Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2006/Nov

message: As some of you already know, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics recently started using User:Werdnabot to automatically archive its talk sections when ten days have passed since the last new comment. Perhaps we should start to think about whether we want to follow their example. JRSpriggs 11:51, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems a good idea to me. --Salix alba (talk) 19:11, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Rather than base it on elapsed time alone, I suggest that archiving of old material should only be done when a certain page size is reached.  There's no point in archiving a question which hasn't been answered after 10 days, if it's the only thing there. StuRat 04:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please read the instructions at User:Werdnabot/Archiver/Howto. You will see that the options are very limited. We can change the time interval between the last signed message in a section and the time of archiving, but we cannot control the size of what is taken or what is left. Our choice is reduced, but we avoid having to do all the archiving manually. JRSpriggs 09:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

text: By the way, there is one way in which it is not automatic. When we get to November 12, someone will have to create the new archive file for November 2006 and edit the code for Werdnabot invokation to reflect the new file name. The same every month thereafter. JRSpriggs 09:32, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Werdnabot seems to be broken again. It has not done any archiving (for anyone) since 24 October 2006. (Just as I was trying to get it to work for us, too.) And Werdna himself seems to have dropped out of wikipedia (at least temporarily). JRSpriggs 07:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It ran on the 28th, so at this point I cannot keep up with whether it is on or off. However, Werdna has apparently been working on some security issues -- vandals had figured out how to use Werdnabot to trash pages by directing its output inappropriately. JRSpriggs 11:54, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: To User talk:AzaToth: Since you pushed the list of archive files down into subpage "/archivelist" (which fact is far from obvious), I (after searching to find it) put a link to it at the top of this talk file right after the template. We need a way to get to that list so that we can add new links as we create new archive files (currently once per month). JRSpriggs 08:04, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Neither you nor I will be around here forever. Future archivers must be able to figure out how to use the system without excessive effort. JRSpriggs 08:08, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Sorry, I do not know how I overlooked that edit link. I just tested it by adding a file for November prematurely. JRSpriggs 08:13, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No problem, perhaps I should had marked it better? →AzaToth 11:23, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archiving automatically (well almost) 

message: Current (possibly incomplete) list:
:User:218.133.184.53
:User:64.213.188.94
:User:DEWEY
:User:DYLAN LENNON
:User:JLISP
:User:KLIP
:User:KOJIN
:User:MACHIDA
:User:MORI
:User:POP JAM
:User:SADTW
:User:Suslin
:User:TANAKA
:User:TELL ME that
:User:WATARU
:Should we block more of these?  So far, I've only been blocking them if the edits are incorrect, but a number of them are still live.  Was there any ArbCom action taken against him?  I've lost track.  — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 21:34, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There has never been an ArbCom action, and none is necessary in my opinion. I think the clones can be blocked on sight. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 01:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes I think Jitse is correct. The only question I would have is how do we know they are clones? Paul August ☎ 03:22, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I blocked User:TELL ME that indefinitely after another edit to perfect number. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 06:13, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  More [[User:WAREL]] clones, and blocking 

message: Ok, the symbols have been scaped now, here they are:
\jmath             	\jmath             	\surd         	\surd         	\ast            	\ast            	\uplus   	\uplus
\diamond           	\diamond           	\bigtriangleup	\bigtriangleup	\bigtriangledown	\bigtriangledown	\ominus  	\ominus
\oslash            	\oslash            	\odot         	\odot         	\bigcirc        	\bigcirc        	\amalg   	\amalg
\prec              	\prec              	\succ         	\succ         	\preceq         	\preceq         	\succeq  	\succeq
\dashv             	\dashv             	\asymp        	\asymp        	\doteq          	\doteq          	\parallel	\parallel
\longleftrightarrow	\longleftrightarrow	              	              	                	                	         	
also, one symbol was mission from the help page, that is \rightleftharpoons: \rightleftharpoons
→AzaToth 12:05, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So, is all this stuff incorporated into Help:Displaying a formula now? JRSpriggs 12:13, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm at the moment updating the page at meta, I'll transviki when I'm done. →AzaToth 12:44, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Scape done

message: bug bugzilla:7774 is in the queue now, adding some more goofy stuff. →AzaToth 21:54, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Things in the queue

message: Tensor needs a lot of work. Discusssions a long time ago left the treatment fragmented over pages. Talk:Intermediate treatment of tensors has a recent long comment. I think a merge of Intermediate treatment of tensors into tensor might start some much-needed consolidation and imnprovement. Charles Matthews 10:51, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: On a related note: I've long thought that tensor product needs a complete rewrite. I started a draft at User:Fropuff/Draft 8 some time ago but I haven't had time to finish it. If someone wants to take the material and run with it they are more than welcome. -- Fropuff 05:16, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Tensors

