Talk:Mathematician/Archive 1

message: User:DigitalCharacter wrote a new section:
:Achievements of mathematicians may vary. A mathematician with great achievements is considered as genius. Geniuses are extremely rare. This is one of the reasons they get a lot of attention and admiration (and critics) from ancient times. All broadly known mathematicians are in fact geniuses in field of mathematics and abstract thinking.
:Glory plays an important role in whole history of mathematics. It is a key factor of motivation. There is no patent over theories and theorems (except some algorithms in computer science), so money that can be made in mathematics is not much and glory is almost the only prize.
I find this horribly biased and distorted, particularly the material about "glory".  The material about "genius" uses a notion of genius I don't believe most mathematicians would agree with.  It also seems irrelevant to this article.  There are geniuses in every subject.  Pointing this out is well, pointless.  --C S 00:34, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)
Because of the reasons I've stated right above, I've rewrote the section, and in addition I've retitled it "Motivation" -- this gives it more focus.  I feel the result is much fairer and accurate than before.  --C S 14:24, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)
::I think the current version is still very POV, but in the opposite direction.  The comment about not being motivated by "monetary greed" is emotive and insulting to anyone whose goal is to earn money.  There are other examples too, but I'll have to go back through this.  I agree with the other editor in the discussion who said that there is quite a bit to be done here.  I will edit the emotive "greed" stuff out now, and put a quality tag (and possibly a POV tag) on the article.  capitalist 07:37, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some inner aspects 

message: is there any more information that i can have on leonhard eluer and some examples of his work
: This is not the place to ask this sort of question. I recommend reading the relevant Wikipedia pages, or googling. --Dcclark 04:11, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  math 

message: Is it correct that the United States has the largest number of career mathematicians in the world?  Also, can someone give an estimate of people in U.S. and E.U. whose understanding of mathematics goes beyond abstract algebra, topology, et cetera?
--66.81.21.224 09:41, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I tried a few Google searches but haven't found any statistics by country yet.  capitalist 04:03, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Total Number of Mathematicians 

message: I just finished a 4th year history of mathematics course - I would be happy to enter in some of the most notable mathematicians (such as Archimedes, Euler, etc) - ones regarded as the most important within the field of mathematics, and generally recognized for their brilliance (Archimedes, for instance, is known to have been studying a rudimentary for  of the integral around (I think) 600 BC - just a few years before Newton's calculus came along!).  But, it will have to wait for the New Year, as the holidays are family time for me, and I'm limiting my Wikipedia time to monitoring a few pages and a couple talk page entries......DonaNobisPacem 07:58, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that would add a lot, and will try to contribute when I can.  I just read a book about the Riemann Hypothesis, and the author felt that Gauss was one of history's greatest mathemeticians.  Eventually there could be subsections for each period/geographic region too.  I would do more on this article because it's my priority on Wikipedia now, but I'm trying to finish work on a commercial website, and it's taking forever.    capitalist 04:44, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I certainly think that three of necessary mention are Archimedes (identified as greatest of antiquity, and possibly of all recorded history), Euler, and Gauss; there is also Thales of Miletes, traditionally regarded as the founder of Mathematics, Pythagoras and his school (although Plato's Academy was arguably great, Plato was a neo-Pythagorean in many regards); Newton and Liebnitz for their work on calculus; and there are certainly a few of note in the 20th century.DonaNobisPacem 06:24, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Sorry - I should clarify - I wasn't trying to say that a complete description should be given of these mathematicians, just that they be mentioned in this article as the most famous examples.DonaNobisPacem 08:17, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Famous mathematicians 

message: "Mathematicians differ from philosophers in that the primary questions of mathematics are assumed (for the most part) to transcend the context of the human mind; the idea that "2+2=4 is a true statement" is assumed to exist without requiring a human mind to state the problem. Not all mathematicians would strictly agree with the above."
This is not only doubtful about mathematics; it is also doubtful about philosophy: analytic philosophy, at least, is founded on the idea (from Frege) that the truth-values of propositions can be determined independent of psychological context. This should probably be removed, or at least revised; there are more important differences between mathematics and philosophy.
::I would think that the entire reference should be removed, since it belongs in an article about the philosophy of mathematics.  This article is about mathematicians; the people, not the subject they study.  capitalist 04:28, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Differences 

message: are the jokes encyclopedic?  Not sure they belong here. JamieJones  talk 21:45, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  jokes 

message: Hi -
a new category (:Category:Jewish_mathematicians) of mathematicians was created recently; all biographical pages seem to have been gone over - a link at the bottom of the page now flags the mathematician in question as a person whom the creator of the category seems to deem worthy of inclusion in the said category. (Type in the name of your favourite mathematician (or your own?) to see whether he/she/you make the cut.)
It seems to me that this makes even less sense than, say, "British mathematicians" - it is more along the lines of "vegetarian painters" or "Aryan restauranteurs". See Category_talk:Jewish_mathematicians.
I have proposed this category for deletion. Supporting (or contrary) statements can be made at  Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2006_May_4.
Mind you - a little browsing makes it evident this is a classification by descent, not by confession. Of course, a classification by confession would serve hardly any good purpose either. (There is no (other) classification of mathematicans by confession as of yet, for what that is worth.) Hasdrubal 21:32, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flagging mathematicians, dead or alive 

message: Substituted at 15:21, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment