Any one know what is up with the equations on WP? I recently browsed one of my pet articles ( Kt/V)-- and all the equations are gone despite that there were no edits. The equations in Navier-Stokes equations are also gone. Interestingly, the equations in Standardized Kt/V are still there. It looks like there's some error with the equation interpreter-- perhaps due to recent changes discussed above? Nephron T| C 20:40, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Beginning cross-post.
End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.
An edit-warrior, wishing to give his arguments ONLY in edit summaries, has twice deleted a new section I added to completing the square. He says
“ | Incidental mathematics, although clever, is not relevant. The wording ('this may be considered completigng the square') shows this. | ” |
Could we have some third (and fourth...) opinions? Michael Hardy 03:50, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Here's the new section, with a typo fixed (I should have said "equal to −2"): Michael Hardy 03:54, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
By writing
one sees that the sum of a positive number x and its reciprocal is always greater than or equal to 2, with equality only when the last parenthesized expression vanishes. That happens if and only if x = 1. By adding the middle term, equal to −2, one gets a perfect square; thus this may be considered a sort of completion of the square.
User:Michaelbusch is in the wrong here. Reasonable people can disagree about quite how many examples an article such as this should contain. But such disagreements should not be carried out by deletions: the Talk page is for such discussions. Charles Matthews 07:49, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
OK, since the issue's been raised: can anyone contribute some good examples besides the one I used? Michael Hardy 00:47, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I've put the new section, somewhat revised, back into the article.
Some decent additional examples could help.
Michael Hardy
01:35, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Flarn2005 has created a Geometry portal. At the moment is a bit bare bones-ish, so it would be useful if people could contribute to it. Tompw 00:08, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Discussion of the proposed Scientific citation guidelines seems to have simmered down. I suspect the guidelines have consensus among math and physics editors. If you have strong feelings about the guidelines, please comment on the talk page. CMummert 01:50, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Need mediation at these articles (the other party is Gene Nygaard). I think the {{ lowercase}} and {{ wrongtitle}} templates are frequently misused, but this is one case where they are genuinely important. Using the Latinizations is wrong; the articles clearly should start with the Greek letter ω, but starting them with Ω would be worse, as that could be interpreted as being related to Ω-logic. -- Trovatore 01:48, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
And, lest anybody is dumb enough to be fooled by the Java-script shenanigans with the display on this articles page, just go follow the links to the one real non-stub category in which this article can be found, and come back and tell us exactly what sort of nonsense you see when you get there. Not only what you see for the article name, but also what letter you find it listed under.
Just where the fuck do you find it, anyway? Off in oblivion, somewhere after the Z.
I'll hold off on fixing the sort key properly until at least a few of you get a chance to see how you are squirreling away this information, hiding it so that is is unfindable.
If you aren't competent enough to deal with those templates and fix the problems they cause, then just stop using them. Gene Nygaard 02:16, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I just created a new template, {{ MathSciNet}}. Hope you all find this helpful! — David Eppstein 06:34, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
The javascript thing is sort of nice, but not sufficient to allow different articles on Ω-logic and ω-logic, which we really ought to be able to have. I've left a note at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Uppercasing of non-Latin letters (including references for the two logics that should be treated, or at least treatable, distinctively). See what you think. -- Trovatore 07:32, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
This comprises a few questions related to the concept of κ-complete lattices and Boolean algebras (where κ is an arbitrary cardinal number), and universal algebras with infinitary (or proper class) signatures.
