Since the purpose of the article originally started by StuRat was in part didactic, how about farming it out as a wikibook? There is still the historical question of the relation of Boole's algebra to the different entity called Boolean algebra to be sorted out, and yet another new article housed at BL might be the best place to do this. The new article can then comment on the non-mathematical aspects of cultural usage that originalyy prompted StuRat to write his text, and the genuinely encyclopediac contribution of the BL article can still be accomodated in the BA article. --- Charles Stewart 18:57, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't think suggesting a wikibook is helpful. What is in wikibooks and what is here is in no way related.-- MarSch 18:31, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
See Talk:Mathematical analysis#Mathematical.2FReal Analysis. A fellow is having problems with the modern defintion of real numbers (among other things). He/she says "infinitesimals exist". My reply would be that the real numbers are defined by axioms, and it follows from those axioms that there are no infinitesimals. It would be good however to have more in-depth comments than that on that talk page. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 11:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
During the travails of my spellbot, I got the following comment:
Makes me really wonder, is it indeed correct/widespread to use "parameterize" (one extra "e") as synonymous with "parametrize"? I never encountered the former, even though it would make sense as it all comes from "parameter". Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 13:15, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
The Hilbert problems page is seeing some development, which is only right and proper. It is also raising numerous issues, in respect of what a 'solved' problem is. This is an opportunity, to do better than other Web treatments (few of the historians really have all the background to write with authority on all 23). The words 'worms', 'can' and 'of' come to mind.
I wonder whether the laudable effort to get a table summary of it all on the page hasn't had its day. It is hard to write enough in a table entry, since some of the problems have several 'ply' in them. I also think that where [[Hilbert's n-th problem]] is now a redirect, we really need to have the buffer of a separate page. For example, Hilbert's fifth problem used to redirect to Lie group, but it seems clearer not to have arguments about what a Lie group is, and what the Fifth Problem was, on the same page.
Please come and help. This page missed Featured Article status over the summer, but has already been much expanded. Charles Matthews 09:49, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
See talk:rotation#Request for comment. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 00:58, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
If anyone's feeling energetic, I started an article on Proofs of quadratic reciprocity. Sadly, it was a bigger job than I foresaw, and I've had enough for now. It needs several things done to it; see Talk:Proofs of quadratic reciprocity for my opinion on this. Thanks! I should go back to writing blahtex and existing in the real world now... Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 03:11, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 October 30 - the classification of academics needs a big clean-up. Please come and vote. Charles Matthews 11:56, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the automation makes it difficult to manually add articles such as this to the current activity list. Uncle G 00:53, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
See the talk page. Has anyone else heard of this, outside of MathWorld? Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:14, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
The new article Function Iteration has the general smell of being original research. It doesn't look wrong, it just looks home-grown. Anyone care to do something about that? AfD maybe? linas 01:26, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive O#Frustration with make technical articles accessible policy
Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 18:55, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I want there to be either a list of categories or a category of categories here. The more I think about it, the more I think it should be a list, not a category. One reason is that some categories probably don't deserve their own articles. Another is that it might be neat if we could put the categories in a table and like list their properties (cartesian closed, concrete, abelian, monoidal, etc). But then again, I've never liked (wp organizational) categories. Anyway, I started a list, which is basically just me adding a whole bunch of categories to the short list that was already at category (mathematics), in my user space because I wasn't sure if it should be an article. Have a look? - Lethe | Talk 06:10, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
I really like my table, but I'm afraid it's way too wide for most people's monitors... - Lethe | Talk 20:43, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
It looks like vector (spatial) has been used in some contexts where coordinate vector or vector would have been more appropriate. I started to go through and fix things until I realized there must be at least a few hundred pages to check that link to vector (spatial). My understanding is that spatial vectors (per their article) only refer to vectors in dimensions at most 3. This would make such links to vector (spatial) inappropriate when considering vectors in higher (or arbitrary) dimensions. How should we proceed to address this problem? - Gauge 07:14, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
A related note: I suggest that for clarity we rename Vector (spatial) to Vectors in three dimensions.-- Patrick 11:00, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not even sure I like the existence of this article in the first place. Is there really so much to be said about vectors in R3 that wouldn't fit in an examples section of vector space that these vectors need their own article? Remember that we're an encyclopedia, not a textbook. - Lethe | Talk 00:28, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Wikisource is currently contemplating deleting all mathematical and astronomical tables (including expansions of transcendental numbers, tables of logarithms, ephemerides, and so forth) and all source code. See Wikisource talk:What Wikisource includes for the discussion of this. Uncle G 15:49, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
I got confused the other day when I saw unitary in the context of a C*-algebra. Eventually I figured out that it means "having multiplicative identity", and I changed it to unital. I now see that some authors do use unitary in this sense (Hungerford), though it isn't mentioned in our page on unitary. I'm going to add a mention there, but I kind of also want to change all instances I come across to unital, which is less ambiguous. How do you feel about the word unitary to mean having identity in an algebra, or over a ring with identity for a module? - Lethe | Talk 16:01, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
One person uses multiple account to change the spelling of math articles one way or another. I reverted whatever I saw so far (that does classify as vandalism I would say, as that person was warned half a day before to not do that). I guess we need to take a close look at the recent changes to math articles from the list of mathematical topics to watch for more. Note that the person in question makes sure that the user page and talk page are blue, I guess to mislead people. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 07:03, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Is it really a problem? Sure, changing "provably" to "probably" is probably (provably?) uncool, but if someone wants to waste their time changing "sanitise" to "sanitize" or the other way, I say let 'em waste their time. It's better than real vandalism. Don't we have better things to do? (On the other hand, I would of course object to such spelling changes on articles like George Bush or Vegemite). Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 13:06, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Hi y'all,
There's been an idea floating around for a while now that would of interest to all frequent mathematics article editors. I can't remember who originally thought of it. I'm wondering if there's anyone out there with time + skill + motivation to actually make it happen.
Wouldn't it be lovely if we could write our equations with $ or $$ signs instead of bulky <math> tags, just like in TeX. Every now and then this gets proposed as a change to the wikisource markup, but I tell you, it ain't gonna happen that way, because it's just too big a change. I think the main objection is that it would weird out too many non-math people out if they got funny TeX errors every time they tried to use ordinary $ signs. Fair enough.
But there's another way to do this which might satisfy everybody. What we need is some kind of javascript thing which automatically and transparently translates between $ and <math> tags on the way in and out of the edit box (and presumably translates $ signs in the wikisource to something sensible like "\$"). This proposal would have no effect whatsoever on the database or the mediawiki software; it would stay recorded as <math> in the database. From what I understand, we have available some mechanism for personalised javascript (e.g. via monobook.js), which presumably could override the default behaviour when you load a page for editing or save an edited page. Then all that would be required is that a user copies the script to their own monobook.js, and they would be able to work with $ signs -- no thought required. Anyone who isn't interested doesn't have to use it.
Now, I'm pretty clueless when it comes to javascript, and I don't know how monobook.js works, and I don't have time to research it now. I've been led to believe, through some conversations I had a while back, that such a thing was technically feasible. Does anyone have any comments on feasibility? Does anyone here know enough to sit down and write the thing? Am I making any sense at all? Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 01:34, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't see any advantage whatsoever in using $ and $$ instead of "bulky" <math> tags. The only thing I used to hate about <math> is that they are a pain to type, but right about the edit box you have the buttonbar with the math tags in. Click on that, and if you hit any keystroke that silly text "Insert formula here" will disappear, and you are ready to go.
