Talk:Lowest common denominator

message: Needs more on usage applying to media. ReverendG 20:24, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: The article equates LCD with LCM. But a denominator is not the same thing as a multiple; in fact, they are opposite (or, more precisely, inverse). Has anyone ever heard this term in math? I have heard it only in colloquial conversation. (I think people really mean "greatest common denominator", but they substitute "least" because "greatest" sounds big.) So I propose that this article explicitly state that the concept is not mathematical at all, but a colloquial misuse of math jargon. Joshua Davis 21:09, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I withdraw the above complaint! Somehow I did not notice the presence of fractions, which makes the concept quite meaningful indeed. Please ignore. Joshua Davis 03:35, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Not math at all?

message: Feureau, you added a cleanup tag without explaining why on the talk page, and in this case I don't understand it. But I made some minor changes; is it cleaned up now? The grammar/spelling/writing are all fine; the concept is clearly defined, using simple language, and then examples are given, and then the greater social impact is even addressed. What's your issue?
And as for the stub tag: What do you think this article is missing? The LCD is not a large or complicated topic in math, so I don't see it having an article much longer than this. But perhaps I'm unimaginative. Joshua Davis 11:53, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup and stub tags 

message: The source is Connected Mathematics 2nd edition, Bits and Pieces I. Is that sufficient as a source or do you need photocopies of the actual book? --Bachcell (talk) 23:03, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for the source.  For a proper citation of the source (so the general reader of Wikipedia's LCD article knows what book is being referred to, precisely) see Wikipedia:Citation templates.  However, overriding a proper citation is the consideration that the LCD article is not the place to fight a cultural war about education reform or not.  The LCD article should deal with the mathematical concept of LCD.  The LCD concept is not central to education reform.  (If I understand your position re. ER correctly, it seems that you should be interested first of all in a full explanantion of the LCD concept.  Inserting the issue of ER only takes away from the explanation of the LCD concept.) Cheers.  --  Iterator12n  Talk  01:11, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Education reform

message: I see there used to be a disambiguation page for this and it's gone away. I followed the link to the discussion of it going away and it said that I could leave follow-up comments on the discussion page for the topic, which I guess is here.  My comment is simply this:  There are other meanings of Lowest common denominator (or I prefer "least common denominator") that probably follow by analogy from the math definition but are social.  Consider that in a pluralistic society if one group will not permit a certain kind of TV broadcast (or web page) and another group will not permit another, the result might accidentally be a publication policy that allows only the "least common denominator".  Explaining my use of this term in context on a bit of writing I'm doing on the web in another venue is usually tedious and I would prefer to just use the term and hyperlink my use to a central explanation of the concept here at Wikipedia.  But there is no mention here of such a usage. I would normally have considered adding an entry to the disambiguation page and starting a new article.  I'd have to research the suffix, but I assume Lowest_common_denominator_(political) or some such thing.  And then I'd imagine it would be linked through the disambiguation page.  But given that the disambiguation page is deleted, I'm now in the awkward position of having to navigate both the mechanics and the politics of reinstating the page. I'm not up to that.  I'm just a disappointed user who wishes this sort of thing were simpler to do.  In sum, not all uses of this term are mathematical and there's no obvious place to acknowledge that fact. --Netsettler (talk) 08:49, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Missing disambiguation page

message: What is a K-12 Balloons Standard?  I know K-12 (which should be a link), but I and google don't seem to know how balloons relate. DHR (talk) 15:26, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: "balloons standard" gets no relevant google hits, so I've commented out that paragraph until someone explains. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:25, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Here it is, an old bit of vandalism. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:29, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  K-12  Balloons Standards 

message: I believe a contributor pasted something (the process to extract the minimum common denominator) into this article without caring about leading spaces. So it's better if somebody with better knowledge than me reviews it because it's still confusing.
--Kipitis (talk) 10:30, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Graphic glitches 

message: I removed the "Non-mathematlcal usage" section because it only described a figurative usage of the word and searching didn't turn up sources that covered it any serious way beyond documenting that the metaphorical usage exists. Since Wikipedia is not a dictionary, I removed it. A couple people added it back because the lead had a link to it. I'm thinking that rather than restore the section, we should remove the link. On the other hand, if there are some good sources about the non-mathematical kind of lowest common denominator, then I'd like to cover them well (perhaps in a separate article since it's really a separate topic). I did find this book, but it appears to be a self-indulgent rant rather than a reliable source of information. Does anyone know of any good sources? I can imagine that there might be. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 16:02, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reliable, non-dictionary sources for the metaphorical meaning?