Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2007/Nov

message: On November 1, 2007, Did you know? on the Wikipedia main page was updated with a fact from the article Bramble-Hilbert lemma. Jmath666 05:36, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's in this version. The nominator wrote "not that I understand the advanced math here". It was picked by Blnguyen. I wouldn't call the DYK text "hooky" as requested in Wikipedia:Did you know#Selections, but that may be hard for math articles. I suggested a less technical "hook" when primes in arithmetic progression got in DYK. PrimeHunter 17:04, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  DYK 

message: The STIX Fonts Project has released their fonts for beta testing. —Ruud 21:42, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  STIX fonts 

message: Didn't we deal with this before?  Perhaps it needs more mathematical eyes on the problem.  — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 21:11, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Chicken McNuggets problem]] 

message: User:71.117.139.31 is making a bunch of changes to formulae with edit summaries like "fixed a variable", which I am reasonably sure are not correct. Can someone take a look? (this <math> stuff isn't my strong suit). --Stormie 23:21, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: They appear to be vandalism. I've undone them all and put a warning on his talk page. Thanks for the alert. —David Eppstein 23:34, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some edits to check 

message: ScienceWorld has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ScienceWorld.  At that page people should post their opinions---either Keep or Delete or Merge or Redirect or what-have-you.
: 
My own view, and the reason why this page is where I'm posting this, is that the main reason to consider the topic notable is that this is a new effort by the same people who created MathWorld.  When a new novel is to be published by an author who's won the Nobel Prize in literature, it can be considered notable, even before publication, because its author is so noteworthy. Michael Hardy 22:00, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur. While notability is not always inherited, in some cases something is notable due (at least in part) to the involvement of some other notable entity. --Cheeser1 07:05, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  ScienceWorld 

message: When is the last time someone from here looked at the article Mathematical problem?  --Lambiam 04:07, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Holy crap!  That's all I'll say.  VectorPosse 04:17, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Little did I know, computing the decimal expansion of pi was one of the outstanding problems of mathematics!  And here I thought it was finding secret encoded messages sent by Elvis from beyond the grave in the decimal expansion of pi.  Anyhoo, I cut out some of the howlers from the article and marked it as a stub.  I'm hoping one of you will be brave enough to start a proper fleshing-out of the article.  I'll snipe from the sidelines. Cheers. Rybu  —Preceding comment was added at 06:39, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I hear the decimal expansion of π contains arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions. Jeepers. --Cheeser1 06:46, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, 0, 00, 000, ... (except that the proof is still missing).  --Lambiam 22:13, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Houston, we have a mathematical problem... 

message: Page(s) related to this project have been created and/or added to one of the Wikipedia:Contents subpages (not by me).
*List of basic mathematics topics
*List of basic arithmetic topics
*List of basic algebra topics
*List of basic calculus topics
*List of basic discrete mathematics topics
*List of basic geometry topics
*List of basic trigonometry topics
*List of basic topics in logic
*List of basic statistics topics
This note is to let you know, so that experts in the field can expand them and check them for accuracy, and so that they can be added to any watchlists/tasklists, and have any appropriate project banners added, etc. Thanks. --Quiddity 19:25, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notice of List articles 

message: Regulars here will recall that about a month ago, I raised the idea of taking an article on advanced mathematics to FAC, and proposed Homotopy groups of spheres as such an article, on the grounds that it is both highly sophisticated, and generally appealing. Originally, my ambitions were merely to refine the article at the time. However, I have been delighted by the response: many editors have joined in an endeavour to produce a comprehensive article on advanced mathematics, and the article has trebled in size! Here, R.e.b. deserves a special mention for adding so much deep material. (I have done little more than copyediting.)
However, the huge improvement of this article has raised questions of accessibility, presentation and balance that are hard to judge from close-up. I also noticed that the A-Class assessment program has fallen rather quiet. So I have nominated this article for A-Class, primarily to get WikiProject wide input on the current article and stimulate some discussion. Please take a look at the article, and add comments to the review page. Thank you in advance to all, and thank you once again to those who responded with such enthusiasm to my previous post. Geometry guy 19:34, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Homotopy groups of spheres]] [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/A-class rating/Homotopy groups of spheres|A-Class assessment]] 

