:35, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

text: According to the official schedule (and I know of no announcement to the contrary), Tao's talk is on Sunday at 11:10.  "Wiki math" is also listed at 9-10:55 on Tuesday.  As for "incognito", some people just like wearing masks and silly costumes.  I personally will be dressed in a monkey suit and a black diamond-studded masquerade ball mask.  --C S (talk) 06:00, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Re "...monkey suit and a black diamond-studded masquerade ball mask.": that is very pimp. Mct mht (talk) 11:58, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Corrections: While Tao's talk already happened at the time I said, "Wiki Math" was indeed moved to 2:15 as Casselman said.  So the time listed (in the correction handout I got) is 2:15, Tuesday, 6AB.  But Casselman will need to find a new excuse to leave early.  Also, I will forgo the monkey suit.  --C S (talk) 06:17, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Actually, I'm a bit chagrined to note that Tao does have another talk at 4pm.  The Wiki Math thing will start soon..I suggest watching for Casselman-incited vandalism.  He seems a bit of a prankster.  In particular I recommend watching for edits to articles like Langlands program. --C S (talk) 21:25, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

text: I'll take a look since I will be there (unless I have to do something during that time).  If they say something too erroneous, perhaps I will try and make a correction.  --C S (talk) 02:53, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wiki Math at JMM 

message: One thing I did note was that Portal:Mathematics gets a quite a high number of page views, more than the Mathematics page. I guess this is because it is linked from the Main page. As such it serves as an important route into the mathematics articles, yet  does not seem to get much attention. --Salix alba (talk) 12:20, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Portal:Mathematics

message: List of scientific theories and laws. AfD? Mct mht (talk) 11:56, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Redirect to a portal? It will be unmanageably long as a statement of all theories now held valid. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:34, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Someone has marked it as in the middle of revamping. I would say let that get finished and take a look. I'm concerned that the list doesn't have a clear defining property - it seems too vague. --Cheeser1 (talk) 19:44, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  funny article 

message: Would some mathematicians give their opinion at Wikipedia:Peer review/Force? Thanks a 10^6. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:20, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peer review help 

message: I would appreciate some help in this discussion (as well as the two sections below it). There's a dispute over whether three parameters can be mapped to a geometric solid. SharkD (talk) 03:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help on parametric math 

message: Please take a look to the edits by an unregistered user who cutted a lot of things, I don't understand them quite well and I am a little skeptic.--Pokipsy76 (talk) 17:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know enough about what this new user is trying to say to figure it out, but there was a substantial change in content here that I'm not sure is legitimate. Could someone with a little more expertise, or at least a better understanding of the context, take a look? --Cheeser1 (talk) 20:08, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've never heard of the Collatz Conjecture. It might help if someone who's read it abstracted the subject matter; does it require an algebraist, a group theorist, a non-abelian group theorist...? If it involves ennumerative combinatorics drop a note on my user page. But no Infinitary Combinatorics, those guys are nuts :-) Pete St.John (talk) 21:46, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It is mostly elementary math: a bit of number theory and dynamical systems, and probably some combinatorics, yes. Geometry guy 21:59, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: To be fair, it's not easy to say exactly "what kind of math this is" since this is unsolved, and for all we know, it might be solved by Fourier analysis 10 years from now. But just by looking at it, it seems to be number theoretic (the content in question seems to be number theoretic at first glance, which I suppose is the more germane consideration). --Cheeser1 (talk) 22:03, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Having skimmed over it, I'd say "unsolved conjectures in elementary number theory" which yeah, can be arbitrarily difficult and involve any imaginable technology. It looks like quite a bit could be trimmed as OR, there seems a dearth of references. I think it's more of an editorial issue (keeping up with overeager grad student who doesn't have an account) than a math issue (no problem following the logic in "optimization", at least in the earlier version, but maybe no reason to?). Pete St.John (talk) 22:42, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I always discuss the Collatz Conjecture when I lecture in Algorithms or Automata (upper division computer science courses).  You can write a very simple program (the one given in the article) that halts for all inputs if and only if the Collatz conjecture is true, for example.  This is the main importance of the Collatz Conjecture to me, since it illustrates that it can be extremely difficult to decide whether an extremely simple program halts.  Vegasprof (talk) 10:23, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Collatz conjecture 

