Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2007/May

message: The dispersive partial differential equation wiki
now has the gnu free documentation license listed as its copyright, which I think means that stuff from it can now be copied over into wikipedia (which seems to use the same license, though someone who knows about these things should confirm this). Maybe someone who knows about these thinks could make a template to say something like
:This article incorporates material from ... from the dispersive PDE wiki, which is licensed under the GFDL
R.e.b. 21:18, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dispersive PDE wiki 

message: Theres been a dispute over whether Curves (disambiguation) and Curve (disambiguation) should be merged, which has now gone to RFC. So I though I'd invite the heavy mob over to Talk:Curves (disambiguation). --Salix alba (talk) 21:31, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Curves (disambiguation) 

message: This is sort of frivolous, but I didn't want to make any changes to such a contentious topic.  Now that the Poincare conjecture is proven, and its proof is verified three ways from last August, shouldn't the "did you know..." factoid about the Millennium Prize problems read "there are 6 unsolved problems..."? Ryan Reich 23:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Though to answer my own question, there is a pretty good argument that we should wait for the Clay Mathematics Institute to make it official. Ryan Reich 23:44, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "7 unsolved problems"? 

message: Recently an editor changes Poincaré–Birkhoff–Witt theorem to a redirect to Poincaré-Birkhoff-Witt theorem (the former uses en dashes, the latter hyphens) although it was quickly reverted.  I know some of the math folk here have impressed upon others in the past that the en dashes are correct and should be used in the page title.  WP:MOSDASH agrees that using the en dashes is correct (since these are different people's names) but states that for page titles simple hyphens should be used.  A provision that it is ok to redirect to the dash title from the hyphen title has been struck out.  After some investigation, it's clear that a discussion on the WP:MOSDASH talk page is what led to the previously mentioned edit; the discussion seems to have pinpointed a problem with saving pages with dash titles on computers using an older version of Internet Explorer.  --C S (Talk) 06:54, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What a silly thing for people to be worried about, exactly which dash belongs where.  As far as I'm concerned there should only be one dash (the one on my keyboard) to avoid all the confusion. StuRat 16:43, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Part of the point is that the different dashes have different meanings. If one writes about the Chan-Ho-StuRat theorem, one doesn't know whether it's a result by three people named Chan, Ho, and StuRat, two people named Chan and Ho-Sturat, etc., whereas if one writes about the Chan-Ho–StuRat theorem the distinction is more clear to those paying attention. So within the text of an article, using the right kind of dash can be important. As for titles of articles, I find the argument on MOSDASH unconvincing, especially because both names should be present with a redirect from one and the character appearing in the url will depend on which path one uses to reach the article, but whatever. —David Eppstein 16:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

text: The problem is that you can't save a page by saving a redirect! So, from the point of view of good typography and clarity, it is better to have Chan-Ho-StuRat theorem redirect to Chan-Ho–StuRat theorem, but from the point of view of everyone being able to save content, it is better to have Chan-Ho–StuRat theorem redirect to Chan-Ho-StuRat theorem. I agree the trend is towards unicode, so WP probably needs to introduce an error message like "You are using a badly designed operating system and/or browser. Please update your computer to use non-Microsoft products" for this situation. Incidently, Chan-Ho–StuRat theorem is still a redlink: is anyone going to make a stub? It could be a nice result ;) Geometry guy 17:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:BEANS.  ;) --C S (Talk) 07:39, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  dashes in page titles 

message: The following articles are up for GA Review, feel free to comment.
*Exponentiation
*Homotopy groups of spheres
*Klee's measure problem
*Ordinal number
*Quadratic equation
*Sylvester's sequence
*Znám's problem
Hope to see you there. 74.116.113.241 01:18, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  GA Review 

