Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2007/Jul

message: I will keep this short.
--Cronholm144 15:14, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  July 

message: As part of the Notability wikiproject, I am trying to sort out whether Icosahedral–hexagonal grids in weather prediction is notable enough to have its own article; or if, and where to, the article should be merged. I would appreciate an expert opinion. If you can spare some time, please add your comments to the article's talk page. Thanks!  --B. Wolterding 17:42, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Icosahedral–hexagonal grids in weather prediction 

message: Hi,
I would like to notify you about this merger proposal regarding the expected utility hypothesis. Expert opinions welcome. --B. Wolterding 11:31, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger: Expected utility and related topics 

message: Would somebody look at Ramanujan prime? An IP has added an unsourced claim I doubt and tagged with . The IP keeps removing the tag and claims a reference is not needed even though I point to WP:V#Burden of evidence. I have made 3 reversions already within a day (and the IP has made 4). PrimeHunter 01:27, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll keep an eye on it. -- Avi 01:33, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. PrimeHunter 01:47, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Ramanujan prime]] 

message: Aryabhatta Maths Competition
Please opine at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aryabhatta Maths Competition. Michael Hardy 23:25, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article's deletion proposed 

message: As a result of recent discussions about the manual of style, the guideline about page names was recently changed (since June 14) so that en dashes (–) are acceptable in article titles one more.  Other changes led to the manual of style for dashes being merged to the main manual of style. 
If there are pages that should be renamed to replace a hyphen with an en dash, and the move is not contentious, I'd be glad to help with the moves when admin assistance is required. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:46, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there a category (Mathbot? Veblenbot? Jitse's bot?) "math articles that contain hyphens"? This might make transitioning easier.--Cronholm144 20:52, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: According to the current guidelines, there isn't a need for a transition: both regular and en-dash hyphens are acceptable in titles, although redirects should be provided from one form to the other. Geometry guy 21:04, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There have been a few cases where articles about jointly-named theorems were "forced" to use hyphens against some editors' requests, so I thought those might be worth changing back. Otherwise, I agree with the current guideline that there's no need to change them all at once. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:06, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  En dashes in page names 

message: I nominated this 2003 FA for FAR. It is woefully inadequate. Details follow. Geometry guy 00:06, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Galileo 

message: This user http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/86.192.35.156 has added links to a web site to the following articles:
* Chebyshev polynomials
* Lagrange polynomial
* Fixed point iteration
* Newton's method
I noticed because I have Fixed point iteration on my watchlist. Because this user appears to be doing this systematically, I suspect this user is running the website. Hence, this appears to go against WP:EL (whereby you are not to add links to your own web site.)
I have removed the link in Fixed point iteration, but I'm not sure I want to keep my eyes open for this kind of stuff all the time. Is there a botty way of doing this? You guys on top of it?
Loisel 22:01, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Report him to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam--Cronholm144 22:38, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, well for now I've reverted it and added a friendly notice to his talk page. We'll see next time. Loisel 23:31, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link spamming 

message: I would like to draw the attention of the honorable gentlemen away from the  wooden church mentioned by 
Lambiam above in the course of a passionate discussion spanning mathematics, wikipolicies, originality of humour, and many other fine subjects, and direct it to a somewhat more pressing image issue.  Namely, quite a number of pages are using the wrong image of Euclid, or as it happens, the image of wrong Euclid ! And here they are:
* Algebra
* Euclid
* Euclidean geometry
* User:Rj/Misc
* Perfection
* User:Farzon Lotfi
* Portal:Geometry
* Portal:Geometry/Selected biography
* History of algebra
Apparently, by carelessly cropping the bottom of the painting which contains the latin inscription Evklidi Megaren, Mac Tutor History of Mathematics Archive had initiated the error, which then propagated to Wikicommons, and on to Wikipedia. The full image is available at  aiwaz.net and leaves very few doubts that an error had been made. Fortunately, in this instance the caption at the Wikipedia article Euclid (although not the commons description) mentioned the name of the painter, so it was relatively straightforward to trace the image. Moreover, someone had already noticed the error and posted a warning on the image talk page. But what if we are not so lucky? Should we make a consistent effort to verify the accuracy of the images in mathematics articles, or, at least the most heavily linked ones? Arcfrk 21:30, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image of Euclid 

message: * List of films about mathematicians
* Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of films about mathematicians
Michael Hardy 18:47, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "List of films about mathematicians" nominated for deletion 

