The contents of the Glossary of mathematics page were merged into Glossary of mathematical jargon on 29 October 2023. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page. |
This article was nominated for deletion on 23/2/2006. The result of the discussion was keep. |
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Should "iff" be on this list? Isn't it a rigorous term, rather than jargon? And how is it pronounced in a lecture, anyway: I've only heard "if-and-only-if" spoken. - DavidWBrooks 20:30, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
iff : Th x Th → {T,F}
It seems to me that most of the articles linked to from Mathematical jargon are very short. Not short enough to be stubs, perhaps, but short enough to be merged into here. Why not do that?
(An exception is Iff, but, as I wrote above, I think iff has two uses; the one can be merged into here, and Iff can be about the other.) — msh210 17:07, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
If we leave it as is, then why are we considering it a stub? It's a complete article, isn't it? — msh210 19:36, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Mathematicians use obtain for two things:
So I was going to add obtain to this list. But then it struck me: is this actually mathematical jargon, or is this just the usual meaning of obtain? That is, are these two uses of obtain just small variations on the dictionary definition of obtain, understandable to "outsiders", or are they real jargon? I'm not sure, so am not adding obtain to the list. What do y'all think? — msh210 17:21, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
What about meet, miss, and avoid (which mean, respectively, "intersect", "intersect in the empty set", and "intersect in the empty set")? Are these jargon? — msh210 00:44, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Someone just added smooth; is this jargon? It's just a word found in math, like plus or group. No? — msh210 14:18, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure I agree with all that is said. But in any case it might warrant an article. Charles Matthews 12:02, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
this is not really specifically mathematical, is it? — MFH: Talk 08:27, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
* wrt, with respect to
* In mathematics, "With Respect To" ; see mathematical jargon.
I've given a new face to this page, since I found the old version to be sprawling, arbitrary, and rather ugly. I've simply divided the terms into categories and given a broad overview of each category. My next move will be to regularize the presentation of the page and add simple descriptions to each term. Finally, a few terms landed in "Miscellaneous" for a few reasons: LHS/RHS is seemingly none of the above categories, "transport of structure" is a term I've never heard and has no page to describe it, and "wrt" is hardly specific to mathematics. I think that the latter two ought to go, and if anyone could argue whether LHS/RHS belongs under Proof or Qualitative, or even Philosophical, it would be nice. Ryan Reich 00:29, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Okay, well, I've given descriptions to everything but "Miscellaneous". Perhaps some of the dead links should be filled in, or removed if my description is thorough enough, and some unlinked terms may want their own pages. Conversely, I've tried to be as concise but authoritative as possible, so maybe a better route is to excise some of the specific pages. Pedantry is endless, and even if one can write a whole paragraph on the term, a single sentence might suffice. Ryan Reich 01:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Yesterday I made a few changes to the page, one of which was to split up "in general" so that, rather than appearing as a single, large entry in one category, it is now three entries in three categories. Depending on your perspective on this page this is either obviously right or obviously wrong. It makes it harder to come in looking for a specific phrase and learn everything about it in one place; on the other hand, my opinion is that people will come here having seen a phrase in a particular context and go straight to the correct place. They have to do that to find any of the terms, anyway, in the new layout.
I feel that splitting up this term is reasonable on those grounds, then. I also think that it's reasonable on the grounds that the nature of mathematical jargon is to overload common words, in this case "general", rather to make up new ones, so that the context is particularly important; thus, the same phrase should appear multiple times if it's used in multiple contexts. It also keeps the entries short; if it's not already clear from the way I did things at the beginning, I favor definitions which are as consise as possible: every term either has its own page or isn't worth having its own page because it's so simple. Finally, there are probably only one or two terms that have their hands in every pot like this, so it won't happen much.