message: I have learned that the ability to rollback edits, which is used to revert vandalism more easily, can now be granted to non-admin users. Unlike the undo operation, rollback does not require entering an edit summary and can be done from the user contributions page. It should be used only to revert edits that are clearly vandalism, but does make this more convenient. At the moment, any admin can enable the rollback ability for any user (I don't understand the process by which this was determined). If you are interested, please ask me or another admin on this list. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:27, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rollback ability 

message: Is this similar or based on anything real, or is it basically just a one-off joke limited to Futurama: Bender's Big Score? A google search reveals 23 hits and a google news and books search gets zilch, so it doesn't appear to be a "real" theorem. I'm sorry if it's a stupid question, but I never was any good at math... -- Scorpion0422 01:20, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It doesn't seem real to me. Way too in-universe to be presented as the "Greenwaldian Theorem." We don't do articles for every single joke in every single TV show, and that's what this seems like to me. --Cheeser1 (talk) 01:26, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay thanks, that's what I thought. In the DVD, she explained it as if it was a real thing, so I thought I'd double check here. -- Scorpion0422 01:31, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: According to the Law of cosines (spherical), "... the spherical Pythagorean theorem reads \cos(c) = \cos(a) \cos(b) \," when the angle between sides a and b is a right angle. To the fourth order, this gives 1 - c^2/2 + c^4/24 = (1 - a^2/2 + a^4/24)*(1 - b^2/2 + b^4/24) = 1 - a^2/2 + a^4/24 - b^2/2 + a^2b^2/4 + b^4/24. Thus we get 12c^2 - c^4 = 12a^2 + 12b^2 - a^4 - 6a^2b^2 - b^4. Replacing c^4 by (c^2)^2 = (a^2 + b^2)^2 = a^4 + 2a^2b^2 + b^4, we get 12c^2 = 12a^2 + 12b^2 - 4a^2b^2. Thus c^2 = a^2 + b^2 - a^2b^2/3 < a^2 + b^2. So the "Greenwaldian theorem" is true for small right triangles on a sphere. JRSpriggs (talk) 05:22, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Or more generally on any surface of positive curvature, I believe. Algebraist 07:38, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Greenwaldian Theorem]] 

message: :Category:Abel Prize laureates has been nominated for deletion. 132.205.44.5 (talk) 23:13, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category:Abel Prize laureates at CfD 

message: Is it possible to jump to a random math article (just like Special:Random, but restricted to math articles)? Jakob.scholbach (talk) 18:35, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This is one way. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I am probably displaying my ignorance of the modern Internet, but is it possible for Jitse to provide that PHP file for download, so I could (say) put a link to it on my machine as a bookmark and not have to pass through his school's server?  This would make it rather faster. Ryan Reich (talk) 02:30, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe you need some php-server to display php-files on your local machine, say. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 08:21, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That's basically correct. Besides, you would also need another file on my computer which contains the names of all the articles and is read from the PHP file. That other file is updated daily. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:21, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess I'm not yet so ignorant that I don't know when to ask the question.  That's what I thought the answer would be.  Thanks. Ryan Reich (talk) 16:11, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  random math article? 

message: There is a discussion going on whether the newly split-off :Category:Metalogic should be merged back into :Category:Logic.  --Lambiam 10:25, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category:Metalogic 

message: The article Grounded relation has been proposed for deletion.  --Lambiam 05:38, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Grounded relation]] on AfD 

message: In irrational number, someone has added this:
:: The numbers exp r, cos r, and tan r are irrational for every rational r\ne 0\,.
They've cited an item published in that year.  But it seems likely that the proposition is far far older than that.  Perhaps what was published was a new proof of an old theorem.  Does someone here know the facts? Michael Hardy (talk) 06:17, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  As stated, it is an immediate corollary of the Lindemann-Weierstrass theorem (1885). –Henning Makholm 19:32, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

text: The result is mentioned without the theorem name at http://mathworld.wolfram.com/IrrationalNumber.html. The name "Stevens's theorem" was added by the notorious 218.133.184.93 (block log). PrimeHunter (talk) 06:36, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I removed the "theorem" text altogether, the user in question has a two-year pattern of introducing questionable information (whether with or without citations). I blocked him too, for edit warring at Parity (mathematics). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:28, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I can't believe he was still trying to insert that result into Parity, as if it falls within the scope of the article. There are thousands (millions?) of results in number theory that mention parity, odds, evens, etc. They don't all belong in there. --Cheeser1 (talk) 19:16, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Stevens' theorem?" 