This article contains the text
I cannot find any Google hits for Chlemloid's form or Chlemshaw's algorithm anywhere but in this article or its mirrors. Could this be sneaky vandalism? -- 80.168.226.41 02:45, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Zipping back many, many edits finds an older version of this text:
I've reverted to this version of that sentence: it looks at least plausible, given the context. -- 80.168.226.41 02:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
From Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-11-27/Technology report:
There is a new button labelled "(undo)" which appears on the right under the edit summary when you look at the diff in a vandal's contributions. This allows you to remove a change without disturbing subsequent changes to the same page. I just found out about it. Have not had an occassion to try it yet. JRSpriggs 10:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
The next round of nominations for the Wikipedia:Release Version is now open, these are articles which are to go on a CD-release of wikipedia. I've nominated 19 new mathematics articles.
which are generally our higher importance topics and of at least B+ status. I guess most of these could do with some a bit of love and care. There may be other articles I've missed which others think should also be nominated. -- Salix alba ( talk) 11:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I want to add some new articles about particular varieties of continued fractions to Wikipedia (S-fractions, J-fractions, the continued fraction of Gauss, etc). Unfortunately the definition given in the basic article is so restrictive that the mathematical objects I want to discuss have been defined right out of existence! There are already some 250 links to the existing article, so renaming it is probably out of the question. My plan is to rewrite the existing definition and tweak the rest of the article so it's still logically consistent. Here's the definition I'm working with right now.
In mathematics, a continued fraction is an expression of the form
where the ai and the bi are numbers. The ai are the partial numerators of the continued fraction x. The bi are the partial denominators, and the ratios ai / bi are the partial quotients.
If all the partial numerators are 1 and all the partial denominators (except b0) are positive integers, the continued fraction is a simple continued fraction, expressed in canonical form. Most of this article is devoted to simple continued fractions – see this related article for a more general discussion.
I'm posting this for comment. Is this definition sufficiently general? I suppose I could define a continued fraction as the composition of a (possibly infinite) sequence of Möbius transformations, but that wouldn't be very accessible, for the general reader.
Oh -- I also have a question. I'm not an expert on TeX. The ellipsis in the formula above is not quite right – it really should be replaced with three dots that descend to the right. Does anybody know the name for one of those?
Your feedback is welcome. I'll check back here regularly, or you can contact me on my talk page. DavidCBryant 16:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me like the correct thing to do would be to modify the generalized continued fraction article to fit your definition and discuss the various special cases there. The definition given at continued fraction seems to be the most common one and should probably remain the same. -- Fropuff 19:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I've just added the continued fraction for π given above to the List of formulae involving π (so I hope it's correct!). Michael Hardy 00:36, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Sylvester's sequence has been listed as a Good Article, thanks to a proposal by User:Anton Mravcek and a review by User:Twinxor. I'm a little surprised, given its low density of inline citations and our recent experiences with GA reviews, but pleasantly surprised. — David Eppstein 16:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the quibbles; I added the ISBN-10's and a longer caption. To my mind ISSN's do not belong on individual article references but rather the reference should wikilink the journal name (as the ones in this article already do) and the ISSN should go into the article about the journal. If I had a DOI link I'd include that, though. — David Eppstein 16:19, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
FYI, slashdot.org has evoked transreal number which is a recreate of a previously deleted article. I think its an prime example of mathematical illiteracy. Oh well. Afd, fix or delete. linas 19:46, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
A new {{ Calculus footer}} has been created. A discussion about it is going on at Talk:Calculus#Re: Addition of Template:Calculus footer. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 17:30, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi, all!
I just put a new article out in the big namespace. Please take a look at it and tell me what you think -- either here, or on my user talk page.