message: I am a member of the small community people who actively research tetration. For the last few years I have operated tetration.org, one of the main resources for tetration on the Internet. I became invoked with Wikipedia when I noted that Wikipedia’s entry on tetration was rapidly climbing to the top of search engine queries on tetration. Being very impressed with the goals and achievements of Wikipedia, I contacted other people researching tetration and suggested that we collectively become involved in editing Wikipedia’s tetration entry. 
I guess the other folks weren’t as infatuated with Wikipedia as I was, so I ended up making what I thought were some reasonable edits to the tetration and Ackermann function. Tetration is an area of mathematics that attracts much attention from the public and amateur mathematicians while only now is it just becoming a legitimate are of mathematics research. The problem is that people keep adding their non-peer reviewed research to the tetration page on extending tetration beyond the natural numbers Tetration - Extension to real numbers. I didn’t want to try and play cop on the tetration page, but neither did I feel comfortable remaining affiliated with an entry that I felt continually misrepresented what was known about tetration. The solution to the problem is to publish articles in peer reviewed journals that clarify what is and isn’t known about tetration. 
My personal problem is that I have a large backlog of research on tetration and related subjects that I need to organize and publish. Just because Wikipedia is not appropriate for documenting research doesn’t mean that the underlying MediaWiki software isn’t magnificence in documenting research; hey, just ask the CIA. I have a new website at tetration.net using MediaWiki; having Asperger’s and over a dozen years as a software developer MediaWiki helps me to do a brain dump of my work. I like the idea of pulling my research together using MediaWiki, publishing it in a peer-reviewed journals and then releasing the entries constituting the peer-reviewed material under GFDL. 
The reason I posted this here is I need help in understanding the etiquette and GFDL issues in using stuff like snippets of TeX from the Wikipedia. Can I just cite a Wikipedia entry for a snippet of TeX or must I release the entry under GFDL. Almost all of the TeX snippets I have used are at least slightly edited, how does that impact things. Daniel Geisler 21:23, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that an isolated brief formula from Wikipedia would fall under the "fair use" exception to the copyright law. So you would not need to do more than acknowledge the source. JRSpriggs 08:37, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Research Wikipedias 

message: Can anyone confirm that Leon Henkin has died? Charles Matthews 13:10, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, he died on Wednesday, 2006-11-01. Contact Barb at the department via their website if more information is needed. --KSmrqT 20:04, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Leon Henkin