message: Why doesn't :Category:List-Class mathematics articles exist? Nousernameslefttalk and matrix? 02:10, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you explain why it should? It looks like a naming scheme that I have never come across. --Hans Adler (talk) 02:13, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

text: There is :Category:Mathematics-related lists. Is that what you were after? Ben (talk) 02:19, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. But when you enter  it has a link to Category:List-Class mathematics articles instead of the latter. Thanks for the clarification. Nousernameslefttalk and matrix? 04:00, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It's an historical relic, I believe. When the WP 1.0 ratings were originally set up, some people thought it would be good to have a quality rating for all sorts of pages - lists, disambig pages, etc. But there isn't any reason to use those in the math project. The list of mathematics articles is automatically made without talk page tags, so we can limit the use of talk page tags to articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 05:55, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Organization question 

message: * Dear math people who are upset about CFD nominations relating to math: You might consider participating more regularly at WP:CFD to get a sense of what happens there on a regular basis, and not just on math topics. It might help avoid feelings of persecution, and it would certainly help the project-based vote stacking that happens when a math issue comes up. That's not helpful for the overall project, because it's much better that we have consistent treatment across the various disciplines and subjects. If you think CFD currently leans too delete-happy, then regular participation by category-keepers could shift the balance. On the other hand, if you, like me, participate for a while and over time find yourselves becoming more parsimonious with your ideas of what are appropriate categories, then you will perhaps be happier when math-related categories come up for discussion. Either way you can help categorization practice become more consistent across Wikipedia. 
: Right now, in response to people complaining about the math-related awards CFD nominations, there is a discussion at WP:OCAT about developing better examples and language for WP:OCAT#Award winners. Since a number of math project-related folks expressed strong opinions of various sorts (including calling me a "deletionist", which is pretty funny if you knew me) I'd really like to invite you to participate in that discussion to help improve WP's categorization guidelines. It can perhaps help us to develop a more robust consensus about these guidelines and practices.
: Cheers, Lquilter (talk) 21:17, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: going forward

message: I just spent a half-hour doing some edits on Gershgorin circle theorem that would normally take a minute or two.  Five minutes after saving it, I still can't see the article after the edits.  TeX seems not to be working today.  All I see in the article is the TeX code.  I tried previewing it repeatedly while editing, and it never worked.  Is this happening to everyone else? Michael Hardy (talk) 14:54, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It could be a migration issue.  I have also noticed that the TeX rendering is sluggish.  Silly rabbit (talk) 14:58, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It isn't displaying for me at all - just a blank space. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:05, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The cause of the problem is described here. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:57, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Is this related to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-01-21/Parser changes? JRSpriggs (talk) 01:35, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is TeX simply not working today? 

message: Can someone look at logical graphs and tell me if its real or not? It's essentially incomprehensible to me, and is written in such a style as to make me not want to even try to comprehend it.  For a while, I confused it with  G. Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form, for which I have a personal distaste for, as its shallow, clothed with un-needed cryptic drivel, and is just barely on this side of the distinction of real-vs.-crank math. So, with that prejudice, I was taken aback to find the article on logical graphs, which I can't make heads or tails out of. linas (talk) 04:58, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Most content produced by Awbrey is written in an obfuscatory manner in which trivialities are presented as deep wisdom, and you never know how much of it is neologisms and original research.  --Lambiam 08:56, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, well, Pierce seems not only legit but even remarkable, and just skimming his bio page provides a number of interesting surprises.  So I have no reason to distrust that he developed some concept of a "logical graph". But the description given in that article had the flavour of obtuse original research.linas (talk) 03:42, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Logical graph]]s 