Thanks! DavidCBryant 02:10, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I came across the page List of mathematics articles and am concerned about the self-references in it. Outside of the {{ MathTopicTOC}} template, the entire page is written as if the reader is an editor of Wikipedia. This would cause confusion if the page were reused outside of Wikipedia. After discussing this with User:Oleg Alexandrov, it was suggested that the page could be moved to Wikipedia:List of mathematics articles. I would support such a move, but he opposed it on the grounds that the page would be difficult to move and that it belongs in the main namespace. I am seeking further input. Thanks. Khatru2 04:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Here's how I see it. The article you mention presently serves 3 purposes:
-- Fropuff 05:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
{{:List of mathematics articles}}
I really think all this is not worth the trouble. Yes, the list of mathematics articles has a dual purpose, both for editors and for readers. Theoretically speaking a split or a move to the Wikipedia namespace would be the right thing to do. Practically speaking it would be an inconvenience, and I really think that keeping things the way they are outweighs any advantages of separating the two. Let the readers read the first part in that article, the actual lists, and let the editors or potential editors wonder about the wikiproject link and the changes to the list. That's what I'd think, at least. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 15:53, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Some science articles are starting to produce introductory versions of themselves to make them more accessible to the average encyclopedia reader. You can see what has been done so far at special relativity, general relativity and evolution, all of which now have special introduction articles. These are intermediate between the very simple articles on Simple Wikipedia and the regular encyclopedia articles. They serve a valuable function in producing something that is useful for getting someone up to speed so that they can then tackle the real article. Those who want even simpler explanations can drop down to Simple Wikipedia. What do you think?-- Filll 22:55, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't know if I agree that simple intro articles are out of place. But I do think the concern of dividing up effort is a very valid one. I would agree that editing is not a "zero sum game", but I think that's the wrong thing to bring up. I think what Fropuff was referring to is the dividing up of expertise. Sure there are editors joining everyday, and if somebody puts in less effort, people will join who will pick up the slack. Unfortunately, that doesn't really address expertise. When one person, expert on a particular topic, stops editing, progress in that area may stop for a very long time (and errors start creeping in). It's not like there's a uniform distribution of experts joining, let alone a uniform distribution of expertise in the different areas.
I find it doubtful that even doing an incredible job would significantly increase the expertise level of editors. To really gain significant expertise takes considerable effort and dedication. People with that desire will want to study the material out of books. What Wikipedia offers is a useful synthesis of materials. I don't think a scenario where someone learns exclusively off Wikipedia is viable, even assuming a radical improvement.
One thing I want to point out about Brittanica and paper encyclopedias is that they really do a careful job of selection. By doing so, they can focus on fewer articles and ones in which it is much simpler to write well. Wikipedia does not have this advantage. Its strength is in large coverage. So it's really unfair and unrealistic to compare.
Since I got on this soapbox, I do want to say one thing about accessibility however. A common refrain is "Only a specialist can understand it and why would he or she need to read this?" This is wrong. The mistaken assumption is that because the reader did not understand it, the article is esoteric and cannot be understood by anyone other than an "expert". This leads to the tagging of numerous mathematical articles as being too technical. Of course, in reality, there are many people and many levels of expertise and many levels of mathematical maturity. A person adept in one technical subject can often learn something in another because of a high degree of maturity and understanding of how to cull the main ideas out.
Being too technical is an issue that we should be concerned about, but probably if there was less of what I just described, math editors would probably take these concerns more seriously. We try nonetheless.
Having said that, this concern has been raised before, again and again. There's been more of a focus on improving what we have, rather than extending it. People, with the desire, have improved articles such as mathematics and manifold. It took a great deal of effort and time. Right now I've been working on a rewrite of knot theory. It's taking a lot of time, and I certainly can't put in that much time regularly. There are also a few things I promised, but never got done. So the spirit is willing, but the flesh, as usual, is often weak. -- C S (Talk) 18:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
The article area of a disk could use some work. It may be the only Wikipedia article justifying the familiar πr2 expression, so it wouldn't hurt to bring it up to civilized standards. Michael Hardy 01:09, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Proofs of trigonometric identities is, in its present form, a horrible mess. Please help clean it up. Michael Hardy 19:12, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm encountering some concern about the size of the article Areas of mathematics. I saw a reference to a 64K (= 65,536 byte) limit in somebody's message (Oleg's?) recently.
Anyway, I want to learn more about that. Does anyone know where to look it up? Does the limit apply to the wiki markup file that an author/editor can access? Or does it apply to the XML file (sans images) that the server serves up? I'm certain the 64K limit doesn't count graphics ... I tried to load the Mandelbrot set article the other day, and my poor little box choked on it somewhere between 1.0 and 2.0 Mbytes. :(
Thanks for the help! DavidCBryant 20:53, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it's the infamous 00 debate again, and from many aspects I regret that I stepped in it, because it's really kind of a silly argument that doesn't matter much. However it does matter, at least a little, that the two mentioned articles asserted a consensus that does not exist.
