Hi all. I saw there wasn't any article on parametric coords. I am willing to create one, if needed. However, since it might be the same thing as curvilinear coordinates, I've just put in a redirect for now. I've asked the question on Talk:Curvilinear coordinates, but so far nobody can tell me if they are identical, or just related, topics. Please take a look and post your conclusions at that talk page. StuRat 21:24, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Could someone take a look at Direct logic? I see some potential problems with this, given who the author is. — Ruud 16:01, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Fresh out of his most recent 48 hours block, WAREL/DYLAN has been engaging in edit wars at field (mathematics) and division ring, moving, incorrectly, interwiki links from the former to the latter, see WAREL's contribs and DYLAN's contribs.
I wrote a petition on the top of his talk page asking him to stop revert wars, as this has been going for too long. If you are familiar with WAREL's edit warrior activity, and think that it's a bad thing, you may help by signing the petition. I doubt WAREL/DYLAN will learn anything from it, but it may give more legitimacy to future attempts at blocking him for disruption. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 17:46, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
While I am not sure on what to do about the current dispute at field (mathematics), which is centered on the use of "field" at the Japanese Wikipedia, DYLAN LENNON now claims that a finite division ring is not the same as a finite field, and removed the interwiki link from our "finite field" to the Japanese "finite division ring". Comments welcome at talk:finite field. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 18:57, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I have frequently had an unpleasant experience when looking up mathematical terms in Wpedia. I go to the article I want and, reading the definition of the term, I encounter another term I don't understand. If there is a link connected to the term I open a new tab to find the definition of the second term. In reading the second definition I find the need to look up a third, then a forth, fifth, sixth. I am soon swamped by "hanging" definitions. But, not infrequently, a term is used without any attempt to define it. Do mathematicians write these articles only to communicate with other mathematicians? Surely an encyclopedia is meant to educate people about things they don't already know. Too Old 00:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
We don't write our articles solely for mathematicians; we endeavor to make them as readable as possible. Accessibility is definitely a consideration for us. But only one of many, so sometimes an article is not as accessible as we might like. If you think the articles need help, then you know what to do. This is a wiki, be bold, edit. Complaining about the quality of some difficult work done for free by volunteers in their spare time is not going to win you any friends. - lethe talk + 01:57, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I think Too Old has a valid criticism, frequently repeated. The coverage of mathematics is often at too high a level, organisation of articles is confusing, core topics like Algebra are woefully inadaquate. Yes we have done good work todate, our coverage is extensive, but there is still a long way to go.
I propose creating Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Essential articles where we can identify which are the most important mathematics articles, assess then for quality and also mathematical level required. An example we could follow is Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer and video games/Essential articles which nicely organises that fields core material. This would also fit in with the Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project discussed above.
Is anyone interested in helping on this? -- Salix alba ( talk) 23:09, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, the RfC and all our pleas seem to have no effect on his behavior. I blocked both accounts indefinitely, and wrote a note at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Indef block of WAREL/DYLAN LENNON.
This will generate serious questioning, as we are talking about an indefinite block, no less, so your comments there are appreciated, to make the case that this is a community-backed decision. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 17:49, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Should formal Laurent series redirect to Laurent series (as it currently does) or to formal power series (my preference)? Dmharvey 18:20, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I've been trying out the new cite.php tool, i.e. with the <ref> and </references> tags. See for example quasi-finite field. But it looks a bit silly there, because I have two different page numbers for the same book. Does anyone know a slicker way to handle this? Dmharvey 18:22, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I have recently created some material in the approximation theory page, relating to polynomial approximations to special functions. This is related to function approximation, Chebyshev polynomials, and polynomial interpolation, but in ways that I'm not clear about. I'm not an expert in the taxonomy of this area of mathematics, only in the specific things about which I wrote. In particular, I know that there is a field of interpolating polynomials through given data points, and that Chebyshev polynomials (and their roots) are involved in this. I can't believe that "approximation theory" is just about Remes' algorithm or use of Fourier/Chebyshev analysis to make optimal polynomials. So this whole area may be somewhat messed up, and my material might be in the wrong place. Would someone who knows his/her way around in this area be willing to take a look and move things around?