Obviously I can do whatever I want and if people don't like it they can revert the changes; however, since this is a reasonably blatant change and also a little odd, I thought I'd explain it and ask for opinions. Ryan Reich 00:19, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Somewhat related to the non-techniques, there are the invalid techniques, such as
Googling such terms reveals many others. Btyner 17:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
How about frontier question?— msh210℠ 16:58, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I don't see why this is more accurate. Can you even explain what this term (i.e. non-technique) means? The phrase furthermore strikes me as being excessively cute. .-- CSTAR 18:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
I've seen "as desired" used in place of QED in some papers recently - though, more informally. Anyone else, or does anyone think it's common enough to include? Tparameter ( talk) 03:57, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I am not sure if that kind of comment is regarded as bad wikipedia-style (if so please feel free to delete it) but i just wanted to mention that for me the article was very insightful and valuable. It is not easy to find that kind of information in a standard introductionary text book about mathmatics although I think it would definitely belong there. Just wanted to thank the editors of this page for their work, highly appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.179.123 ( talk) 23:28, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
In the context of limits, this is shorthand for arbitrarily large and its relatives; as with eventually, the intended variant is implicit. As an example, one could say that "The function sin(x) is frequently zero", where "frequently" means "for arbitrarily large x".
I strongly disagree. If someone tells me a function is frequently zero I take them to mean, based on formality of the context, either: (a) the function vanishes infinitely often but not everywhere; or (b) the function vanishes more than once.
-- 129.79.237.217 ( talk) 15:57, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I think this terminology is more common and standard for nets, as at [1]. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 15:37, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
This article lists a bunch of references but the ones I checked don't seem to connect with anything in the article. Many of the phrases are well known to mathematicians and so the definitions do not strictly need to be sourced, but the ones that are not common knowledge should have inline cites. Even for the common knowledge terms, it would be desirable to have a source where it is used.-- RDBury ( talk) 09:46, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
This page should probably renamed to remove "jargon" and add "glossary". Possibilities are Mathematical glossary or Glossary of Mathematics or Glossary of mathematical terms. Does anyone have any opinions? The standards of the Glossaries wikiproject should probably be used. Verbal chat 09:23, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
I believe this article is not intended to cover mathematics terminology in general, but rather "commonly used phrases which are part of the culture of mathematics, rather than of the subject". I don't think List of mathematics terminology would be a reasonable article in the first place, it would be far too broad in scope. But that is not this article in any case. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 11:46, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
I agree that this is a glossary, but it is not a glossary of mathematics, in general, but a glossary of mathematical jargon. So glossary of mathematics is clearly the wrong title. Is there any reason to believe that glossary of mathematical jargon would be more useful as a title than the current mathematical jargon? — David Eppstein ( talk) 21:41, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
It is quite blatantly obvious from this article's content that it's not a glossary of mathematical terms, and no one has attempted to make it into that. But it is a list of certain kinds of terms used by mathematicians. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:55, 24 July 2010 (UTC) ...and if there were a glossary of mathematics, it would need a lower-case initial "m" as required by WP:MOS, not the capital letter that "Verbal" suggested. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:56, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
In form this is more an outline than a list or a glossary. Many of the terms link to their own articles, and you could make a case for notability for the rest but I'd rather see the material gathered into an article like this than split up in a dozen stubs. I think changing the name to "Glossary of ..." would reduce the scope of what can be included to a definition and the result would be less encyclopedic. I rather see the current name kept with material added to the entries without their own articles, so the entire article is more in keeping with summary style.-- RDBury ( talk) 17:35, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
"Trovatore", could you list what you consider "defensible" names for this article? Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:16, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
I think parts of this article need better sourcing. Many terms are described without references. Ulner ( talk) 20:36, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
What about adding "degenerate" to the list? According to Oxford, "degenerate" is a mathematical term "relating to or denoting an example of a particular type of equation, curve, or other entity that is equivalent to a simpler type, often occurring when a variable or parameter is set to zero." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gregherlihy ( talk • contribs) 02:29, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Although I understand what's meant by 'let', still, provided that I'm not native english, I wonder what does it actually stand for. Maybe it doesn't hold any extra information for a native speaker, I'm not sure. For me it does. For me it seems that something like 'let x be an integer' means something like 'let me speak about an integer variable and let me call/refer_to that particular integer variable as x'. But also it seems that it's not all about variables but is a very general notation instead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.99.93.173 ( talk) 07:01, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