message: This was a rather large update, that's wwhy it took such a long time. First of all, bug bugzilla:1182 is fixed, so non greek greek symbols (\Alpha \Beta\,\!) are not displayed as italics. Whats new is as following (\binom is more of a bugfix):
\begin{align}
    L  & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty}\ {{\cos {1 \over x} \cdot  {-1 \over x^2}}\over {-1 \over x^2}} \\
    & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty} {\cos{1 \over x}} \cdot {-1 \over x^2} \cdot {x^2 \over -1} \\
    & = \cos{1 \over \infty} = \cos{\ 0} = 1
\end{align}	\begin{align}
    L  & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty}\ {{\cos {1 \over x} \cdot  {-1 \over x^2}}\over {-1 \over x^2}} \\
    & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty} {\cos{1 \over x}} \cdot {-1 \over x^2} \cdot {x^2 \over -1} \\
    & = \cos{1 \over \infty} = \cos{\ 0} = 1
\end{align}
\begin{alignat}{2}
    L  & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty}\ {{\cos {1 \over x} \cdot  {-1 \over x^2}}\over {-1 \over x^2}} &\quad& \text{by me} \\
    & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty} {\cos{1 \over x}} \cdot {-1 \over x^2} \cdot {x^2 \over -1} && \text{by him} \\
    & = \cos{1 \over \infty} = \cos{\ 0} = 1 && \text{Axiom 3}
\end{alignat}	\begin{alignat}{2}
    L  & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty}\ {{\cos {1 \over x} \cdot  {-1 \over x^2}}\over {-1 \over x^2}} &\quad& \text{by me} \\
    & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty} {\cos{1 \over x}} \cdot {-1 \over x^2} \cdot {x^2 \over -1} && \text{by him} \\
    & = \cos{1 \over \infty} = \cos{\ 0} = 1 && \text{Axiom 3}
\end{alignat}
Foo \bigl( \begin{smallmatrix}
  a&b\\ c&d
\end{smallmatrix} \bigr)$
 Bar	Foo \bigl( \begin{smallmatrix}
  a&b\\ c&d
\end{smallmatrix} \bigr)
 Bar
A \xleftarrow{n+\mu-1} B \xrightarrow[T]{n\pm i-1} C	A \xleftarrow{n+\mu-1} B \xrightarrow[T]{n\pm i-1} C
\binom{k}{2}\dbinom{k}{2}\tbinom{k}{2}\frac{k}{2}\dfrac{k}{2}\tfrac{k}{2}	
\binom{k}{2}\dbinom{k}{2}\tbinom{k}{2}\frac{k}{2}\dfrac{k}{2}\tfrac{k}{2}
\sideset{_*^*}{_n^'}\prod_a^b                       	\sideset{_*^*}{_n^'}\prod_a^b
;Some new symbols that where forgotten:
\vartriangle\triangledown\lozenge\circledS\measuredangle\nexists\Bbbk\backprime\blacktriangle\blacktriangledown                          	\vartriangle\triangledown\lozenge\circledS\measuredangle\nexists\Bbbk\backprime\blacktriangle\blacktriangledown
\blacksquare\blacklozenge\bigstar\sphericalangle\diagup\diagdown\dotplus\Cap\Cup\barwedge                                                	\blacksquare\blacklozenge\bigstar\sphericalangle\diagup\diagdown\dotplus\Cap\Cup\barwedge
\veebar\doublebarwedge\boxminus\boxtimes\boxdot\boxplus\divideontimes\ltimes\rtimes\leftthreetimes                                       	\veebar\doublebarwedge\boxminus\boxtimes\boxdot\boxplus\divideontimes\ltimes\rtimes\leftthreetimes
\rightthreetimes\curlywedge\curlyvee\circleddash\circledast\circledcirc\centerdot\intercal\leqq\leqslant                                 	\rightthreetimes\curlywedge\curlyvee\circleddash\circledast\circledcirc\centerdot\intercal\leqq\leqslant
\eqslantless\lessapprox\approxeq\lessdot\lll\lessgtr\lesseqgtr\lesseqqgtr\doteqdot\risingdotseq                                          	\eqslantless\lessapprox\approxeq\lessdot\lll\lessgtr\lesseqgtr\lesseqqgtr\doteqdot\risingdotseq
\fallingdotseq\backsim\backsimeq\subseteqq\Subset\preccurlyeq\curlyeqprec\precsim\precapprox\vartriangleleft                             	\fallingdotseq\backsim\backsimeq\subseteqq\Subset\preccurlyeq\curlyeqprec\precsim\precapprox\vartriangleleft
\Vvdash\bumpeq\Bumpeq\geqq\geqslant\eqslantgtr\gtrsim\gtrapprox\eqsim\gtrdot                                                             	\Vvdash\bumpeq\Bumpeq\geqq\geqslant\eqslantgtr\gtrsim\gtrapprox\eqsim\gtrdot
\ggg\gtrless\gtreqless\gtreqqless\eqcirc\circeq\triangleq\thicksim\thickapprox\supseteqq                                                 	\ggg\gtrless\gtreqless\gtreqqless\eqcirc\circeq\triangleq\thicksim\thickapprox\supseteqq
\Supset\succcurlyeq\curlyeqsucc\succsim\succapprox\vartriangleright\shortmid\shortparallel\between\pitchfork                             	\Supset\succcurlyeq\curlyeqsucc\succsim\succapprox\vartriangleright\shortmid\shortparallel\between\pitchfork
\varpropto\blacktriangleleft\therefore\backepsilon\blacktriangleright\because\nleqslant\nleqq\lneq\lneqq                                 	\varpropto\blacktriangleleft\therefore\backepsilon\blacktriangleright\because\nleqslant\nleqq\lneq\lneqq
\lvertneqq\lnsim\lnapprox\nprec\npreceq\precneqq\precnsim\precnapprox\nsim\nshortmid                                                     	\lvertneqq\lnsim\lnapprox\nprec\npreceq\precneqq\precnsim\precnapprox\nsim\nshortmid
\nvdash\nVdash\ntriangleleft\ntrianglelefteq\nsubseteq\nsubseteqq\varsubsetneq\subsetneqq\varsubsetneqq\ngtr                             	\nvdash\nVdash\ntriangleleft\ntrianglelefteq\nsubseteq\nsubseteqq\varsubsetneq\subsetneqq\varsubsetneqq\ngtr
\ngeqslant\ngeqq\gneq\gneqq\gvertneqq\gnsim\gnapprox\nsucc\nsucceq\succneqq                                                              	\ngeqslant\ngeqq\gneq\gneqq\gvertneqq\gnsim\gnapprox\nsucc\nsucceq\succneqq
\succnsim\succnapprox\ncong\nshortparallel\nparallel\nvDash\nVDash\ntriangleright\ntrianglerighteq\nsupseteq                             	\succnsim\succnapprox\ncong\nshortparallel\nparallel\nvDash\nVDash\ntriangleright\ntrianglerighteq\nsupseteq
\nsupseteqq\varsupsetneq\supsetneqq\varsupsetneqq\leftleftarrows\leftrightarrows\Lleftarrow\leftarrowtail\looparrowleft\leftrightharpoons	\nsupseteqq\varsupsetneq\supsetneqq\varsupsetneqq\leftleftarrows\leftrightarrows\Lleftarrow\leftarrowtail\looparrowleft\leftrightharpoons
\curvearrowleft\circlearrowleft\Lsh\upuparrows\rightrightarrows\rightleftarrows\Rrightarrow\rightarrowtail\looparrowright\curvearrowright	\curvearrowleft\circlearrowleft\Lsh\upuparrows\rightrightarrows\rightleftarrows\Rrightarrow\rightarrowtail\looparrowright\curvearrowright
\circlearrowright\Rsh\downdownarrows\multimap\leftrightsquigarrow\rightsquigarrow\nLeftarrow\nleftrightarrow\nRightarrow\nLeftrightarrow 	\circlearrowright\Rsh\downdownarrows\multimap\leftrightsquigarrow\rightsquigarrow\nLeftarrow\nleftrightarrow\nRightarrow\nLeftrightarrow
→AzaToth 14:36, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Awesome!  Thank god for the align stuff, I've needed that many times before. —Mets501 (talk) 14:49, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Texvc updated again 