William Ackerman 00:40, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
User:BenCawaling has added apparently identical copies of a 2,500 word essay titled "About the incomplete totality of the infinite set of prime numbers" to the following talk pages:
I don't think that Wikipedia is the right place for this diatribe, and we certainly don't need multiple copies of it - but as it's all on talk pages, I don't know what policy or guideline could be quoted in support of removing it. Does anyone have an opinion on what should be done about this (if anything) ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gandalf61 ( talk • contribs) 11:41, April 8, 2006
I have moved this essay to User:BenCawaling/Essay and replaced each copy on an article talk page with a link to its new location. Gandalf61 08:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
This is getting interesting: two socks at the same time: [1] [2]. And an anonymous edit: [3]. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 19:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I banned 64.213.188.94 ( talk · contribs) indefinitely. - lethe talk + 22:33, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
At Talk: Length of an arc I added a comment arguing that the title ought to be Length of a curve (presently a redirect to Length of an arc). Please discuss there if you care (one way or another). Lambiam Talk 03:18, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
Here is the {{ numbers}} template. Today is the second instance when somebody felt templated to insert it in all the articles linked in there (first time was a while ago). I feel this is the case when being in Category:Numbers is enough for these articles, and the gain given by this template in all articles is not offset by the huge size of the template and the distraction it causes on the page. Comments? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 04:01, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm a bit miffed that my original post on this topic seems to have been blown by without comment. I'm not an expert and I really don't know the answer.
Please see Jim Loy's angle trisection page. He shows a few methods using forbidden tools; I call your attention to the so-called tomahawk and to the movable, marked carpenter's square. Is the use of these tools not equivalent to neusis? John Reid 01:57, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
(rolling eyes) Oh, that I should have asked mathematicians for opinions! "What color is that tree?" "It might appear to be some shade of green on the side that was visible at the time of obseveration." ;-) It really would be informative to hear a number of expert users say "I don't know."
It's okay. For the immediate, ugly, practical purpose of editing the project, it's enough that I think both are cases of neusis, Pmanderson suspects it, and nobody yet is ready to say they're not. That's enough information for me to proceed with my rounds. If an expert has more information later, well, we'll change it. Thank you. John Reid 18:22, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Before I continue the edit war which has developed between "Jagged 85" and myself (with some others), I would like to bring the case to our community. Jagged 85 has been adding (what I consider) irrelevant material to several articles in the "Cardinal numbers" category (and I think elsewhere as well). I removed it once. Now he has put it back. This inspite of the fact that there is an already existing article on Indian mathematics to which he has been adding. See Talk:Cardinal number for more information. In my opinion, he is just cluttering up these articles and making them hard to read. There are no mathematical theorems or hard facts in his writing, just attempts to grab credit for the Jaina. JRSpriggs 03:20, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Please look at:
I've deleted the "stub" notice from a few dozen of these. Please help. Click on one. If it's too long to be called a "stub", deleted the {{algebra-stub}} notice. Start at the bottom, since I started from the top, so the ones NOW near the top have been dealt with. Some are AMAZINGLY long articles, and are called "stubs". Others are fairly short and could use more material but are clearly too long to be called stubs.
Then we can go on to "geometry-stub", etc., etc., etc., etc.......... Michael Hardy 03:09, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Debate is getting a bit heated at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Radical integer and Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Radical integer, with one contributor arguing that it's not within our purview as editors, even if experts, to judge the reliability of anything written in Weisstein's encyclopedia, unless some other source directly contradicts it.
That idea strikes me as a recipe for disaster. Weisstein's work has so much overlap with our project, and is so full of idiosyncracies, that we have to view with caution any article on which he's the only source. If our hands are tied on this, the quality of WP math articles is at risk. Please come and state your views. -- Trovatore 21:34, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Has a trivial subject and I could not find any google hits. Should it stay? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 04:10, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
I've been working on the matrix group page and need some help with the content. In particular I'm trying to summarize the types of classical groups but don't have the necessary background to do so. Some of the changes involve generalizing the definitions on other pages (such as unitary group) to arbitrary fields as well as possibly adding some pages (such as projective special orthogonal group).
I've put a summary of the changes I think would be helpful on Talk:Matrix_group. TooMuchMath 05:00, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Update: The page is starting to come along, however we now have some redlinks if anyone wants to take a shot at them:
TooMuchMath 17:39, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Well as you can see the links are no longer red and the classical groups portion of the page is looking pretty good. More contributions are welcome, of course! TooMuchMath 22:52, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Since we seem to be discussing references/sourcing so much recently.... can I ask what is the deal with references for all of our articles on more basic topics? For example, none of the following articles have any book/journal references: irreducible polynomial, normal subgroup, null space, vector space, affine scheme, group (mathematics), symmetric group, function composition. And there are plenty more, they're very easy to find. For such articles, sourcing would have two primary purposes: (1) historical information about where the concept first appeared, possibly in nascent form (this is hard because it involves genuine historical research), and (2) pedagogical, i.e. "where you can learn more about this idea". The second one is obviously problematic because in some cases there are many thousands of textbooks that cover the relevant material. On the other hand, sometimes I feel like there are some double standards going on in the background: for topics which all of us here know are important and standard, we don't require any sourcing, but things like "radical integer" make sparks fly.... Dmharvey 12:20, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
There are double standards and double standards; I think this double standard is absolutely rational and legitimate. I am unembarrassed to say I think we should have that double standard. Just the same, the point is well taken: While not as essential for topics we know about than those we don't, sourcing is still useful and the article isn't really complete until it's provided. -- Trovatore 19:34, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, sure, we should source things properly. If they aren't, then we shouldn't include it. On the other hand, we often give editors the benefit of the doubt. If there are no sources for something, then if the creator of the article is a known, respected contributor, not known for randomly inserting crazy crap into Wikipedia, then we give him/her time to find a source. I think it's perfectly fine to rely on the trust built among known contributors. In this case, it was a respected contributor Henrygb who had created the article, even giving a source. However, in this case, another respected contributor questioned the source, as upon investigation the source cited a mailing list which is not available for view and other searches through the usual methods, Google, MathSciNet, etc., were unable to find the term "radical integer". In this case, it's not applying a double standard to ask, "Should we allow this material?" It's natural and perfectly fine to engage in discussion, even amongst contributors who hold a great deal of trust for each other. Such discussion acts as a "reality check", making sure we don't get carried away and making sure we ultimately uphold the standards.
