Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2006/Jul

message: Do we need a disambiguation page for these? Dmharvey 21:56, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It would suffice to put a disambiguation link at the top of Serre conjecture, the Quillen-Suslin theorem being the only likely ambiguity. Having "Serre conjecture" and "Serre's conjecture" mean different things is asking for trouble. --KSmrqT 22:48, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Septentrionalis 00:24, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Serre conjecture]] vs [[Serre's conjecture]] 

message: This unicodification stuff made me realize that as just one editor I have very little control over what people decide to do with their bots on wikipedia. I asked the guy running User:Bluebot politely to stop proactively converting HTML entities to Unicode in math articles (and am waiting for a response), but if he doesn't comply what recourse do I have before all of the articles are converted anyway? Apparently he already refused Dysprosia's request.
It seems to me that bots could do a lot of damage in a very short amount of time (shorter than it would take to get the hosting user banned, for instance), and the damage might also be difficult to fix, probably requiring someone to write up a new bot just to fix the mess that the former bot created. How long will it be until someone truly malicious tries to write a bot that trashes (or worse, subtly introduces sign errors, for instance) in hundreds or thousands of articles? Are there any measures in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening? - Gauge 23:38, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As a bot owner, whose bot has, on occasions, gone rogue, I can say that it does not take long for somebody to notice something odd and notify the bot owner and/or block the bot.  Bots are fifth class citizens (in order: Jimbo/bureaucrats/admins/users/anons/bots), they are shown no mercy. :)  Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:04, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If an ordinary user can block a bot, how is this done? When should one do it? JRSpriggs 10:09, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Blocking a bot, like any user, requires an admin. (There are several in this project: Oleg Alexandrov, Jitse Niesen, Lethe, Charles Matthews, Mindspillage, Fropuff, Michael Hardy, Mikkalai, Toby Bartels, The Anome,  Isomorphic, Charles Stewart — did I miss anybody? — and me.) Paul August ☎ 15:58, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Rogue wikibots

message: I'm not that good at creating/organizing templates, but I'd like to throw out the idea that using templates in mathematics-related articles would be quite helpful/unifying. There could be an overall Template:Mathematics which includes every topic from elementary algebra to knot theory; we could also make individual topic-related templates such as Template:Calculus. So far as I can see, there are currently very few mathematics templates, with apparently only one in :Category:Mathematics templates and a handful in :Category:Mathematics navigational boxes. 66.229.182.113 09:03, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For my part, I don't like linkfests or find them helpful; we had some a while ago, and deleted them after consideration as random collections of articles. Septentrionalis 18:39, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

text: The template Template:mathematics-footer may already provide what you're looking for. -lethe talk [ +] 18:48, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree with Septentrionalis, one should keep templates small and use them very sparingly. Templates can be distracting linkfarms in many cases. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:55, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I am not sure but I think it may be useful to have infoboxes for theorems, inequalities, conjectures, lemmas, mathematicians. (Igny 21:12, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I would strongly disagree with any of that. I don't quite understand what you mean by infoboxes, but from what I can tell they will just amount to more clutter. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:08, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I just would like to say that many people have infoboxes, see Abraham Lincoln, Isaac Newton, Friedrich Nietzsche (note the nice infobox the philosophers have), Blaise Pascal; but not so many mathematicians are with infoboxes, see Friedrich Bessel, Andrey Kolmogorov, Henri Poincare, Fermat etc. (Igny 02:56, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I see. I thought infoboxes are some kind of glorified templates allowed to be transcluded on hundreds of pages. I agree now that they could be useful, although the danger of creating unnecessary clutter is still there. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:20, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mathematics Templates 

message: I'm not sure the definition given is that widespread. Seems a bit too restrictive. Author gives Mathworld as a source. Please comment at Talk:Algebraic_equation. Dmharvey 20:16, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  new article: [[algebraic equation]] 

message: I just figured out how to do nice looking double arrows in texvc exact sequences. Here is a demo:
:{\mathcal F}(U)\rightarrow\prod_i{\mathcal F}(U_i)\prod_{i,j}{\mathcal F}(U_i\cap U_j).
The point is to put some phantoms above the top arrow and below the bottom arrow which apparently forces the arrows to space more closely together. I also did a native TeX diagram for splitting lemma this way, using names for the arrows. I hope someone finds this useful. - Gauge 00:26, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course what you really want is this... Dmharvey 01:24, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I noticed that the character ⇉ looks too short and stubby in MathML compared to the png output. It doesn't rescale when I change the text size either. Maybe it's because I'm missing the Symbol font? I still haven't found a reasonable explanation of how to get Symbol to work on my Gentoo box. I successfully installed all of the others required for MathML. Running Firefox 1.5.0.4, of course. - Gauge 04:11, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  It sounds like a font thing, but it might also be a problem with Firefox's scaling code. It knows how to stretch some operators but not all. Dmharvey 22:04, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nice double arrows 

