Talk:Lists of mathematics topics

message: There was no consensus at all for this move.  The cited page on which the consensus was reached did not reach a consensus.  And I didn't recognize even one name among those who commented there.  HUNDREDS of daily Wikipedia editors have each edited HUNDREDS or (in my case and that of many others) THOUSANDS of mathematics articles, and they didn't participate in the discussion.  We should broadly canvas to solicit opinions of those hundreds of mathematicians who edit here. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:15, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just so this won't be misleading: that other page on which it is claimed that a "broad consensus" was reached mentioned this issue only twice, tangentially.  I'm not sure it ever mentioned this page specifically.  Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics was notified of the discussion on this page, but not of the other one.  Participants in Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics did not participate here when it seemed unnecessary. Michael Hardy (talk) 06:43, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As Francis notes, he made an effort to solicit opinions, and the requested move has been open for some time. There has been a discussion ongoing at Wikipedia talk:Contents to work out where this sort of list belongs. If you feel so strongly about this issue, you should obviously request that the other lists mentioned by the Transhumanist get moved back to article space. This was, and is, the right venue to get moves you dislike overturned. Angus McLellan  (Talk) 12:54, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

text: There was no consensus for a move on this page, and the discussion was properly closed with a "no consensus" notice.  I did not overturn the decision of the closing admin; what I did leaves intact the "no consensus" outcome.  The proper thing for the closing admin to have done if he wanted to change his mind later would be to start a WP:RM. Michael Hardy (talk) 14:45, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  No consensus at all was reached on this move.  This is bogus. 

message: A proposal currently on WP:RM would move this list back to the portal namespace, see Wikipedia talk:Move navigational lists to portal namespace. Andrewa (talk) 03:45, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Another move proposal

message: At the moment, this article divides Fields of mathematics into 3 subdivisions: Basic, Advanced and Applied. This makes no sense. It would make more sense to divide the advanced section into Pure and Applied, however I favour removing the applied tag altogether. To quote from the article on applied mathematics:
"There is no consensus of what the various branches of applied mathematics are. Such categorizations are made difficult by the way mathematics and science change over time, and also by the way universities organize departments, courses, and degrees."
If there is to be an applied section then differential equations should definitely go in it, and so should discrete mathematics. However I don't think there should be such a section.
The List of topics could be arranged so that it starts with the more pure-ish topics and then moves down the list to more applied-ish topics, but there shouldn't be any hard dividing line.
Delaszk (talk) 10:49, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Although this subdivision has been stable since it was introduced on June 9, 2005, I agree that contrasting Advanced with Applied does not make eminent sense. I don't think, though, that the best solution is to abolish the category Applied. The main point of having these categories is the ease of navigation. Lumping 6 + 7 = 13 fields together makes navigation harder. I favour instead changing Advanced to Pure. While there may be no consensus for all fields where they belong, I think most mathematicians, if asked to classify these 13 fields as either pure or applied, would reproduce the exact same subdivision. I don't agree that Discrete mathematics should go under Applied. The categorization of partial differential equations is indeed problematic; it is a bit curious that List of nonlinear partial differential equations is put under "Calculus and analysis", but List of partial differential equation topics under "Dynamical systems".  --Lambiam 23:15, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: OK agreed, pure and applied headings are a useful navigational aid.
Here's a quote from Dynamical systems
"The differential equations determining the evolution function Φ t are often ordinary differential equations: in this case the phase space M is a finite dimensional manifold. Many of the concepts in dynamical systems can be extended to infinite-dimensional manifolds—those that are locally Banach spaces—in which case the differential equations are partial differential equations. In the late 20th century the dynamical system perspective to partial differential equations started gaining popularity."
It would thus seem reasonable to move List of nonlinear partial differential equations to the dynamical systems section even though Differential dynamical systems may be an extension of calculus.
I said above that I thought "Discrete mathematics" is applied rather than pure, however  
"Discrete mathematics" does not seem to be a coherent field. It seems to be just the parts of various fields which are studied in computer science. Most of the fields: Number theory; game theory; logic; information theory; probability; and dynamical systems contain both discrete and continuous parts, and all of them already have their own sections on this Lists page, except for combinatorics. So I think a combinatorics section should be there rather than a discrete section.  
Delaszk (talk) 15:15, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

text: Discrete mathematics is negatively defined as mathematics not requiring the notion of continuity (but see e.g. Scott continuity, which IMO belongs to the realm of discrete mathematics), and does not form an organic whole – but is still a useful category for navigational purposes. I would also put Set theory and Order theory under Discrete mathematics; I think they are misclassified under Logic.  --Lambiam 23:35, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Set theory is not really logic, in the general sense of that word, but it *is* "mathematical logic"; this is established terminology, even if it is not really (wait for it) logical. On the other hand, set theory (except, possibly, for very elementary set theory, such as Venn diagrams and so on) is not standardly characterized as discrete math. I do agree that order theory doesn't belong under logic, but I'm not so sure it goes under discrete math either. --Trovatore (talk) 00:02, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Discrete mathematics isn't so much a topic as a way of looking at mathematics. Since it is everything that isn't analysis, it includes parts of just about every area of mathematics.
I've just realized that Discrete mathematics is listed under areas of basic mathematics. I think it's fine there.
Looking to the Areas of mathematics article for inspiration, perhaps the Logic section should be renamed Foundations and then logic and set theory would be fine there and proof theory and model theory could be added. Order theory could be put under algebra or given its own section. Delaszk (talk) 16:46, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed changes to this List

message: It may be helpful to develop one. Tkuvho (talk) 12:20, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  list of math history and math philosphy journals 

message: There is a thread here about whether Lists of mathematics articles should redirect here. Let's consolidate the discussion on that other page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:49, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion on organization 

message: Wonder what was meant here, don't want to change unless original editor lets us know what he/she was trying to say.Pdecalculus (talk) 18:44, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's meant as a tongue-in-cheek reference to Gödel's first incompleteness theorem. DilumA (talk) 04:24, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a good joke, but I'm not sure it should be presented to readers.  I've commented it out, for the moment.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 20:12, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  And I've removed it. - dcljr (talk) 21:25, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: We can help by making inconsistent?

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