Another thing. I don't think it is a good idea to write a Wikipedia article as if it is a LaTeX document. This may result in too many inline PNG formulas. And no, MathML is not just behind the hill, coming any day or two. :) Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 16:48, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Expert fact-checking and other assistance requested at Inductive dimension. -- Trovatore 07:25, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Someone has proposed here that Category:Dimension be renamed to Category:Dimensions. Personally I disagree (though I'm open to argument). Please contribute (whether you agree with me or not). One possibility is that overly disparate concepts are being muddled together in this category. -- Trovatore 19:00, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Well known to whom? This seems a little silly. Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 03:18, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this, but I was wondering if there were any policies concerning examples on math pages? I dunno, but it seems that it might be useful if pages had some example problems (like if the Green's theorem page had an sample problem to find the area of a planar region, or whatever)... Thanks :-)-- yoshi 00:59, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
YES ABSOLUTELY DO EXAMPLES. I would err more than most to the side of providing examples. (If I have the time, that is.) As long as they don't distract from the main discussion. Dmharvey 02:33, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Please consider posting an example of obtaining and using a Hessian matrix to find the maxima of a likelihood function such as a multinomial function. Alternatively, please consider posting a reference or two where such information can be found. Thank you. {{ Mark W. Miller 20:25, 23 November 2005 (UTC)}}
Thanks also to the individual who alerted me to how to sign my notes. -- Mark W. Miller 20:37, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Hessian matrix | diagonal form | signature | kind of extremum |
---|---|---|---|
positive definite | minimum | ||
negative definite | maximum | ||
indefinite | saddle point |
Your participation is appreciated... --- Charles Stewart 20:10, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
The Wikipedia:Reference desk was not too long ago split into subjects. Currently, there is a Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science subsection which is where math questions should go. It seems to me that math questions are a pretty small fraction of the posts there, and most go unanswered (unless they're high school math questions). How would you feel about having a separate place for math questions? I like to ask questions, and I like to answer questions, so I would like it. - lethe talk 20:25, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I've enjoyed editing WP so much that I've decided that it might be a good idea to organize my original-research thoughts, half-baked ideas, and full-fledged research results using a wiki, as opposed to trying to maintain a collection of half-finished LyX (TeX) documents (which is what I currently do, along with deep piles of paper). I was about to install my own private copy of the mediawiki software on my server when it occurred to me that perhaps I should enquire here first... Is there some public place where this could be done? I gather planetmath might be one-such, but I rather like the mediawiki interfaces. I don't know if wikibooks allow original resarch; also, as I want to publish my personal notes, I want to exert considerable editorial control (i.e. deny write access by default, grant write access only to friends).
The reason I find this interesting is the hyperlinking. Writing traditional, "flat", "linear" mathematics papers requires a review of basic concepts and notions early in the paper. Using a wiki allows these steps to be skipped, in favor of links. It also allows hyperconnections between related concepts: as sometimes, the difficulty of writing a math paper is figuring out how to lay out the ideas in linear order. So I think that playing with a wiki for pure research and pseudo (self-)publication might be a worthwhile experiment. But where shall I experiment? linas 17:37, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Hey everyone. I'm sure you've all seen talk pages featuring rather long-winded conversations like Talk:Mathematical_analysis (and archives), Talk:Proof_that_0.999..._equals_1, Talk:Four_color_theorem/archive2.... Typically an anon shows up and starts saying -- how to put this diplomatically? -- controversial things. Then the regulars here leap to the defence of rational thought. My question is: what motivates these people? What makes them tick? Why do they bother? Do they really think they're correct? Or are they just having fun? Dmharvey 20:19, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Interesting thoughts guys. Thanks. Dmharvey 01:06, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
User:CarlHewitt has created a new category, Category:Mathematical model, which he's been populating with theories, not models. I've put it on CfD. Opinions solicited (as always, whether they agree with mine or not). -- Trovatore 00:42, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Today I discovered the thing called Google books. I had a question about harmonic functions, and I found excellent excerpts from books where this topic is covered. This tool would be very helpful for editors who are too lazy to use the library, and could also be used in checking the information and adding references to existing articles. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk)
Background: Due to the influence of Soare, in recent years it has been fashionable to use the term "computability theory" for what used to be called recursion theory. Very recently on WP, Category:Computability was renamed to Category:Theory of computation, where some of the articles are a good fit, but by no means all of them. Also the computability theory article underwent a substantial rewrite, focusing almost entirely on the aspects of interest to computer scientists rather than mathematical logicians.
This left a big void, as recursion theory or computability theory (as you prefer) is standardly considered one of the four branches of mathematical logic (the other three being set theory, model theory, and proof theory). So I created Category:Recursion theory and a stub article at recursion theory.
What needs to happen now:
See the discussion at Talk:Computability theory (computation). -- Trovatore 20:31, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Does this look a bit odd to anyone else? Dmharvey 01:37, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
See Talk:Model (abstract)#Dispute and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Carl Hewitt. — R. Koot 16:38, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I can't help noting that User:CSTAR has abandoned Wikipedia, or has gone into hiding, or is at least taking a wikivacation. It is hard for me not to conclude that this RfC and some of the personal attacks it engendered was the proverbial straw. I enjoyed CSTAR's company, ad saw him as a good, highly qualified editor working in the general area of operator algebras and (surprise) C*-algebras. Unfortunately, this meant that he was often involved in disputes fending off the latest cranky quantum mechanics edit, and I suspect this sapped a lot of his energy. I am not happy about his departure, as he was a valuable and trusted editor. linas 22:05, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Seriously, though, I think Addition needs a content shuffle. Please drop by Talk:Addition#Split.3F. Melchoir 06:00, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics. No posts yet. - lethe talk 06:43, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Ghirlandajo, I noticed you moved Dimitri Egorov to Dmitry Yegorov. I debated with myself for a while as to how exactly I should name the article, given that there are alternate spellings. Actually I was only considering the difference between Dimitri and Dmitri, but clearly his family name can be spelled differently too. In the end, I chose Dimitri Egorov because that's the spelling given on The Mathematics Genealogy Project. Since you're living in Russia, I obviously bow to your knowledge on this subject, but I'm wondering if there is a standard way of spelling Russian names such as this? Forgive my Canadian ignorance on the subject - I'm hoping to maybe add some more stubs of Russian mathematicians in the future, and it would be great if I knew how to do it properly to begin with. Cheers! -- PeruvianLlama( spit) 20:24, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
I was told this project is "the best WikiProject on Wikipedia", so I am hoping someone can help. I would like to equivalently represent the use of the phrase "The page is intentionally left blank" on blank pages. The phrase is a self-refuting meta-reference, in that it falsifies itself by its very existence on the page in question. I made this same request at the reference desk, but only got limited answers. One person suggested using Gödel numbering, while another said:
But I am at a loss as to how to proceed from here. I will be submitting this article to WP:FAC soon, and would really like to have a paragraph concerning specifically this. Thanks! — BRIAN 0918 • 2005-12-5 02:09
I saw that Category:Differential equations is not in Category:Equations. However, both categories are subcategories of Category:Mathematics, so if I'd place Category:Differential equations in Category:Equations then I'd violate the guideline of not including a category A in both another category B and an ancestor of B. Any ideas on how to proceed? -- Jitse Niesen ( talk) 10:35, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I have proposed the re-creation of Category:Mathematical model. Please discuss in Talk:Mathematical model. Thanks,-- Carl Hewitt 19:16, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi everybody! If you're not already aware of the mess attached to the talk page of Proof that 0.999... equals 1, consider yourself lucky. I'm here to solicit comments on my proposal to rewrite that page and confront all the popular misconceptions. Please see Talk:Proof that 0.999... equals 1#If I may speak to the article itself.... Thanks, Melchoir 21:25, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
FWIW, Don't under-estimate infinite-digit sequences. The z-transform of the sequence of digits in the ( p-adic) expansion of a real number is a Cantor space, and so, in this very certain sense, there are topologies of the real number line where 0.999... is inequivalent to 1.000... Its a subtle point, and it seems to have something to do with "why there are fractals", which are crawling with these kinds of topological inequivalences. There are topologies that naively seem to be isomorphic to the real numbers, but on closer examination are not. The expansion in terms of digits is one of them. So maybe the article isn't very good, but the topic merits a deeper examination, since its a truism often taught in grade/high school, and has difficult subtleties associated with it. linas 07:22, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Just a note that Arabic numerals has been listed at WP:RFC under mathematics regarding a heated dispute over numerous content changes. Peyna 16:26, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
For those who may not know, CSTAR (a well respected math and physics editor) has left Wikipedia, perhaps for good, primarily because of the Carl Hewitt affair. Paul August ☎ 20:39, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Everybody here please have a look at my MetaWiki proposition for the creation of wikiscience, a technical wiki-based encyclopedia that will allow for ORIGINAL contributions from users plus the most up-to-date research from professionals (as well as being a math and science encyclopedia). Wikipedia as it stands is far from this, as well as other sites such as "Mathworld". Math and science is simply too technical and evolving of a subject to be thrown about with the rest of wikipedia articles. Math and science, given its special nature of presentation and subject, needs to be part of the wikipedia whole, yet seperate and organized (I think we all agree). I believe that the wikimedia foundation has the momentum and the user base to make this extroadinary contribution to the math and science community, but I need supporters before wikimedia makes this happen.
