Talk:Classical Hamiltonian quaternions

message: Statements such as Here is where it gets interesting. need to be removed, per WP:STYLE and WP:NPOV (not to mention the whole article needs sourcing per WP:V) Marasmusine (talk) 17:18, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Tone

message: Hello and welcome to Classical Hamiltonian Quaternions.
This page began because the historical section was growing faster than the modern section, and I feared that soon a single section, 10.1 of that page, would contain more chapter headings than the rest of the entire page combined.
Thats not fair to modern quaternions.  They are a living breathing growing mathmatical  entity, which is constantly finding new uses for itself.
This page is not about that, it is about the quaternions of the 19th century.  I suggest that sources cited would be more interesting if they were actually from that era.
The story of 19th century quaternions ends in 1901, which interestingly was the date of the publishing of Gibb's book vector analysis.
A  21st century reader reading vector analysis,  would find much of the notation very familar.  But go back any farther and things are very different.  The words mean something different than  the do today.
Of particular importance, the words vector and tensor meant something different in the quaternion system.
"quaternion products" is also a 20th and 21st century idea.
So well lets get started.  I am very much suprised that this  material is not on  wikipedia already in this format.
Hobojaks (talk) 17:30, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original when I created this page 

message: The common modern spelling is scalar, but scaler is used quite often in the article.  I will bulk correct this on my next pass, but I wanted to make sure there was no subtle distinction between the two.
While I suggest not worrying too much about technical aspects (spelling, detailed grammar, wiki tags), the article appears dangerously WP:OR, at least partially due to writing style.  I suggest concentrating on fixing tone issues which have produced WP:V unverifiable claims, and the secondly fixing the potentially verifiable statements for which you have provided no WP:RS reliable source.
I'll work on correcting the technical aspects so the article appears better at first glance.  I've already taken care of the technical problem that was preventing headers from working correctly, now there are just the spelling errors and wiki links, I think. JackSchmidt (talk) 18:04, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scalar or scaler 

message: I moved a lot of text into history of quaternions article.  I don't think  that it most of it fits in to an article about history rather than an article about a historical notation.
I first suggested that this be done in this talk page, and then  did it some time  later  when there were no objections.
Hobojaks (talk) 01:59, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Does this belong some place else

message: There are two different issues.
The first is what were classical quaternions.
It would explain classical notation, classic structure.
The second issue is who and when and why.
Who  and when  would be about names of people and events and dates in the history of quaternions.  
Inside of who and when should go an in depth history longer than the one offered as the brief history on the main quaternion page for those interested in more information in this long and facinating subject.
How classical quaternion calculus differed from the early modern forms of vector analysis that replaced them as far as main stream use around the turn of the century, would also belong in an in depth history section.
Also unlike classical quaternion notation, now of interest to those attempting to read and understand old text books, the history of quaternions has gone on into the 20th and 21st centuries where ideas about quaternions are expressed by game developers in the latest programing languages.
So are there any objections to me doing a little more work on dividing this article (main article on quaternions including overly long history section)  into two parts?
Right now it is about two different things?
Hobojaks (talk) 05:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Original argument for creation of classical notation article

message: Friends the plauge of modern vector notation has snuck into this article.
Where I had written A "cross" B someone put A X B to mean the modern cross product.
We need some way to distinguish between the modern cross product and the classical quaternion product.
May I suggest that when  ever i, j, and k are modern and not classical that in this article they be shown in a different color, perhaps read.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hobojaks (talk • contribs) 06:06, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The plauge of modern notation 

message: I was just looking at the references and the links to the page scans of the classical texts seem to all be broken, and only lead to the text and not the indivevidual pages.
A sadly lot of work will be needed to reconstruct these references.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hobojaks (talk • contribs) 07:10, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links to page scans of classical texts all broken? 