message: Thanks to the efforts of several editors, the assessment of mathematics articles using the  template is now considerably more useful and worthwhile than it was before. I thought it would therefore be helpful to summarize the current system and its benefits, and to encourage editors to add ratings to existing and new articles.
The maths rating is a template which can be placed (by anyone) on the talk page of any mathematical article to summarize its quality, importance and field, and suggest improvements that could be made.
What can article assessment do for you? The maths rating system is useful for directing our efforts towards improving the mathematics coverage of wikipedia. It also helps us to monitor the progress of this WikiProject. Although assessment is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself, it is a useful way to organize and monitor our efforts.
Recent improvements to the system mean that articles with maths ratings are now included automatically (with comments) in many useful tables. For instance, you can see the ratings for articles in your field (e.g. algebra), you can find stub class articles (listed by importance) to improve, or articles considered to be vital to the project rated by importance and quality. Rated articles about mathematicians are listed in a sortable table and there are also tables of theorems and conjectures and historical articles, sortable by field. All rated articles are listed in these tables (which are updated daily). They are also automatically included in a a hierarchy of categories. Every table or category has a navigation bar that links easily to any other.
What can you do for article assessment? There are many ways we can all improve this scheme to maximize its benefits.
* Add the  template to the talk page of an article. For example, when creating a new stub, why not also start up the talk page with a maths rating?
* Add or update data in  templates. There are may articles whose importance or quality is unassessed. Take a quick look at the assessment scheme and assess or reassess an article today!
* Add comments to an article with a maths rating. There is a whole category of mathematics articles which have no comments. A signed comment helps even just to date the maths rating, but even better, it can provide a summary of suggested improvements for the article that other editors can read.
* Add extra information about mathematicians. To make sortable tables, the dates, surnames, and primary fields of mathematicians are needed. It is too difficult to deduce these from page contents, so they are stored in a special format. Just click on the links in the mathematicians table to add or update these data.
Finally, you can contribute by making suggestions here or at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 on how the scheme can be improved further. Many thanks. Geometry guy 01:39, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mathematics article assessment 

message: Here it is:
:: In probability theory, a probability distribution is a function of the probabilities of a mutually exclusive set of events.
That is idiotic nonsense.  I had no idea this article was in such profoundly bad shape.  I'm going to have to think about how to rephrase this.  If someone beats me to it, I will be pleased. Michael Hardy 17:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: ... OK, now I've changed it.  I was shocked by what I read. Michael Hardy 17:33, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Is it standard that the term "distribution" is restricted to measures over subsets of the real numbers, rather than the general case of measures over subsets of any possible space of outcomes (e.g., random curves)?  --LambiamTalk 18:19, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

text: The Encyclopaedia of Mathematics considers a probability distribution to be any probability measure of a probability space.  --LambiamTalk 18:27, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure what's standard, but my old copy of Feller's book says that distribution functions are "non-decreasing functions which tend to zero as x → −∞ and to 1 as x → ∞." That seems to imply that a distribution function is defined in terms of a random variable that can only assume real values. On the other hand, I only have vol. 1 of An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications.  DavidCBryant 18:48, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

text: My impression was that "distribution" refers to something more complicated than a density function, but not as complicated as a measure. You use it with the Riemann-Stieltjes integral#Application to probability theory. JRSpriggs 06:22, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The initial sentence in "probability distribution" is terrible!! 

message: The  template appears to me as a rather indiscriminate collection of numerical algorithms, with a heavy bias towards root-finding algorithms. I don't know if it is necessary, and if it is, if grouping these together is any good. For example, it is of little use at Pseudorandom number generator and Fast Fourier transform. I would argue that it should be either thoroughly rewritten and posted on a different collection of articles, or otherwise deleted. Comments? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:56, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that this navigation bar is useless (unbalanced, incomplete, and also inaccurate). That might, perhaps, be fixed, but in this case I don't understand what aim it could achieve that is not much better addressed by categories (for navigation) and a good overview at Numerical analysis.  --LambiamTalk 21:10, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The obvious thing to do (and probably the least work) would be to move the template to "root-finding algorithms" and remove all the other stuff. Geometry guy 21:38, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Having looked at it, my first instinct is to delete it as a useless eyesore. While deleting from each article, add a category as Lambiam suggests. --KSmrqT 21:43, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  OK. Jitse, our numerical guy, agrees too (on his talk page). I removed it from articles and deleted it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:39, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template:Numerical algorithms 

message: In my quest to assess every mathematics article I came across several articles that were in the purview of this Wikiproject that had not been placed under its supervision. This troubled me and I would like to know what can be done to add these articles to our project efficiently. The articles I have found thus far are Mandelbrot set and Lorenz attractor but I am sure there are more out there.--Cronholm144 18:52, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You mean, articles without the Project Math banner on their talk pages? Just do what you did to Mandelbrot set, add one there. Also, add a mathematical category (e.g. :Category:Fractals) to the article itself if it should have one and doesn't. —David Eppstein 19:02, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: According to the table of assessed mathematics articles there are about 1000 assessed articles. On the other hand the list of mathematics articles contains about 15000 articles. Previous discussions have not supported the automatic tagging of these articles (see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive_18#.7B.7BMaths_rating.7D.7D and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive_24#Tagging_math_articles) and have suggested that assessing all these articles might not be a sensible goal. However, the current assessment coverage is rather haphazard, and I would encourage editors to add maths ratings to any articles which they consider to be important to the project. Geometry guy 21:08, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  As yet to be added mathematics articles 