I have added, based on experience in applied fields, that the word "tight" is often used with the same meaning as the word "sharp" in this excellent article. If someone with pure math experience can confirm that this is also the case in pure math (I am almost certain it is.. No field is an island, right?), please delete the "in applied fields" qualifier. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.72.92.107 ( talk) 21:07, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
I would very much like to see a clear definition/explanation for this phrase which is often thrown into the middle of a mathematical paper with little or no explanation. Keithbowden ( talk) 12:45, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
also sometimes used implying not only , but also ? I'm not sure, but by, you know, intuition... of course this wouldn't apply to infinity, though.-- 131.159.0.47 ( talk) 14:11, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
In Proof Techniques, index battle, in the phrase "for proofs involving object with plurious indices", what does "plurious" mean? It's not in Wiktionary, and there don't seem to be any relevant Google hits. - Adavies42 ( talk) 13:51, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
These entries are amusing, but are they actually in use? I'd say cite or remove. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.189.137.60 ( talk) 03:28, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
I agree. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.219.133.174 ( talk) 08:21, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
Mathematicians often identify isomorphic structures implicitly, so they talk about "the field with two elements" or "the product of A and B" when really, any one of a variety of isomorphic (not identical) things will do. Arguably, this is not how we use "the" in everyday speech (one says "get some eggs from the store", not "get the eggs from the store). There is a whole page on nLab on this concept. Is it worth a mention? siddharthist ( talk) 05:47, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
In the article section Tetration#Non-elementary recursiveness, I noticed the abbreviation s.t., and wondered
The last point is what brought me to this page today. Thoughts, please? yoyo ( talk) 16:30, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
Could someone contribute by offering a description of what is meant by 'essentially sharp' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.20.85.81 ( talk) 08:51, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Contrary to the following statement in § Proof terminology at by way of contradiction (BWOC):
Also, starting a proof or a sub-proof with Assume... indicates that a proof by contradiction will be employed
a proof starting with "Assume …" may continue with, e.g., "… without loss of generality …", or some other conventional phrase, without necessarily implying that the proof will assume a contradiction. Therefore, I propose to remove this sentence entirely, after a suitable pause (a few days) for protest - or (and preferably) for convincing evidence to the contrary. yoyo ( talk) 17:45, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
Could someone please add an entry here for "admits", in usages like "X admits a Y-structure"? -- 86.147.207.61 ( talk) 08:40, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
I believe mathematicians sometimes use the phrase "kill" as an alternative to "mod out". Perhaps this should be mentioned in the article? There is also the method of "killing homotopy groups" in algebraic topology, which might be related (I don't know though because I haven't gotten that far in algebraic topology). Joel Brennan ( talk) 23:40, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
The contents of the Glossary of mathematics page were merged into Glossary of mathematical jargon on 29 October 2023. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page. |
This article was nominated for deletion on 23/2/2006. The result of the discussion was keep. |
This article is rated List-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||
|
Should "iff" be on this list? Isn't it a rigorous term, rather than jargon? And how is it pronounced in a lecture, anyway: I've only heard "if-and-only-if" spoken. - DavidWBrooks 20:30, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
iff : Th x Th → {T,F}
It seems to me that most of the articles linked to from Mathematical jargon are very short. Not short enough to be stubs, perhaps, but short enough to be merged into here. Why not do that?
(An exception is Iff, but, as I wrote above, I think iff has two uses; the one can be merged into here, and Iff can be about the other.) — msh210 17:07, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
If we leave it as is, then why are we considering it a stub? It's a complete article, isn't it? — msh210 19:36, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Mathematicians use obtain for two things:
So I was going to add obtain to this list. But then it struck me: is this actually mathematical jargon, or is this just the usual meaning of obtain? That is, are these two uses of obtain just small variations on the dictionary definition of obtain, understandable to "outsiders", or are they real jargon? I'm not sure, so am not adding obtain to the list. What do y'all think? — msh210 17:21, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
What about meet, miss, and avoid (which mean, respectively, "intersect", "intersect in the empty set", and "intersect in the empty set")? Are these jargon? — msh210 00:44, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Someone just added smooth; is this jargon? It's just a word found in math, like plus or group. No? — msh210 14:18, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure I agree with all that is said. But in any case it might warrant an article. Charles Matthews 12:02, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
this is not really specifically mathematical, is it? — MFH: Talk 08:27, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
* wrt, with respect to
* In mathematics, "With Respect To" ; see mathematical jargon.
