De quinque corporibus regularibus has been listed as one of the Mathematics good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. Review: March 5, 2021. ( Reviewed version).

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A fact from De quinque corporibus regularibus appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 18 September 2020 ( check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that a book on polyhedra by Piero della Francesca fell victim to "probably the first full-blown case of plagiarism in the history of mathematics" when Luca Pacioli copied it in his Divina proportione? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2020/September. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/De quinque corporibus regularibus.

This review is transcluded from Talk:De quinque corporibus regularibus/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Ján Kepler ( talk · contribs) 10:52, 2 January 2021 (UTC) reply

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

Very good written article!

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b ( MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a ( reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c ( OR): d ( copyvio and plagiarism):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a ( major aspects): b ( focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b ( appropriate use with suitable captions): All of them seem okay.

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   The article is very good, but I think it would be better to get a second opinion, because I am not sure about the prose as I am not native in English.

Comments

• The other two, De prospectiva pingendi and Trattato d'abaco, concern perspective drawing and arithmetic in the tradition of Fibonacci's Liber Abaci, respectively - does this really have to be there? What about changing it to something like (also the sentence before this one): ... Francesca was studying (rather some other verb) this and that (platonic geometry, etc.)?
  • I think it's important to give at least one brief sentence about what's in the other books, for multiple reasons: to set the context in which he wrote this one, to set up the later material about significant overlaps in content between De quinque corporibus and De prospectiva pingendi, and to set up the other later material about what happened to the books.
• It was the first of what would become many books connecting mathematics to art through the construction and perspective drawing of polyhedra,[3] including Luca Pacioli's 1509 Divina proportione (which incorporated without credit an Italian translation of della Francesca's work), Albrecht Dürer's Underweysung der Messung, and Wenzel Jamnitzer's Perspectiva corporum regularium.[4] - same with this sentence. It's already in other sections and doesn't have to be in this section (at least it could be shorten).
  • Um. You do know that MOS:LEAD is part of the Good Article criteria, right? And that MOS:LEAD requires duplication: everything in the lead should summarize something later, and the lead should provide an adequate summary of all later material. — David Eppstein ( talk) 07:55, 25 February 2021 (UTC) reply
    • Yes, but does the reader really have to know about names of same simillar books to this one? -- Ján Kepler ( talk) 16:24, 25 February 2021 (UTC) reply
      • Ok, I moved two of these out of the lead, since they're detailed later. I also moved the titles and summaries of della Francesca's other books from the lead to the background section. I left Pacioli in the lead as being more important. — David Eppstein ( talk) 17:45, 25 February 2021 (UTC) reply

• • • • • Great! I like it this way more. -- Ján Kepler ( talk) 19:49, 25 February 2021 (UTC) reply
• I am not so sure if the people know what facsimile means. Isn't there a better synonym?
  • The simpler word here would be "copy". But that could just be a copy of the text, while in this context "facsimile" specifically means that we have an actual picture of what the original book looked like. It might also be possible to use something like "photographic reproduction" but that's not really a simplification, and could be overly specific — there are non-photographic processes to reproduce things, and the source doesn't say what process was used. — David Eppstein ( talk) 07:55, 25 February 2021 (UTC) reply
• It is the material from the Elements and pseudo-Euclid, rather than from Timaeus, that forms della Francesca's main inspiration. - I guess we don't know why?
  • I don't think the source said. — David Eppstein ( talk) 07:55, 25 February 2021 (UTC) reply
• I don't want to be a pedant, but could be a reference added to this statement: The first three words mean "Of Peter the painter, from Borgo", and refer to the book's author, Piero della Francesca (from Borgo Santo Sepolcro) ?
  • I would source the translation if I could but this one seems difficult. I found sources translating the same words into Russian ( http://www.mathnet.ru/rus/mo490) and French ( https://books.google.com/books?id=ZCGhAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA99). They say more or less the same thing (at least trusting Google Translate for the Russian, as unlike Latin and French I haven't actually studied that language). I also found an English translation of the rest of the title and the first two sentences of the book, but without those three words, in [1]. Other English-language sources that quote the title appear to be written with the assumption that readers will obviously be able to understand the Latin themselves (e.g. https://books.google.com/books?id=GVaGYBbaHoMC&pg=PA195 which talks about the meaning of the title words without actually translating them first). I did find some guidance in WP:POETRY#Translations into English of non-English works that appears relevant here: "If there are no free alternatives available, a user who is knowledgeable about the foreign language of the poem and confident in translating the text is encouraged to provide his or her own literal translation or a close-to-literal poetic translation. A basic verbatim translation does not violate the policies on original research (WP:OR) or synthesis (WP:SYNTH), and Wikipedia's policies and guidelines encourage users to provide accurate translations." WP:TRANSCRIPTION says the same thing more succinctly. It was easy enough to find sources for della Francesca being from Borgo, though, so I added one reused from elsewhere in the article. — David Eppstein ( talk) 08:24, 25 February 2021 (UTC) reply

• It also includes the (very likely novel) derivation for the height of an irregular tetrahedron, - the source explicitely says very likely? It would be OR if not. ¨
  • The source says "Piero's result here was surely new." — David Eppstein ( talk) 08:47, 26 February 2021 (UTC) reply
• but della Francesca was most likely unaware of either prior discovery - again, just making sure that the source says "most likely".
  • The source says "This volume was also found by Archimedes, but Piero could not have known that". It does not mention Zu. I don't think there are sources explicitly saying that della Francesca was unaware of the work of Zu, because it is so extremely obvious. So instead I added a footnote pointing to a whole book about how Chinese science first became known in Europe in the 17th century. — David Eppstein ( talk) 08:47, 26 February 2021 (UTC) reply
• correct mathematical perspective - what is meant by this? correct mathematical perspective? Is there an incorrect way?
  • Yes. See Grünbaum, "geometry strikes again", for examples. — David Eppstein ( talk) 08:47, 26 February 2021 (UTC) reply

-- Ján Kepler ( talk) 19:49, 25 February 2021 (UTC) reply

20

Responding to the 20 request. I read the article and the prose looks fine to me. Ján Kepler, thanks for reviewing! This appears to be your first review and it's generally preferred to have more detailed commentary in order to provide feedback to the nominator and to show that the article has been thoroughly evaluated. Is there any improvement that you could recommend for the article? Or, if you can't think of anything that would improve the article, then perhaps elaborate a bit on why you think it meets the criteria. See here or here for examples of some recent reviews of mine. ( t · c) buidhe 07:34, 20 January 2021 (UTC) reply

Thanks for the help! -- Ján Kepler ( talk) 11:18, 20 January 2021 (UTC) reply

@ Ján Kepler: It's been over a month since you got this response. Any idea when I can hope to see this review completed? — David Eppstein ( talk) 06:16, 23 February 2021 (UTC) reply

@ David Eppstein: Yeah, sorry, the review will be completed this weekend. Is that okay? -- Ján Kepler ( talk)

@ David Eppstein: I think the article now fits the GA criteria, so I added the GA template. Thanks for your work! -- Ján Kepler ( talk) 06:48, 5 March 2021 (UTC) reply

Thanks for yours! Especially for coming back and providing helpful suggestions for improvement rather than just passing quickly. — David Eppstein ( talk) 07:00, 5 March 2021 (UTC) reply