message: Please comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Regular number. --Trovatore 16:52, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That article was deleted, but there is a genuine (and different) concept here; so I wrote a new one. Weissstein got it wrong. If anyone insists on AfD'ing the new article, fine; we can discuss it there. Septentrionalis 21:42, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this one should be fine; I made a mistake in my MathSciNet search the first time and missed a few references to sexagesimal numbers, Babylonians, etc.  There appear to be six articles (with only one by Sachs), which while not overwhelming, is probably more than enough, going by the usual standard.  There are more or less the same number of hits for other definitions of regular numbers though, in number theory, group theory, etc.  So it may be best to create a disambig page for "regular number".  --C S (Talk) 23:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Bernouilli-number definition I would put at regular prime; what are the others? But it may be simpler if we write Regular number (disambiguation) and then decide on what goes where. Septentrionalis 02:26, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A regular number can refer to the order of a regular element of a finite reflection group; Springer is apparently the name here.  Actually, looking up "Springer" and "Regular element" brings up a lot more hits; I imagine regular number is mentioned much more often in the actual articles, rather than in the MathSciNet reviews.  Springer's 1974 article "Regular elements of finite reflection groups" already defines regular number in that context.  There are also k-regular number fields; here, the usage may be different, but is similar enough to require some disambiguation in my opinion.  There's also several other usages that appear in a MathSciNet search for "regular number", but it's hard to tell how common they are (as it shows up only if it's in the title or review).  So it looks like there is some work to be done here. --C S (Talk) 16:16, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Regular number]] up for deletion

message: A proposal to merge Scalar has turned into a protracted discussion of whether or not the term 'scalar' means the same thing in different disciplines.  See Talk:Scalar. --Smack (talk) 05:13, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scalars 

message: :(copied from Portal talk:Mathematics)
Wikimathematicians, if you are interested, please help determine this afd discussion about Gosh Numbers. Thanks! Bwithh 04:40, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gosh Numbers 

message: The following articles have been listed at AFD and not picked up by the current activity 'bot:
* 
Please contribute to the discussions. Uncle G 23:18, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  AFD listings 

message: A microstub of dubious utility.  AfD? -lethe talk [ +] 06:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It was already (correctly IMO) changed to a redirect. However, alternatively, we could snatch  from PlanetMath if anyone can confirm the veridicity of the information. AdamSmithee 07:53, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[sextic equation]] 

message: I nominated one of us, Arthur Rubin, for administrator. If you are familiar with Arthur's contributions, and would like to vote, see Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Arthur Rubin. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:38, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I definitely will. RfA is the biggest popularity contest these days and it seems that scientists and mathematicians aren't very popular amongst the general public. See Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Edgar181 to see what I mean - some people who do 2000 small edits and write 1 article get twice as many votes. Blnguyen | rant-line 04:45, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree about scientists and mathematicians.  It seems to me that most of them sail through RfA without hardly a sideways glance. -lethe talk [ +] 22:44, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In any event, Arthur Rubin was promoted to administrator a few minutes ago with a 99/2/3 final tally.  CMummert 02:40, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arthur Rubin for admin 

message: I am still fairly new to wikipedia, and I would really appreciate a view from a more experienced wikipedian about the evolution of the article Homogeneity. I have looked at the history of this article over the last year or so, and it seems to have 'evolved' in an extremely strange way. Please take a look at the Revision as of 07:02, 10 February 2006, and compare with the Revision as of 08:34, 10 July 2005. What on earth is going on here??? I am totally baffled by the latest incarnations of this article, but if more experienced editors tell me it is OK, I will accept their wisdom ... Madmath789 22:47, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks like an editor decided that there is basically only one meaning for "homogeneity", i.e. its use in statistics, and then proceeded accordingly.  --C S (Talk) 10:50, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, indeed, but I can't make much sense of the article as it stands, despite being a reasonably competent mathematician with a fair knowledge of probability and statistics! I am also a little suspicious of the possibility of OR here, as much of the editing of Homogeneity and a linked article Reliability (statistics) seems to have been done by David Cruise or by Cruise, and a couple of external links from Reliability (statistics) point to 'visualstatistics.net (e.g. The problem of negative reliabilities ) which seems to be authored by David J. Krus / Cruise scientific. I might be off-beam, but I am very suspicious of these articles. Madmath789 11:37, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes I agree the article does look very out of ballance. Go ahead and bring it back into line. --Salix alba (talk) 11:53, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Apart from the present article being whacky, I also think that Homogeneity (instead of Homogeneous) should be a disambiguation page, with Homogeneous a plain redirect to Homogeneity, and the statistical concept being handled at Homogeneity (statistics), which now redirects to Homoscedasticity, a different concept in statistics. --LambiamTalk 12:34, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Whacky indeed! I have spent some time trying to decide if this article homogeneity is genuine or totally off-the-wall. Can I make a plea: if anyone here knows more than I do about this sort of statistics, could you please advise as to the validity of this weird-looking stuff? Madmath789 16:56, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Evolution of an article! 