message: A confused person extensively rewrote the article titled improper integral.  I reverted to the last version by Jitse Niesen.  I left a message on the confused person's talk page explaining why at least some of what he wrote was erroneous.  Possibly some assistance from some readers of this page in helping him out of his confusion will be needed later. Michael Hardy 16:33, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  improper integral 

message: Could you please watch over average while keeping in mind that this is an introductory article to the topic?  There's some good discussion and edits going on, but -- and I'm appealing to those of you who have kids trying to understand this topic -- could you please try to keep it simple in this article?  Maybe encourage some of the discussion and text to move to more technical articles?  Maybe try to simplify the article so that teens looking up "average" in Wikipedia won't be completely turned off?  Illustrations would help a great deal. Shorter sentences and less jargon would help a lot. PLEASE help if you can!  I'm not saying the information is bad or wrong, I'm just worried about it being in this general and basic article. --Foggy Morning 02:39, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Average]] 

message: Casimir goes to Casimir is up for deletion. The AfD looks like it could use some input from those who know something about Casimir invariants. --Salix alba (talk) 08:16, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Casimir goes to Casimir 

message: There's an AFD on a Kazakh mathematician, Kareem Amin.  It would be great to have some mathematical subject expertise on this? --Lquilter 18:46, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My father (a statistician at Purdue) never heard of him, nor saw any indication he had written any papers.  That may not be conclusive, but perhaps we have someone within research distance of the museum. — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 21:29, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I just made the article on the museum - it's the major museum in kazakhstan and should have had an article before now, actually. (I was just there 2 years ago.) ... But I don't have any contacts there to look up his papers. --Lquilter 21:38, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  AFD on a Kazakh mathematician; help? 

message: Lists (PLURAL, dammit!!) of mathematics topics is a featured list.
: 
List (singular!!) of mathematics topics is not.
: 
After the featured list got moved to lists of mathematics topics (plural "lists"), someone changed Wikipedia:Featured lists so that it said list of mathematics topics (singular "list"), which was a redirect to the non-featured list of mathematics articles.  Then someone saw that the page listed at Wikipedia:featured lists was not a featured list, and deleted it.  The error stood for almost seven months.  I've changed the singular title to a disambiguation page. Michael Hardy 02:25, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Satanic influences..... 

message: If anyone knows anything about this topic, could they assist at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Casimir goes to Casimir? Michael Hardy 20:42, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It was closed as a redirect. --Salix alba (talk) 13:49, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Casimir goes to Casimir 

message: Hi, i am no maths expert so i ask someone here if this article: 2^x makes any sense. Is it encyclopedic? Accurate? Thanks. Woodym555 23:21, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It has been prodded instead. If expansion is possible, it would be welcome. Thanks. Woodym555 23:28, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I replaced the prod with a redirect to Power of two. —David Eppstein 23:52, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good move. — xDanielx T/C\R 06:46, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Speedy deletion candidate. 

message: This Scientific Peer Review project can hardly be called successful. While there have been a steady but small flow of articles submitted for review, the actual reviews have been either non-existent or in no real way different from those done through the standard Wikipedia:Peer review process. Some editors will recall that the project was started with an enthusiastic discussion about identifying expert reviewers through an elected board. Unfortunately as time went by, it became clear there was no consensus on whether we had a board, or on how it was to be set up or on what it was supposed to do. There was also a lack of consensus on what "sciences" we were covering, and on many other aspects. In the end we sort of lapsed into a minimal review process which has staggered on for about 18 months. I think it is time we decided what to do about the project. Unless people can come up with a new way forward and enthusiastically implement it, I think we have to declare that this project be no longer active in any sense and that editors should ask for review at WP:PR. I am posting this on the talk pages of the major Science WikiProjects. Please feel free to publicize it elsewhere. Please add you comments at Wikipedia talk:Scientific peer review#Is this inactive?. --Bduke 03:41, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Scientific peer review]] 