message: I have a question about Factorization#Table method.  Should it stay?  Or is it too textbook-like?  Thanks for your opinions. —Mets501 (talk) 15:01, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Factorization 

message: Can anyone figure out why this is producing an error?
\begin{alignat}{2}
   (a+b)^{m+1}  & = a(a+b)^m + b(a+b)^m &\quad& \text{by the inductive hypothesis} \\
   & = a \sum_{k=0}^m { m \choose k } a^{m-k} b^k + b \sum_{j=0}^m { m \choose j } a^{m-j} b^j && \text{by the inductive hypothesis} \\
   & = \sum_{k=0}^m { m \choose k } a^{m-k+1} b^k + \sum_{j=0}^m { m \choose j } a^{m-j} b^{j+1} && \text{by multiplying through by } a \text{ and } b \\
   & = a^{m+1} + \sum_{k=1}^m { m \choose k } a^{m-k+1} b^k + \sum_{j=0}^m { m \choose j } a^{m-j} b^{j+1} && \text{by pulling out the } k=0 \text{ term} \\
   & = a^{m+1} + \sum_{k=1}^m { m \choose k } a^{m-k+1} b^k + \sum_{k=1}^{m+1} { m \choose k-1 }a^{m-k+1}b^{k} && \text{by letting } j = k-1 \\
   & = a^{m+1} + \sum_{k=1}^m { m \choose k } a^{m-k+1}b^k + \sum_{k=1}^{m} { m \choose k-1 }a^{m+1-k}b^{k} + b^{m+1} && \text{by pulling out the } k=m+1 \text{ term from the right hand side} \\
   & = a^{m+1} + b^{m+1} + \sum_{k=1}^m \left[ { m \choose k } + { m \choose k-1 } \right] a^{m+1-k}b^k && \text{by combining the sums} \\
   & = a^{m+1} + b^{m+1} + \sum_{k=1}^m { m+1 \choose k } a^{m+1-k} b^k && \text{from Pascals rule} \\
   & = \sum_{k=0}^{m+1} { m+1 \choose k } a^{m+1-k}b^k && \text{by adding in the } m+1 \text{ terms.}
\end{alignat}
:It didn't like the ' in Pascal's, I can see if I can fix that→AzaToth 15:43, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The \text{by adding in the} m+1 \text{terms.} would be in normal LaTeX as \text{by adding in the $m+1$ terms.}, but that's not allowed at the moment. Perhaps fill a bug request about that. →AzaToth 15:48, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks!  I don't know if that will work in the article though, it's quite a bit too wide. —Mets501 (talk) 16:05, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

text: I added in some spaces to this example so the text doesn't get jammed up against the formulae. —David Eppstein 17:43, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem 

message: I'm planning on nominating Probability-based strategy for deletion (rationale on article talk page), and I suppose the Catalin Barboianu BLP as well.  I thought I'd check see if the readership of this page thinks I'm mistaken before I do so. Pete.Hurd 22:10, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No objection from me, although it's not exactly my field. — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 00:30, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  There is (or was) some material on randomized strategies in some Wp article I worked on over two years ago. This article seems like a confused form of that. --CSTAR 02:01, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Probability-based strategy