message: Please see my proposal for Greek letters at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Conventions  CMummert 23:27, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Greek letter proposal 

message: JA: User:CMummert is making a mass of what appear to be improper page moves, renames, and reorgs to computability related articles.  Could somebody please sort all that out and makes sure it's by the book?  Thanks, Jon Awbrey 15:58, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What I've seen looks legit to me. --CSTAR 16:23, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I would be glad to explain, if anyone asked me; one the other hand, I am an expert in the area.  For a while, there have been two articles: Computable function and Recursive function.  These titles are synonyms in the current vernacular, and having them as separate articles is confusing.  I have moved Recursive function to Mu-recursive function which is the consensus on what that article is actually about.  I made Recursive function into a disambiguation page, which is important because there is a CS meaning for the term that was not reflected on the previous page.  Then I chased almost all the things that linked to Recursive function.  Many of them actually wanted to link to Recursion or Recursion (computer science); the previous page had no relation to the material in articles that were linking to it! So  I fixed many of the links to Recursive function to point to a more helpful location. I also made a start towards fixing Mu-recursive function. CMummert 16:35, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Computability Articles 

message: Many of us have been eagerly awaiting the culmination of the STIX font project. A major milestone was recently announced.
:* On 10 July, the STI Pub group received the final delivery of requested glyphs for the STIX Fonts Project. This final set is being reviewed by the STI Pub Technical Review Committee, and packaging instructions for the beta test of the fonts are being prepared. Tables of STIX glyphs will begin to appear on this website within the next few weeks, and the beta font set will begin to be constructed.
So far every deadline has been overly optimistic; still, progress has been real. It appears the race is on, between universal adoption of the STIX mathematics glyphs and Wikipedia adoption of BlahTeX! Regardless of which tortoise crosses the line first, we all win. Huzzah! --KSmrqT 09:47, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  STIX Fonts update 

message: I don't know if this is the right place to ask about this, but I've been working on Fleiss' kappa, and I'd like to get someone who actually knows what they are talking about to look over it. I have the paper here, but I worked out what is what by trial-and-error because I am pretty much maths illiterate. I'd appreciate it if anyone could look over it, and add  or something if I've made a mistake. Thanks - FrancisTyers · 16:01, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See my comments on the talk page of Fleiss' kappa. VectorPosse 22:44, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Fleiss' kappa

message: Hi all,
Just wanted some of the editors opinion on a discussion I started at Category talk:Mathematics user templates. The discussion is about userboxes, a bit technical, but not serious. I don't want to advertize, but the fact is that in most cases, category pages are usually watched by the creators only, and probably even worse in this case, only be the sysop who moved the category. Thanks, — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 17:17, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion at [[Category talk:Mathematics user templates]] 

message: The 'whacky' article Homogeneity is up for deletion - please take a look and comment at Homogeneity. I think it really needs looking at by a statistician. Madmath789 06:33, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've now listed a new AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Homogeneity (statistics) and voted speedy keep on Homogeneity, previous votes have been copied across. --Salix alba (talk) 16:22, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Homogeneity 

message: Hello,
I'm currently trying to clarify the use of the term "hypercomplex number" over the years and to-date. The goal is to update the hypercomplex number article. Since this may result in a rewrite, it would be great if any ideas or comments could be posted in talk:hypercomplex number, so the reasoning behind a potential rewrite would remain with the article.
Thanks, Jens Koeplinger 21:27, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: PS - It may be that the term "hypercomplex number" is to-date a rather freely used term, like "numbers with 2 or more dimensions and at least one non-real axis". If so, I'll scratch together what I can find in some common places (here, mathworld) and rewrite hypercomplex number in a fashion that puts different systems into different categories (like Cayley-Dickson, split-complex, etc). Thanks, Jens Koeplinger 13:28, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've just posted a rewrite of the hypercomplex number article. While I tried to carry over all previously existing information and statements into the new version, it now contains much more detail and categorization. I would appreciate any comment or help. Thanks, Jens Koeplinger 22:29, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terminology clarification and first use references: "Hypercomplex Number" 