message: I nominated these for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/One third, as not encyclopedic in my view. Comments on these articles are welcome there. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:00, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[One third]] and [[one quarter]] 

message: This survived AfD, although it could use a rewrite. Michael Hardy also suggests a new title, since this is not a class of number, but an essay on bogus statistics. Can anyone think of a good one? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:05, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Imaginary number? Seriously, I think that is how such made-up numbers that achieve mythical status are known. Plenty of Google hits with this meaning.  --LambiamTalk 00:03, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Michael seems to be thinking of something more descriptive, like unsourced statistical claims; or apocryphical, anecdotal, numerical.... to which mythical number would redirect. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:38, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the current title makes this a bit too much like a book ad. I'm not against citing the book, but centering the article around it is not a good idea. On the other hand, any alternative title should be in plain enough language not to be OR. Apocryphal statistics and anecdotal statistics both seem to capture the flavour of the article to me: the numerical aspect is reflected in the plain language meaning of the word "statistics". Geometry guy 19:09, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Which book?  --LambiamTalk 20:26, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Sorry, the cited reference reads a bit like a book title, but it seems to be an article. I still think the title revolves too much around one primary source. Geometry guy 20:34, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Mythical number]]

message: Perhaps I'm being naive, but it seems to me quite unwikipedian to go around protecting articles.  Wouldn't a better way be to have some kind of shared watchlist for heavily vandalized articles?  Is there already such a facility that I don't know about?  If not, someone could just provide a list of problematic articles in their user namespace (or even in Wikipedia/Wikipedia_talk namespace).  Others could add articles as the need arose.  Silly rabbit 11:52, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There's no shared watchlist. About which articles are vandalized, it is usually high profile ones, like mathematics itself, then the math portal and all its subpages, and then, well geometry. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:25, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

text: The closest thing is the "Related changes" tool, on the left side of the screen.  If you go to one of the field subpages of this table and then select "related changes" you can get a list of changes made to the pages there, like this .  It's not quite the same as a watchlist because multiple changes to the same article are shown.  C Mummert · talk 15:37, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

text: A few more pages I've seen frequent vandalism on: Pythagorean theorem, Buoyancy, Fibonacci number. —David Eppstein 16:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Algebra seems to be attacked as much as Geometry, although, amazingly, unlike the latter it undergoes productive development at the same time. Arcfrk 06:08, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

text: More interesting would be a "shared patrol-list", which answers the question "has someone whom I trust reviewed the most recent changes?" That way, I can avoid reviewing something that you've already reviewed and let pass. linas 00:05, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  So, what's on your watchlist? 

message: Could someone have a glance at Algebraic bracket and this AFD entry? Needs expert comment on accuracy / worthiness for keeping. Thanks. Tearlach 02:21, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nominate it for AfD.  It has no context, and it's completely isolated on wikipedia.  Such things are useful in deformation theory (see Gerstenhaber algebra), but if the need should arise, it's likely to be dealt with inline anyway.  So, no harm done.  Anyway, I objected to the term algebraic bracket ages ago.  Silly rabbit 02:36, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'd prefer to keep this as a reminder that there are algebraic brackets, and this is one of them. We don't delete orphans on WP: we find them a family. I've known the term "algebraic bracket" since my early postdoctoral days, when I spent some time thinking about them with a few experts. I'd be happy to move this particular instance to a more specific title, though. In the long run, "algebraic bracket" itself might be a nice dab. Geometry guy 03:29, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

text: I am not at all sure it's a good title, but the concept is important, and the article seems to have plenty of references (in case you needed context). Definitely keep! Arcfrk 13:54, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I closed the discussion after the nomination was withdrawn. The article was moved to Nijenhuis-Richardson bracket. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 04:02, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Algebraic bracket]] 