message: When Werdnabot ran yesterday, it added the section "General Comment about Math articles from a non-mathematician" from this talk page to the archive, but it did not remove it from this page. I tried to remove it from this page manually, but I could not. There is a part of that section which does not appear in my edit window, and thus I cannot delete that part. Can someone else fix it, please? JRSpriggs 09:10, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The part which cannot be editted begins with "Suggested structure of a mathematics article" bracketted by "< h 2 >" and "< / h 2 >" (with out the blanks, which I added to prevent the problem from happening again here). JRSpriggs 09:15, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Manually removed.  --LambiamTalk 11:10, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: To Lambiam: Thank you very much for your help. After I logged out yesterday, it occurred to me that perhaps I should have tried to edit using the "edit this page" tab at the top of the article instead of the "edit" button associated with the section. Is that how you did it? Were you using Mozilla's Firefox as I am or did you use Internet Explorer or what? JRSpriggs 06:10, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's how I did it using Firefox. Alternatively, I could have edited the various subsections out separately one by one, but that seemed like more work. Did the bot get confused by the html-style header? I did not carefully examine things, but had the impression that some other, not archived sections were decidedly older than this one.  --LambiamTalk 10:38, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem editting a section of this talk page 

message: The lists of suggestions for selected article / selected picture / "Did you know?" for the mathematics portal is begining to get rather small. Could people try and add some items to the lists? This is especially true of the images, as good/interesting maths images can be hard to track down. Tompw 20:17, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess all the articles in :Category:A-Class mathematics articles, :Category:GA-Class mathematics articles and possibly :Category:Bplus-Class mathematics articles would be candidates for selected articles. I'm slowly building :Category:Mathematics images which might be a good source for pictures. --Salix alba (talk) 11:33, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Portal suggestions needed 

message: Pseudo data is up for deletion. Current version is non-mathematical although the term seems to be used quite widely in statistics. --Salix alba (talk) 12:47, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pseudo data up for deletion. 

message: Please comment: Mikio Sato. My comment: silliness. --Pjacobi 09:57, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Navboxes for awards? 

message: Hello folks - I noticed an inconsistency with your importance rankings, and I thought maybe somebody might want to take a look.  Nash equilibrium is rated "high" importance while Game theory is ranked "mid".  It seems to me that a concept in a field ought not be more important than the field itself.  I don't really care which way it goes, or even if it gets fixed, but I thought I'd let you all know.  --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 20:15, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, I've changed the ranking of Game theory since no-one else has commented so far. I think the ranking scheme is pretty informal, so unless anyone else says otherwise, feel free to change the rankings of articles in cases where you feel the change is warranted. Cedars 00:52, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Game theory and importance rankings 

message: From Steiner surface: "There are ten different types, including the Roman surface and cross-cap." - List of all ten? -- 201.51.252.63 23:55, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article consists of three sentences and a reference. Yes, a reference! In fact, a relevant reference, and online so it's easy to access. Furthermore, that page has many, many further references. Or are you asking us to expand the article with the contents cited? --KSmrqT 23:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of all ten types of Steiner surface? 

message: Just an FYI, since it falls under this WikiProject, I tagged the article Definable number with the Original Research tag.  It's an interesting article, but it does not appear to be based on external published information.  Rather, it is an exploration by the article's authors into the concept of definability.  In fact, in the introductory paragraph, the article even concedes that the phrase "definable number" isn't a standard mathematical term, which begs the question if "Definable number" is even the proper title for the article!
Anyway, I'd recommend that interested people here check out the article.  If you are familiar with references regarding "definable numbers", feel free to add them to verify that the article isn't just original research.  Or, if the article does appear to be entirely original research, then it should be deleted from Wikipedia and/or moved to a site that allows for original mathematical research articles.  I didn't immediately tag the article for deletion, though, since I thought it would be more prudent to let you guys and the article's authors try and address the concern first.  It is, after all, a good read, so I'd rather see it be fixed than deleted. Dugwiki 18:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The concept of a "definable number", under that name and as distinct from computable numbers, certainly appears in the literature, notably in Turing's "On computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem" . I think the problem with the article is not OR so much as that it doesn't cite sources and should. —David Eppstein 19:04, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It appears to me that Turing does not attempt to define "definable number" in that paper, or develop any theory of what a "definable number" in general is. He talks about the existence of a definable number that's not computable, but it's more like "here, you can see that this number is definable", not "this is what a definable number is in general". So I would take that to be more of a nonce term, not something we can write an article about. I would be strongly against writing an article based mainly on Turing's notion of definable taken from that paper, because of the fact that (based really just on a text search; I haven't read the paper yet in detail), he never does really define it. --Trovatore 19:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Moved to definable real number. There is a fair amount that comes up when you Google that term. Charles Matthews 19:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