Even when the editor is an anon, we often give the benefit of the doubt, investigating how common the terminology is and whether the results are mentioned in some well-known resources. I'm even amazed at the lengths people sometimes take to investigate rather dubious-sounding claims, in the interest of completeness and fairness.
So I would say there is no double standard here. We often allow anyone to edit and insert material without citing, as if we didn't, we wouldn't gain a lot of content. On the other hand, to make sure we don't allow the crap to build up, we rely on trust of known contributors and also our expertise, e.g. "hey, this guy says some cubics can't be solved by radicals; that's not what I learned in undergrad algebra!" Eventually, though, we should be adding sources, and indeed some people are clearly going through articles and added citations where needed. So it's not accurate to say we don't require sources for some articles. -- C S (Talk) 20:18, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Copied from Talk:Mathematics -- Salix alba ( talk) 14:18, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
This seemed like the best place to get people's attention about the article PDE Surfaces, written by Zer0 cache. I suspect that it's promoting research, but I can't be sure. It would be appreciated if other editors can check this out. I've also left a small query at PDE surfaces talk page. MP (talk) 11:28, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
mathematics is curerntly going very well on Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive. Maybe you want to vote for it -- MarSch 18:13, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
There's an extremely heated debate going on the talk page for Serge Lang between two editors, User: Revolver and User: Pjacobi. The issue is whether an external link to an article on the AIDS wiki (which was written by Revolver) should be allowed. I've just made my thoughts known there, and I also noticed that an RFC had been filed, but no comments had been made here (which is requested on the RFC page). -- C S (Talk) 04:18, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
I nominated Theorem 1 for deletion. I tried using {{ prod}} first but its author disagreed. Comments welcome. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 03:55, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
There is an NPOV dispute at the above articles: we need expert advice from statistician(s), especially those familiar with spatial statistics.
Briefly: User:JanWMerks claims that geostatistics is a scientific fraud, and has repeatedly edited these related articles to reflect that POV. Myself, User:Antandrus, and others were trying to point out Wikipedia rules, such as WP:NPOV, WP:VERIFY, and WP:NOR. Much edit warring ensued.
Now, the dispute (at spatial dependence) is over whether the F-test is a valid statistical test for spatial dependence. Also: several references (at geostatistics and kriging) are being used to support the claim that kriging is invalid, and I don't have easy access to a good library to check these references.
I hope that someone is willing to research the claims of invalidity better than I can, or perhaps simply provide a third opinion about the dispute.
Please feel free to visit Talk:Geostatistics, Talk:Kriging, and Talk:Spatial dependence to help out. Thanks!
-- hike395 17:40, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
I wonder if these two Greek suffixes mean the same or almost the same thing. Then, the following redirects may make sense:
I stumbled into them at the Missing science project, and don't know what to do about them. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 18:55, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
This category called " Category:Continuum theory" is a subcategory of "Set theory" and of "General topology", but it contains no articles. Should it be deleted? How can I propose it for deletion? JRSpriggs 07:20, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
An editor insists on removing red links as "cleanup". I think the participants here realize the importance of red links to this project (and Wikipedia in general). I'm puzzled why anyone would insist on removing them, but this editor has been quite stubborn, insisting that the articles *must* be created before links to them can be included in this article. -- C S (Talk) 00:41, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
I've made some comment's at the user's talk page ( User talk:PHDrillSergeant); hopefully, this should be enough. -- C S (Talk) 01:01, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
A stock market "analyst" who sold a correspondence course on "cycle analysis". [9] This link includes a table of contents which I think makes clear how trivial Dewey's "system" is; please comment on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Edward R. Dewey. Septentrionalis 19:13, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
A newly created article Radical integer has been listed for deletion. Should it be kept or deleted? Note that the article resolves a long-standing redlink in Algebraic integer listed on Wikipedia:Missing_science_topics/Maths8. Weigh in. Lambiam Talk 17:50, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
Radical extension, extension by radicals, or (most common, I think) pure extension is standard, and radical number I think I've seen. Radical integer is logical and has a MathWorld article to go with it, which speaks in its favor. It seems to me that all of this should be discussed somewhere in an article on solvable extensions, but I can't find any such article. Should I write one? I don't want people deleting it if I do. Gene Ward Smith 21:25, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Oh, one more small point: What I said about "sourced only to MathWorld" is not strictly true; I'm including Weisstein's encyclopedia of math as part of MathWorld. With that addendum it's true. -- Trovatore 17:35, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Here's a sketch of an almost-proof. "Almost" because I'm left with a denominator of at most 2.