message: I made a list of math articles which are most linked to from other math articles. The list is at User:Mathbot/Most linked math articles. 
My goal was a metric for assessing the importance of math articles. I think the higher an article is  on this list, the more important it probably is, and the more crucial is for it to be in good shape. This is imperfect of course, but is better than not having anything.
Also, I emphasized articles which have not yet been rated as part of the WP:1.0 project. That may help with tagging. Hope this is useful. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:03, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Very much so, I will get on these first--Cronholm144 03:10, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree this is very useful, thanks Oleg :) Of course it is not a perfect metric, as well-linked articles are more likely to be in good shape, and therefore less in need of help. So it is definitely worthwhile (though very boring, sigh) to go through all of the articles. Probability and statistics is particularly under-represented in the assessment scheme. Is there a champion out there? Geometry guy 19:53, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Most linked to math articles 

message: A recent edit of Differential equation expanded the article by adding a section Rise in importance during 20th century. I believe that it's a wrong article for this type of material (or wrong material for this type of article?), my concerns are summarized here. Can some experts in differential equations and/or numerical methods, please, take a look? Arcfrk 01:43, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Differential equations 

message: * 
Please contribute to the discussion. Uncle G 09:05, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Relations on a set of three elements above. Geometry guy 12:07, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articles listed at Articles for deletion 

message: The Wadge hierarchy stub needs help from an expert.  Wadge game needs an article or a section in Wadge hierarchy.  If these topics are better covered in other articles, then a paragraph in another article with a merge/redirect or blank/redirect may be in order.  Disclaimer: I am not a mathematician. davidwr 09f9(talk) 15:38, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need help with [[Wadge hierarchy]] and related articles 

message: Editors here might like to know that the outcome of the CfD for :Category:Jewish mathematicians is deletion. I would like to thank others here for taking the trouble to comment at this CfD and thus express the view of general mathematics article editors. The discussion was one of the longest I have seen, so the weight of good argument that editors here contributed was very important. Geometry guy 10:56, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Outcome

message: Hi, I'm looking for a small number of Wikipedia editors in the Mathematics area who are well-qualified, well-respected, and have high standards.  This is for a new project that needs such talents; just now I'd rather not advertise the details.  Please tell me some names, including perhaps your own if you fit the description.   Thanks.  --Zerotalk 10:46, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Methinks mostest editors went a-scurrying after reading this ungrammatical, error-filled request. linas 15:52, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We're not such a judgemental lot are we? It looks more like a case of Groucho Marx to me: "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member" :) Geometry guy 16:33, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who are the most best editors around here? 

message: When moving an article, you have to remember to also move the /Comments subpage if it exists. For instance, when Euler integration is moved to Euler method, the talk page Talk:Euler integration automatically goes with it, to Talk:Euler method. However, the subpage Talk:Euler integration/Comments is not automatically moved to Talk:Euler method/Comments; you have to do this by hand. 
This is a pity as it will go wrong in the future. Unfortunately, I don't have any better suggestion that just telling everybody to keep this in mind. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 08:04, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe a bot could check for this :-) --C S (Talk) 09:40, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Is this a problem for all articles with archived talk pages as well, eg Talk:Entropy/Archive7 ?  If so, this is a much bigger problem, and should be urgently patched in the wiki software.  Jheald 10:01, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Is there an extant proposal to modify Special:Movepage so that it offers an option  "[ ] Move subpages (if any)" in addition to "[ ] Move associated talk page(s)"?  --LambiamTalk 10:24, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for pointing this out Jitse! I agree that it is definitely a flaw in the wiki software, especially now that subpages are encouraged for so many things (e.g., /doc pages for templates). I would also note that if a page about a rated mathematician is moved (e.g. to make the form of the name comply with Wikipedia guidelines), then there may also be a Talk:.../Data subpage to move. Geometry guy 10:40, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  That was me, sorry about that. I moved the page, fixed the redirects, but did not think of the comments page. Good to know in the future. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:59, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

text: To answer my own question above: yes, there is such a proposal: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9626. If you think this is a good idea, you can vote for it.  --LambiamTalk 06:31, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving pages with assessment comments 

message: The article is somewhat shell-ish; i outlined a framework for the new article on the article talk page. Please, let's get this article good.. i love trig!   ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ slurp me! 19:27, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help required for a big development of [[Trigonometry]] and related articles. 