(Precis of my position, which is not really the point, but just so you know where I'm coming from: The arguments for 00=1 make perfect sense for exponentiation as defined on the naturals, or even when the base is ineterpreted as a real and the exponent as a natural, because then we are indeed discussing an empty product. However they cease to convince in the context of real-number-to-real-number exponentiation. The natural number 0 and the real number 0.0 are distinct kinds of thing, and there is no reason 0.00.0 must be defined, merely because 00 is.)
Anyway as I say my position is beside the point. The point is that there are editors (well, one in particular, a difficult fellow whom some of you have encountered in the past) who want to preserve the articles in a state where they assert a consensus that does not in fact exist among mathematicians. I think you'll all agree that's wrong, whatever your views on the underlying "issue", if we can dignify it with that name. Please come and work on a broader-based approach. -- Trovatore 17:06, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
I left a comment to Bo Jacoby on the talk page of empty product. I encourage others to come and make a comment. -- C S (Talk) 11:39, 16 December 2006
Judging by this and other past "wars" with Bo Jacoby, it seems that he is really nothing more than a big bully. (And I don't feel like I'm resorting to an ad hominem attack when I say so. The evidence speaks for itself.) I worry about editors leaving the project over such things. I know I, for one, refuse to play into his specious and tangential arguments, since he seems to thrive on getting impassioned responses to his silliness. But if we all ignore him and choose to leave the debate, it seems he gets his way. Is there no recourse for dealing with bullying like this? VectorPosse 20:31, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
It's distressing that somehow this section on "bullying" actually contains some. -- C S (Talk) 10:32, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm curious how many cookies you passed out, Melchoir. Surely not as many as , but probably quite a few. How fast were they moving when you let fly (to cover a 3-parsec radius, I mean)? Is your arm sore? And why didn't I get one? ;^> DavidCBryant 12:17, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
A well-meaning, new editor has been making some additions to this article. I don't believe these follow NPOV, but I no longer have the energy to talk to this person. I tried explaining NPOV doesn't mean putting out one argument followed by counterargument, but somehow this person doesn't seem to understand and takes everything as an accusation of some type. His/her grasp of the facts and circumstances also seems tenuous. -- C S (Talk) 23:57, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I need an advice on how to group entries in List of operators. Any thoughts?-- Planemo 13:26, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
IMHO, having such a "list" is not that good an idea. the term "operator" is used in a hell of a lotta places in mathematics, making a comprehensive listing difficult and somewhat pointless. and having an incomplete list, as that article is right now, is misleading, unless one is very specific about the context and what is meant by an "operator". right now it looks rather like an ungainly collection. for instance, an operator theorist would find few items on that list to be of interest; in any case, they are well-covered elsewhere. i am sure such examples abound from other fields, say the boundary operator from homology. also, some entries in the list seem rather funny, e.g. taking the inverse of a function is listed, so is the arc-length of a curve and the L^2 norm. sure one can use whatever terminology one wants, but calling every trivial thing an "operator" doesn't help the credibility or the utility of the "list". Mct mht 18:25, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
in light of the fact that the article has undergone further edits. i would like to state again that, if one insists on having such a list, one must be very specific about what's meant by an operator, in what particular context(s). right now it's a rather incoherent collection, including the see also links. a case might be made that an article listing all common integral transforms has a place in WP. but calling, say, the L2 norm an "operator" is not a good idea. i doubt there's single piece of literature that uses that terminology. there are quite a few such misleading examples in that list right now. Mct mht 12:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I need to represent the following probability mathematically using the correct wikicode/syntax.
A person is presented with 7 questions and 7 answers. What are the odds of them correctly pairing off 4 of them?
perfectblue 09:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
<math>\Pr(C \geq 4) = \frac{23}{1260}?</math>I don't know why, but I thought that there was a way of doing this where you fed in the data and the equation, and it calculated it on the server and presented it to the user.