message: I am looking for other editors to participate in a broad task force to organize Wikipedia's articles on Boolean algebra, propositional logic, and related topics. The current organization is quite idiosyncratic, and has been the subject of discussion before. The initial goal of the task force would be to outline the current structure of these articles (the topics covered by each and how they interconnect) and discuss improvements to this organization. If we are successful we will come out with a proposal that can be announced more widely. 
Participating in the task force would not require a large time commitment. If you are interested, please look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Logic/Boolean algebra task force and add yourself to the list of editors. The page was created under WikiProject Logic only for convenience. I hope that I will be able to gather editors with a wide range of backgrounds to participate. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:59, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boolean algebra task force 

message: Hi, I amended the assessment from Stub to Start-Class now that someone has added a decent amount of bio. Hope that's ok. Secret Squïrrel, approx 12:00, 29 January 2008 (Earth Standard Time)
:Looks good to me. --Salix alba (talk) 12:22, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Ferdinand Eisenstein]] 

message: Hi. You may be familiar with the Philip Greenspun Illustration Project. $20,000 has been donated to pay for the creation of high quality diagrams for Wikipedia and its sister projects. 
Requests are currently being taken at m:Philip Greenspun illustration project/Requests and input from members of this project would be very welcome. If you can think of any diagrams (not photos or maps) that would be useful then I encourage you to suggest them at this page. If there is any free content material that would assist in drawing the diagram then it would be great if you could list that, too.
If there are any related (or unrelated) WikiProjects you think might have some suggestions then please pass this request over. Thanks. --Cherry blossom tree 16:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reminder of the Philip Greenspun Illustration project 

message: The surprisingly new article titled extraneous solution could use some work. Michael Hardy (talk) 13:50, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Is that not just words, with standard dictionary definitions, put together? --Cheeser1 (talk) 20:02, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm afraid you've lost me.  I don't understand your question at all. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:44, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I believe Cheeser1 is suggesting that an extraneous solution is nothing but a solution that is extraneous, and as such is not deserving of its own article. CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Right. We have an article on cats and an article on purple, but no article purple cats, because purple cats are just cats that are purple. --Cheeser1 (talk) 00:45, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Some work?! Dr. Hardy, I would normally defer to your expertise - but, holy moly, this article is garbage. The two examples listed in the article would fit better in an article entitled "elementary school misunderstandings about how to do math". Seriously! See article talk page for discussion. I'm thinking deletion, but I don't formally propose such things, and I usually don't support them. But, this is pretty bad. Tparameter (talk) 01:06, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks to me like this is a very special case of what goes on in invalid proof, which is honestly one of the messiest articles I've ever seen. Abusing multivalued functions or nonexistent operations (logs, square roots, "division" by zero, etc) to get more solutions than there should be for something (or, in some instances, concluding that the "right" solution equals the "wrong" solution like 1=0). I've spent some time considering how to clean it up, but have no idea where to even start. --Cheeser1 (talk) 02:07, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have heard the term used to describe solutions outside of the domain. For example, imaginary numbers when the domain is defined as being the reals. Then the imaginary solutions would be "extraneous". However, a colleague just told me that the term is also used as a misnomer to describe non-solutions derived with invalid methods, and also almost-solutions not in the domain BECAUSE they result in division by zero - which also happens to be the first example in the article which I criticized. Tparameter (talk) 08:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: But the point is, these are simply solutions that are extraneous. I don't know that this is article-worthy. --Cheeser1 (talk) 08:48, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That's what I thought - but, there is some discussion on the talk page that extraneous solutions are not necessarily solutions in the first place. I've investigated unreliable definitions on the internet that corroborate this definition (to include certain non-solutions). Tparameter (talk) 16:27, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: They are solutions, but just to the wrong equation. A more apt example might be "fat cat" which is an idiom. They are not truly cats (and not necessarily fat). It's still just a dictionary definition. But "extraneous solution" really does mean a solution that is extraneous - to the given equation, or to some equation you get along they way (by using some operation like squaring). --Cheeser1 (talk) 16:35, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

text: This concept is specifically discussed often enough in modern high school algebra textbooks that it deserves its own article. Extraneous solutions arise naturally in some contexts; for example, when eliminating fractions produces a quadratic equation. I haven't looked at the article yet to say whether it's good but it should exist. Dcoetzee 18:07, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extraneous solution 