message: Perhaps someone might want to suggest changes or join this experiment: User_talk:Edgerck#Reliance_on_Information
Comments are welcome (down the page, please!). I hope this is useful. Edgerck 11:03, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reliance on information 

message: I nominated this for deletion, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/5280 (number). Comments welcome. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:55, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[5280 (number)]] 

message: I've nominated List of prime numbers for deletion here.  Feel free to comment. —METS501 (talk) 20:21, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, don't feel free to comment any more. :-) Closed as speedy keep. —METS501 (talk) 02:45, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yeah. :) Sometimes it helps testing the waters over here before nominating an article for deletion. If mathematicians here say a math article sucks, the rest of the crowd at AfD usually has no choice but to agree. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:38, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  AFD 

message: Someone's nominated three coin for deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Three coin. Michael Hardy 00:05, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  ...and another 

message: I have nominated table of divisors and table of prime factors for deletion. --Trovatore 04:16, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  still another 

message: If anyone has a minute, can they try to decipher this edit and reinsert it in coherent English?  It was written by a user who doesn't speak English very well, and has been removed by me for the time being. —METS501 (talk) 18:00, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quintic equation 

message: I take it the semi-protection of geometry has expired, because we're right back to vandalism. My assessment of the experiment is that vandalism completely disappeared during protection, and positive contributions appeared. Conclusion: semi-protection should be permanent. --KSmrqT 04:11, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Geometry vandalism 

message: In the article Yuktibhasa it is said that the work of the same name by Indian astronomer Jyeshtadeva, is considered to be the first mathematical treatise on calculus. This became a DYK also. Most of the sources online refer to the work thus. However, certain users have questioned this notion in connection with Indian Mathematics and Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics. Rather than leaving the resolution to quasi experts, this question should be settled here, I think.
The conversation referred to is ongoing at Talk:Indian mathematics the major players are User:Jagged 85 and User:Fowler&fowler. However most articles that mention the history of calculus will be affected by the result of this conflict.--Cronholm144 07:09, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, as there is no original research allowed, at most certain references may have to be added. It is outside the scope of Wikipedia to rule on what is the first treatise on calculus (even if that is a meaningful statement). Charles Matthews 10:14, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Yuktibhasa]] the first treatise on Calculus 

message: According to this article, "liminally compact" is another way to say "locally compact". I asked the author of the page two months ago whether some reference could be added (see User talk:Wikimorphism). I got a reply that it was definitely used as claimed in the article, but no references have appeared and the author has vanished. So, is anybody familiar with this usage? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:44, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Apparently the contributor was not sure it had every appeared in print. The article is only a stub, and a dubious one at that, so it would be no great burden to recreate it should the need arise. I have PRODed it. --KSmrqT 13:19, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Liminal property]] 

message: Georg Cantor has been put on Good article review, I suppose, as a punishment for emphasizing his maths over his (non)-Jewishness. Feel free to comment. Arcfrk 07:31, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I recognize the name of the nominator; this is simply more footnote-worship. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:06, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If you have any problems as regards myself PMAnderson please take it to WP:ANI. If you do not, and continue to make remarks on other talk pages as regards myself, I will not hesitate in reporting you there for baiting me. We both disagree on the level of citationing an article needs, so let's leave it at that. LuciferMorgan 22:44, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I am pleased to come back from ANI bearing news that this threat seems to have been retracted. I admit I do not share LuciferMorgan's simple and unjustified faith in what citation can accomplish; but we also disagree on whether "citationing" is an English participle. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:53, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Georg Cantor Good article review 

message: Hello to everybody at the Math Wikiproject. While evaluating articles to be created at WP:AFC, I encountered this Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/Today#Iteratively_Re-weighted_Least_Squares. I am not too good with things math related so can someone here who is more knowledgeable review the submission to see if it is worthy of an article? Thanks for helping. -- Hdt83  Chat 06:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It was created by Salix alba and subsequently edited by Lambiam and myself. In case anyone else here cares to view the results, they are now at iteratively re-weighted least squares. —David Eppstein 19:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Iteratively Re-weighted Least Squares 