If all 5040 permutations of the seven answers are equally probable, then the answer is given in the article titled rencontres numbers as 70/5040 = 1/72. Michael Hardy 20:38, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
To Lambiam: I am sorry that I did not notice that you had got the answer first. If you are correct about using a predetermined value, then presumably that would be the five correct that the "experts" called for. Then the probability would be, using your figures, (21+0+1)/5040 = 22/5040. However, then she failed the test, so I do not know how relevant that probability is in the case of failure. JRSpriggs 12:25, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Luigi Fantappiè could stand a cleanup job. It seems a touch heavy on the uncritical adoration. Anville 23:49, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Lseixas ( talk · contribs) has been going around changing the symbol for differential, e.g. "dt" to "\mathrm{d}t" inside Tex expressions at General relativity and elsewhere. If I remember correctly, KSmrq ( talk · contribs) told us to do the exact opposite. Is there an agreed standard symbol for the differential? JRSpriggs 09:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
If there's a controversy about this subject, including verifiable sources such as the ISO convention mentioned above, shouldn't something of the history of this controversy be mentioned in Leibniz's notation for differentiation? And why is that article separate from Leibniz notation, and why do those two articles use two different versions of the convention? — David Eppstein 21:47, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
With regards to the ISO standard, I think it's mostly meant to be applied to physics and engineering. I think IUPAC chimed in at one point or another with a similar standard for chemistry. On the other hand, like I mentioned above, mathematicians have never really gone along with all of it. ( So ppppppthtthhthththth! ;) Lunch 22:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
It seems that there are strong references for roman d: CBE manual (Scientific Style and Format 6ed 1994 CUP cf p208) and Swanson's Math into Type. pom 23:22, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Mine too. Let's try a variation:
That looks a little bit better, but still
is what I'm accustomed to and is what I see in most books, every day. If one must use the Roman "d", one should still have the space between "f(t)" and "dt". Thus: \int f(t)\,dt. Michael Hardy 01:16, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
There's a really interesting discussion going on about this article. The main problem seems to be that it is very difficult to explain what this is. Unfortunately, currently the article reads something like a diatribe on how the notion of "word problem" is nonsense. This article seems to have been in this kind of state for over three years. -- C S (Talk) 19:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm thinking of putting this article as a FAC, but before I do so, I would love the opinion of a few math editors, so I can get the article even better before letting it be the subject of the scrutiny of the rest of the Wikipedia community. As I've never been through the featured article process before (nor have I been involved in it), any comments/help with the article would be greatly appreciated. — Mets501 ( talk) 21:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
This is being revised, especially the infamous section 2b about inline citation. It seems to me that even the edits I did not do are in a sensible direction; after some jumping up and down at Wikipedia:Good articles/Review#Johann Sebastian Bach (where it is perhaps clearer than on mathematical articles what sort of points are at issue), some mutual understanding may have been attained. Please come help. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:40, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
If you have an opinion about whether the article should be named "Exclusive or" or "Exclusive disjunction", come on down to Talk:Exclusive disjunction and share your opinion. Samboy 09:09, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Recently the vector notation on a huge number of pages was changed from bold style () to arrow style (), in an effort to make notation on wikipedia more homogeneous. In paticular the Maxwell's Equations section has been changed.
Is this such a good idea? To begin with, mathematical notation is not in fact consistent, with different persons, groups, countries and even continents often using quite different notation. What is more appropriate to some may be less aprropriate to others. Notation vary's across fields as well. It doesn't seem wise to impose a single notation for all of Wikipedia when no over all consensus exits. ObsessiveMathsFreak 15:18, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
\vec
to produce bold, leaving \overrightarrow
to produce ?
—Ben FrantzDale
18:21, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I find the {{ Calculus footer}} template to be rather ugly, either with stuff hidden or stuff shown. I would suggest that it be rewritten keeping only the most relevant calculus topics, instead of the huge amalgam of links, whether they show up or are hidden. Comments? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 20:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi. I have nominated the FA Regular polytope to be review to see if it still complies with the featured article criterias. You are welcome to comment at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Regular polytope.