message: I need help with Halting problem and Godel's incompleteness theorem. User:Likebox, an avowed fan of Archimedes Plutonium, is adding some content both literally and figuratively incorrect to these, and I don't see any way to resolve it by myself. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:28, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd almost given up on Halting problem.  Perhaps I'll have a look at it tomorrow.  Of course, he won't accept my ideas, either....  — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 01:31, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I fixed halting problem this morning, but he reverted it. He is extremely confused about how to use terminology correctly, apparently favoring vague analogies instead of correct exposition. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:49, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: While I agree with the idea of removing fluff and vague analogies from the article, you also removed the material that makes the article comprehensible to computer scientists. Is there some way of writing an article that's acceptable mathematically but written in such a way as to be understandable by programmers? For instance, there's no explanation of why a decision problem (which, to a programmer, can be explained as the desired behavior of a subroutine that has some input and a boolean valued output) has anything to do with sets of integers (a seemingly static mathematical object having nothing to do with computation). This is, by the way, a problem with both versions of the article; Likebox's version has separate sections with intuition and with rigor, but little connection between them. —David Eppstein 02:00, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't just remove it - I tried very hard to integrate it throughout the other text. Check the diff for my edit . I don't mind at all the idea of having some intuition present, but not in the "he said/she said" way that claims there is a difference between computer science and recursion theory.  I would be glad to work cooperatively to add more explanation throughout both articles as appropriate. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:20, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I totally agree that the "he said/she said" approach is counterproductive. I attempted to restore your version of the Gödel article but was reverted (by DFRussia, not Likebox) so it looks like we're going to have to work on building consensus among multiple people who see it the other way before having any success at fixing these articles. —David Eppstein 03:21, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In any case, it cannot possibly hurt to have more people watching these two articles for a little while. I agree that consensus building is needed here, rather than some sort of appeal to authority. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:27, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

text: looks like that page can use more attention. i would suggest other knowledgable folks besides Carl take a look, if they haven't done so. Mct mht 00:54, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help with some logic articles 

message: I have made a request for comments here. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:32, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for comments on GIT 

message: Preclosure operator was misspelled as praclosure operator. When I corrected this, I realised that there is also an article prametric space, and this drew my attention to the zoo of generalized metrics articles. I think there are some serious issues there, but I am not very motivated to solve them alone since it is too far from my main interest. Please see my rant on the talk page for prametric space. I would appreciate help from someone who is a bit closer to the subject.
One particular question: Is there a standard term for something that satisfies all axioms of a metric except the triangle inequality? --Hans Adler 14:43/15:08, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not exactly sure how standard it is, but the only term I've seen for this concept is a semimetric. Although I've seen semimetric defined in slightly different ways as well. The term doesn't seem to be quite as standard as pseudometric or quasimetric. Outside of Wikipedia, I have never heard of the terms prametric or hemimetric. -- Fropuff 20:28, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Generalized metrics and "pra" as a presyllable 

message: Geometry guy is a candidate for adminship. His RFA page is here for anyone who wishes to comment. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:37, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Many thanks to the many editors here who contributed to my RfA nomination. If anyone needs some assistance requiring admin tools, please do not hesitate to let me know. Honoured and delighted though I feel, I realise that one guy getting a few extra buttons is not a big deal compared with the huge task of improving the mathematical content of the encyclopedia. So I would be even more delighted if editors here have a moment to comment on the A-Class assessment of Homotopy groups of spheres. We are getting close to an FAC here, but the input and backing of this project concerning the content and quality would be absolutely invaluable. Geometry guy 22:35, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requests for adminship: Geometry Guy 

message: Surely every numerical analyst in the world is familiar with the remarkable work of Gene H. Golub. Those who knew him personally will be especially saddened to learn that he has just died suddenly and unexpectedly. --KSmrqT 22:08, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've just added him to the list of recent deaths. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:27, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gene Golub 

message: Editor  has just created an article called megalithic geometry and attempted to link to it from geometry. I have reverted the link; probably the article should be deleted as hokum. Have a look. --KSmrqT 20:41, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Give  an indefinite block and roll-back all his edits! He is a single purpose crack-pot. JRSpriggs 07:16, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: He seems to be creating a walled garden around Alan Butler, Sylvain Tristan, Megalithic geometry, and Salt Lines, cross linking and adding the same sources to all of them. If we AfD one we should take a look at all of them. —Cronholm144 08:55, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