text: This discussion should move (has moved) to the talk page. CMummert 19:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  FYI - [[Definable number]] tagged as Original Research 

message: Using the most recent database dump and Mathbot's List of mathematics categories, I made a list of 7287 articles related to mathematics. I tried to eliminate as many stubs as I could, but some slipped through.   Of the 7287 articles, 
* 4328 did not have at least one of Reference(s), Notes, or Further reading as a  section header.   These are listed at User:CMummert/Unreferenced
* 2919 of those didn't have any of those sections or an External links section either. These are listed at User:CMummert/Unreferenced_without_external_links.  
Thoughts?  CMummert 00:11, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Cool. That means theres 10,000 articles which do have references. We're doing well! --Salix alba (talk) 00:24, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Salix alba should check his subtraction. 7287 minus 4328 is 2959 which is a lot less than 10,000. JRSpriggs 08:36, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

text: You should probably not count all the List of ... (there are more than one hundered). pom 10:16, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I know the data isn't perfect; this was just a one-hour hack of a script. One reason that I only have 7287 articles instead of 11000 (Jitse's bot) or 14000 (Mathbot) is that I didn't include most of the biography categories.  But even with that margin of error, it appears that over half the articles included in my list of 7287 give no printed references, and over one third have not printed references or external links.  My next plan is make a list of these articles by category. CMummert 12:14, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Results of a script looking for references 

message: The page on Fermat's Last Theorem includes the following statement:
:The main problem that Wiles had to overcome was to establish a correspondence between semistable elliptic curves over the rational field, and the modular semistable elliptic curves over the rationals, which he did by explicitly showing that there were equal numbers of each. Before Wiles' work on the problem, there had been many attempts to count elliptic curves, but no one had found a way to do it.
I think this is misleading, if not plainly incorrect. It is trivial to count elliptic curves over the rationals: there are denumerably many of them, since they are determined by polynomials in two variables which are quadratic in y and cubic in x, and there are plainly an infinity of them. As I understand it, the issue was not simply to show that there were equal numbers of each; again, this is trivial: there are denumerably many modular semistable elliptic curves. The issue, as I understand it, was starting from a semistable elliptic curve, to find a modular form which defined/determined the given elliptic curve.  Perhaps someone who is more familiar with this could take a look and fix that paragraph? Magidin 16:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Cut those. The talk about flavours of set theory also seems completely out of place. And could be original research Charles Matthews 22:32, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I took care of the set theory part. CMummert 16:06, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Paragraph in  [[Fermat's Last Theorem]] 

message: There seems to be a discussion going on in Hypercube, Measure polytope, Tesseract, and N-cube about which name should be primary for which page. Tesseract is the 4d polytope, Measure polytope is currently the primary name for the general n-dimensional concept, N-cube has some odd marginally-related number-theoretic content, and Hypercube is currently a small disambiguation page. Contributors including myself disagree on whether Hypercube should redirect to one or the other polytope page, or what the proper name of each page should be. If you're interested, see the talk pages for these articles. —David Eppstein 18:30, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hypercube nomenclature 

message: Found another article that needs some references, and thought someone here might be able to track it down.  Monty Hell problem (not to be confused with the Monty Hall problem is currently apparently based largely on an internet forum discussion.  Unfortunately, forum groups are not acceptable references since anybody can post anything they want on a forum.  In particular, what needs to be verified is that the "Monty Hell problem" appeared in a publication of some sort somewhere at some point in time, and was called by that exact name.  The specific description of the problem also needs to be verified.  
I do believe I've seen this problem before, though, so my guess is it was taken from a publication somewhere and posted to the internet.  The trick is finding a book of puzzles or logic or probability problems with this paradox. Dugwiki 23:17, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I doubt there's going to be more sourcing of this.  It appears to be just one of the results of yet another online discussion.  AFD is my suggestion.  --C S (Talk) 20:30, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Monty Hell problem]] - needs some references 

message: I made the following edit on the Recurring decimal article, creating a section where I show that recurring decimals can be expressed in the terms of an infinite series.  I just wanted to post it up here for others to check up on my edits (obviously people here are more experienced and I would hate to post up factually incorrect information).--Jersey Devil 07:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Recurring decimal

message: The article (one liner microstub) is on AfD. Could someone take a look what it is worth? TIA Pavel Vozenilek 01:30, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Monadic logic]] 