If you are interested in making this happen please visit the link and show your support. Also, if you want more detail of my idea, or have any suggestions or criticisms please visit WikiScience Details! Thanks! -- B21.12.52.123 12:55, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm against it. I think it will divide the efforts of editors, with the most technically inclided editors eschewing wikipedia general. I don't think there should be a limit on how technical articles in wikipedia get (Wikipedia wants to be the sum total of human knowledge). To the critics who complain when they come to an article that's too technical, well, we can make each article as approachable as possible, but in many cases that will still be entirely incomprehensible to most people. C'est la vie. - lethe talk 22:03, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
What do you mean by: "Math and science is simply to technical and evolving of a subject to be thrown about with the rest of wikipedia articles. Math and science, given its special nature of presentation and subject, needs to be … separate …". Are you saying that the math and science content should be moved from Wikipedia to Wikiscience? Paul August ☎ 22:54, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
-- B21.12.52.123 11:02, 14 December 2005 (UTC)===Wikipedia vs Wikiscience===
First off, I am not an annonymous user. I chose this name arbitrarily when I was just starting to contribute to wikipedia articles. If this name bothers any of you I guess I can change to a "normal" name. My name is Parker W. and I am an ex-math major from the University of Oklahoma. I am a real person lol...later on if this gets more support I will start a mailing group so people can contact me personally.
Charles Matthews: Wikipedia as it stands is FAR from any serious math resource. The trial of Michael Jackson is like 10 times longer and more complex than the article on E. Given E is one of the most beautiful and important numbers in math, this is a travesty or at least an embarrasment to wikipedia's scope in math.
Paul August and Oleg: As I said before "...that is, wikipedia (like any other encyclopedia) should still have relatively simply worded and accessable concepts in math and science, but for more in-depth and up-to-date modern (and original research from users) research, plus more in depth on the "simple" concepts, wikiscience would be the home. Does this divide contributers? Not if the technicality of the articles on wikipedia is kept to a minimum (like other paperbased encyclopedias). In fact, I would say that what is one wikipedia right now suffices for this pupose, so no extra work would need to be done in wikipedia"
That is, WikiScience is in my mind a companion to Wikipedia. As any encyclopedia, Wikipedia will have entries on math and science, moving them or getting rid of all the math and science articles in wikipedia would be absurd. However, for the lastest "peer-reviewed" (at least compared to wikipedia) research, both amateur and professional, for indepth technical articles suitable to those in the math and science fields, and for proper organization and stucture that is helpful to those seeking mathematical and scientific information, WikiScience will serve that function.
C'est la vie remarked that "wikipedia wants to be the sum total of human knowledge". This is not correct. Wikipedia, however revolutionary and huge it my be, is still an encyclopedia and has many guidelines as to what shouldn't be in the encyclopedia such as definitions of words, news stories and the like. This is why wikitionary, wikinews were created, respectively. The content matter of these sister projects is just to different to be mixed in with what is suppost to be an encyclopedia.
As is with what I proposed to be put in wikiscience. But just because wikinews and wiktionary were created, doesnt mean that all articles defining words and all articles reffering to current events were removed! These articles in math and science which are "different" are what I call technical articles.
"Techical vs "non-technical" math and science articles
Technical articles and qualitatively and quantitively different from non-technical articles, as I shall dub them, which are currently in wikipedia.
The key difference is rigor. Going back to my example of the Michael Jackson trial (no offence to MJ:)), a minor detail such as, Mr. Mesereau's shows were black at the trial would have no effect on the overall information of the article. If that were in-fact, not true, than the article would not be compromised.
With a techical article it WOULD be compromised if a small detail was wrong, unfounded, or erronious. The ENTIRE article would be compromised in the eyes of any serious student/enthusiast or researcher. This is why we have CRC handbooks, Mathematical encyclopedias, or resources such as the arxiv. Now this does not mean that any of the articles in math and science here are "wrong" or "unfounded" or inadequate, it just means that they serve a different purpose from technical articals. This is that of exposition. Technical articles are not generally expository (all though than can be), are more in-depth, and contain more "sensitive" topics (topics that the reader my require a corresponding source or cite, as well as a cite of proof). One is not "better" than the other, they are just serving different needs. Wikipedia currenty does not meet the latter's needs.
What is the crucial difference then that wikipedia can't facilitate? This is that of critical review. Critical review is the lifeblood of technical articles. I will wait and give my list of possible implementations of critical review just in case you guys want to respond to anything I said of have criticisms or concerns of what I just posted.
-- B21.12.52.123 05:04, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
IN SUMMERY: WikiScience is to Wikipedia as The CRC Handbook plus Mathword plus summeries of discoveries in the latest math and science journals, plus orginal contributions from users and professionals is to Encyclopedia Brittanica. Neither one is "better" they are just different. Wikipedia will still have math and science articles just as Brittanica does.
Regardless of the current quality of math wikipedia, we aim to subsume EB, CRC Handbook (isn't that just a table of data? That actually, we will not subsume), mathworld, EDM2, Soviet encyclopedia, and others. - lethe talk 10:50, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
-- Hypergeometric2F1[a,b,c,x] 11:29, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I have joined the Wikipedia:Project Mathematics and have introduced myself on the participants page. I will keep campaigning for this idea, but in the meantime I will contribute what I can and see what happens. -- B21.12.52.123 06:58, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I have also created a new nickname to assuade confusion -- Hypergeometric2F1[a,b,c,x] 11:18, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Above, Hypergeometric2F1[a,b,c,x] wrote that
Well, I counted all the mathematics and mathematician articles which have either a {{ attention}} or {{ cleanup}} or {{ expert}} template either in the article or on its talk page. I found 98 of those. Jitse's tool states that there are 33 more at Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Mathematics (and thre could be an overlap with the first 98). All in all, we get 131 pages needing attention of a total of 11000-11713 articles, which is 1.19%, a far cry from 20%. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 22:14, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
If you use Yahoo to find references to superlogarithm you will discover some interesting clones of Wikipedia pages. The term superlogarithm appeared on a past version of the tetration page, but now appears almost nowhere else on the net. Now the term superlogarithm appears on both the Free WebCam Tetration and Sex Pictures Logarithm pages of a rather unusual Wikipedia clone at newpenisenlargement.com. Daniel Geisler
I would dearly love to rewrite the following:
I find it almost unreadable, because of the insistence on quotient notation. I would prefer subscripts:
From my background, this is merely a matter of different conventions. Yet I get the feeling that some people feel uncomfortable with the subscript notation and habitually use quotient notation. What's up with that? -- KSmrq T 11:54, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies. From my reading of the conventions talk page, it appears that Zn has three possible interpretations: (1) the additive group of integers modulo n, (2) the ring of integers modulo n, and (3) the p-adic numbers with p = n. I take it that for n prime, we would use a different notation if we mean the Galois field. Are there any other ambiguities I should be aware of? And do the interpretations differ more by area of mathematics, or area of the globe?