message: I have added a new section about right vectors.
I feel that this new section makes the section that I wrote earlier contrasting quaternion notation with the modern notation of vector analysis redundant and was contemplating either moving it or deleting it altogether.
What I like about my new method, is that it takes care of the problem that I was having in early versions of this article with mixing old and new notation.  Hopefully most of the readers of this article will be understand that the scaler product and dot product mean the same thing in modern use.  The same can be said for the vector product, or cross product.
At least wikipedia thinks so, because when I link vector and scaler product which were terms more popular at the turn of the century they seem to link right up with the correct mathmatical concepts.
Yet before I go and delete a large section of text I thought it might be good to get other ideas.  The other option is to move that text to the history section.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hobojaks (talk • contribs) 21:07, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't you mean "right versor" instead of "right vector" ? The versor concept was important in the classical quaternion theory, and it was the 90 degree arc versors that were used to produce the spatial vector subspace.Rgdboer (talk) 23:48, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  New section on right vectors. 

message: Similarly, Quaternion negative nomenclatures often expropriate terms from classical quaternion nomenclature and redefine them to a point that it makes very difficult to understand classical texts.  is both jargon and POV. Quaternion negative is a nonce-term; expropriate is a Marxist polemical term, which we should use only in summarizing texts which actually use it. 
It may be removed on either ground, and will be removed on both. WP is not the place for essays on the oppressed virtue of anything, let alone quaternions.  Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:16, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: More unsourced

message: :The product of two tensors is another tensor, the sum of two tensors is another tensor, and the quotient of two other tensors is another tensor.
Does Hamilton actually ever add tensors for quaternions which are not multiples of each other? The sum of tensors for arbitrary quaternions is not the tensor of the sum, although it obeys the triangle inequality. 
Here is an example
http://books.google.com/books?id=TCwPAAAAIAAJ&dq=lectures+on+quaternions&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=bOy1BhGbhA&sig=frI4KxlT4PociUTljrUl3iT_0Xw&hl=en&ei=kRCySbnDCZ3gsAPC5qCPAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PRA1-PA675,M1
Scroll down to the middle of the page, technically here tensors are being subtracted, but examples of them being added exist as well.  In Lectures on quaternions Hamilton says tensors can be better thought of as unsigned numbers, but then in other places it is less clear when he means just a positive number.  Later on, when he gets into bi-quaternions, they have bi-scalar coefficients.  Hence the tensor of a bi-quaternion can actually  can actually be a 'negative tensor'.  Or even stranger a bi-quaternion can have a tensor of zero even when not all the individual coefficients are zero.  In this case its inverse is infinite, or at least I think I remember reading something along those lines.  Also one can find sentences where Hamilton uses the words metric and tensor in the same sentence.Hobojaks (talk) 07:01, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I meant to reply to this earlier. Hamilton introduced the term "tensor", as I learned through the current article (yet another key concept he coined). He used it in a somewhat different manner, though. I'm not competent on exactly Hamilton's use of the term, so I might not be of much value here; all I want to ask for is caution. Maybe a direct quotation (e.g. book so-and-so page so-and-so) would help? Just a suggestion. Thanks, Jens Koeplinger (talk) 02:45, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Try absolutely different; the citations of Tait make clear that Hamilton's "tensor" is the "square root of the norm" of a quaternion, and so a one-dimensional quantity. (The "square root of the norm" above is, I think, an exact quotation of Tait; would putting it in quotes help?) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:20, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I see ... it appears almost as if Hamilton (or Tait) would attempt to construct an algebra of magnitudes (which would be why the "minus" operation is problematic). The "citation needed" tag is there, that should help getting it clarified. Thanks, Jens Koeplinger (talk) 19:37, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Sum of tensors