message: Yesterday, Calculus was chosen as the collaboration of the week for people that want to push good articles to featured article status. I encourage people from the mathematics project to get involved as this is clearly one of the most important articles on mathematics and likely to be among the most visited. At first glance I would say that there is still a considerable amount of work to be done. Pascal.Tesson 18:32, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Calculus: GA collaboration of the week 

message: The notation
:  X \ \stackrel{\mathcal{L}}{=}\ Y. 
conventionally means that the two random variables X and Y both have the same probability distribution.  The letter "L" stands for "law"; probability distributions are sometimes called "laws". Michael Hardy 04:11, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A similar usage in probability theory 

message: Optimal stopping uses ≡ to state the distribution of a random variable. That is, they write X ≡ D where X is a variable and D is a distribution. Is that one of the uses of ≡ we should be avoiding, or is it ok? Maybe it should be a membership symbol rather than either = or ≡? —David Eppstein 21:31, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe X ≡ D is very much a non-standard use and should therefore be avoided. What is wrong with saying in words that X is a random variable with distribution D? Independence has to be stated in words anyway; we have no notation for that.  --LambiamTalk 01:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the suggestion — I agree that saying it words works better than notation here, and have made that change. The rest of the article could still use some work, but that's beyond the scope of what I want to do with it tonight. —David Eppstein 02:51, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Related problems encountered in listed articles

message: Added bug bugzilla:7753. →AzaToth 21:45, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Bugzilla

message: I've created Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/equivlistrevert for reverting non-math changes.  Sebastian, you should finish the job you've done on /equivlist with math articles. johnpseudo 15:47, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hold on a second.  As I've pointed out, there's no consensus that things should be changed even in math articles.  Many of us have expressed that especially in pure math articles, the = should remain.  Maybe I am misunderstading what you mean by the "job", but if by that you mean changing = to =_def (or something like that), then Sebastian should not finish the job but should still plan to take a month or two off like he suggested he would.  Please correct me if I have misunderstood the thrust of your comment. VectorPosse 16:18, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Never mind.  I think you're saying to change \equiv to =^def and not = to =^def.  Well, I still disagree with that, but since both \equiv and =^def are equally bad in my book (for pure math articles at least), I won't say anything either way about it. VectorPosse 16:46, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought the agreed on change was "=...as a definition" and that sort of thing, which which no one, so far, has any problem. Septentrionalis 20:16, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Implementing proposal

message: I did some edits to Euler reciprocity relationship.  I agree with whoever put the "context" tag there: its opening sentence is horribly abrupt, not informing the reader that mathematics is what the article is to be about, etc.  But I wonder if this article ought to exist.  As nearly as I can understand it, it's another statement of what is called Clairaut's theorem.  (If you tell me that it's obviously supposed to be Clairaut's theorem, that may be because I edited it to say what I guessed it was intended to say.)  Michael Hardy 01:25, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I also tried to find out what Euler reciprocity relationship is supposed to refer to, before you edited the article. As far as I could see, it's indeed the same as Clairout's theorem, but I wasn't certain because I found only a few references and none were very clear. I think a redirect is in order. By the way, symmetry of partial derivatives is also on that subject. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 04:10, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

text: This seems like yet another instance of "theorems are named after the first person after Euler or Gauss to re-discover them" -- Euler was indeed the first to discover this. By the way, in Thermodynamics, the relation is used a lot, for example to prove the Maxwell relations, and it is generally known as the Euler Reciprocity Relationship there. I would make sure that both names are featured prominently because people reading things like thermodynamics texts will be hunting for explanation under the name "Euler Reciprocity Relationship" and not "Clairaut's theorem" --Pmetzger 05:15, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: John L. Greenberg seems to claim that Clairaut had priority (in the 1730s, versus Euler in the 1740s) in a book review appearing in Annals of Science 41 (1984), 171–177.  He refers to his (Greenberg's) prior article, in the same journal, volume 39 (1982), 1–36. Michael Slone (talk) 06:56, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Euler reciprocity? 