One reason I ask is because the article with the opaque quotient notation was talking about algebraic topology groups (no cohomology rings), where only interpretation (1) would make sense (so far as I know), yet quotients were used anyway. (Furthermore, the sentence itself tells us we're talking about groups.) So I'm trying to get a better understanding, not of just what people do, but why.
I understand it can be hard to explain choices; for example, I know for me there are contexts in which I would always use Cn, and others in which I would never do so, but use Zn instead. Still, any further insights would be appreciated. -- KSmrq T 02:02, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Today I happened across an old conversaion I had with Oleg a few months ago on Talk:Transcendental number about templates in the math project (the discussion also arrived here; see archive). We all pretty easily voted to delete them: Template:change, Template:structure, Template:space, and Template:quantity. I'm a mild inclusionist and was a little nervous about so much deletion, but I was assuaged when I saw Template:Mathematics-footer. My main concern was lack of consistency across other technical subjects (confer Template:Natural sciences-footer and Template:Physics-footer, for example), and this one addresses that fine. Today, upon tripping on the old discussion, I noticed that while we do have this template, it's pretty much unused.
So how do we feel about these templates these days? Are they useful as a navigational tool? Is it worth having this one for the sake of consistency? I'm somewhat inclined to add the footer to all the articles mentioned within. Here it is, for reference. - lethe talk 16:12, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
There has been some discussion about renaming the pages linked to from the following template:
Part of a series on | ||
Mathematics | ||
---|---|---|
|
||
Mathematics Portal | ||
The current proposal is as follows:
Older discussion on this topic may be found at Talk:List of lists of mathematical topics#Renaming this page.
Comments? Objections? If you agree, please state so. -- Fropuff 03:19, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:Pages needing attention/Mathematics#Listing the pages needing attention for some discussion. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 05:30, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I turn your attention to this article by Nature and Wikipedia's response. Karol 06:04, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I just wanted to say I enjoy this resource and find it useful. I am not a mathematician or a statistician, although I use both a fair bit in my work. I learned a great deal from this very forum over a few days just last month. Wikipedia will only improve with time. Comparing Wikipedia with Encyclopedia Britannica at this point hardly seems fair. Wikipedia has been around for, what, 5 years. Encyclopedia Britannica has been around “forever”. If Wikipedia compares favorably with Encyclopedia Britannica already in at least some regards imagine what Wikipedia might be like 20 years from now.
I also think that technical articles are great. Personally I would prefer that more of them have examples and references. But this forum and the math help desk have been helpful to me in climbing the learning curve on technical issues. Some things I’ve learned here I tried off-and-on unsuccessfully to learn elsewhere on the internet over the course of several years.
As for the reliability of Wikipedia, perfect reliability is, in a Popperian sense, perhaps an unattainable ideal in that all of science is constantly being revised. Although, examples and references are one way for the reader to verify factual information and the state of the art as described in Wikipedia articles. As such, examples and references act, to an extent, like peer review.
I guess my point is that people will find these articles, will use these articles, and will be glad you wrote them, regardless of how specific or technical those articles may be… …particularly if those articles contain examples and references and are aimed at people who don’t know as much as you do about the subject.
I didn’t know the most appropriate place to put my comments so I stuck them here. Sorry if these comments are out of place. Mark W. Miller 06:41, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I have created a discussion page for the implementation of a wiki, Wikipolis, allowing for dynamic collaborations, original research, and some form of peer-review. I invite you all to add your ideas!-- Hypergeometric2F1[a,b,c,x] 10:01, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Somer pseudoprime is a puzzling new page, and hard to verify through Google. Charles Matthews 22:11, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Since the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences reference is only from 2003, I see no good reason to have this hanging around. Charles Matthews 16:17, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Somewhere above, in the discussion about wikiscience, a claim was made that around 20% of math articles need attention of an expert. Well, the number is just a fraction of that, for the moment 1.54%, meaning 169 articles, but that's still a big number. On Fropuff's suggestion, I wrote a script which will daily add to Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Mathematics math pages having various attention templates, like {{ cleanup}}, {{ expert}} etc. So, I'd just like the community to be aware of that page (most of us are, I think), and visit it from time to time. :) Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 02:37, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually, we may need those stubs. My feeling is that we have plenty of graduate students and other useful people editing anonymously, who currently are not able to start articles. We should aim to add 'good stubs' on many topics. Charles Matthews 22:07, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Merry Christmas, all! (... with the understanding that paganism is older than Christianity, either way, cheeriest of holidays!) linas 02:41, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
I wrote the article A linear functional which is not continuous only to immediately discover on its talk page a suggestion to move it to Non-continuous linear functional (darn, everybody should be drunk and sleeping this post-Christmas morning, not checking the recent changes). What do people think (if it matters at all)? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 17:36, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
I like the first name. Compare with stuff like An infinitely differentiable function that is not analytic. Also, is "non-continuous" a word? Shouldn't that be "discontinuous"? - lethe talk 03:02, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi there :) - the article was moved to A linear map which is not continuous - is that what people have decided on? Right now it looks like no consensus, but I thought I'd just give everyone a buzz... WhiteNight T | @ | C 23:28, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
I moved the article A linear functional which is not continuous to discontinuous linear map which seems to address all concerns on this page. I made a bunch of other alternative titles redirect to it. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 19:57, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
IP, 69.22.98.162 ( contributions) has been making edits to Albert Einstein, Henri Poincaré and David Hilbert, essentially questioning the originality of Einstein's theory of special relativity, giving as a source this: [8] (see Talk:Albert_Einstein#His Theory and Talk:Albert_Einstein#Nobel prise edit), all of which I think have been reverted (by me and others). I don't really know much about the history of the development of relativity, (beyond what little I've read on Wikipedia), if anyone can shed any useful light on this, your help would be welcome. Paul August ☎ 23:01, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Now is your chance to answer the question: Should Wikipedia have redirects for OEIS titles? ☺ Uncle G 01:58, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Currently there's an inconsistent usage among various articles that should probably be cleared up. Partial function claims that, given a partial function f:X→Y, its domain is X. I think the more standard usage is that the domain of f is the subset of X on which f is defined; this is the usage assumed in Recursively enumerable set and Uniformization (set theory). I don't know a name for X, though, given this convention. In any case we should standardize on one convention. My strong preference is for the second; I don't think I've seen the first convention used anywhere but WP. -- Trovatore 19:32, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
This site uses "domain" for X and "exact-domain" for f-1(Y). When working In the category of sets and partial functions (often called PfN), X would be called the domain of f (at least as a morphism). Paul August ☎ 16:22, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
OK, in accordance with the above discussion, I've edited Partial function and Domain (function) to indicate the existence of both usages. I've edited Recursively enumerable set and Uniformization (set theory) to specify which sense of the term is in use. But there are bunches more articles that link to Partial function and/or Domain (function); I'm not likely to get around to checking them individually any time soon. -- Trovatore 23:37, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
JA: Seems like "domain" is standard for the designated set, after all, what if it's just a relation L c X x Y ? And I think that "domain of definition" is used for the other thing by many folks in computing contexts, for example, Arbib et al. Jon Awbrey 07:40, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Since the purpose of the article originally started by StuRat was in part didactic, how about farming it out as a wikibook? There is still the historical question of the relation of Boole's algebra to the different entity called Boolean algebra to be sorted out, and yet another new article housed at BL might be the best place to do this. The new article can then comment on the non-mathematical aspects of cultural usage that originalyy prompted StuRat to write his text, and the genuinely encyclopediac contribution of the BL article can still be accomodated in the BA article. --- Charles Stewart 18:57, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't think suggesting a wikibook is helpful. What is in wikibooks and what is here is in no way related.-- MarSch 18:31, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
See Talk:Mathematical analysis#Mathematical.2FReal Analysis. A fellow is having problems with the modern defintion of real numbers (among other things). He/she says "infinitesimals exist". My reply would be that the real numbers are defined by axioms, and it follows from those axioms that there are no infinitesimals. It would be good however to have more in-depth comments than that on that talk page. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 11:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
During the travails of my spellbot, I got the following comment:
Makes me really wonder, is it indeed correct/widespread to use "parameterize" (one extra "e") as synonymous with "parametrize"? I never encountered the former, even though it would make sense as it all comes from "parameter". Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 13:15, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
The Hilbert problems page is seeing some development, which is only right and proper. It is also raising numerous issues, in respect of what a 'solved' problem is. This is an opportunity, to do better than other Web treatments (few of the historians really have all the background to write with authority on all 23). The words 'worms', 'can' and 'of' come to mind.