message: Hi... hey, if I had a dollar for every instance of the word "strong" in mathematics articles, I'm sure I could buy a tiny microwave from Walmart... but there doesn't seem to be any section of any article that defines/discusses "strong" (I'm told it means "result A is stronger than result B if B can immediately be deduced from A"). This is definitely strongly needed.. need something to wikilink the word "strong" to. I really appreciate your help. Ling.Nut 06:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: PS I bet it would be a small, wikilinkable subsection of a larger, more general article.. but I have no idea what article that would be... thanksLing.Nut 06:42, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You mean like a fortiori? —David Eppstein 06:46, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes I do, in fact. But the link goes to the top of a table... and it's impossible to tell which entry is meant.. say for example "blah blah blah found an even stronger proof that..." Is there any way to.. umm.. write an article for the term? Or write three sentences to stick in another article? Thanks! Ling.Nut 06:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe wikt:a fortiori is more satisfactory? —David Eppstein 07:00, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Would it be satisfactory to include it at the list of words in Mathematical jargon?  --LambiamTalk 12:58, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've added it there. Ryan Reich 21:44, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  no definition or discussion of "strong" 

message: What is the convention regarding the use of \mathbb{R}^n versus Rn? Jhausauer 20:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See /Archive5#question about formatting of standard symbols (I didn't find a more recent discussion). The project tends not to be prescriptive, but there seems to be a preference for bold inline html, and blackboard bold math in display. Geometry guy 20:31, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

text: ℝ?  Doesn't seem to work for me. Silly rabbit 21:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I didn't look carefully enough at my source. ℝ should work in MathML but is unavailable in HTML. Another way of typing the same thing, that does work in HTML: ℝ. —David Eppstein 21:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

text: This may depend on your OS, browser, monobook.js, installed fonts, and the house Uranus is in, but for me ℝn isn't very legible. ℝn, with the font size one up, is almost twice as tall and quite legible, although the subscript is a bit too low.  --LambiamTalk 22:23, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

text: This is mentioned in the mathematics style manual. We use "R" inline and "\R" (or equivalent) in displayed TeX equations. --KSmrqT 05:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rn 

message: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive Index is currently broken. I have fixed the most obvious break, which is that, after number 20, archive titles have a space before the number.
However, more seriously, the complete archive takes many seconds to load and now breaks the infamous pre-expand include limit. (What? Never heard of that? Take a look at Wikipedia:Template limits: this is useful knowledge, since it affects quite a few of our activities.) I propose that the  complete archive should be replaced by a pre-2006 archive, and that the years (2006 and 2007) in the table should link to a page listing all the archives for the given year. This would not break the pre-expand include limit. I would just do it, but thought that other editors might like to know that something went wrong. Geometry guy 22:06, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for taking care of that. I have never tried looking at the entire archive. CMummert · talk 05:06, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archives of this page 

message: There is a discussion at Talk:Neighbourhood (mathematics)#Which comes first: neighborhood of a point or of a set?, and a few more mathematicians in that neighbourhood would be appreciated. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:38, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neighbourhood (mathematics) 

message: :I think that we should have relatively few articles of "top" importance (say, 2% = 300 articles within mathematics) and that the majority of articles should be "low" importance. Articles of "top" importance should appeal to non-mathematicians so they can't be about deep concepts; there may be some exceptions like Poincaré conjecture that are important in maths and have hit the headlines in the newspapers. That means that we should be very selective: after 50 or so mathematicians and elementary stuff like square, triangle, addition, there is not much left.
:"The importance of a topic within its own context" depends a lot on what you consider to be its own context. The article on pseudo-differentiable quasi-widgets is not that important in the context of mathematics, more important in widget theory, and crucial to the theory of pseudo-differentiable quasi-widgets. I hope that Geometry guy can clarify this point.
:As an example, I'll explain the ratings that I have in mind for numerical analysis:
:* Top: only numerical analysis itself.
:* High: major subfields like optimization, interpolation, root finding, numerical integration; and also the most important methods (I haven't thought this through, but I'm thinking about Gaussian elimination, Newton method, fast Fourier transform, and no others); about a dozen in total.
:* The rest to be divided between mid and low.
:I haven't rated any of the articles mentioned, except numerical analysis which I upgraded from "high" to "top", so I've no idea what the actual importance ratings are. But I've seen quite a lot of articles being rated, and most importance ratings match with how I'd rate them. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Re: This is not going to happen with the current definition of "Low", because editors who have worked hard on articles they are interested in are hardly going to call the subject "peripheral". — there is some of that, I'm sure, but I wonder if there's also a selection effect here: the articles that get enough attention to be rated are also less likely to be on topics of low importance. —David Eppstein 06:46, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Overall importance or within context?