message: The STIX Fonts project will make the beta version of its fonts available for download in early December. This will be a great boon to all mathematics readers, and of special interest to the Wikipedia mathematics community. The fonts come with a generous license, and now would be a good time for experts here to review it to decide if it will cause any problems for us. For example, does item 2 apply if a Wikipedia page displays an equation as a PNG typeset with these fonts? (What is considered a "derivative work"?) --KSmrqT 10:38, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: you could always stick text metadata in a chunk in a PNG.  the text from the license is pretty small; it could be abbreviated and then compressed in the PNG, but it still might be a big price to pay for zillions of little PNGs.  (200 bytes?)  someone could write to the STIX project to ask if it's necessary for each image; that is, the Wikipedia as a whole could be the work.  Lunch 19:47, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  What I'm hoping is that using the fonts in a document does not constitute a derivative work. Otherwise, anyone who typesets a paper using these fonts has the same problem. I'm hoping they mean something much more narrow, like a new font derived from these. --KSmrqT 22:52, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They seem very hazy on the how the fonts are published, in terms of what formats. They may be true-type fonts or similar which can be easily resized. Ideally we would of course use MathML for the output, in which case font selection would be left to the browser. In any case we'll need to sweet talk some of the MediaWiki developers, and probably file a bug when they are finally released. --Salix alba (talk) 23:59, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Looking at item 3 of the licence: You may (a) convert the Fonts from one format to another (e.g., from TrueType to Postscript), nd (b) embed or include a subset of the Fonts in a document for the purposes of allowing users to read text in the document that utilizes the Fonts. So this seems to give explit permission for our needs. I guess we could probably just add the Stix Fonts to the general Wikipedia:Copyrights page, or link to it from that. I'm guessing a document that includes the fonts is not a derivative work, but a program which convert to PNG would be. --Salix alba (talk) 00:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

text: with regards to using the fonts to produce a document, copies of fonts included in PostScript and PDF files often have (short) copyright notices included/encoded with them (but not whole licenses).  as to what's considered a "derivative work", that may be partly up to the copyright holder and what's set in law and court precedents in a given country; i dunno - ask an IP lawyer or the STIX project.  if someone does approach the STIX project, they might also ask if the fonts could be released under the GFDL.  MicroPress might not want to though.  salix is right in thinking that we could punt on the whole issue if we used MathML and had the browsers worry about rendering... :)  Lunch 20:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Some of the legal issues with FOSS and font licenses are addressed in a February, 2006 article by Bruce Byfield. He mentions that the STIX license evolved in response to feedback.EdJohnston 17:32, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  STIX Fonts 

message: Hey there folks. I've been sorting through the  tags over the last few days and there are a couple requets in your pile. Could you take a look at :Category:Pages needing expert attention from the Mathematics Portal? Don't be thrown by the word portal; It's pretty much just a category of math articles that requested expert help. Thanks much! --Brad Beattie (talk) 19:03, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Category is defunct; now there is :Category:Pages needing expert attention from Mathematics experts. And there is, of course, as always, Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Mathematics/Lists.  --LambiamTalk 10:13, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expert requests 

message: Some of the interwiki links provided on this page describe another theorem, also credited to Thales of Miletus, proving that parallel lines intersecting a pair of intersecting lines create similar triangles. (See the featured article on the French wikipedia, :fr:Théorème de Thalès for probably the best explanation). What is this theorem called in English, and is there an article here about it? (There should be.) Rigadoun  (talk) 16:22, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: After exploring a little, I believe that two fundamentally different theorems are tied to Thales' name. The French article picked one; we picked the other. Each has some importance, but each can also be seen as a simple corollary of something more basic. --KSmrqT 05:21, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Thales' Theorem]] 

message: These were formerly a single article, which conflated LRD processes with long-tailed distributions as if the presence of a long-tailed distribution only ever arose as a result of LRD, and vice versa, and that they were, in effect, two aspects of a single concept. Terms like "memoryless distribution" were used...
I've tried to separate the two, but I'm no expert, and I'm pretty sure the result is still a mess. Can anyone with some probability/statistics/queueing theory knowledge help tidy these up and proofread them for errors? -- The Anome 00:03, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Long-range dependency]] and [[heavy-tailed distribution]] 

message: I just made an article on a serial plagiarist Dǎnuţ Marcu.  The hope is that "contributions" of this person become better known.  Please take a look and contribute to make the article adherent to WP style.  Also, keep an eye on it - I am afriad there might be a "speedy deletion" move by the Marcu himself.  Mhym 02:29, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You must be very careful. You are stating that actual plagiarism has taken place. That is not the proper, neutral form of statement. You must state all claims and counter-claims. What you have posted is in effect an attack piece. In  order to survive speedy deletion by administrators, you must rewrite it in a neutral style. Charles Matthews 17:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article seems quite okay to me, with the possible exception of the second sentence ("best known for a long series of plagiarised papers"). I was not able to find any counterclaim, and the evidence is clear that plagiarism has taken place. In my opinion stating that actual plagiarism has taken place is the proper and neutral form of statement. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 04:20, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

text: For interested parties, a discussion between me and mhym has started at Talk:Dǎnuţ Marcu.  --C S (Talk) 04:28, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Dǎnuţ Marcu]]