I wonder whether the laudable effort to get a table summary of it all on the page hasn't had its day. It is hard to write enough in a table entry, since some of the problems have several 'ply' in them. I also think that where [[Hilbert's n-th problem]] is now a redirect, we really need to have the buffer of a separate page. For example, Hilbert's fifth problem used to redirect to Lie group, but it seems clearer not to have arguments about what a Lie group is, and what the Fifth Problem was, on the same page.
Please come and help. This page missed Featured Article status over the summer, but has already been much expanded. Charles Matthews 09:49, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
See talk:rotation#Request for comment. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 00:58, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
If anyone's feeling energetic, I started an article on Proofs of quadratic reciprocity. Sadly, it was a bigger job than I foresaw, and I've had enough for now. It needs several things done to it; see Talk:Proofs of quadratic reciprocity for my opinion on this. Thanks! I should go back to writing blahtex and existing in the real world now... Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 03:11, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 October 30 - the classification of academics needs a big clean-up. Please come and vote. Charles Matthews 11:56, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the automation makes it difficult to manually add articles such as this to the current activity list. Uncle G 00:53, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
See the talk page. Has anyone else heard of this, outside of MathWorld? Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:14, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
The new article Function Iteration has the general smell of being original research. It doesn't look wrong, it just looks home-grown. Anyone care to do something about that? AfD maybe? linas 01:26, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive O#Frustration with make technical articles accessible policy
Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 18:55, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I want there to be either a list of categories or a category of categories here. The more I think about it, the more I think it should be a list, not a category. One reason is that some categories probably don't deserve their own articles. Another is that it might be neat if we could put the categories in a table and like list their properties (cartesian closed, concrete, abelian, monoidal, etc). But then again, I've never liked (wp organizational) categories. Anyway, I started a list, which is basically just me adding a whole bunch of categories to the short list that was already at category (mathematics), in my user space because I wasn't sure if it should be an article. Have a look? - Lethe | Talk 06:10, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
I really like my table, but I'm afraid it's way too wide for most people's monitors... - Lethe | Talk 20:43, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
It looks like vector (spatial) has been used in some contexts where coordinate vector or vector would have been more appropriate. I started to go through and fix things until I realized there must be at least a few hundred pages to check that link to vector (spatial). My understanding is that spatial vectors (per their article) only refer to vectors in dimensions at most 3. This would make such links to vector (spatial) inappropriate when considering vectors in higher (or arbitrary) dimensions. How should we proceed to address this problem? - Gauge 07:14, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
A related note: I suggest that for clarity we rename Vector (spatial) to Vectors in three dimensions.-- Patrick 11:00, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not even sure I like the existence of this article in the first place. Is there really so much to be said about vectors in R3 that wouldn't fit in an examples section of vector space that these vectors need their own article? Remember that we're an encyclopedia, not a textbook. - Lethe | Talk 00:28, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Wikisource is currently contemplating deleting all mathematical and astronomical tables (including expansions of transcendental numbers, tables of logarithms, ephemerides, and so forth) and all source code. See Wikisource talk:What Wikisource includes for the discussion of this. Uncle G 15:49, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
I got confused the other day when I saw unitary in the context of a C*-algebra. Eventually I figured out that it means "having multiplicative identity", and I changed it to unital. I now see that some authors do use unitary in this sense (Hungerford), though it isn't mentioned in our page on unitary. I'm going to add a mention there, but I kind of also want to change all instances I come across to unital, which is less ambiguous. How do you feel about the word unitary to mean having identity in an algebra, or over a ring with identity for a module? - Lethe | Talk 16:01, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
One person uses multiple account to change the spelling of math articles one way or another. I reverted whatever I saw so far (that does classify as vandalism I would say, as that person was warned half a day before to not do that). I guess we need to take a close look at the recent changes to math articles from the list of mathematical topics to watch for more. Note that the person in question makes sure that the user page and talk page are blue, I guess to mislead people. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 07:03, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Is it really a problem? Sure, changing "provably" to "probably" is probably (provably?) uncool, but if someone wants to waste their time changing "sanitise" to "sanitize" or the other way, I say let 'em waste their time. It's better than real vandalism. Don't we have better things to do? (On the other hand, I would of course object to such spelling changes on articles like George Bush or Vegemite). Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 13:06, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Hi y'all,
There's been an idea floating around for a while now that would of interest to all frequent mathematics article editors. I can't remember who originally thought of it. I'm wondering if there's anyone out there with time + skill + motivation to actually make it happen.
Wouldn't it be lovely if we could write our equations with $ or $$ signs instead of bulky <math> tags, just like in TeX. Every now and then this gets proposed as a change to the wikisource markup, but I tell you, it ain't gonna happen that way, because it's just too big a change. I think the main objection is that it would weird out too many non-math people out if they got funny TeX errors every time they tried to use ordinary $ signs. Fair enough.
But there's another way to do this which might satisfy everybody. What we need is some kind of javascript thing which automatically and transparently translates between $ and <math> tags on the way in and out of the edit box (and presumably translates $ signs in the wikisource to something sensible like "\$"). This proposal would have no effect whatsoever on the database or the mediawiki software; it would stay recorded as <math> in the database. From what I understand, we have available some mechanism for personalised javascript (e.g. via monobook.js), which presumably could override the default behaviour when you load a page for editing or save an edited page. Then all that would be required is that a user copies the script to their own monobook.js, and they would be able to work with $ signs -- no thought required. Anyone who isn't interested doesn't have to use it.
Now, I'm pretty clueless when it comes to javascript, and I don't know how monobook.js works, and I don't have time to research it now. I've been led to believe, through some conversations I had a while back, that such a thing was technically feasible. Does anyone have any comments on feasibility? Does anyone here know enough to sit down and write the thing? Am I making any sense at all? Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 01:34, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't see any advantage whatsoever in using $ and $$ instead of "bulky" <math> tags. The only thing I used to hate about <math> is that they are a pain to type, but right about the edit box you have the buttonbar with the math tags in. Click on that, and if you hit any keystroke that silly text "Insert formula here" will disappear, and you are ready to go.