text: The author aims to prove the use of circular pattern on the Phaistos disk, but manages to come up with circular evidence. Pardon the pun, couldn't resist. The basic observations are valid and useful, such as the 30 fields on one side and 31 on the other, but his conclusions beyond this are essentially unsubstantiated. For example: He is assuming a certain number of degrees on the circle (366), and a certain number of arc-seconds per degree, and furthermore that the length measure is a foot, and that there are 36.6 feet per arc-second. If it is so, then the result corresponds to within a kilometre with the circumference of the Earth, which is remarkble. Since it is remarkble, he concludes that it must be true, which is of course a circular argument to say the least. The book is full of similar units and measures that are unsubstantiated. I can not recommend it.
This material might possibly survive as an article on the book, which discusses the claims from a neutral point of view. Geometry guy 10:10, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Not quite a true walled garden.  I found one link outside, to Xavier Guichard, who may have proposed a similar theory.  I think he may be notable.  — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 13:39, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

text: I have nominated the article, as well as Salt Lines and Sylvain Tristan, for deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Megalithic geometry. (The fourth one has already been deleted.)  --Lambiam 14:11, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The AfD discussion was closed with the result Delete.  --Lambiam 11:09, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It has a line in Phaistos_Disc_decipherment_claims; that's probably what it deserves. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:16, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Megalithic geometry 

message: Carl Friedrich Gauss has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  FAR for Carl Friedrich Gauss 

message: Thanks to the help of CBM/ Jitse Niesen and KSmrq who helped by pulling out the citation templates of WP math articles/providing improving remarks on the database, there is now a database containing the references of all WP math articles (as of approx. September 07). There are 5300 references, written by some 6000 authors. You can access the database at http://zeteo.info. The references are linked to their corresponding authors, publishers, and journals respectively. An author/publisher/journal is a separate database entity, thus providing the correct structure to uniformly host additional information like wikilink of an author, issn of a journal etc. 
More or less manually I fed the data into the database. It was quite a bit of work to do this. I haven't attempted to verify the information which is now in the database. An in-depth check of a small sample of templates showed, that the stuff is generally pretty well-done, though. Using worldcat.org, I manually added ISSN's for the some 120 (total: 1200) journals. Hence, even merely recopying the result of the database most often improves the presentation of a reference. For example, in Atiyah-Singer index theorem, a reference reads
* .
The output of the corresponding entry in the zeteo database is
* 
(notice the ISSN, wikilink of the first author, the page formatting using en-dash, the wikilink of the journal, the full name of the journal. The latter is achieved via a manually added redirect similar to the ones for WP articles).
Several options are available; for example it is easy to let it put out something like 
:
for those who prefer footnote-style referencing. For your commodity, there is a little search engine template similar to the google toolbar etc., which can be integrated in the browser's menu. So, no excuses anymore :-) for not referencing an article when you actually know a reference off your head.
Anybody can add/update database items. It is possible to import bibtex files and let the database parse them, so you can relatively comfortably add the items of your personal bibtex file (it's pretty quick, I did 6.000 of them).  A brief documentation can be found here, bugs and questions etc. can be reported here. 
Enjoy! Jakob.scholbach (talk) 22:49, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm a little confused.  Clearly not all the references of mathematics article are in the database, including many that I've included in articles.  Is it because only those formatted with a template have been included?  --C S (talk) 09:06, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. Only references using the cite book, cite journal and citation templates have been used. The reason for this is that it is hard/impossible to pull non-template reference information out of the articles and parse it. Moreover the quality of those references is often considerably worse than where templates are used. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 09:35, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

text: This could be very useful for me. How is adding references from Wikipedia source supposed to work? I pasted the references section of model theory into the textfield, clicked "parse this text", and got an empty template. The references (reformatted as templates very recently) still don't seem to be in the database. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:05, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Embarassing. I didn't know that the templates also work as  instead of   (without space), hence the parser is not yet up to this variation. This is now fixed. I'll fix this very soon. In the meantime, if you manually delete the leading space between the braces and "cite", it works (click at "add a reference from file" etc.). The DB currently contains only the reference templates as of September, which is probably why you didn't found the recently formatted references.  Jakob.scholbach (talk) 20:28, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent. I am looking forward to using your tool regularly. Thanks a lot! --Hans Adler (talk) 15:34, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  reference tool 

message: Please add your opinions on article simplification here. --Foggy Morning (talk) 02:10, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Average]] 