message: :At a basic level it is alright to think a tensor as just a positive number.<:ref>Hardy 1881 pg. 5</ref>  Mathematically it functions exactly like a positive number.  If you add two tensors you get another tensor, just like when you add two positive numbers.  The same is generally true with multiplication and division.  On a more technical level Hamilton's classical definition of a tensor is of a signless number.  In other words a number with out a plus or minus sign in front of it.  5 is an example of a tensor and so is 2.  A plus sign is an operator, and you can put an operator inbetween two tensors and perform the operation of addition producing a new tensor.  Zero is the problem child of the tensors, if you divide by zero the answer is infinite.  On the other hand if you add zero to another tenser you get the same number you had before.  For example 0 + 2 = 2.  According to Hamilton's notation it is OK to just leave off the zero, write in shorthand +2 = 2.  When two tensors are subtracted the answer may not be a positive number, and hence not a tensor, but a new and different kind of number called a scalar. For example 2 - 5 = -3.  Minus two is not a tensor.  Actually -3 like any negative number can be written as 0 - 3.  Hamilton asks you to agree that there is really no need to write a zero in front of the three, with the understanding that -3 is really just short hand for 0 - 3. In the classical treatment of the subject it is skipping ahead to say that 
This is flatly unacceptable,. First of all, it isn't coherent English; it's a mass of sentence fragments, filled with misspellings; Hamilton's word is the Latin tensor, not tenser. 
It is unsourced, and attributes to Hamilton intensions he never had: Hamilton asks you to agree that there is really no need to write a zero in front of the three is personification more suitable to a child's book of knowledge than an encyclopedia. 
5 is an example of a tensor is misleading to the point of vacuity; 5 is the tensor of 5i, but that's not the same thing. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:51, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Use English

message: I give up, so the section on tensors is greatly reduced, to the disadvantage of readers of the subject, due to the apparent need to source every sentence in a starter article with several citations.  I am moving back to the four operators, which might be less controversial.
Maybe this will allow discussion in this article to at least become more civil and we can move the more controversial parts to other areas.  Nobody very much really seems to care about quaternion notation, unless it comes with analysis, which is why I have now undertaken to understand the cryptic words on Hamilton on the subject of the relationship between addition and subtraction and multiplication and division and analysis and synthesis.  Thus enlightened, as the the relation between various types of vection, to claim that an act of revection or following a revector back to the starting point is technically analysis and not synthesis, with build in hyperlinks, to the proper terms, that will prove my case.
Till then, I think it might be best to remove to other articles the more advanced topics on the subject of the tensor of a quaternion, to the main article which no one will care about, the history article where it will probably be ignored, and the main article, where many experts will be needed to puzzle over the fact that Cayley believed that the tensor was the square root of the norm, while that article which cites no sources claims that the tensor is the norm.
Those seeking to destroy content on the subject of Hamilton's thinking have sown the wind, and must now reap the whirl wind.
Hobojaks (talk) 02:25, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Section on tensors greatly reduced

message: (1) Don't feed trolls.
(2) Hey what happened to the tag about this page being nominated for deletion?  I think that that tag is very important, and people need to read that discussion, please put that back or I am complaining to an administrator.
(3) I still agree with everybody typing on this discussion that this whole page should be blanked and we should start over.
(4) Thanks for vandalizing my user page, I now have multiple accounts, and keep stuff I am working on that I think should be part of wikipedia on a user page that only watches and does not type so you will never be able to pull that one again.
(5) This content I feel is more useful on a user's personal page as  tool for creating content for other pages.  That way the user will have all those links that he can explore, all those definitions of esoteric terms, hyperlinked together, that he can use as a tool, for researching good content that can go on other pages.  That was part of the keep agreement that we all agreed to that I would get to have a user page that I could use, remember.
(6) A state of war exists within the article space in Wikipedia, I didn't start it, but we all need to agree that it exists.  There are people that want to keep Hamilton's ideas off Wikipedia, and want to distort the history of human thought so that it excludes his thinking in favor of their own so called modern perspective.  If reading books written by Hamilton somehow automatically constitutes original research then letting people with a hostile agenda have access to that research is a sign of weakness, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.  If they want to dispute facts, they can start by reading and making their own list of difficult terms from scratch like I did.
(7) Remember I wanted to delete this page, and move the content into the main article, no one else works on it, and it is to much work for me to defend it against vandalism.  Enough of its content has already been deleted to make it unintelligible to any reader that happens across it.  We also agreed that in order achieve a agreement  that Hamilton's work can't be completely excluded from a main page on quaternions.  Any content I add from now on is going on the main page, and we can fight about it there.  Its going on one carefully spell checked sentence at a time, with five or six citations.
(8) I agree, with what ever the trolls say, I am going to start blanking this page three times a day, and at least one troll will be blanking it three more.  If someone else wants to develop some content, I can agree to leave it up what they develop, if it is factual.  I will have some pretty good tools on my user page to dispute that if it is not.  But I think that no one really cares but me.
(9) If someone wants to start over again this summer that is great, maybe I can help, but I am tired now, the trolls have one I give up.
:Comment: The AFD tag was removed since the article was kept at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Classical Hamiltonian quaternions.  What trolls are harming the page?  I can't see any recent issues? MBisanz talk 19:53, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Please put that tag back, along with a tag indicating that this page has been vandalized   The problem child is Septentrionalis PMAnderson who is currently deleting the tensor of a quaternion sub article.  He is trying to chip away at Hamilton's ideas one sentence, or small section at at time. This breaks the truce agreement.Hamiltons wrath (talk) 01:34, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