Let S be those numbers obtainable from the natural numbers by addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, positive integer roots. (I want to call this the maximal radical extension of Q, but I'm slightly concerned about roots of unity. Never mind.) Let R be the "radical integers", i.e those numbers obtainable from naturals by addition, subtraction, multiplication, and positive integer roots (but not allowing division). First I claim that any x in S is of the form y/d for some y in R and some integer d. This is done by induction on the structure of x. Clearly addition, subtraction, multiplication pose no problems. Integer roots also fine (i.e. ). Division is slightly more troublesome, you need some kind of "rationalising the denominator" trick.
So now suppose we have x = y/d as above, and suppose further that x is an algebraic integer; we want to prove that x is itself a radical integer. Let K = Q(y), and let O be the ring of integers of K, so x is in O. As Gene pointed out above, O has a finite Z-basis, and the basis elements are polynomials in y with coefficients in Q, so for a large enough integer m we find that mO consists entirely of radical integers. Split m into a product of powers of prime ideals in O, say . By looking at the rings , we can find some large integer n such that xn is congruent to either 0 or 1 modulo each . Then is in mO, so is a radical integer, say z. Then we have , which is a radical integer possibly divided by 2.
Anyone buy that? Getting rid of that last 2 seems a little problematic. Dmharvey 00:26, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
:)
--
Lambiam
Talk
16:21, 26 May 2006 (UTC)The lists at Wikipedia:Missing science topics#Mathematics now contain entries from MathWorld, Springer Encyclopaedia of Mathematics, Charles Matthews' maths lists (thanks Charles!), St Andrew's, and PlanetMath. There are 15465 redlinks and 9700 bluelinks (in separate lists), which is a progress of 38.55% towards eliminating the redlinks. For many redlinks it is likely that the information exists on Wikipedia but under a different name, so creating redirects is a good way to advance that project forward. The harvest is great and the workmen are few [10] (since it's Easter today :) Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 22:21, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
I wonder what people think of these multiply-indented lists to define all the variables that appear in a formula. An example is found here. It is claimed that this format is somewhat standard here at wikipedia and is found in hundreds of articles, but I've never seen it, and furthermore don't really like it, I prefer instead a regularly indented paragraph of text. What are your opinions of this format? - lethe talk + 00:52, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
From a dyslexic point of view I have problems parsing large blocks of text and tend to find lists easier to read. I had a play about with a more compact format using tables. Compare
The Schrödinger equation is: | i | the imaginary unit, | |
t | time, | ||
the partial derivative with respect to t, | |||
reduced Planck's constant (Planck's constant divided by 2π), | |||
H(t) | the Hamiltonian - a self-adjoint operator acting on the state space. |
The Schrödinger equation is:
-- Salix alba ( talk) 09:27, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
The Schrödinger equation is:
where:
— merge 09:42, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
I wonder if those explanations of the symbols make this equation any more comprehensible to someone not familiar with the notation. If you don't know what the symbol is for partial differentiation then IMO it is very likely that you don't know what partial differentiation is and the same goes for the imaginary unit.-- MarSch 09:55, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it's necessary to explain certain things, such as the imaginary unit, time, or the partial derivative. Articles assume some basic knowledge, so we should rely on this (however, we should clearly attempt to make the number of assumptions as smallest as sensibly possible). Dysprosia 10:05, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
The Schrödinger equation is:
where H is the Hamiltonian, ψ is the state and t is time,
but even better is probably
A physical system with Hamiltonian H and initial state vector ψ0 can be described at time t by the state vector ψ(t) which is a solution of the initial condition ψ(0) = ψ0 and the differential equation called the Schrodinger equation
-- MarSch 10:09, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I have nominated How to get the prime factors of a number for deletion. Comments welcome. -- Meni Rosenfeld ( talk) 16:46, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Deleted. - lethe talk + 05:17, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Hi all. I saw there wasn't any article on parametric coords. I am willing to create one, if needed. However, since it might be the same thing as curvilinear coordinates, I've just put in a redirect for now. I've asked the question on Talk:Curvilinear coordinates, but so far nobody can tell me if they are identical, or just related, topics. Please take a look and post your conclusions at that talk page. StuRat 21:24, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Could someone take a look at Direct logic? I see some potential problems with this, given who the author is. — Ruud 16:01, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Fresh out of his most recent 48 hours block, WAREL/DYLAN has been engaging in edit wars at field (mathematics) and division ring, moving, incorrectly, interwiki links from the former to the latter, see WAREL's contribs and DYLAN's contribs.