Fred - Chess 22:57, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Regular polytope has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Sandy ( Talk) 23:27, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
this change at Perfect number by Chikushi ( talk · contribs) looks a lot like User:WAREL. It's his first edit, and the formula is byte-for-byte identical to this edit by MIYAJ ( talk · contribs), blocked as a sock puppet of User:WAREL. Did I do right in reverting it? — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:41, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
There have also been a sequence of WAREL-like edits to perfect number recently by Sugakusha ( talk · contribs), Kotobakarihakirai ( talk · contribs), Goodboy Johnny ( talk · contribs), and InterCommunication ( talk · contribs). Each of those names is a new account that only has edits to perfect number. The first one has been blocked and marked as a suspected sock but the other three have not yet. Given this repeated abuse, and evasion of repeated blocks, would protection for perfect number be in order? — David Eppstein 18:22, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
bumped into the above article, apparently on AfD for non-notable, and thought maybe it should be brought to attention here. if that Terrence Tao is indeed a (sufficiently regular) contributor, as claimed, seems to me it is very possible that the website is well-known or becoming so, among specialists. if that's the case, non-notability certainly gets disqualified as a reason for AfD, in my opinion. Mct mht 05:37, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
GurchBot 2 ( talk · contribs) moved all archives with non-standard names to standarized names. E.g. changing "Archive12" to "Archive 12" and leaving a redirect behind. By so doing, GurchBot 2 has messed up the archives at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics and probably many others which use Werdnabot to archive their talk pages. It did not change the Werdnabot invocations to show the new file name for the current archive so Werdnabot added the archived material to the redirects which were left behind. Also, a minor point, GurchBot 2 did not change the archive lists to point at the new file names so they are now all going thru the redirects. This is a real mess. JRSpriggs 03:58, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
I am working on a guideline, Wikipedia:Writing about math. Can you people please look at it? -- Ineffable3000 23:33, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
I think that the Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky article should be switched from the scope of wikiproject Russian history to wikiproject mathematics since his importance is in the history of mathematics not the history of Russia. NikolaiLobachevsky 06:35:01 12/26/2006 (UTC)
There are a number of graph theory articles that I was going to put a {{ maths rating}} template on, but I couldn't find the right category. Does it go under topology? I couldn't find any graph theory articles already tagged. grendel| khan 16:11, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Category:Graph theory or its subcategories. — David Eppstein 16:33, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
It is also on this page, 4 sections up. -- Lambiam Talk 18:55, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Paul August, with enthusiastic support, has found a seat on the Wikipedia Arbitrary Committee. (Did I spell that right? ;-D) He joins Charles Matthews, another mathematician. (Why these two fine editors would prefer to settle squabbles rather than write mathematics articles, I cannot imagine.) I congratulate Paul on his success, and look forward to many excellent, even-handed decisions. -- KSmrq T 22:20, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Duja ( talk · contribs) has just moved "Mu-operator" to "μ-operator". This is the third (or is it the fourth?) time someone has done this; on the earlier occasions the move was reversed. My understanding was that we had an agreement to keep the Latinized spelling of the Greek letters in the titles of mathematics articles. Please someone (an administrator) reverse this. JRSpriggs 10:55, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:18, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Any one know what is up with the equations on WP? I recently browsed one of my pet articles ( Kt/V)-- and all the equations are gone despite that there were no edits. The equations in Navier-Stokes equations are also gone. Interestingly, the equations in Standardized Kt/V are still there. It looks like there's some error with the equation interpreter-- perhaps due to recent changes discussed above? Nephron T| C 20:40, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Beginning cross-post.
End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.
An edit-warrior, wishing to give his arguments ONLY in edit summaries, has twice deleted a new section I added to completing the square. He says
“ | Incidental mathematics, although clever, is not relevant. The wording ('this may be considered completigng the square') shows this. | ” |
Could we have some third (and fourth...) opinions? Michael Hardy 03:50, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Here's the new section, with a typo fixed (I should have said "equal to −2"): Michael Hardy 03:54, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
By writing
one sees that the sum of a positive number x and its reciprocal is always greater than or equal to 2, with equality only when the last parenthesized expression vanishes. That happens if and only if x = 1. By adding the middle term, equal to −2, one gets a perfect square; thus this may be considered a sort of completion of the square.