I've given a new face to this page, since I found the old version to be sprawling, arbitrary, and rather ugly. I've simply divided the terms into categories and given a broad overview of each category. My next move will be to regularize the presentation of the page and add simple descriptions to each term. Finally, a few terms landed in "Miscellaneous" for a few reasons: LHS/RHS is seemingly none of the above categories, "transport of structure" is a term I've never heard and has no page to describe it, and "wrt" is hardly specific to mathematics. I think that the latter two ought to go, and if anyone could argue whether LHS/RHS belongs under Proof or Qualitative, or even Philosophical, it would be nice. Ryan Reich 00:29, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Okay, well, I've given descriptions to everything but "Miscellaneous". Perhaps some of the dead links should be filled in, or removed if my description is thorough enough, and some unlinked terms may want their own pages. Conversely, I've tried to be as concise but authoritative as possible, so maybe a better route is to excise some of the specific pages. Pedantry is endless, and even if one can write a whole paragraph on the term, a single sentence might suffice. Ryan Reich 01:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Yesterday I made a few changes to the page, one of which was to split up "in general" so that, rather than appearing as a single, large entry in one category, it is now three entries in three categories. Depending on your perspective on this page this is either obviously right or obviously wrong. It makes it harder to come in looking for a specific phrase and learn everything about it in one place; on the other hand, my opinion is that people will come here having seen a phrase in a particular context and go straight to the correct place. They have to do that to find any of the terms, anyway, in the new layout.
I feel that splitting up this term is reasonable on those grounds, then. I also think that it's reasonable on the grounds that the nature of mathematical jargon is to overload common words, in this case "general", rather to make up new ones, so that the context is particularly important; thus, the same phrase should appear multiple times if it's used in multiple contexts. It also keeps the entries short; if it's not already clear from the way I did things at the beginning, I favor definitions which are as consise as possible: every term either has its own page or isn't worth having its own page because it's so simple. Finally, there are probably only one or two terms that have their hands in every pot like this, so it won't happen much.
Obviously I can do whatever I want and if people don't like it they can revert the changes; however, since this is a reasonably blatant change and also a little odd, I thought I'd explain it and ask for opinions. Ryan Reich 00:19, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Somewhat related to the non-techniques, there are the invalid techniques, such as
Googling such terms reveals many others. Btyner 17:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
How about frontier question?— msh210℠ 16:58, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I don't see why this is more accurate. Can you even explain what this term (i.e. non-technique) means? The phrase furthermore strikes me as being excessively cute. .-- CSTAR 18:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
I've seen "as desired" used in place of QED in some papers recently - though, more informally. Anyone else, or does anyone think it's common enough to include? Tparameter ( talk) 03:57, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I am not sure if that kind of comment is regarded as bad wikipedia-style (if so please feel free to delete it) but i just wanted to mention that for me the article was very insightful and valuable. It is not easy to find that kind of information in a standard introductionary text book about mathmatics although I think it would definitely belong there. Just wanted to thank the editors of this page for their work, highly appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.179.123 ( talk) 23:28, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
In the context of limits, this is shorthand for arbitrarily large and its relatives; as with eventually, the intended variant is implicit. As an example, one could say that "The function sin(x) is frequently zero", where "frequently" means "for arbitrarily large x".
I strongly disagree. If someone tells me a function is frequently zero I take them to mean, based on formality of the context, either: (a) the function vanishes infinitely often but not everywhere; or (b) the function vanishes more than once.
-- 129.79.237.217 ( talk) 15:57, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I think this terminology is more common and standard for nets, as at [1]. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 15:37, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
This article lists a bunch of references but the ones I checked don't seem to connect with anything in the article. Many of the phrases are well known to mathematicians and so the definitions do not strictly need to be sourced, but the ones that are not common knowledge should have inline cites. Even for the common knowledge terms, it would be desirable to have a source where it is used.-- RDBury ( talk) 09:46, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
This page should probably renamed to remove "jargon" and add "glossary". Possibilities are Mathematical glossary or Glossary of Mathematics or Glossary of mathematical terms. Does anyone have any opinions? The standards of the Glossaries wikiproject should probably be used. Verbal chat 09:23, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
I believe this article is not intended to cover mathematics terminology in general, but rather "commonly used phrases which are part of the culture of mathematics, rather than of the subject". I don't think List of mathematics terminology would be a reasonable article in the first place, it would be far too broad in scope. But that is not this article in any case. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 11:46, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
I agree that this is a glossary, but it is not a glossary of mathematics, in general, but a glossary of mathematical jargon. So glossary of mathematics is clearly the wrong title. Is there any reason to believe that glossary of mathematical jargon would be more useful as a title than the current mathematical jargon? — David Eppstein ( talk) 21:41, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