I wrote a petition on the top of his talk page asking him to stop revert wars, as this has been going for too long. If you are familiar with WAREL's edit warrior activity, and think that it's a bad thing, you may help by signing the petition. I doubt WAREL/DYLAN will learn anything from it, but it may give more legitimacy to future attempts at blocking him for disruption. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 17:46, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
While I am not sure on what to do about the current dispute at field (mathematics), which is centered on the use of "field" at the Japanese Wikipedia, DYLAN LENNON now claims that a finite division ring is not the same as a finite field, and removed the interwiki link from our "finite field" to the Japanese "finite division ring". Comments welcome at talk:finite field. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 18:57, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I have frequently had an unpleasant experience when looking up mathematical terms in Wpedia. I go to the article I want and, reading the definition of the term, I encounter another term I don't understand. If there is a link connected to the term I open a new tab to find the definition of the second term. In reading the second definition I find the need to look up a third, then a forth, fifth, sixth. I am soon swamped by "hanging" definitions. But, not infrequently, a term is used without any attempt to define it. Do mathematicians write these articles only to communicate with other mathematicians? Surely an encyclopedia is meant to educate people about things they don't already know. Too Old 00:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
We don't write our articles solely for mathematicians; we endeavor to make them as readable as possible. Accessibility is definitely a consideration for us. But only one of many, so sometimes an article is not as accessible as we might like. If you think the articles need help, then you know what to do. This is a wiki, be bold, edit. Complaining about the quality of some difficult work done for free by volunteers in their spare time is not going to win you any friends. - lethe talk + 01:57, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I think Too Old has a valid criticism, frequently repeated. The coverage of mathematics is often at too high a level, organisation of articles is confusing, core topics like Algebra are woefully inadaquate. Yes we have done good work todate, our coverage is extensive, but there is still a long way to go.
I propose creating Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Essential articles where we can identify which are the most important mathematics articles, assess then for quality and also mathematical level required. An example we could follow is Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer and video games/Essential articles which nicely organises that fields core material. This would also fit in with the Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project discussed above.
Is anyone interested in helping on this? -- Salix alba ( talk) 23:09, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, the RfC and all our pleas seem to have no effect on his behavior. I blocked both accounts indefinitely, and wrote a note at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Indef block of WAREL/DYLAN LENNON.
This will generate serious questioning, as we are talking about an indefinite block, no less, so your comments there are appreciated, to make the case that this is a community-backed decision. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 17:49, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Should formal Laurent series redirect to Laurent series (as it currently does) or to formal power series (my preference)? Dmharvey 18:20, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I've been trying out the new cite.php tool, i.e. with the <ref> and </references> tags. See for example quasi-finite field. But it looks a bit silly there, because I have two different page numbers for the same book. Does anyone know a slicker way to handle this? Dmharvey 18:22, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I have recently created some material in the approximation theory page, relating to polynomial approximations to special functions. This is related to function approximation, Chebyshev polynomials, and polynomial interpolation, but in ways that I'm not clear about. I'm not an expert in the taxonomy of this area of mathematics, only in the specific things about which I wrote. In particular, I know that there is a field of interpolating polynomials through given data points, and that Chebyshev polynomials (and their roots) are involved in this. I can't believe that "approximation theory" is just about Remes' algorithm or use of Fourier/Chebyshev analysis to make optimal polynomials. So this whole area may be somewhat messed up, and my material might be in the wrong place. Would someone who knows his/her way around in this area be willing to take a look and move things around?