Another thing. I don't think it is a good idea to write a Wikipedia article as if it is a LaTeX document. This may result in too many inline PNG formulas. And no, MathML is not just behind the hill, coming any day or two. :) Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 16:48, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Expert fact-checking and other assistance requested at Inductive dimension. -- Trovatore 07:25, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Someone has proposed here that Category:Dimension be renamed to Category:Dimensions. Personally I disagree (though I'm open to argument). Please contribute (whether you agree with me or not). One possibility is that overly disparate concepts are being muddled together in this category. -- Trovatore 19:00, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Well known to whom? This seems a little silly. Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 03:18, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this, but I was wondering if there were any policies concerning examples on math pages? I dunno, but it seems that it might be useful if pages had some example problems (like if the Green's theorem page had an sample problem to find the area of a planar region, or whatever)... Thanks :-)-- yoshi 00:59, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
YES ABSOLUTELY DO EXAMPLES. I would err more than most to the side of providing examples. (If I have the time, that is.) As long as they don't distract from the main discussion. Dmharvey 02:33, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Please consider posting an example of obtaining and using a Hessian matrix to find the maxima of a likelihood function such as a multinomial function. Alternatively, please consider posting a reference or two where such information can be found. Thank you. {{ Mark W. Miller 20:25, 23 November 2005 (UTC)}}
Thanks also to the individual who alerted me to how to sign my notes. -- Mark W. Miller 20:37, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Hessian matrix | diagonal form | signature | kind of extremum |
---|---|---|---|
positive definite | minimum | ||
negative definite | maximum | ||
indefinite | saddle point |
Your participation is appreciated... --- Charles Stewart 20:10, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
The Wikipedia:Reference desk was not too long ago split into subjects. Currently, there is a Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science subsection which is where math questions should go. It seems to me that math questions are a pretty small fraction of the posts there, and most go unanswered (unless they're high school math questions). How would you feel about having a separate place for math questions? I like to ask questions, and I like to answer questions, so I would like it. - lethe talk 20:25, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I've enjoyed editing WP so much that I've decided that it might be a good idea to organize my original-research thoughts, half-baked ideas, and full-fledged research results using a wiki, as opposed to trying to maintain a collection of half-finished LyX (TeX) documents (which is what I currently do, along with deep piles of paper). I was about to install my own private copy of the mediawiki software on my server when it occurred to me that perhaps I should enquire here first... Is there some public place where this could be done? I gather planetmath might be one-such, but I rather like the mediawiki interfaces. I don't know if wikibooks allow original resarch; also, as I want to publish my personal notes, I want to exert considerable editorial control (i.e. deny write access by default, grant write access only to friends).
The reason I find this interesting is the hyperlinking. Writing traditional, "flat", "linear" mathematics papers requires a review of basic concepts and notions early in the paper. Using a wiki allows these steps to be skipped, in favor of links. It also allows hyperconnections between related concepts: as sometimes, the difficulty of writing a math paper is figuring out how to lay out the ideas in linear order. So I think that playing with a wiki for pure research and pseudo (self-)publication might be a worthwhile experiment. But where shall I experiment? linas 17:37, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Hey everyone. I'm sure you've all seen talk pages featuring rather long-winded conversations like Talk:Mathematical_analysis (and archives), Talk:Proof_that_0.999..._equals_1, Talk:Four_color_theorem/archive2.... Typically an anon shows up and starts saying -- how to put this diplomatically? -- controversial things. Then the regulars here leap to the defence of rational thought. My question is: what motivates these people? What makes them tick? Why do they bother? Do they really think they're correct? Or are they just having fun? Dmharvey 20:19, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Interesting thoughts guys. Thanks. Dmharvey 01:06, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
User:CarlHewitt has created a new category, Category:Mathematical model, which he's been populating with theories, not models. I've put it on CfD. Opinions solicited (as always, whether they agree with mine or not). -- Trovatore 00:42, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Today I discovered the thing called Google books. I had a question about harmonic functions, and I found excellent excerpts from books where this topic is covered. This tool would be very helpful for editors who are too lazy to use the library, and could also be used in checking the information and adding references to existing articles. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk)
Background: Due to the influence of Soare, in recent years it has been fashionable to use the term "computability theory" for what used to be called recursion theory. Very recently on WP, Category:Computability was renamed to Category:Theory of computation, where some of the articles are a good fit, but by no means all of them. Also the computability theory article underwent a substantial rewrite, focusing almost entirely on the aspects of interest to computer scientists rather than mathematical logicians.
This left a big void, as recursion theory or computability theory (as you prefer) is standardly considered one of the four branches of mathematical logic (the other three being set theory, model theory, and proof theory). So I created Category:Recursion theory and a stub article at recursion theory.
What needs to happen now:
See the discussion at Talk:Computability theory (computation). -- Trovatore 20:31, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Does this look a bit odd to anyone else? Dmharvey 01:37, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
See Talk:Model (abstract)#Dispute and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Carl Hewitt. — R. Koot 16:38, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I can't help noting that User:CSTAR has abandoned Wikipedia, or has gone into hiding, or is at least taking a wikivacation. It is hard for me not to conclude that this RfC and some of the personal attacks it engendered was the proverbial straw. I enjoyed CSTAR's company, ad saw him as a good, highly qualified editor working in the general area of operator algebras and (surprise) C*-algebras. Unfortunately, this meant that he was often involved in disputes fending off the latest cranky quantum mechanics edit, and I suspect this sapped a lot of his energy. I am not happy about his departure, as he was a valuable and trusted editor. linas 22:05, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Seriously, though, I think Addition needs a content shuffle. Please drop by Talk:Addition#Split.3F. Melchoir 06:00, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics. No posts yet. - lethe talk 06:43, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Ghirlandajo, I noticed you moved Dimitri Egorov to Dmitry Yegorov. I debated with myself for a while as to how exactly I should name the article, given that there are alternate spellings. Actually I was only considering the difference between Dimitri and Dmitri, but clearly his family name can be spelled differently too. In the end, I chose Dimitri Egorov because that's the spelling given on The Mathematics Genealogy Project. Since you're living in Russia, I obviously bow to your knowledge on this subject, but I'm wondering if there is a standard way of spelling Russian names such as this? Forgive my Canadian ignorance on the subject - I'm hoping to maybe add some more stubs of Russian mathematicians in the future, and it would be great if I knew how to do it properly to begin with. Cheers! -- PeruvianLlama( spit) 20:24, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
I was told this project is "the best WikiProject on Wikipedia", so I am hoping someone can help. I would like to equivalently represent the use of the phrase "The page is intentionally left blank" on blank pages. The phrase is a self-refuting meta-reference, in that it falsifies itself by its very existence on the page in question. I made this same request at the reference desk, but only got limited answers. One person suggested using Gödel numbering, while another said:
But I am at a loss as to how to proceed from here. I will be submitting this article to WP:FAC soon, and would really like to have a paragraph concerning specifically this. Thanks! — BRIAN 0918 • 2005-12-5 02:09
I saw that Category:Differential equations is not in Category:Equations. However, both categories are subcategories of Category:Mathematics, so if I'd place Category:Differential equations in Category:Equations then I'd violate the guideline of not including a category A in both another category B and an ancestor of B. Any ideas on how to proceed? -- Jitse Niesen ( talk) 10:35, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I have proposed the re-creation of Category:Mathematical model. Please discuss in Talk:Mathematical model. Thanks,-- Carl Hewitt 19:16, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi everybody! If you're not already aware of the mess attached to the talk page of Proof that 0.999... equals 1, consider yourself lucky. I'm here to solicit comments on my proposal to rewrite that page and confront all the popular misconceptions. Please see Talk:Proof that 0.999... equals 1#If I may speak to the article itself.... Thanks, Melchoir 21:25, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
FWIW, Don't under-estimate infinite-digit sequences. The z-transform of the sequence of digits in the ( p-adic) expansion of a real number is a Cantor space, and so, in this very certain sense, there are topologies of the real number line where 0.999... is inequivalent to 1.000... Its a subtle point, and it seems to have something to do with "why there are fractals", which are crawling with these kinds of topological inequivalences. There are topologies that naively seem to be isomorphic to the real numbers, but on closer examination are not. The expansion in terms of digits is one of them. So maybe the article isn't very good, but the topic merits a deeper examination, since its a truism often taught in grade/high school, and has difficult subtleties associated with it. linas 07:22, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Just a note that Arabic numerals has been listed at WP:RFC under mathematics regarding a heated dispute over numerous content changes. Peyna 16:26, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
For those who may not know, CSTAR (a well respected math and physics editor) has left Wikipedia, perhaps for good, primarily because of the Carl Hewitt affair. Paul August ☎ 20:39, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Everybody here please have a look at my MetaWiki proposition for the creation of wikiscience, a technical wiki-based encyclopedia that will allow for ORIGINAL contributions from users plus the most up-to-date research from professionals (as well as being a math and science encyclopedia). Wikipedia as it stands is far from this, as well as other sites such as "Mathworld". Math and science is simply too technical and evolving of a subject to be thrown about with the rest of wikipedia articles. Math and science, given its special nature of presentation and subject, needs to be part of the wikipedia whole, yet seperate and organized (I think we all agree). I believe that the wikimedia foundation has the momentum and the user base to make this extroadinary contribution to the math and science community, but I need supporters before wikimedia makes this happen.