message: While trying to expand the list of important articles in Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0, I've come across a few articles I feel are close to Wikipedia:Good articles status and nominated them appropriately. of these Euclidean geometry, Georg Cantor and David Hilbert has reached GA status. Pi, Fractal, Gottfried Leibniz, Ronald Fisher have failed. Fractal needs someone to check recent additions made by reviewer, Leibniz needs some work organising the references and Pi and Fisher needs more extensive work. If anyone would like to have a look at these articles it should not take much to gain GA status. --Salix alba (talk) 09:47, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good articles 

message: We've got a new IP address adding external links to the above mentioned web site.  I'm tempted to revert en mass, but I'd like a second opinion. — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 17:52, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I had just noticed this too, and I agree the links don't belong here. Dmharvey 18:36, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, noticed them earlier, and find them hard to read (but they may well be valid) - the notation used on that website is 'tedious' to read - see  I agree they don't belong here. Madmath789 21:19, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If I read this page correctly, they claim to have their own proof of the equivalence of Zorn's Lemma and the Axiom of Choice; I hope I'm being unfair, but... What next, the Pythagorean Theorem? Septentrionalis 23:03, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  {{IPvandal|84.40.138.111}} and -http://www.apronus.com/provenmath/ links 

message: The following articles have been listed at Articles for deletion but not caught by the 'bot:
*
Uncle G 11:54, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: it is now. Septentrionalis 21:25, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The decision on Wilkinson's polynomial was keep, after a number of editors worked on cleaning it up and clarifying its significance. --KSmrqT 00:15, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

text: The bot runs once a day; it may be preferable either to wait a day and see if it is picked up, or add this to the list by hand. Septentrionalis 22:49, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The decision on imaginary logarithm was redirect to complex logarithm, agreed unanimously. --KSmrqT 09:54, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articles listed at Articles for deletion 

message: User_talk:Karl-H has recreated the page.  He's also made edits to calculus of variations and number theory among others.  Somebody familiar with the subjects and the original RfD might want to take a look.  Lunch 19:09, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Reverted all of those. — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 21:18, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  article [[variational number theory]] is back 

message: Currently the list of mathematicians has a certain number of redlinks. I would argue that that was a good thing when Wikipedia was new and plenty of famous people did not have articles and when there was no bot to maintain that list.
I would think that now we would be better off having the list of mathematicians list articles which actually exist, with redlinks (requests for new articles) going to Wikipedia:Requested articles/Mathematics instead. Removing the redlinks from the list of mathematicians would also make it easier to see what mathematician articles got created/deleted by inspecting the  Current activity. 
In short, how about removing all the redlinks from the list of mathematicians? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:32, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that's a good idea. Can I also encourage people to add to the requested mathematician list? As a grad student, I'm hesitant to create articles for mathematicians that work at my school. I'd feel more comfortable if they were on the requested list. Thanks. Originalbigj 19:45, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The bot now removes redlinks from the list of mathematicians (log). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:53, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It appears that you removed the redlink to Thomas Jech from the list of mathematicians, but did not add it to the list of requested articles on mathematicians. If a redlink is removed from one, I think that it should be added to the other (if not already there). And what if someone destroys the article or moves it to another name? JRSpriggs 03:10, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Update. I just created a stub for Thomas Jech. I did not see the redlink removal in the log. But I remember creating a redlink for him a month or two back. JRSpriggs 03:27, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing the redlinks in the list of mathematicians 

message: The article Oyam's Pyramid is currently proposed for deletion. It seems to me that it would be likely to be covered by some area of mathematics rather than being a complete hoax, but I've been unable to track down any evidence for its existence with this title. Could somebody take a look and see if a) it's a valid but wrongly-titled article, b)it needs merging or redirecting to some other concept, or c) it's complete garbage. Thanks Yomangani 10:46, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Since there are no Google hits for any of this (except to Wikipedia), it is definitely made up. In my opinion it doesn't make much practical sense if you actually mean to build a pyramid. (Disclaimer: I have no actual experience in pyramid construction.) Mathematically it seems to be a pointless triviality. --LambiamTalk 23:00, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Oyam's Pyramid