William Ackerman 00:40, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
User:BenCawaling has added apparently identical copies of a 2,500 word essay titled "About the incomplete totality of the infinite set of prime numbers" to the following talk pages:
I don't think that Wikipedia is the right place for this diatribe, and we certainly don't need multiple copies of it - but as it's all on talk pages, I don't know what policy or guideline could be quoted in support of removing it. Does anyone have an opinion on what should be done about this (if anything) ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gandalf61 ( talk • contribs) 11:41, April 8, 2006
I have moved this essay to User:BenCawaling/Essay and replaced each copy on an article talk page with a link to its new location. Gandalf61 08:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
This is getting interesting: two socks at the same time: [1] [2]. And an anonymous edit: [3]. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 19:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I banned 64.213.188.94 ( talk · contribs) indefinitely. - lethe talk + 22:33, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
At Talk: Length of an arc I added a comment arguing that the title ought to be Length of a curve (presently a redirect to Length of an arc). Please discuss there if you care (one way or another). Lambiam Talk 03:18, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
Here is the {{ numbers}} template. Today is the second instance when somebody felt templated to insert it in all the articles linked in there (first time was a while ago). I feel this is the case when being in Category:Numbers is enough for these articles, and the gain given by this template in all articles is not offset by the huge size of the template and the distraction it causes on the page. Comments? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 04:01, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm a bit miffed that my original post on this topic seems to have been blown by without comment. I'm not an expert and I really don't know the answer.
Please see Jim Loy's angle trisection page. He shows a few methods using forbidden tools; I call your attention to the so-called tomahawk and to the movable, marked carpenter's square. Is the use of these tools not equivalent to neusis? John Reid 01:57, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
(rolling eyes) Oh, that I should have asked mathematicians for opinions! "What color is that tree?" "It might appear to be some shade of green on the side that was visible at the time of obseveration." ;-) It really would be informative to hear a number of expert users say "I don't know."
It's okay. For the immediate, ugly, practical purpose of editing the project, it's enough that I think both are cases of neusis, Pmanderson suspects it, and nobody yet is ready to say they're not. That's enough information for me to proceed with my rounds. If an expert has more information later, well, we'll change it. Thank you. John Reid 18:22, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Before I continue the edit war which has developed between "Jagged 85" and myself (with some others), I would like to bring the case to our community. Jagged 85 has been adding (what I consider) irrelevant material to several articles in the "Cardinal numbers" category (and I think elsewhere as well). I removed it once. Now he has put it back. This inspite of the fact that there is an already existing article on Indian mathematics to which he has been adding. See Talk:Cardinal number for more information. In my opinion, he is just cluttering up these articles and making them hard to read. There are no mathematical theorems or hard facts in his writing, just attempts to grab credit for the Jaina. JRSpriggs 03:20, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Please look at:
I've deleted the "stub" notice from a few dozen of these. Please help. Click on one. If it's too long to be called a "stub", deleted the {{algebra-stub}} notice. Start at the bottom, since I started from the top, so the ones NOW near the top have been dealt with. Some are AMAZINGLY long articles, and are called "stubs". Others are fairly short and could use more material but are clearly too long to be called stubs.
Then we can go on to "geometry-stub", etc., etc., etc., etc.......... Michael Hardy 03:09, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Debate is getting a bit heated at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Radical integer and Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Radical integer, with one contributor arguing that it's not within our purview as editors, even if experts, to judge the reliability of anything written in Weisstein's encyclopedia, unless some other source directly contradicts it.
That idea strikes me as a recipe for disaster. Weisstein's work has so much overlap with our project, and is so full of idiosyncracies, that we have to view with caution any article on which he's the only source. If our hands are tied on this, the quality of WP math articles is at risk. Please come and state your views. -- Trovatore 21:34, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Has a trivial subject and I could not find any google hits. Should it stay? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 04:10, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
I've been working on the matrix group page and need some help with the content. In particular I'm trying to summarize the types of classical groups but don't have the necessary background to do so. Some of the changes involve generalizing the definitions on other pages (such as unitary group) to arbitrary fields as well as possibly adding some pages (such as projective special orthogonal group).
I've put a summary of the changes I think would be helpful on Talk:Matrix_group. TooMuchMath 05:00, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Update: The page is starting to come along, however we now have some redlinks if anyone wants to take a shot at them:
TooMuchMath 17:39, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Well as you can see the links are no longer red and the classical groups portion of the page is looking pretty good. More contributions are welcome, of course! TooMuchMath 22:52, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Since we seem to be discussing references/sourcing so much recently.... can I ask what is the deal with references for all of our articles on more basic topics? For example, none of the following articles have any book/journal references: irreducible polynomial, normal subgroup, null space, vector space, affine scheme, group (mathematics), symmetric group, function composition. And there are plenty more, they're very easy to find. For such articles, sourcing would have two primary purposes: (1) historical information about where the concept first appeared, possibly in nascent form (this is hard because it involves genuine historical research), and (2) pedagogical, i.e. "where you can learn more about this idea". The second one is obviously problematic because in some cases there are many thousands of textbooks that cover the relevant material. On the other hand, sometimes I feel like there are some double standards going on in the background: for topics which all of us here know are important and standard, we don't require any sourcing, but things like "radical integer" make sparks fly.... Dmharvey 12:20, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
There are double standards and double standards; I think this double standard is absolutely rational and legitimate. I am unembarrassed to say I think we should have that double standard. Just the same, the point is well taken: While not as essential for topics we know about than those we don't, sourcing is still useful and the article isn't really complete until it's provided. -- Trovatore 19:34, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, sure, we should source things properly. If they aren't, then we shouldn't include it. On the other hand, we often give editors the benefit of the doubt. If there are no sources for something, then if the creator of the article is a known, respected contributor, not known for randomly inserting crazy crap into Wikipedia, then we give him/her time to find a source. I think it's perfectly fine to rely on the trust built among known contributors. In this case, it was a respected contributor Henrygb who had created the article, even giving a source. However, in this case, another respected contributor questioned the source, as upon investigation the source cited a mailing list which is not available for view and other searches through the usual methods, Google, MathSciNet, etc., were unable to find the term "radical integer". In this case, it's not applying a double standard to ask, "Should we allow this material?" It's natural and perfectly fine to engage in discussion, even amongst contributors who hold a great deal of trust for each other. Such discussion acts as a "reality check", making sure we don't get carried away and making sure we ultimately uphold the standards.