message: The Erdős disambiguation page included a moderately long list of things named after Paul Erdős.  I created a new page called List of things named after Paul Erdős.  I moved all those items to that page, and left a link to it on the disambiguation page.  If there are other things that should be listed there, please add them. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:12, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure what to do about it, but there's a lot of overlap there with Erdős conjecture. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:23, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Forgive me for speaking out of turn, but aren't the items of Erdős conjecture a subset of List of things named after Paul Erdős?  Merging/redirecting the former into/to the latter seems an idea worth considering. --The Brown Bottle 18:29, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe Erdos was known for his conjectures, as well as for his collaboration and other mathematical work.  Perhaps they should still be kept separate.  — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 20:53, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I see no reason for either of these articles to exist. The material is not large and could be included in Paul Erdős to the benefit of the project. I suggest this be done before they are proposed for deletion. --Bduke (talk) 21:43, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know about proposals for deletion, but it certainly looks like merging could be considered. Erdős conjecture has the potential to become a nice section of Paul Erdős. A redirect to that section could take over the disambiguation function. (Or is a redirect to a section a bad idea?) Most of the things in List of things named after Paul Erdős are either conjectures or already in the "See also" section of Paul Erdős, so that shouldn't be a problem either. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:58, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  It does seem like a page that could expand greatly -- sure, a list of 10 or 15 things could easily be rolled into the main article, but what happens when 30 more things are added?  I think a page for this could prove useful.  CRGreathouse (t | c) 04:14, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

text: But it is not large now, so add it to the main article and then hive it off when it does get too large. --Bduke (talk) 23:47, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I would agree, were it not for the fact that the list was split off from a disambiguation page. I think that users should be able to navigate through the disambiguation structure without needing to chew through substantive articles in order to find the article they are looking for. (And this consideration holds in particular while the list is short and thus difficult to locate among the biographical information about Erd{\H o}s himself.) –Henning Makholm 00:04, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of things named after Paul Erdős 

message: We should overturn this move.  Hardly anybody commented on it.  We should solicit the opinions of about 500 Wikipedians who frequently edit mathematics articles. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:08, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  overturn 

message: I've moved it back.
: 
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.
: 
Oleg, you're experienced with bots, about which I know nothing.  Is there a quick way to compile a list of frequent math editors to ask for their opinions on this? Michael Hardy (talk) 04:17, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we better wait for people to comment here. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:55, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  No consensus at all was reached on this move.  This is bogus. 

message: In some circumstances, one wishes unit symbols (cm, etc.) to always be upright (i.e. non-italic), even if enclosed in an italicized phrase, e.g. so as not to be confusable with italicized variables which might coincidentally use the same characters.  I've created the template  to do this for us trivially, without violating the XML semantic integrity of the XHTML italicized phrase that is output (which necessarily includes the unit). Instead of stopping and starting the emphasis, as in only 3 cm wide at the base, you simply wrap the unit in the template: only 3  wide at the base (which yields "only 3 cm wide at the base", visually, without breaking the ... XHTML span around the entire italicized phrase, as received by the browser).  Enjoy!  PS: Please feel free to notify other wikiprojects that may find use for this; I'm not a particant in the science & math projects, but created this to resolve a fight over at WP:MOSNUM. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont]  ‹(-¿-)› 17:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template for forcing non-italic units (e.g. in formulas) 