message: It is tempting to use this terminology because of the intuition that it conveys (within a certain context), but is such use widely accepted? The article lists no references. Arcfrk (talk) 09:45, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm fairly certain this book, which is as far as I know a reasonably well-established text on the subject matter, uses such terminology. I could be wrong, I'm no expert on which books or which terminology is commonly used. --Cheeser1 (talk) 09:54, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: See Constructible Number at MathWorld. I've added this and two other references to the article. Gandalf61 (talk) 10:07, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

text: I believe it is widely used in textbooks on abstract algebra (in the Galois theory section, for instance Hungerford's Abstract Algebra: an introduction).  MathSciNet gives two articles with this in the title, both referring to the geometric concept, both research level.  I think it is safe to say the term is widely accepted, though perhaps not widely used outside of textbooks and a few articles providing new insights on a problem solved completely in the 19th century. JackSchmidt (talk) 17:47, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Constructible number]] 

message: I've suggested an idea at Talk:Second-order_logic#Explain formula idea and given an example there. I thought it would be good if there could be an "Explain formula" link next to complicated formula, that would show/hide an explanation. Perhaps a template could be created for this kind of thing. Any comments on this idea? —Egriffin (talk) 16:29, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Explain formula idea 

message: I recall reading somewhere that only one proof of a certain proposition should be in an article, so how does one choose the proof? For example, in the article Simson line. there exists a more elementary proof than the one given. Should I replace it or not? Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 03:07, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: We have a separate page for discussions of when and how to include proofs in mathematics articles: Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs. Perhaps it should be turned into a guideline, which then should hopefully also include guidance on when not to include a proof. Examples of articles with many proofs are Pythagorean theorem and 0.999...; you'd almost think there is something fishy with these claims that they should need so many proofs. So a limit of one proof is not a hard and fast rule. But in general, unless there is something particularly illustrative, illuminating or elegant about a particular proof, I'd say: if a proof must be included, keep it as simple as possible (but not more).  --Lambiam 11:27, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proofs 

message: Foundations of statistics has been nomited for deletion.  As we've seen happen before, the arguments for deletion go something like this:
: 
: "I never heard of 'chemistry'. It sounds like some new religious movement. Delete the article or merge 'chemistry' into 'scientology'."
: 
I think maybe I'll try to start a statistics WikiProject.  There's no community and Wikipedia work in that field, even by those who know it well, is so uneven because we lack conventions and the like.
: 
Express opinions on that article here. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:23, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Foundations of statistics 

message: Inspired by a post at the village pump, I'm wondering if anyone else thinks there ought to be a link to Jitse's random article tool on Portal:Mathematics, as seen on Portal:Middle Earth for example. (And Jitse: would you mind?) Algebraist 23:20, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's a great idea! Another place where it can be included is the WikiProject Mathematics main page (either in the "toolbox" on the left side or in the "Resources" on the right side). Arcfrk (talk) 23:58, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Random article link 

message: Jakob.scholbach suggested looking at the German version of least squares. I have also looked at the French version. This is how the problem is stated there.
  \chi^2(\theta) = \sum_{i=1}^N \left(\frac{y_i - f(x_i;\theta)}{\sigma_i}\right)^2 = \sum_{i=1}^N w_i \left(y_i - f(x_i;\theta)\right)^2
 Les quantités  w_i , inverses des variances des mesures sont appelés poids des mesures.
 
 (Literal translation) The quantities  w_i , the inverses of the variances of the measurements are called the "weights" of the measurements
Both French and German articles are based on the premise that least squares is applied mathematics, and that therefore the physical circumstances of its applications are an integral part of it. Petergans (talk) 09:48, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other language versions 

message: I have found that there are two articles on this topic which slightly contradict each other - Newton's method uses the function and 1st derivative. I was taught this at school as the Newton-Raphson method. Then there is Newton's method in optimization which brings in the 2nd derivatives. Is there a generally agreed way to distinguish between the two methods? I would refer to them as first and second order Newton methods. Petergans (talk) 14:24, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No, the "second order" Newton method is Halley's method. In optimization, one is looking for the zeros of the gradient, as possible locations of extremal points. So by using Newton's method on the system of first derivatives the Hessian turns up. The order of convergence is still quadratic.--LutzL (talk) 15:20, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