message: It was recommended that I might post this here, as there seems to be many more interested persons here than at other places on Wikipedia.
There is a July 12 recommendation to delete or rename the mathematics logic stub type as part of a re-organization under a philosophical-logic stub. I have put an argument opposed to the proposal as it would make those article stubs in need of improvement less visible to many of you who visit here, people who have a better sense of how to review and edit those stubs than the general population of Wikipedia users/editors. I make no comment here about non-mathematical philosophers of logic, but feel free to form your own opinions and make them known in an appropriate manner. Hotfeba 19:34, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed renaming/deletion of mathematics logic stub 

message: :::More soapboxing: CH's choice of example articles are curious. Compare our dynamical system and Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy to those at Scholarpedia, cited above. After a quick skim, its not obvious that the Scholarpedia articles are actually "better". If one also includes the related articles here at WP, then our entries are certainly more complete and comprehensive. I would encourage everyone here to continue thinking about possible mechanisms whereby a domain expert could review a given article, make needed corrections, and then prominently stamp a "seal of approval" on a given version of an article. I believe that this kind of "peer review process" could be relatively straight-forward to implement, and would address almost all of CH's concerns about accuracy and reliability. I also believe that if this were done, the result would be a product much superior to the efforts of Scholarpedia, as the true wiki process can create and manage content at a much, much faster rate than the traditional scholarly review article process can. linas 14:03, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems to me that the technical means to make permanent links are already in place. The main difficulty I see is recruiting experts to review the articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:51, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point. Tenure review boards don't consider WP participation in their review. On the other hand, to get the ball rolling, we do have a few professional mathematicians lurking here, who could be pressured to do a review. But we don't have a procedure.  In the eyes of CH and others (clearly, in they eyes of those founding and funding Scholarpedia), WP is not authoritative because we don't have a way of certifying the reviewers.  How would we know a reviewer is competent to perform the review? Shall we allow Danko to participate?  Will I feel snubbed, if I'm not invited/allowed to participate?  We have plenty of highly capable, but informal and ad-hoc volunteer reviewers; we don't have a process that is perceived as "water-tight" by outsiders. linas 01:48, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Review of Wikipedia articles 

message: We've had fun discussing the cartoon at Bring radical. Meanwhile: A post on the reference desk prompted me to study the text of the article more closely, and it seems we've been overlooking more serious issues. Try reading "Bring-Jerrard normal form"; it purports to be an explanation of the reduction, but it's not very successful. Nor is the rest of the article much better. A reader who does not already understand this material is unlikely to benefit much.
I'm not going to be able to clean it up myself; I'm requesting the services of a domain expert or two. Thanks. --KSmrqT 11:40, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Bring radical", the text 

message: The biographical article about Marc Thomas, a US mathematics professor, had been listed for review by WikiProject Notability. (Some notability concerns have been raised on the talk page.) But what it really needs, in my opinion, is attention by a mathematics expert. It's well possible that the person is in fact non-notable, but I think a functional analyst can judge this better than I can, Could you have a look at the article? Thanks! --B. Wolterding 12:49, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marc Thomas 

message: The discussion has also spilled over onto the talk page.  The core of the discussion is whether or not "introduction" articles should be allowed.  People opposed to this FA candidate think "in principle" there should be no "introduction to..." articles and everything should be explained at general relativity.  Some of the comments supporting this position run along the lines of "general relativity shouldn't be that hard to explain" and "the problem is that Wikipedia allows impenetrable and contextless pages on mathematical and technical minutiae".  Some countering comments generally explain that the mathematics may be intimidating, require too much background, etc., and so a simplified (less mathematical) article serves a useful purpose. 
It seems to me this is the kind of thing we've often discussed here, so I think it useful and beneficial for this FA discussion if math editors go and make some comments. --C S (Talk) 19:52, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interesting discussion at [[Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Introduction_to_general_relativity]] 

