Talk:Calculus/Archive 4

message: What are everyone's thoughts on including the power rule in the derivatives section?Dannery4 20:24, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not so hot on the idea. Really not necessary for a general treatment of calculus.--Cronholm144 20:50, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

text: We do have an article on derivatives and we also have wikibooks. I think we also have a list somewhere that has all of the rules for derivatives. --Cronholm144 21:13, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  power rule for derivatives? 

message: If a section of an article is removed by an editor it is never appropriate to note this fact on the page itself. By all means rewrite the section, or address the concerns of the editor who removed it on the talk page (and these are usually necessary if the editor considers the portion too badly-written to revise). But please do not reference this on the article page itself: that is not an appropriate forum to discuss the revisions made (indeed, this is the place to do that). I have reverted the attempt to do this. Xantharius 23:42, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The editor removed these sections out of ignorance and prejudice. It is evident he does not understand the contents (see previous section where he has demonstrated this). The way I see it, if your editors are not bright or capable enough to understand the material, then it is summarily removed. It is not my job to convince you (after the all, the work is not mine and I too do not fully understand it all, but am able to see it has merit. No source is 100% error-free. We all look at knowledge and decide for ourselves what has value and what does not). The removed sections were written as good or better than existing sections. Your team removed these out of prejudice. Well, I am not surprised. After all, Wikipedia is the world according to what the Wiki sysops and administrators think is 'encyclopedic'. Both of the sources I quoted are educated academics in their respective fields. 141.211.62.20 is the Wiki-puppet judge and his/her word is final. 141.211 became immediately prejudiced because one theorem was stated 'weakly', i.e. rather than being differentiable, it was only stated that it is continuous. I could see his point of view but if he had read all the material (chapters), he might have noticed that it mentions problems with the notion of differentiability. For example in Chapter 2, it shows how f(x)=abs(x) can be differentiable everywhere depending on how the derivative is defined. Newton's definition of the derivative leaves much to be desired. Newton himself could not defend it. You only have to look at how confused you all are and the discussions on these pages by so many 'educated' contributors and if you are smart enough (doubtful in my opinion), you will realize that they all know very little. Unlike you, I am uncertain about the foundations of the derivative. Its definition is problematic in many ways. Not only is it not defined rigorously but it has become more obscure. The removed section on Calculus without limits showed how one can differentiate without using the limit concept in any way. 76.31.201.0 12:03, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In response to 76.31.201.0: 141.211.62.20 behaved exemplary. S/he did not remove the material you added even though it contained mistakes, took the time to look through some of the material you presented, and tried to engage you all the way. But this talk page is not to discuss the persons, it's to discuss the article (see "no personal attacks"). I've seen no evidence that John Gabriel's book, your main reference, is a reliable source (where is the evidence that he's an educated academic?). Thus, we should not use it as a reference for this article. Dovermann is a professor in mathematics so his lecture notes can be used, but he says himself that he's following a very unusual approach which does not give the results in full generality. Given the many books on calculus, I think his approach should not be given much coverage in the article, though I'm very interested in it and I'll consider it next time I teach calculus to biologists. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:16, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's deal with your statements one at a time. Regarding Gabriel's work: 141.211 was correct in only one thing - he stated that the theorem should
have been stronger by requiring differentiability, not only continuity. However, if s/he or you took time to read Gabriel's reasons, you would have seen that he questions the definition of differentiability. In chapter two he illustrates how using a different definition for the derivative (the central difference) produces a different result for differentiability (page 5 of
chapter 2). 141.211 subsequently made a mistake in the follow up response. So who has been making the mistakes? Now you question whether Gabriel is qualified or not. Since when did Wiki required that the author of a source be suitably qualified? Heck, most of you are not suitably qualified. 141.211 claims that the derivative is not the limit of an average. If not, then tell me what f(x+h)-f(x)/h means? It is an average.
Now let's deal with Dovermann. It does not matter that his results do not work in generality. This is irrelevant. The point of my edits was to show that one can use calculus rigorously without limits. You have several articles that can't even be substantiated with any solid evidence and yet they pass by because of your blessing. Some examples are your article on infinitesimals and non-standard analysis just to mention a few.  Sorry, it is about YOU and not the subject because YOU decide what gets to stay or go. Look, I know who sits on top of this heap - it's Michael Hardy and cohorts. And this is not a personal attack, it is a fact. Whoever removed the edits is prejudiced and  unqualified. 76.31.201.0 20:52, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

text: 76.31.201.0, I would appreciate if you examined a message on your talk page before this gets much further out of hand. Xantharius 22:35, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Wikipedia has always required that the articles are based on reliable sources. In the sciences, this usually means that the sources have undergone peer review. This is one of Wikipedia's core policies (see Wikipedia:Verifiability for more information). -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 05:28, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, so you found some weak arguments in Gabriel's work but did you find any weak arguments in Dovermann's work? Why was the section 'calculus without limits' removed? I (and Dovermann) believe it is very important and presents a new perspective. Perhaps Newton (if he were alive today) would have been overjoyed to read Dovermann's work. Perhaps Archimedes would have been fascinated by "averages" because this is in effect why he was able to calculate the magnitude of areas and volumes. Perhaps we should think of 'indivisibles' and not 'infinitesimals' - these are two completely different concepts. The latter is non-sense and the former is part of the reason calculus is about averages - without collapsible/telescopic averages (composed of indivisibles), neither integral or differential calculus would have been possible. 76.31.201.0 03:36, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Would you care to explain your comment about Michael? Do you have some sort of personal vendetta against WP:WPM or the math editors? If you do, then it would be best to take this up elsewhere or not at all. Your condescending attitude is not appreciated by anyone here. Everyone here(except me) has made an attempt to engage with you in civil discourse. You have rebuffed their every attempt to placate you. The frequent ad hominum ("prejudiced and  unqualified" for one) attacks and insinuations do not strengthen your arguments and try the patience of everyone here. The reasons for the removal for the material you wanted inserted has been explained to you(WP:UNDUE is the most cogent IMO). If you cannot accept this policy then I am afraid that wikipedia is not the place for you to be. I realize that I have been rather terse, and I would prefer to continue this in a more amicable way. Here is the olive branch... take it or leave it.--Cronholm144 10:42, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Removal" notices added to article