text: Newton's method is for finding a zero of a function. Newton's method in optimization is for finding an optimum of a function. Applying the latter method to a function f is the same as applying Newton's method to its derivative f'.  --Lambiam 09:20, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Newton's method 

message: This question has reared its head again at WP:VPP#Mathematics. Algebraist 01:34, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accessibility of maths articles 

message: Do we have a policy or guideline on the use of technical terms? If not, we should.
I was just looking at finite element method, and it uses two technical terms, "Dirichlet condition" and "displacement condition", to refer to the same thing.
I personally think that, as much as possible, a single article should stick to a single notation, and a single technical term per concept. I think listing other terminologies and notations is a good thing, but I don't think that intermixing terminologies and notations within the article, for no good reason, helps in any way.
So do we have such a policy? Where is it?
Loisel (talk) 04:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know that there's a policy, but it seems to me a matter of good writing, not to be unnecessarily confusing. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:26, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I'm not as familiar as I should be with the MOS, but I believe terminology switching is frowned upon (in the same way switching BC/BCE or British/US English are not really helpful). --Cheeser1 (talk) 06:32, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I think that paragraph refers to consistency across articles, and is given by way of rationale for having a Manual of Style. Nevertheless, the same rationale clearly also applies for consistency within an article being desirable.  --Lambiam 21:39, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: "An overriding principle is that style and formatting should be applied consistently throughout an article, unless there is a good reason to do otherwise". --Sturm 21:46, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I should have read it more carefully.  --Lambiam 22:25, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I guess you're right. It says Dirichlet problem, not Dirichlet condition. Also, thanks for the link to WP:MOS, although I have the feeling that some verbiage that directly addresses notation, symbols and terminology would be more convincing when the issue turns up in an edit war at some point in the future. Loisel (talk) 07:13, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Policy on technical terms 

message: Is there a standard format and location for numerical examples in mathematics articles? Examples seem to be scattered or non-existant.  See: Expected_value - 2 in intro; Standard_deviation - 1st section, step by step; variance - no example. If there is no standard, should we make one? --Zojj (t,c) 01:37, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess there is no standard. Examples, pictures, and simple non-technical explanations are of course very encouraged and as early as possible in articles, as they help elucidate matters, especially in math. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples 

message: This article has had a rough start and could use some help.  One important part is to improve the references, but this is a big task.  An easy first step is to check the provided references to see if they actually support the claims made, and a second is to format the surviving references in a standard fashion.   Silly rabbit and I have made some progress on this, but it would be good to have a few more eyes on the project.  The topic may be heavily influenced by physics, so those with a dual background would be particularly helpful.  As a warning: the original authors may have a WP:COI and may feel they are not being treated WP:CIVILly since their work has been called non-notable and proposed for deletion really quite a few times now.  I think this is just an inherent problem with COI edits, and that there has not really been any incivility, but I felt I should warn you about the probable difficulty in finding consensus on the article as a whole.  This should not really affect the refcheck, but when you comment on the references, you might want to double check you aren't accidentally insulting someone or otherwise inadvertently inciting something awful.  Thanks for any help. JackSchmidt (talk) 05:24, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Boubaker polynomials]] refcheck 

message: Recently, I noticed that SVD was an article about a sniper rifle, with no reference to any other meanings.  When I google search , most of the hits on the front page are for Singular value decomposition, a few are for other meanings, and only one (the wikipedia article) is for the rifle.
I moved the rifle article to SVD (rifle) and made SVD a disambiguation page.  The creator of the rifle article has since moved SVD (the disambig page) to SVD (disambiguation) and put the rifle article back at SVD with the comment that "google gets enough first page hits to indicate this is a firearm".  (Does google tailor your hits based on previous searches?)  They did add a link to the disambiguation page at the top, which is good.
Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary_topic indicates that when there is a well-known primary meaning or phrase, that topic may be used for the main article with a link to the disambiguation page.  Is the rifle really the primary meaning of SVD?  Is this worth arguing about?  Where would be a good place to have the "extended discussion" that might indicate that there is no primary meaning, and that SVD should be the disambiguation page? -- KathrynLybarger (talk) 06:13, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not going to comment on the issue you raise.  But another more pressing matter is that in the process of moving the pages around, the original page history of SVD was lost.  It remained at SVD (rifle), which is now a redirect.  An administrator is going to have to fix the problem and re-move the page SVD (rifle) to SVD so that the history is recovered.  Any volunteers? Silly rabbit (talk) 06:24, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I restored the redirect from SVD to the dab page, so that the history now goes with the correct article. No admin powers were needed nor used, though I have them. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:32, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks! -- KathrynLybarger (talk) 07:10, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