message: * promoting the effective concensus. If every issue were decided by a vote ("is pi transcendental?") most technical issues would be decided wrongly. It's not enough than non-specialists don't understand something, to be justified in destroying it. Democracy needs mechanisms for merit to intrude into policy. Note the current political issue in America, where "separation of church and state" protecting the teaching of Darwinian Evolution in public schools, can be subverted by Creationists simply redefining themeselves as Creation Scientists (so their view is Science, not Religion). They publish their own papers with their own peer-review in their own journals. How is that science, to be distinguished from "our" science, in the courts? The general process of promoting truth (in the sense of propositional calculus, or in the sense of scientific induction) in a world dominated by public opinion, judicial truth, Revelatory Truth, and others, is not trivial. We have to live in this world.
* Support for the Category is not just a clique of wikipidians, but a profession. For example, Ron Graham, a former president of the AMS, "popularizes" Erdos Numbers. 
* Erdos' indiosyncracies, unprecedented touring, profligate production, and brilliance are legendary, in fact iconic. Erdos Nubmers have (increasingly) historical and (diminisihing) socio-political significance to mathematicians. Also the Numbers so some extent memorialize the man in a more approopriate way than merely naming a theorem for him.
* This category is in no way less meaningful (nor, perhaps, more meaningful) than categories such as persons born on certain dates, or who live in certain cities, etc. Summary deletion of those categories would evoke a hew and cry from the special interest group that does care. This is a natrual process, and mathematicians need to be able to hew and cry also, as deductive logic is not necessarily effective on the deletionists.
* I have a theory that the deletionists are concerned with "defining people by numbers" perceived as an evil activity, and conceived with very murky notions of "define" (and even "number", e.g. they are confused about Erdos Numbers being upper bounds). If they understood the subject they may not be afraid of it. So part of our motiviation is education, but in a meta-mathematical topic that is outside our usual methods of teaching, e.g. I can't prove that the category should not be deleted, in the same way I would prove L'Hopital's Rule. Pete St.John 22:50, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Admins do as admins please.  I don't think this is going anywhere, even with consensus on its side. CRGreathouse (t | c) 00:54, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There was no reason to delete this, except that some people see it as their job to tear down the work of others.Ryoung122 02:43, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's not a fair or appropriate accusation. As much as any of us might disagree with the actions or opinions of others, we should not be jumping to such accusatory conclusions. As for the "admins do as admins please" - I suppose that is true, and perhaps that's a systemic problem on a wiki like this, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth making an honest effort to do something (be it overturn, or listify, or something). --Cheeser1 05:42, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reasons to reverse the deletion 

message: Discussion here about the best way to present Erdos numbers in articles is perfectly appropriate. But some editors are concerned that the discussion might be intended to disrupt the ongoing DRV. I don't think that is actually the case, but I hope everyone will keep it in mind, to foster collegiality. As usual, there is no massive conspiracy, just a disagreement about the best way to do something. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:12, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: After closing (early!) as "overturned", the closer reversed the decision. See also Wikipedia talk:Deletion review/Log/2007 November 7#Regarding the Erdos number categories.  --Lambiam 06:24, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This whole thing is quite confusing. Aparently, (as SparsityProblem notes here ) it was closed early, as the rules require it to be open for 5 days before closing. Wikipedia:Deletion review#Closing reviews Looking back through the November DRV pages, I could onlly find two that were listed for a full 5 days before being closed, in violation of the rules for closing DRV's. (All of the other DRV's on that same day as the Erdos number DRV have already been closed.) Will they all be reopened, now? --Ramsey2006 10:14, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Continuing discussion 

message: An editor has asked for a deletion review of :Category:Erdős numbers. Since several of you participated in the previous discussion for this category, you may wish to participate in this relisting of the deletion review. The previous one was apparently closed as "relist" due to canvassing. - jc37 09:23, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relisted 

message: With the categories decisively gone, I have created List of people by Erdős number. Ntsimp (talk) 18:54, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The collaboration calculator Collaboration Distance is amazing. It calculated my Erdös number (4 via James C. Owings Jr., Dilip B. Madan, and Robert W. Robinson) in less than one second. But contrary to what it says, I had to give my name in the form "Spriggs, James" (full first name rather than initial). JRSpriggs (talk) 08:39, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New list 

message: I wanted to make some commutative diagrams (in the context of pin groups and related topics), and couldn't find any documentation; people seem to make them in many ways. I figured out how to make SVG commutative diagrams, so that it's now quite easy, and documented it at: meta:Help:Displaying a formula#Commutative_diagrams.
Hope this helps!
Nbarth (talk) 22:33, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Commutative diagrams 

message: I just finished a major expansion of dessin d'enfant. I'd appreciate it if some people who know more than I about Riemann surfaces and algebraic number theory (not difficult!) could take a look and make sure I haven't said something stupid. Edits or general feedback on readability, content, etc., would be welcome, too, of course. PS: As a deliberate stylistic decision, I tried to follow Gowers' advice to put examples first   — I'd also appreciate feedback on how well that worked. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dessins d'enfants 

message: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Index lists is a complex issue which I've tried to summarize. It concerns pages in mainspace like List of timelines, Lists of mathematics topics, and List of film topics. Its scope is currently a few hundred pages, and potentially a few thousand pages. Feedback would be appreciated. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:14, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: 'This issue may be important to Wikipedia's mathematics community.  The magnificent lists (plural, "lists"; not "list") of mathematics topics, an officially Featured List, could get moved from the article space into the portal space.  I don't think it should be there.  It is not just a way of navigating among Wikipedia articles; it is a way of browsing the subject matter itself. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:21, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Index lists - RfC 