Even when the editor is an anon, we often give the benefit of the doubt, investigating how common the terminology is and whether the results are mentioned in some well-known resources. I'm even amazed at the lengths people sometimes take to investigate rather dubious-sounding claims, in the interest of completeness and fairness.
So I would say there is no double standard here. We often allow anyone to edit and insert material without citing, as if we didn't, we wouldn't gain a lot of content. On the other hand, to make sure we don't allow the crap to build up, we rely on trust of known contributors and also our expertise, e.g. "hey, this guy says some cubics can't be solved by radicals; that's not what I learned in undergrad algebra!" Eventually, though, we should be adding sources, and indeed some people are clearly going through articles and added citations where needed. So it's not accurate to say we don't require sources for some articles. -- C S (Talk) 20:18, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Copied from Talk:Mathematics -- Salix alba ( talk) 14:18, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
This seemed like the best place to get people's attention about the article PDE Surfaces, written by Zer0 cache. I suspect that it's promoting research, but I can't be sure. It would be appreciated if other editors can check this out. I've also left a small query at PDE surfaces talk page. MP (talk) 11:28, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
mathematics is curerntly going very well on Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive. Maybe you want to vote for it -- MarSch 18:13, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
There's an extremely heated debate going on the talk page for Serge Lang between two editors, User: Revolver and User: Pjacobi. The issue is whether an external link to an article on the AIDS wiki (which was written by Revolver) should be allowed. I've just made my thoughts known there, and I also noticed that an RFC had been filed, but no comments had been made here (which is requested on the RFC page). -- C S (Talk) 04:18, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
I nominated Theorem 1 for deletion. I tried using {{ prod}} first but its author disagreed. Comments welcome. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 03:55, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
There is an NPOV dispute at the above articles: we need expert advice from statistician(s), especially those familiar with spatial statistics.
Briefly: User:JanWMerks claims that geostatistics is a scientific fraud, and has repeatedly edited these related articles to reflect that POV. Myself, User:Antandrus, and others were trying to point out Wikipedia rules, such as WP:NPOV, WP:VERIFY, and WP:NOR. Much edit warring ensued.
Now, the dispute (at spatial dependence) is over whether the F-test is a valid statistical test for spatial dependence. Also: several references (at geostatistics and kriging) are being used to support the claim that kriging is invalid, and I don't have easy access to a good library to check these references.
I hope that someone is willing to research the claims of invalidity better than I can, or perhaps simply provide a third opinion about the dispute.
Please feel free to visit Talk:Geostatistics, Talk:Kriging, and Talk:Spatial dependence to help out. Thanks!
-- hike395 17:40, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
I wonder if these two Greek suffixes mean the same or almost the same thing. Then, the following redirects may make sense:
I stumbled into them at the Missing science project, and don't know what to do about them. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 18:55, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
This category called " Category:Continuum theory" is a subcategory of "Set theory" and of "General topology", but it contains no articles. Should it be deleted? How can I propose it for deletion? JRSpriggs 07:20, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
An editor insists on removing red links as "cleanup". I think the participants here realize the importance of red links to this project (and Wikipedia in general). I'm puzzled why anyone would insist on removing them, but this editor has been quite stubborn, insisting that the articles *must* be created before links to them can be included in this article. -- C S (Talk) 00:41, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
I've made some comment's at the user's talk page ( User talk:PHDrillSergeant); hopefully, this should be enough. -- C S (Talk) 01:01, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
A stock market "analyst" who sold a correspondence course on "cycle analysis". [9] This link includes a table of contents which I think makes clear how trivial Dewey's "system" is; please comment on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Edward R. Dewey. Septentrionalis 19:13, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
A newly created article Radical integer has been listed for deletion. Should it be kept or deleted? Note that the article resolves a long-standing redlink in Algebraic integer listed on Wikipedia:Missing_science_topics/Maths8. Weigh in. Lambiam Talk 17:50, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
Radical extension, extension by radicals, or (most common, I think) pure extension is standard, and radical number I think I've seen. Radical integer is logical and has a MathWorld article to go with it, which speaks in its favor. It seems to me that all of this should be discussed somewhere in an article on solvable extensions, but I can't find any such article. Should I write one? I don't want people deleting it if I do. Gene Ward Smith 21:25, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Oh, one more small point: What I said about "sourced only to MathWorld" is not strictly true; I'm including Weisstein's encyclopedia of math as part of MathWorld. With that addendum it's true. -- Trovatore 17:35, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Here's a sketch of an almost-proof. "Almost" because I'm left with a denominator of at most 2.