If you are interested in making this happen please visit the link and show your support. Also, if you want more detail of my idea, or have any suggestions or criticisms please visit WikiScience Details! Thanks! -- B21.12.52.123 12:55, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm against it. I think it will divide the efforts of editors, with the most technically inclided editors eschewing wikipedia general. I don't think there should be a limit on how technical articles in wikipedia get (Wikipedia wants to be the sum total of human knowledge). To the critics who complain when they come to an article that's too technical, well, we can make each article as approachable as possible, but in many cases that will still be entirely incomprehensible to most people. C'est la vie. - lethe talk 22:03, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
What do you mean by: "Math and science is simply to technical and evolving of a subject to be thrown about with the rest of wikipedia articles. Math and science, given its special nature of presentation and subject, needs to be … separate …". Are you saying that the math and science content should be moved from Wikipedia to Wikiscience? Paul August ☎ 22:54, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
-- B21.12.52.123 11:02, 14 December 2005 (UTC)===Wikipedia vs Wikiscience===
First off, I am not an annonymous user. I chose this name arbitrarily when I was just starting to contribute to wikipedia articles. If this name bothers any of you I guess I can change to a "normal" name. My name is Parker W. and I am an ex-math major from the University of Oklahoma. I am a real person lol...later on if this gets more support I will start a mailing group so people can contact me personally.
Charles Matthews: Wikipedia as it stands is FAR from any serious math resource. The trial of Michael Jackson is like 10 times longer and more complex than the article on E. Given E is one of the most beautiful and important numbers in math, this is a travesty or at least an embarrasment to wikipedia's scope in math.
Paul August and Oleg: As I said before "...that is, wikipedia (like any other encyclopedia) should still have relatively simply worded and accessable concepts in math and science, but for more in-depth and up-to-date modern (and original research from users) research, plus more in depth on the "simple" concepts, wikiscience would be the home. Does this divide contributers? Not if the technicality of the articles on wikipedia is kept to a minimum (like other paperbased encyclopedias). In fact, I would say that what is one wikipedia right now suffices for this pupose, so no extra work would need to be done in wikipedia"
That is, WikiScience is in my mind a companion to Wikipedia. As any encyclopedia, Wikipedia will have entries on math and science, moving them or getting rid of all the math and science articles in wikipedia would be absurd. However, for the lastest "peer-reviewed" (at least compared to wikipedia) research, both amateur and professional, for indepth technical articles suitable to those in the math and science fields, and for proper organization and stucture that is helpful to those seeking mathematical and scientific information, WikiScience will serve that function.
C'est la vie remarked that "wikipedia wants to be the sum total of human knowledge". This is not correct. Wikipedia, however revolutionary and huge it my be, is still an encyclopedia and has many guidelines as to what shouldn't be in the encyclopedia such as definitions of words, news stories and the like. This is why wikitionary, wikinews were created, respectively. The content matter of these sister projects is just to different to be mixed in with what is suppost to be an encyclopedia.
As is with what I proposed to be put in wikiscience. But just because wikinews and wiktionary were created, doesnt mean that all articles defining words and all articles reffering to current events were removed! These articles in math and science which are "different" are what I call technical articles.
"Techical vs "non-technical" math and science articles
Technical articles and qualitatively and quantitively different from non-technical articles, as I shall dub them, which are currently in wikipedia.
The key difference is rigor. Going back to my example of the Michael Jackson trial (no offence to MJ:)), a minor detail such as, Mr. Mesereau's shows were black at the trial would have no effect on the overall information of the article. If that were in-fact, not true, than the article would not be compromised.
With a techical article it WOULD be compromised if a small detail was wrong, unfounded, or erronious. The ENTIRE article would be compromised in the eyes of any serious student/enthusiast or researcher. This is why we have CRC handbooks, Mathematical encyclopedias, or resources such as the arxiv. Now this does not mean that any of the articles in math and science here are "wrong" or "unfounded" or inadequate, it just means that they serve a different purpose from technical articals. This is that of exposition. Technical articles are not generally expository (all though than can be), are more in-depth, and contain more "sensitive" topics (topics that the reader my require a corresponding source or cite, as well as a cite of proof). One is not "better" than the other, they are just serving different needs. Wikipedia currenty does not meet the latter's needs.
What is the crucial difference then that wikipedia can't facilitate? This is that of critical review. Critical review is the lifeblood of technical articles. I will wait and give my list of possible implementations of critical review just in case you guys want to respond to anything I said of have criticisms or concerns of what I just posted.
-- B21.12.52.123 05:04, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
IN SUMMERY: WikiScience is to Wikipedia as The CRC Handbook plus Mathword plus summeries of discoveries in the latest math and science journals, plus orginal contributions from users and professionals is to Encyclopedia Brittanica. Neither one is "better" they are just different. Wikipedia will still have math and science articles just as Brittanica does.
Regardless of the current quality of math wikipedia, we aim to subsume EB, CRC Handbook (isn't that just a table of data? That actually, we will not subsume), mathworld, EDM2, Soviet encyclopedia, and others. - lethe talk 10:50, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
-- Hypergeometric2F1[a,b,c,x] 11:29, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I have joined the Wikipedia:Project Mathematics and have introduced myself on the participants page. I will keep campaigning for this idea, but in the meantime I will contribute what I can and see what happens. -- B21.12.52.123 06:58, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I have also created a new nickname to assuade confusion -- Hypergeometric2F1[a,b,c,x] 11:18, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Above, Hypergeometric2F1[a,b,c,x] wrote that
Well, I counted all the mathematics and mathematician articles which have either a {{ attention}} or {{ cleanup}} or {{ expert}} template either in the article or on its talk page. I found 98 of those. Jitse's tool states that there are 33 more at Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Mathematics (and thre could be an overlap with the first 98). All in all, we get 131 pages needing attention of a total of 11000-11713 articles, which is 1.19%, a far cry from 20%. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 22:14, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
If you use Yahoo to find references to superlogarithm you will discover some interesting clones of Wikipedia pages. The term superlogarithm appeared on a past version of the tetration page, but now appears almost nowhere else on the net. Now the term superlogarithm appears on both the Free WebCam Tetration and Sex Pictures Logarithm pages of a rather unusual Wikipedia clone at newpenisenlargement.com. Daniel Geisler
I would dearly love to rewrite the following:
I find it almost unreadable, because of the insistence on quotient notation. I would prefer subscripts:
From my background, this is merely a matter of different conventions. Yet I get the feeling that some people feel uncomfortable with the subscript notation and habitually use quotient notation. What's up with that? -- KSmrq T 11:54, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies. From my reading of the conventions talk page, it appears that Zn has three possible interpretations: (1) the additive group of integers modulo n, (2) the ring of integers modulo n, and (3) the p-adic numbers with p = n. I take it that for n prime, we would use a different notation if we mean the Galois field. Are there any other ambiguities I should be aware of? And do the interpretations differ more by area of mathematics, or area of the globe?