message: I mention this matter here rather than at the BLP noticeboard, as I expect people there will find all this rather confusing.  But the math folk here are quite familiar with the whole Manifold Destiny thing, presumably.
Take a look at the current incarnation of Talk:Xi-Ping Zhu.  It is nothing but a fistfight between several editors, including User: Danko Georgiev MD, User: Jiejunkong, and User: Mathsci. In addition, Danko Georgiev (who people might recognize from his soapboxing style on several talk pages) has thrown about some serious allegations, calling the article subject Zhu "a criminal" and so forth.
Based on my view that nothing on this talk page has actually been of any use in helping improve the article, rather, it has only been a verbal battlefield between these editors, I have blanked the talk page and replaced with some templates and a brief explanation .  Unfortunately, it has been reverted by Jiejunkong, who thinks that MathSci's (alleged) experience as a professional mathematician, somehow justifies keeping this horrible mess of a talk page.
I think it's a big shame that anybody stumbling on this article and reading about Zhu (including possibly the subject), will see this horrific back-and-forth flaming on the talk page.  This is not constructive discussion.
I wonder if just purging the whole talk page history is an option here.  --C S (Talk) 12:20, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps some steps should be taken to discourage/block/warn/ban Danko. I had to deal with the disruption he caused at the Afshar experiment, and found he added nothing positive. In private communication, he indicated that he recently purchased a book on introductory complex analysis, which he was reading, and demonstrated difficulty in understanding how to add, multiply, and take the modulus of complex numbers. At this point, I realized he was a crank. It seems wrong to me that someone so untrained in mathematics should be allowed to cause such tremendous disruption.  linas 13:13, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If he is so mathematically unwashed, you'd expect his publications referenced at Unruh's interferometer to be total garbage, but at first glance I don't see the expected giveaways of crankhood (which is different from crankiness). It's not my field, so perhaps they are full of bloopers, but then he does a good job in masking them.  --LambiamTalk 19:39, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

text: The article now has an immense section on the Manifold Destiny thing, which is undoubtedly a violation of BLP policy due to undue weight.  There are also some POV problems partially due to lack of understanding.  Apparently I'm the only one that has ever considered what Zhu himself might think of his WP bio; others are more caught up in expressing their points.  But in any case, I stopped watching the other related articles long ago, and this is no different.  It's too difficult keeping BLPs from getting wrecked, so there's no point for editors like me to waste any more time on this.  --C S (Talk) 22:23, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The point of wasting your time is to create accurate and neutral articles.  I added the section on the manifold destiny and I agree that it could create undue weight and that I could have misinterpreted it.  I added the section in an attempt to bring resolution to a debate that was without question unhelpful.  I invite anyone to please come and comment, this article is suffering from a lack of input.  I have created a section at the end of Talk:Xi-Ping Zhu for comments regarding the BLP concerns as well as added an RFC to the BLP noticeboard.  I invite editors here to take 20 minutes to look over the article and related material and provide input into how this issue should be handled. Weston.pace 14:35, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  serious BLP concerns at [[Xi-Ping Zhu]] 

message: Recently Cycle (mathematics) was merged into Cyclic permutation. Since I'm unconvinced that this is a good idea, I've temporarily reverted that merge until we could have a discussion here. So what does everyone think? Paul August ☎ 22:29, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I will think for more.`'Míkka 23:33, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

text: P.S. What a funny thing math is: in  some texts an acyclic permutation is a cyclic permutation!-) `'Míkka 23:44, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with the unmerge and agree that Cycle (mathematics) should be a disambig. As for maths terminology, I am not surprised at all that three different things are given the same name, but I think that in the postscript, Míkka has been confused by the notation - it is definitely meant to be an acyclic permutation. JPD (talk) 11:14, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Define acyclic permutation, then. Whatever it is, in the Travelling Salesman Problem permutations which are one full cycle of all elements are considered, so I am confused indeed, but not in the way you think. `'Míkka 16:10, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

text: The way the term cycle, in the sense of cycle of a function, is used by mathematicians, it is not restricted to bijections, unlike what is suggested by Cycle (mathematics). Let f : S → S be any function. Then a cycle of f, with period p, is an infinite sequence a0, a1, ..., such that ai+1 = f(ai) for i = 0, 1, ..., ak = a0 for some k > 0, where p is the least such value of k. See, for example, the use of the term in the Collatz conjecture article. If f is viewed as the state transition function of an automaton, this is the same as an infinite loop in programmers' parlance.  --Lambiam 14:59, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: ...and in permutation theory it used to be called permutation cycle or simply cycle. `'Míkka 16:10, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge of [[Cycle (mathematics)]], into [[Cyclic permutation]] 

message: Recently the article on the Unicode font Code2000 was deleted, with no informed comment. That deletion is being reviewed, and members of this project who wish to do so may comment here. --KSmrqT 07:08, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Update: The deletion of Code2000 (the article!) was overturned, unanimously. Enjoy. --KSmrqT 04:35, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Code2000 DRV 