text: Hi - I've got very little time now, sorry if I sound short. Couldn't leave a note this morning because some admins blocked the outgoing IP address from one of our work proxies. "Anonymous proxy" it says, though I don't know what's anonymous about me editing, with user name and password ... anyway - please don't do drastic changes to the page. When I expressed my interest in a "rewrite" then I meant a purely editorial change (wording, quotations, etc) and no change to the actual material. I think you would care less if I change a sentence from "A versor is a ..." into "Hamilton introduces a 'Versor' (ref) as ...". Unless I'm mistaken, you would see such an update as un-essential wording change, and that's what I meant. No change to actual material, just writing it in the style of an encyclopedia. Gotta go. Thanks, Jens Koeplinger (talk) 22:54, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Your contributions are always productive and welcome Koeplinger.  You are part of the solution, not the problem.  However your work belongs in a copy of this article on the main page.Hamiltons wrath (talk) 01:41, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  I give up now, like I said I would.  No more troll food. 

message: Is there still a factual dispute going on?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homebum (talk • contribs) 16:48, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is presently being factually disputed? 

message: I have noticed some recent edits to the section about tensors used in the Hamiltonian context.
The particular section is now problematic due to the deletion of massive amounts of text from this article.
(1)There used to be an entire section dedicated to the idea that terms used in a Hamiltonian context are different from those of a modern context.  This section came under attack as being OR, but if there is now going to be a move to restore these concepts to the article, we would need to bring back this section.
(2)An entire article on Tensors in the sense of Hamilton's usage was deleted, after much bitter discussion.
The present section being edited, is intended to be about a kind of number called a tensor.  There is also an operation called take the tensor of which bears the same name.  The three citations to the work of Hamilton, and the secondary sources of his contemporaries support the statement that a tensor is by definition a positive or signless number, please don't move the citations to support the contention that a tensor is the square root of the common norm.  That the tensor of a quaterion has the property that it is equal to the square root of the common norm is a property that Hamilton proves, it is neither the definition of the operation of taking the tensor of a quaternion, nor is it the definition of what a tensor is as a numerical quantity.
Also the evolution of terms and notation is an emotional topic better suited to another article, such as the history of quaterions.  That the common norm as defined by Hamilton, is different from the norm defined by other writers is a minor point for those serious about learning Hamilton's ideas about quaterions.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homebum (talk • contribs) 17:26, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I was trying to clarify one small part of the article. Describing the tensor of a quaternion as "positive numerical quantity, or more properly signless, number" without saying how this quantity is related to or can be derived from the quaternion itself is vague and useless. Similarly, describing the versor as "another special type of quaternion with useful properties" is of no help at all to the reader. However, the whole article is now so muddled, bloated and confused that I give up. Gandalf61 (talk) 23:00, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trying to rebuild after desasterious deletion episode. 