message: As the discussion has died down a little, I thought it would be useful to summarise some of the issues with a few comments, and outline some steps forward.
# There seems to be agreement (or at least no disagreement) that there should be more articles rated as lower importance than higher importance, and in particular that only a few hundred articles (out of several thousand rated articles) should be rated Top importance. This is not going to happen unless some changes are made: at the moment, the Mid category is the most populated.
# There appears to be some consensus that context should be taken into account when assessing importance, although there are concerns that this might conflict with point 1, and no agreement whether elementary material is intrinsically more important than advanced material. On the other hand, rating importance within context appears to be coherent with the v1.0 fixed edition plans.
# There has been much less agreement on how and to what extent context should be taken into account, although several suggestions were made.
## The field entry in the maths rating should be the context in which importance is assessed (see also point 6 below).
## Context should be assessed using the main category to which the article belongs.
## Other mechanisms and ratings schemes should be introduced, such as User:Salix Alba's scope.
# The fields should be clearly defined to help editors to be consistent about which topics are rated under which field. This may involve making conventional choices: for example, topics in Numerical analysis should be rated under applied, even if it is also analysis.
# Further to this point, some editors suggested that a field2 would be useful. This can also be achieved more informally simply by linking to the relevant field page from the article talk page. However, yours truly cautioned against overuse of this feature as it might defeat part of the purpose of the field entry in the ratings template.
# In conjunction with 3.1, Arcfrk suggested that the number of fields should be expanded and in particular that algebraic geometry should be a separate field. Certainly the geometry and topology and algebra fields are already too large to be manageable.
# The question of how to assess importance of articles on mathematicians has not yet been discussed.
In response to this, I have created Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance. At present, it mostly consists of material copied from other pages, but the intention is to develop it to provide mathematics specific guidelines which at least address points 1 and 2. I have also created /defn subpages of the field pages to provide descriptors of the fields. These are gathered together at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Fields: please improve and add to these definitions! I hope this will help to address point 4. For point 5, the linking could be tried out with some of the information theory articles, which are the most obvious examples so far where the single field approach is inadequate.
Concerning point 3, I'm not sure it matters too much that there isn't consensus for time being. As long as we agree that some context should be considered when assessing importance, a diversity of opinion on how much is not going to make a huge amount of difference to the way articles get rated. The ratings system, like the rest of Wikipedia is definitely a work in progress, and I would prefer to take a fairly conservative approach to improving it. This partly underlies my view on point 6. Some expansion of the number of fields is going to be needed, and in the long run, I could certainly imagine geometry and topology being replaced by maybe even six fields such as
:elementary geometry, differential geometry, algebraic geometry, general topology, differential topology and algebraic topology.
However, doing something like this would require a lot of work, and the case for it is not yet clear, in my opinion. I would prefer to experiment with the geometry/topology split and see what the numbers look like: this would at least make it easier to subdivide geometry later on if this proves necessary.
Finally, apologies to other editors if my over-active participation in this discussion has conveyed the impression of a hidden agenda or a point of view to promote. I initiated the discussion precisely because there were several issues that I was unsure of, and some of these have been greatly clarified thanks to the comments made here so far. However, I freely admit that my developing point of view is also influenced by issues of implementation: any improvement to the rating system needs to have editors willing to do the (often substantial) work required to implement it!
Further comments most welcome either here or on the relevant talk pages in Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 (such as the new pages above). Geometry guy 15:40, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No there aren't: only about 60 rated linear algebra articles so far. Geometry guy 17:05, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Sounds fine to me. However, then I would split algebraic geometry from differential geometry right from the beginning. There's been discussion on this in :talk:Elliptic curve, and a joint algebraic/differential geometry field would increase the pressure to treat artithmetic issues and geometry in positive characteristics as part of algebra instead, a development that I would find regrettable. However, I could also accept an argument for keeping the current larger geometry and topology field as it is. Even the split of 120 topology, 70 AG and 120 diff. geom. is not that bad, in particular as none of these fields has achieved desired coverage yet. Stca74 17:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I just had a quick look at the exchange and the article itself: it looks like geometry to me, but there is a case for rating it as number theory either instead or in addition. I don't understand the argument for algebra, and the complex analysis point of view on these objects is covered by Riemann surface. I don't see how the split would affect the argument, and of the 190 articles, only about 100 are clearly differential geometry: this is quite a tricky interface to separate. Geometry guy 17:18, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  You're right with the Elliptic curves article. During that exchange I was somehow under the impression that number theory does not have its own "field" either but is currently under algebra. Which is of course not true. Thus even less reason to classify that article under algebra. But back to the topic here: what I'm arguing for is that if we decide to split topology from the current geometry and topology, let's split AG as a separate fied at the same time. The latter are of course connected, but then again so are both to (algebraic) topoogy, and at least I'm not able to argue for any of the links being stronger than the two others. Stca74 19:23, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Moving forward from here