text: As supporting evidence: SVD matrix: 1.4M Google hits; SVD rifle: 100k Google hits. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:26, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

text: In my view, it was uncivil of the rifle contributor to claim primacy. If someone writes about "Leonard Carliz (Minor Poet)" then I'm content for a disambig page and renaming my own "...(Mathematician)", we should both just rename our pages, unless the greater significance of one is blatant. To many people I suppose, anything about math is blatantly insignificant :-( Pete St.John (talk) 21:12, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

text: This has already taken place, as attested by the page history.  However, some clumsy move attempts were made by User: Koalorka, the editor who thought the rifle ought to be the primary meaning, leaving a bit of a muddle.  The necessary repairs and redirects have been made. --Sturm 15:56, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  It seems that the talk page history was also lost, but during a much earlier move .  Silly rabbit (talk) 17:30, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The original talk page was at Talk:Dragunov Sniper Rifle – again, a move handled by a clumsy copy-and-paste. I think I'll be having a word with Kolorka. --Sturm 19:04, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If it helps, he was warned before in Nov 2007.  The warning had a neat link I hadn't seen before to a backlog of such moves.  It is also a neat diff because of the QINU bug. JackSchmidt (talk) 20:21, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[SVD]] -- primary meaning? 

message: Today I stubbed out an article about logician Warren Goldfarb of Harvard University.  It was later tagged for speedy deletion since it did not sufficiently establish Goldfarb's notability.  
I have contested the deletion: I believe Goldfarb is notable, although I agree that I did not establish this in the stub article.  But before I put more effort into it, I would like feedback from members of this community: is Warren Goldfarb sufficiently notable to merit a Wikipedia article?
Thanks for any feedback you can provide.
-- Dominus (talk) 01:14, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Ask User:Gregbard for an opinion.  His list of papers doesn't suggest that he works in a field of logic where I understand notability.  — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 01:24, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

text: The relevant guideline, WP:PROF, is very vague. I'm also not familiar with the philosophy side of logic. My impression is that there is a good chance the article would last at AFD, since there are at least two things that the article can say: he has a named professorship, and he was a co-editor of Goedel's collected works, a very important publication. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:52, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I know little of such logic, but I would concur that these two points clearly demonstrate notability per WP:PROF (and don't seem to require specific knowledge of this field). --Cheeser1 (talk) 02:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

text: The named professorship at Harvard by itself is strong evidence to me that he's notable enough for an article, and I'd hope that (after I've added a line naming the chair to the article) it would be safe from speedy. It seems likely that this is what DGG meant by "obviously not a speedy". —David Eppstein (talk) 02:17, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

text: Named professorships are typically considered prestigious and competitive. Those who receive them are well established in their field, with a long history of strong research. A named professorship would be mentioned in a formal introduction, like an award the person has won. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:00, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It is, as far as I am concerned, an award. It's like a named scholarship or a named award, only it's attached to your job, instead of your financial aid or some big certificate or whatever. --Cheeser1 (talk) 20:57, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Warren Goldfarb 

message: I'd like to draw your attention to an issue in the definition of Decidability (logic), namely whether that definition should be based on the imprecise notion of "effective method", or the precise notion of "recursive computability". See Talk:Decidability (logic)#Precise and imprecise definitions.  --Lambiam 16:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  An issue in the definition of Decidability (logic) 