message: Wikipedia:Writing_better_articles#Size
I have been reading this section with amazement.  Apparently some articles actually evolve in the exact opposite of the way this article is evolving, by spawning new sub articles.  Contrary to this approved trend this article seems to be having its substructure forced back into an increasingly long single article.
I have now completed much of the work of rolling two subsections back into the main article.
This process has been over my objection, and as the article now continues to grow in content I was wondering at what point any of the people proposing to delete substructure might change their minds?
There is a minority element within the wiki-community that has historically had the aim of keeping content on the subject of Hamilton's treatment of quaternions off wikipedia, using just about any pretext to delete content.  Hopefully the futility of this tactic will soon occur to them.  Homebum (talk) 06:49, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh dear. It is always a bad sign when someone has to invoke a conspiracy theory to explain similar concerns raised by multiple editors. Please consider for a moment a simpler explanation, which is that maybe you are wrong. Our aim in Wikipedia is to write encyclopedic articles on notable subjects that are accessible, neutral and reliably sourced. An article that summarises Hamilton's original approach and explains some of his terminology is fine. But there is no need to restrict ourselves to using only his notation, neither do we need to replicate every step of his journey - Hamilton's style was famously prolix and opaque. And unsourced opinion about "negative nomenclatures" and a supposed bias against a geometric treatment is definitely out of place here. Gandalf61 (talk) 09:55, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverse of normal process 

message: Looks like for now we've got a lot of material loaded into the article. The "cohesion" tag is up top and needs to remain there for a while. For the sake of record keeping, and for my personal sanity, I'd like to point out the following reference versions of material that was merged together. Versions are of the date/time prior to the recent move of material:
*Classical Hamiltonian quaternions ID=272052451 (20 Feb 2009)
*Classical Hamiltonian quaternions ID=283900894 (14 April 2009)
*Tensor of a quaternion ID=280406103 (29 March 2009)
*The vector of a quaternion ID=277104326 (13 March 2009)
*Here is another favorite
Have a look!
nutfarm(talk)
Those four links capture the entirety of the material for me. Once editing has calmed, this could be used as references to gauge relevance and completeness of the material.
Thanks, Jens Koeplinger (talk) 01:11, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the help with these links to early articles!  Your work and help is always appreciated.  I am thinking about creating a template, which might help to organize the vast amount of material that Hamilton's work entails.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homebum (talk • contribs) 01:40, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference links for material (for completeness and relevance) 

message: Hamilton writes in an early version of hypertext, which makes it really nice, because he provides article numbers in his text to spots where the hyper links should go.  Once these links are in place every time you come to a confusing term in a quote you can just click on it to find out what it means, and after you do that, his writing becomes much more understandable.
Right now, to finish up the quote on the definition of a versor, I have discovered that one more spot needs to by hyperlinked to defining what the plane of a quaternion is, but that will have to be work for another day.
Article is really starting to take shape!  Good hyper linking of Hamilton's thinking just might help us to preserve what little is left of our collective sanity.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Quaternionist (talk • contribs) 16:43, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  A very cool fact about Hamilton. 

message: Original argument:
Homebum, you clearly seek to own this article, and you do not want to collaborate with other editors. This is contrary to Wikipedia's guiding principles. As the essay Wikipedia:Collaboration first says: "In a collaborative environment such as a wiki, contributors who are unable or unwilling to collaborate with others should be politely but firmly excluded from the portions where conflict occurs, or even excluded from the community." I am not interested in arguing endlessly with you. Eventually you will get bored or be banned, and then the article can be usefully re-written. Gandalf61 (talk) 09:44, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  This arguement has been moved to a new section for responce. 

message: : Hamilton died before he worked on these strange entities. His son claimed it to be a "bow for another Ulysses".
"Claimed" is an odd choice of word, implying that the remark – meaning that some other genius would have to take up the work – was controversial.  (Penelope challenged her unwelcome suitors to shoot with a bow that only her husband could draw.)  This is more of a disclaimer, if anything. —Tamfang (talk) 22:34, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other double quaternions 

message: The link "Main Article: Tensor" is misleading, because the main article is about an entirely different concept.  This link should be retained, but in a sentence that explicitly mentions that the tensor in this article is not the tensor in the main article.  I'd hate for someone interested in the modern meaning of this well-known word to be misled.
HendrikBoom3 (talk) 16:53, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link to main Tensor page is confusing.