message: Copied from ref desk, I figured it would get more attention here.--Cronholm144 11:15, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This sounds extremely useful. Of course, this would lead to the usual problems of "recommended" being subjective and therefore the question of whether it is really appropriate. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 00:29, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I was thinking that we (WP:WPM) could put together a list through collaboration (we could userfy it to avoid POV problems) and provide a little summary of what the book addresses and the recommended prerequisites etc... and do it for each major field of mathematics. That way people looking for recommendations in the future can get a feel for the printed options out there.--Cronholm144 00:37, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This may be useful. I personally rather look at the "references" section of an article page, though. If we do such a central list, we should put this information to the relevant articles, too. Jakob.scholbach 05:07, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is List of important publications in mathematics but this is more geared to seminal texts than specifically text books. --Salix alba (talk) 08:34, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recommended reading 

message: The discussion about mathlogic stubs was never closed, and recently the discussion has started up again. As it's not uncommon for people to pay more attention to later comments than earlier ones, you may be interested in commenting (again) at Wikipedia:Stub_types_for_deletion#.7B.7BLogic-stub.7D.7D_.2F_Cat:Logic_stubs_or_.7B.7BMathlogic-stub.7D.7D_.2F_Cat:Mathematical_logic_stubs.  — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:54, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: After an analysis of the now-closed discussion, I posted comments on the math logic stub discussion page identifying two separate and valid points of view raised in the stub rename/deletion discussion in the hopes of promoting understanding between sides. Hotfeba 19:23, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stub discussion still ongoing 

message: I updated the list of mathematical redlinks and the most linked math redlinks list, in case somebody finds them useful. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:30, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lists of redlinks 

message: I recently noticed that the :category:English logicians is included in the list of mathematicians. At present the category contains three names: Richard Ferrybridge, Richard Whately, and John Stuart Mill.
I'm not familiar with the works of Ferrybridge, but I have read books by both Mill and Whately, and I'm positive that neither one of them is remotely connected with mathematics. Is it OK to delete their names from the list of mathematicians? Will Oleg's bot just put them back if I do that? Are we going to run into more of this kind of thing because of the philosophy/math split in categories that use the word "logic" in their names?  DavidCBryant 22:50, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good question. On many occasions articles are miscategorized, and then the bot adds them to the list of mathematics articles or the list of mathematicians. If you delete entries from that list, but they are still in a category searched by the bot, the bot will put them back (so one needs to remove the articles from those categories, or make the categories not be searched by the bot). So, perhaps we can remove the logicians from the mathematicians categories. Comments here? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:06, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

text: How about :Category:Experts in mathematical logic? `'Míkka 04:22, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Really it would make sense to split :category:logicians into :category:mathematical logicians and :category:philosophical logicians. The former would be a subcat of :category:mathematicians and the latter a subcat of :category:philosophers. Of course there would be a fair number of names in both cats -- Donald A. Martin, Kurt Gödel, Stephen Kleene, these are just a few off the top of my head. --Trovatore 06:57, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Anybody's willing to help with that? :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:49, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  If you need help I could do Q-Z. CRGreathouse (t | c) 15:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Logicians in the list of mathematicians

message: The article is on AfD now: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Icosahedral–hexagonal grids in weather prediction --B. Wolterding 07:31, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Icosahedral–hexagonal grids in weather prediction (again) 

message: I've begun a list of mathematics articles tagged as unreferenced at User:Shotwell/Mathematics articles needing sources. I plan, time permitting, to eventually generate a more comprehensive list using a database dump. If I'm duplicating previous work, please let me know. Cheers, shotwell 09:50, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have a bot that maintains Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Mathematics/Lists#Articles lacking sources. That's not so nice as your version though. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 10:57, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Those two lists cover articles that are explicitly tagged as unreferenced. I have a list, that I update occasionally, of articles that don't appear to have any sources based on the section headers in them. User:VeblenBot/Unreferenced is sorted by category and User:VeblenBot/Unreferenced2 is sorted alphabetically. This makes it easier to go through an entire category you are familiar with to add sources. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:36, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I figured someone had generated a more comprehensive list. I should have poked around some more. Thanks to both of you! shotwell 22:58, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mathematics articles without sources 