Let S be those numbers obtainable from the natural numbers by addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, positive integer roots. (I want to call this the maximal radical extension of Q, but I'm slightly concerned about roots of unity. Never mind.) Let R be the "radical integers", i.e those numbers obtainable from naturals by addition, subtraction, multiplication, and positive integer roots (but not allowing division). First I claim that any x in S is of the form y/d for some y in R and some integer d. This is done by induction on the structure of x. Clearly addition, subtraction, multiplication pose no problems. Integer roots also fine (i.e. ). Division is slightly more troublesome, you need some kind of "rationalising the denominator" trick.
So now suppose we have x = y/d as above, and suppose further that x is an algebraic integer; we want to prove that x is itself a radical integer. Let K = Q(y), and let O be the ring of integers of K, so x is in O. As Gene pointed out above, O has a finite Z-basis, and the basis elements are polynomials in y with coefficients in Q, so for a large enough integer m we find that mO consists entirely of radical integers. Split m into a product of powers of prime ideals in O, say . By looking at the rings , we can find some large integer n such that xn is congruent to either 0 or 1 modulo each . Then is in mO, so is a radical integer, say z. Then we have , which is a radical integer possibly divided by 2.
Anyone buy that? Getting rid of that last 2 seems a little problematic. Dmharvey 00:26, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
:)
--
Lambiam
Talk
16:21, 26 May 2006 (UTC)The lists at Wikipedia:Missing science topics#Mathematics now contain entries from MathWorld, Springer Encyclopaedia of Mathematics, Charles Matthews' maths lists (thanks Charles!), St Andrew's, and PlanetMath. There are 15465 redlinks and 9700 bluelinks (in separate lists), which is a progress of 38.55% towards eliminating the redlinks. For many redlinks it is likely that the information exists on Wikipedia but under a different name, so creating redirects is a good way to advance that project forward. The harvest is great and the workmen are few [10] (since it's Easter today :) Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 22:21, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
I wonder what people think of these multiply-indented lists to define all the variables that appear in a formula. An example is found here. It is claimed that this format is somewhat standard here at wikipedia and is found in hundreds of articles, but I've never seen it, and furthermore don't really like it, I prefer instead a regularly indented paragraph of text. What are your opinions of this format? - lethe talk + 00:52, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
From a dyslexic point of view I have problems parsing large blocks of text and tend to find lists easier to read. I had a play about with a more compact format using tables. Compare
The Schrödinger equation is: | i | the imaginary unit, | |
t | time, | ||
the partial derivative with respect to t, | |||
reduced Planck's constant (Planck's constant divided by 2π), | |||
H(t) | the Hamiltonian - a self-adjoint operator acting on the state space. |
The Schrödinger equation is:
-- Salix alba ( talk) 09:27, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
The Schrödinger equation is:
where:
— merge 09:42, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
I wonder if those explanations of the symbols make this equation any more comprehensible to someone not familiar with the notation. If you don't know what the symbol is for partial differentiation then IMO it is very likely that you don't know what partial differentiation is and the same goes for the imaginary unit.-- MarSch 09:55, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it's necessary to explain certain things, such as the imaginary unit, time, or the partial derivative. Articles assume some basic knowledge, so we should rely on this (however, we should clearly attempt to make the number of assumptions as smallest as sensibly possible). Dysprosia 10:05, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
The Schrödinger equation is:
where H is the Hamiltonian, ψ is the state and t is time,
but even better is probably
A physical system with Hamiltonian H and initial state vector ψ0 can be described at time t by the state vector ψ(t) which is a solution of the initial condition ψ(0) = ψ0 and the differential equation called the Schrodinger equation
-- MarSch 10:09, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I have nominated How to get the prime factors of a number for deletion. Comments welcome. -- Meni Rosenfeld ( talk) 16:46, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Deleted. - lethe talk + 05:17, 1 May 2006 (UTC)