One reason I ask is because the article with the opaque quotient notation was talking about algebraic topology groups (no cohomology rings), where only interpretation (1) would make sense (so far as I know), yet quotients were used anyway. (Furthermore, the sentence itself tells us we're talking about groups.) So I'm trying to get a better understanding, not of just what people do, but why.
I understand it can be hard to explain choices; for example, I know for me there are contexts in which I would always use Cn, and others in which I would never do so, but use Zn instead. Still, any further insights would be appreciated. -- KSmrq T 02:02, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Today I happened across an old conversaion I had with Oleg a few months ago on Talk:Transcendental number about templates in the math project (the discussion also arrived here; see archive). We all pretty easily voted to delete them: Template:change, Template:structure, Template:space, and Template:quantity. I'm a mild inclusionist and was a little nervous about so much deletion, but I was assuaged when I saw Template:Mathematics-footer. My main concern was lack of consistency across other technical subjects (confer Template:Natural sciences-footer and Template:Physics-footer, for example), and this one addresses that fine. Today, upon tripping on the old discussion, I noticed that while we do have this template, it's pretty much unused.
So how do we feel about these templates these days? Are they useful as a navigational tool? Is it worth having this one for the sake of consistency? I'm somewhat inclined to add the footer to all the articles mentioned within. Here it is, for reference. - lethe talk 16:12, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
There has been some discussion about renaming the pages linked to from the following template:
Part of a series on | ||
Mathematics | ||
---|---|---|
|
||
Mathematics Portal | ||
The current proposal is as follows:
Older discussion on this topic may be found at Talk:List of lists of mathematical topics#Renaming this page.
Comments? Objections? If you agree, please state so. -- Fropuff 03:19, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:Pages needing attention/Mathematics#Listing the pages needing attention for some discussion. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 05:30, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I turn your attention to this article by Nature and Wikipedia's response. Karol 06:04, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I just wanted to say I enjoy this resource and find it useful. I am not a mathematician or a statistician, although I use both a fair bit in my work. I learned a great deal from this very forum over a few days just last month. Wikipedia will only improve with time. Comparing Wikipedia with Encyclopedia Britannica at this point hardly seems fair. Wikipedia has been around for, what, 5 years. Encyclopedia Britannica has been around “forever”. If Wikipedia compares favorably with Encyclopedia Britannica already in at least some regards imagine what Wikipedia might be like 20 years from now.
I also think that technical articles are great. Personally I would prefer that more of them have examples and references. But this forum and the math help desk have been helpful to me in climbing the learning curve on technical issues. Some things I’ve learned here I tried off-and-on unsuccessfully to learn elsewhere on the internet over the course of several years.
As for the reliability of Wikipedia, perfect reliability is, in a Popperian sense, perhaps an unattainable ideal in that all of science is constantly being revised. Although, examples and references are one way for the reader to verify factual information and the state of the art as described in Wikipedia articles. As such, examples and references act, to an extent, like peer review.
I guess my point is that people will find these articles, will use these articles, and will be glad you wrote them, regardless of how specific or technical those articles may be… …particularly if those articles contain examples and references and are aimed at people who don’t know as much as you do about the subject.
I didn’t know the most appropriate place to put my comments so I stuck them here. Sorry if these comments are out of place. Mark W. Miller 06:41, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I have created a discussion page for the implementation of a wiki, Wikipolis, allowing for dynamic collaborations, original research, and some form of peer-review. I invite you all to add your ideas!-- Hypergeometric2F1[a,b,c,x] 10:01, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Somer pseudoprime is a puzzling new page, and hard to verify through Google. Charles Matthews 22:11, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Since the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences reference is only from 2003, I see no good reason to have this hanging around. Charles Matthews 16:17, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Somewhere above, in the discussion about wikiscience, a claim was made that around 20% of math articles need attention of an expert. Well, the number is just a fraction of that, for the moment 1.54%, meaning 169 articles, but that's still a big number. On Fropuff's suggestion, I wrote a script which will daily add to Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Mathematics math pages having various attention templates, like {{ cleanup}}, {{ expert}} etc. So, I'd just like the community to be aware of that page (most of us are, I think), and visit it from time to time. :) Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 02:37, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually, we may need those stubs. My feeling is that we have plenty of graduate students and other useful people editing anonymously, who currently are not able to start articles. We should aim to add 'good stubs' on many topics. Charles Matthews 22:07, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Merry Christmas, all! (... with the understanding that paganism is older than Christianity, either way, cheeriest of holidays!) linas 02:41, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
I wrote the article A linear functional which is not continuous only to immediately discover on its talk page a suggestion to move it to Non-continuous linear functional (darn, everybody should be drunk and sleeping this post-Christmas morning, not checking the recent changes). What do people think (if it matters at all)? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 17:36, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
I like the first name. Compare with stuff like An infinitely differentiable function that is not analytic. Also, is "non-continuous" a word? Shouldn't that be "discontinuous"? - lethe talk 03:02, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi there :) - the article was moved to A linear map which is not continuous - is that what people have decided on? Right now it looks like no consensus, but I thought I'd just give everyone a buzz... WhiteNight T | @ | C 23:28, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
I moved the article A linear functional which is not continuous to discontinuous linear map which seems to address all concerns on this page. I made a bunch of other alternative titles redirect to it. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 19:57, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
IP, 69.22.98.162 ( contributions) has been making edits to Albert Einstein, Henri Poincaré and David Hilbert, essentially questioning the originality of Einstein's theory of special relativity, giving as a source this: [8] (see Talk:Albert_Einstein#His Theory and Talk:Albert_Einstein#Nobel prise edit), all of which I think have been reverted (by me and others). I don't really know much about the history of the development of relativity, (beyond what little I've read on Wikipedia), if anyone can shed any useful light on this, your help would be welcome. Paul August ☎ 23:01, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Now is your chance to answer the question: Should Wikipedia have redirects for OEIS titles? ☺ Uncle G 01:58, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Currently there's an inconsistent usage among various articles that should probably be cleared up. Partial function claims that, given a partial function f:X→Y, its domain is X. I think the more standard usage is that the domain of f is the subset of X on which f is defined; this is the usage assumed in Recursively enumerable set and Uniformization (set theory). I don't know a name for X, though, given this convention. In any case we should standardize on one convention. My strong preference is for the second; I don't think I've seen the first convention used anywhere but WP. -- Trovatore 19:32, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
This site uses "domain" for X and "exact-domain" for f-1(Y). When working In the category of sets and partial functions (often called PfN), X would be called the domain of f (at least as a morphism). Paul August ☎ 16:22, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
OK, in accordance with the above discussion, I've edited Partial function and Domain (function) to indicate the existence of both usages. I've edited Recursively enumerable set and Uniformization (set theory) to specify which sense of the term is in use. But there are bunches more articles that link to Partial function and/or Domain (function); I'm not likely to get around to checking them individually any time soon. -- Trovatore 23:37, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
JA: Seems like "domain" is standard for the designated set, after all, what if it's just a relation L c X x Y ? And I think that "domain of definition" is used for the other thing by many folks in computing contexts, for example, Arbib et al. Jon Awbrey 07:40, 14 January 2006 (UTC)