message: In case anyone might be unaware of a technical solution, notice that transclusion can allow a file to appear to be located in two different places. For an example of transclusion, go over to WP:RFA and view the wikisource, and notice that the debates on individual candidates are brought in by using curly brackets, like  (just picking the example that's at the top of today's page). To allow this to be a compromise solution, someone would have to go to the trouble of identifying all the requested logic articles that are in common between the logic and mathematics projects, put those items in a file, and transclude it in both places.  Unfortunately it's not easy to use categories when the articles in question don't yet exist, otherwise categories might be an easier method, since it's quite possible for an existing article to live in more than one category. EdJohnston 16:30, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  How to share requested articles between two WikiProjects 

message: I updated the math section of Wikipedia:Missing science topics with newer entries from MathWorld, and removed the bluelinks. The ratio of blue links to total number of articles increased from 43.3% to 48.1%. That still leaves around 13,000 math concepts which would need articles or redirects.
The log of changes is at Wikipedia:Missing science topics/Log. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:26, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update on the missing mathematics topics 

message: *
*. PrimeHunter 00:41, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Bell's prime number theorem]] and [[Prime quintuplet]] at AfD 

message: I was just browsing using Jitse Niesen's "Random page in mathematics" script, and I come on Relaxation technique.  I can't imagine why it might be considered one.  I don't know if this is a bug in the script, but I expect it just follows an automatically compiled list like list of mathematics articles, and indeed it is in that list, so the question is why this thing ends up there.  There are a number of unintuitively categorized "math" articles I've found with this script, so far only hard economics or hard physics (like, materials, not theoretical physics).  How inclusive are the criteria for this list? Ryan Reich 15:03, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Probably a confusion with Relaxation technique (mathematics). PrimeHunter 15:23, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No doubt, but isn't list of mathematics articles automatically generated?  The bot surely doesn't get confused over similar titles.  My impression was that it used the article's categories to determine inclusion. Ryan Reich 15:55, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oleg has explained this before. People can manually add titles to the list of math articles, and the 'bot won't take those off the list. But if one is deleted and a category tag on that article is still in the list of math categories, then the 'bot will add it back in when it finds that title missing. In other words, the 'bot consults categories to find missing titles, but it doesn't make the comparison in the other direction.  DavidCBryant 16:02, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay.  I will remove it, then. Ryan Reich 21:13, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

text:  Either that, or someone who had seen one war too many over a lead sentence thought we needed the advice. (It must be inviting and easily understood; it must be fastidiously correct; it must summarize the article!)  --KSmrqT 15:34, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is [[Relaxation technique]] a math article? 

message: An expert view would be appreciated. Tim Vickers 22:43, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed deletion of [[Quasi-symmetric equation]] 

message: We recently had a housekeeping sweep of our images causing some to be removed, and I wanted to pass on some information to those who like to create appropriate, informative illustrations for articles.
*One useful tool is gnuplot, which can produce SVG plots of great flexibility.
*For graph-theory diagrams and other "circles-and-arrows" pictures, Graphviz is quick and easy, and also able to make SVGs.
*Another possible source for a vast assortment of appropriate images is Paul Bourke.
*Other do-it-yourself options are:
*# POV-Ray, a general-purpose package that can render algebraic surfaces of degree up to seven; 
*# surf, which is specialized for algebraic curves and surfaces;
*# surfex, which is built on top of surf.
*Non-free tools include Maple, Mathematica, and MATLAB; these also have free counterparts like SAGE and GNU Octave and Scilab.
In summary, there is no shortage of possibilities for great mathematical images. For some articles, photographs may also be desirable; just be careful about copyright status. --KSmrqT 22:18, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've done simple stuff using xfig on a unix system.  Last time I checked Desargues' theorem used an illustration essentially based on one I put there created with xfig (someone added some color or something); similarly at Pythagorean theorem (although that one gets edited so much it's probably evolved a lot more since my picture); and effect of sun angle on climate still has my illustration in its original form. Michael Hardy 23:41, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Inkscape is a nifty point and click tool to create very nice figures. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:10, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, Inkscape is a nice open-source editor for "vector graphics" (SVG, versus PNG "raster graphics"). It would be an awkward tool for mathematical curves and surfaces, which was my emphasis. However, it does have one notable mathematical ability: tilings. Here is some documentation; note that all 17 wallpaper groups are supported. --KSmrqT 04:25, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

text: I've added some information distilled from the above to Wikipedia:How to create graphs for Wikipedia articles#Plotting. My actual experience is limited to gnuplot producing PostScript, so please review and correct as needed.  --Lambiam 05:15, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fun with figures