It is quite blatantly obvious from this article's content that it's not a glossary of mathematical terms, and no one has attempted to make it into that. But it is a list of certain kinds of terms used by mathematicians. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:55, 24 July 2010 (UTC) ...and if there were a glossary of mathematics, it would need a lower-case initial "m" as required by WP:MOS, not the capital letter that "Verbal" suggested. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:56, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
In form this is more an outline than a list or a glossary. Many of the terms link to their own articles, and you could make a case for notability for the rest but I'd rather see the material gathered into an article like this than split up in a dozen stubs. I think changing the name to "Glossary of ..." would reduce the scope of what can be included to a definition and the result would be less encyclopedic. I rather see the current name kept with material added to the entries without their own articles, so the entire article is more in keeping with summary style.-- RDBury ( talk) 17:35, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
"Trovatore", could you list what you consider "defensible" names for this article? Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:16, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
I think parts of this article need better sourcing. Many terms are described without references. Ulner ( talk) 20:36, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
What about adding "degenerate" to the list? According to Oxford, "degenerate" is a mathematical term "relating to or denoting an example of a particular type of equation, curve, or other entity that is equivalent to a simpler type, often occurring when a variable or parameter is set to zero." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gregherlihy ( talk • contribs) 02:29, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Although I understand what's meant by 'let', still, provided that I'm not native english, I wonder what does it actually stand for. Maybe it doesn't hold any extra information for a native speaker, I'm not sure. For me it does. For me it seems that something like 'let x be an integer' means something like 'let me speak about an integer variable and let me call/refer_to that particular integer variable as x'. But also it seems that it's not all about variables but is a very general notation instead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.99.93.173 ( talk) 07:01, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
I have added, based on experience in applied fields, that the word "tight" is often used with the same meaning as the word "sharp" in this excellent article. If someone with pure math experience can confirm that this is also the case in pure math (I am almost certain it is.. No field is an island, right?), please delete the "in applied fields" qualifier. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.72.92.107 ( talk) 21:07, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
I would very much like to see a clear definition/explanation for this phrase which is often thrown into the middle of a mathematical paper with little or no explanation. Keithbowden ( talk) 12:45, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
also sometimes used implying not only , but also ? I'm not sure, but by, you know, intuition... of course this wouldn't apply to infinity, though.-- 131.159.0.47 ( talk) 14:11, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
In Proof Techniques, index battle, in the phrase "for proofs involving object with plurious indices", what does "plurious" mean? It's not in Wiktionary, and there don't seem to be any relevant Google hits. - Adavies42 ( talk) 13:51, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
These entries are amusing, but are they actually in use? I'd say cite or remove. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.189.137.60 ( talk) 03:28, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
I agree. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.219.133.174 ( talk) 08:21, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
Mathematicians often identify isomorphic structures implicitly, so they talk about "the field with two elements" or "the product of A and B" when really, any one of a variety of isomorphic (not identical) things will do. Arguably, this is not how we use "the" in everyday speech (one says "get some eggs from the store", not "get the eggs from the store). There is a whole page on nLab on this concept. Is it worth a mention? siddharthist ( talk) 05:47, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
In the article section Tetration#Non-elementary recursiveness, I noticed the abbreviation s.t., and wondered
The last point is what brought me to this page today. Thoughts, please? yoyo ( talk) 16:30, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
Could someone contribute by offering a description of what is meant by 'essentially sharp' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.20.85.81 ( talk) 08:51, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Contrary to the following statement in § Proof terminology at by way of contradiction (BWOC):
Also, starting a proof or a sub-proof with Assume... indicates that a proof by contradiction will be employed
a proof starting with "Assume …" may continue with, e.g., "… without loss of generality …", or some other conventional phrase, without necessarily implying that the proof will assume a contradiction. Therefore, I propose to remove this sentence entirely, after a suitable pause (a few days) for protest - or (and preferably) for convincing evidence to the contrary. yoyo ( talk) 17:45, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
Could someone please add an entry here for "admits", in usages like "X admits a Y-structure"? -- 86.147.207.61 ( talk) 08:40, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
I believe mathematicians sometimes use the phrase "kill" as an alternative to "mod out". Perhaps this should be mentioned in the article? There is also the method of "killing homotopy groups" in algebraic topology, which might be related (I don't know though because I haven't gotten that far in algebraic topology). Joel Brennan ( talk) 23:40, 7 February 2021 (UTC)