message: I randomly clicked on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Count today and found a rather round number. Of course we all know that divisibility by 1000 is no big deal, but it makes a good excuse to celebrate the good work by many contributors over many years to create so many mathematics articles. Geometry guy 22:42, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: ;-) Paul August ☎ 22:49, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

text: I think it is the number of articles at list of mathematics articles, but I'm sure Jitse or Oleg will correct me if I am wrong. Note that the count changes once per day, usually by an integer bigger than one, so it was a bit of luck to hit a round number, hence the post. Geometry guy 23:38, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think it is the number of mathematics and mathematicians articles (the total, that is). Jitse should know for sure. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 07:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:49, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Count 

message: I notice that all the space on WP:MATH front page is devoted to FA- and A-class articles or similar, but nowhere is there an area (or link to an area) where articles/other pages undergoing AfD or similar deletion discussion can be listed. :-(
That said I nominated a mathematician and physician of unknown notability, James M. McCanney, for deletion. AfD is here. Might not be widely-published as he's said to be "anti-establishment". Just a heads up. Pegasus «C¦T» 07:23, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Mentioning it here is fine, but if it has a sufficiently mathematical category it will also show up automatically in Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:34, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your quick reply! Pegasus «C¦T» 08:19, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where do I mention math-related stuff about to be deleted? 

message: Error-correcting codes with feedback has been nominated for deletion, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Error-correcting codes with feedback 132.205.99.122 (talk) 23:05, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:AFD]] on [[Error-correcting codes with feedback]] 

message: Is anyone here familiar with the "equivalence symbol" used in the last row of this table?  It looks like an equals sign with a caret on top. I've never seen it anywhere else. Should it be mentioned somewhere on Wikipedia, such as in the equals sign article? --Itub (talk) 07:28, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I know from experience that the symbol is in widespread use in some (probably all) German schools. I don't think there is an exact meaning; at least in school it's certainly not used in the restricted technical sense described in your source. Our teachers pronounced it as "entspricht", i.e. "corresponds to", and I think I can remember an instance when a chemistry teacher used it when explaining the rule of three. I think basically it's just a kind of general purpose "equality with a disclaimer" symbol with no clear meaning. IIRC, among the teachers who actually wrote equations the mathematics teachers were least likely to use the symbol, and the geography teachers used it most. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:48, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

text: There are two similar but distinct Unicode symbols: ≘ (U+2258 CORRESPONDS TO) and ≙ (U+2259 ESTIMATES). The former, with a "frown" over the equals sign, is documented in equals sign as meaning "corresponds to", without further explanation. The symbol ≙ ("wedgeq") redirects to Correspondence (mathematics), but is not explained or even used in that article. I think this is a mistake; the first symbol should have been used instead. The second, with a wedge, is documented in the German Wikipedia as meaning "is estimated as" (see Gleichheitszeichen.) I think it may be in use as a poor man's substitute for the "frowneq". I have also seen it used as a poor man's alternative to ≜ (\triangleq, "triangleq", U+225C DELTA EQUAL TO) meaning "is defined as", as used, for example, in the article Ball (mathematics). See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive 19#Convention for definitions: Use := or \equiv?. I'm in favour of documenting all of these properly, but do not have any authoritative sources.  --Lambiam 12:58, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As has been discussed at length before, I support the use of a simple equals sign in our articles, with accompanying English, rather than a multitude of decorated symbols. An article documenting the common uses of various symbols would be reasonable, although finding a source might indeed be difficult. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:09, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Equivalence symbol 

message: See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Error-correcting codes with feedback.
Normally I would expect this to get listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity.  But it hasn't.  It bore the "Information theory" category.  Apparently articles with that category don't show up on the current activity page.  I've added the "Mathematics" category for now.
Oleg, are you the person who manages the software that determines which things show up on the "current activity" page?  Can you do something about this? Michael Hardy 23:17, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  proposed deletion 

message: Logical necessity of inconsistency has been listed on AfD. —Ruud 23:41, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Logical necessity of inconsistency]]