message: I found about 100 articles in Geometry and topology which are clearly topology, so I guess a geometry/topology split would be about 400/120, which is not ideal. On the other hand, I only found about 70 algebraic geometry articles. Taking algebraic and differential geometry together yields about 190 articles, and the remainder (apart from the topology) is mostly elementary geometry. I would therefore suggest a three-way split into (elementary) geometry, topology and differential and algebraic geometry. The last of these could be split later if necessary.
I haven't yet investigated the Algebra field, but would guess there are quite a lot of linear algebra there. Geometry guy 16:42, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No there aren't: only about 60 rated linear algebra articles so far. Geometry guy 17:05, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Sounds fine to me. However, then I would split algebraic geometry from differential geometry right from the beginning. There's been discussion on this in :talk:Elliptic curve, and a joint algebraic/differential geometry field would increase the pressure to treat artithmetic issues and geometry in positive characteristics as part of algebra instead, a development that I would find regrettable. However, I could also accept an argument for keeping the current larger geometry and topology field as it is. Even the split of 120 topology, 70 AG and 120 diff. geom. is not that bad, in particular as none of these fields has achieved desired coverage yet. Stca74 17:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I just had a quick look at the exchange and the article itself: it looks like geometry to me, but there is a case for rating it as number theory either instead or in addition. I don't understand the argument for algebra, and the complex analysis point of view on these objects is covered by Riemann surface. I don't see how the split would affect the argument, and of the 190 articles, only about 100 are clearly differential geometry: this is quite a tricky interface to separate. Geometry guy 17:18, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  You're right with the Elliptic curves article. During that exchange I was somehow under the impression that number theory does not have its own "field" either but is currently under algebra. Which is of course not true. Thus even less reason to classify that article under algebra. But back to the topic here: what I'm arguing for is that if we decide to split topology from the current geometry and topology, let's split AG as a separate fied at the same time. The latter are of course connected, but then again so are both to (algebraic) topoogy, and at least I'm not able to argue for any of the links being stronger than the two others. Stca74 19:23, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Splitting algebra and geometry 

message: Would it be possible to use categories (which articles already have) instead of making editors choose one field for an article?  It would not be particularly difficult to determine which articles are in (subcategories of subcategories of) particular "master" categories.  That would make it possible to automatically sort the article into several "fields" and would let us get rid of the field= parameter entirely. That seems better than adding field2= and field3= parameters.  Another benefit would be that unrated articles would be automatically detected. CMummert · talk 00:13, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Using categories instead of fields 

message: Multivariable calculus is in need of some serious expansion.  I started to make some changes.  Please review my work and expand/correct it. Jhausauer 21:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multivariable calculus 

message: I've prodded normal set, which I don't think is terminology with any particular currency, but if anyone here knows of it being used, please weigh in. --Trovatore 21:30, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Normal set 

message: Please see "Why is it called biproduct?" section in Talk:Biproduct. --Acepectif 20:31, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Because it's both a product (category theory) and a coproduct. Silly rabbit 20:46, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a dessert topping and a floor wax? Jheald 06:46, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is it called biproduct? 

message: The article titled additional logarithm topics bears certain resemblances to New Orleans three days after Katrina.  Probablly some of its material should get merged into existing articles or perhaps new articles on disparate topics. Michael Hardy 21:07, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that's too generous.  All the "derivations" are textbook stuff that doesn't belong here at all (I'm not saying that proofs don't belong here; I'm just saying that the theorems proved on that page are not given in any context other than that of an indiscriminate, textbook-like list, and so don't contribute to acceptable content).  The "using logarithms" section is really just some competition problems that constitutes a "how-to" guide, and so should go.  The continued fractions bit at the end is just an explication of a well-known algorithm for computing continued fractions that is actually given on the page for that topic.  This article looks like it was written by a high-school junior taking precalculus.  Ryan Reich 21:39, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

text: I've proposed the article for deletion. If anyone disagrees, feel free to remove the deletion template. Ed H | talk 01:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, now we can forget about that disaster. Ed H | talk 02:51, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  disastrous article