message: We at WP:1.0 are currently testing a bot for selecting articles for offline release, based on a balance of importance and quality.    You are familiar with the quality scale, but we are also trying assess article importance.  We want to develop a good algorithm that uses a four-component formula involving WikiProject assessment (Top/High/Mid/Low), no. of hits, no. of links-in and no. of interlanguage (interwiki) links.  We now have some test results for Maths (scroll down to reach Maths), and we'd really appreciate feedback on the various algorithms.  The first is a simple addition of weighted components, but the other two use a logarithmic function (which is more valid mathematically?!).  Which algorithm works best - sort2, sort3 or sort4?  We want to see that the listed articles are ordered from the highest importance-quality to the lowest; which list looks to be giving the most sensible ordering?  Many thanks, Walkerma (talk) 22:17, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Selection of articles for offline releases 

message: This is a courtesy posting. Please post your particular comments on individual articles on their repective discussion pages. I suggest that comments relating to more than one article be posted on talk: least squares. Please also note request to delete Weighted least squares  
*Least squares has been revised an expanded. This article should serve as in introduction and over-view to the two subsidiary articles, 
**Linear least squares (revised)
**Non-linear least squares (created)
which contain more technical details, but it has sufficient detail to stand on its own.
In addition Gauss-Newton algorithm has been revised. The earlier article contained a serious error regarding the validity of setting second derivatives to zero. 
Points to notice include:
*Adoption of a standard notation in all four articles mentioned above. This makes for easy cross-referencing. The notation also agrees with many of the articles on regression
*New navigation template
*Weighted least squares should be deleted. The first section is adequately covered in Linear least squares and Non-linear least squares. The second section (Linear Algebraic Derivation) is rubbish.
This completes the fist phase of restructuring of the topic of least squares analysis. From now on I envisage only minor revision of related articles. This note is being posted an all four talk pages. Petergans (talk) 10:23, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: How do you folks feel when you labor making more accessible an article written by a stubborn specialist and adding a pretty picture, only to have that specialist working separately on his own fork in his sandbox then overwriting your work without discussion ('cause his version "is better")? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:41, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I too think there was a lot to be said for Oleg's version/s compared to this, and I am strongly tempted to edit the article back to something much closer to it, when I have some more time.  Jheald (talk) 20:24, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Least squares: implementation of proposal 

message: I wanted to ask whether people are interested in collaborating on the Riemann surface article, similarly to the collaboration on homotopy groups of spheres initiated by Geometryguy some months ago. The current article is in a decent start-up-shape, but I'm sure there is ample opportunity to improve and enhance it. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 11:37, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  collaboration on [[Riemann surface]]? 

message: I nominated Aceromath for deletion; it is an article on a software program, and Oleg correctly recatted as software, but the author of the article has reverted; so our program may miss it. This looks like a newbie, a one-man company looking for free advertising, so we should delete but not bite. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:57, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm going to leave a note about constructive contributions vs. contributions made as the representative of a corporation (per WP:UN and WP:COI). Actually, I just did. Hopefully I've done what I can to keep this person from being chased off of the 'pedia, even if the account itself seems to have serious issues. --Cheeser1 (talk) 19:08, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

text: For reference, this is also interesting: User:Thenetcentinell. --Cheeser1 (talk) 19:12, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That's why I deduce a one-man company. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:13, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur, but since that's a bit of a gray area, I don't think reporting him for a WP:UN-block would be appropriate. However, I MfD'd his autobiography/userpage/vanispamcruftisement. --Cheeser1 (talk) 19:49, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Aceromath]] deletion 

message: A week ago  produced an article in French called "Lemme de Gauss" which turned out to be about Gauss's lemma (Riemannian geometry), previously a redlink from the DAB page Gauss's Lemma. I have moved it to the English title, and have also done a translation from the French to the best of my ability, which is currently in my user-space here, the main article being (mostly) still the original French for comparison. I would welcome any comments and improvements; in a few days, unless there are objections, I plan to move the translation into the main article, and fix the links from the article Exponential map to point to it. JohnCD (talk) 22:40, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No offense, but it reads like a cliche differential geometry textbook, too many formulas. WP:NOT#TEXTBOOK may be relevant. Arcfrk (talk) 03:49, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Gauss's lemma (Riemannian geometry)]] 

message: Currently the Logarithm article has at the very top two shots of pages with alternative definitions for the log. The question is, do they belong there, and are they more important than the log graph picture?  Is that useful or pretty? Comments welcome at Talk:Logarithm#New old definition images. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments wanted on Logarithm