User:Michaelbusch is in the wrong here. Reasonable people can disagree about quite how many examples an article such as this should contain. But such disagreements should not be carried out by deletions: the Talk page is for such discussions. Charles Matthews 07:49, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
OK, since the issue's been raised: can anyone contribute some good examples besides the one I used? Michael Hardy 00:47, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I've put the new section, somewhat revised, back into the article.
Some decent additional examples could help.
Michael Hardy
01:35, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Flarn2005 has created a Geometry portal. At the moment is a bit bare bones-ish, so it would be useful if people could contribute to it. Tompw 00:08, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Discussion of the proposed Scientific citation guidelines seems to have simmered down. I suspect the guidelines have consensus among math and physics editors. If you have strong feelings about the guidelines, please comment on the talk page. CMummert 01:50, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Need mediation at these articles (the other party is Gene Nygaard). I think the {{ lowercase}} and {{ wrongtitle}} templates are frequently misused, but this is one case where they are genuinely important. Using the Latinizations is wrong; the articles clearly should start with the Greek letter ω, but starting them with Ω would be worse, as that could be interpreted as being related to Ω-logic. -- Trovatore 01:48, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
And, lest anybody is dumb enough to be fooled by the Java-script shenanigans with the display on this articles page, just go follow the links to the one real non-stub category in which this article can be found, and come back and tell us exactly what sort of nonsense you see when you get there. Not only what you see for the article name, but also what letter you find it listed under.
Just where the fuck do you find it, anyway? Off in oblivion, somewhere after the Z.
I'll hold off on fixing the sort key properly until at least a few of you get a chance to see how you are squirreling away this information, hiding it so that is is unfindable.
If you aren't competent enough to deal with those templates and fix the problems they cause, then just stop using them. Gene Nygaard 02:16, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I just created a new template, {{ MathSciNet}}. Hope you all find this helpful! — David Eppstein 06:34, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
The javascript thing is sort of nice, but not sufficient to allow different articles on Ω-logic and ω-logic, which we really ought to be able to have. I've left a note at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Uppercasing of non-Latin letters (including references for the two logics that should be treated, or at least treatable, distinctively). See what you think. -- Trovatore 07:32, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
This comprises a few questions related to the concept of κ-complete lattices and Boolean algebras (where κ is an arbitrary cardinal number), and universal algebras with infinitary (or proper class) signatures.
This article contains the text
I cannot find any Google hits for Chlemloid's form or Chlemshaw's algorithm anywhere but in this article or its mirrors. Could this be sneaky vandalism? -- 80.168.226.41 02:45, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Zipping back many, many edits finds an older version of this text:
I've reverted to this version of that sentence: it looks at least plausible, given the context. -- 80.168.226.41 02:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
From Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-11-27/Technology report:
There is a new button labelled "(undo)" which appears on the right under the edit summary when you look at the diff in a vandal's contributions. This allows you to remove a change without disturbing subsequent changes to the same page. I just found out about it. Have not had an occassion to try it yet. JRSpriggs 10:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
The next round of nominations for the Wikipedia:Release Version is now open, these are articles which are to go on a CD-release of wikipedia. I've nominated 19 new mathematics articles.
which are generally our higher importance topics and of at least B+ status. I guess most of these could do with some a bit of love and care. There may be other articles I've missed which others think should also be nominated. -- Salix alba ( talk) 11:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I want to add some new articles about particular varieties of continued fractions to Wikipedia (S-fractions, J-fractions, the continued fraction of Gauss, etc). Unfortunately the definition given in the basic article is so restrictive that the mathematical objects I want to discuss have been defined right out of existence! There are already some 250 links to the existing article, so renaming it is probably out of the question. My plan is to rewrite the existing definition and tweak the rest of the article so it's still logically consistent. Here's the definition I'm working with right now.
In mathematics, a continued fraction is an expression of the form
where the ai and the bi are numbers. The ai are the partial numerators of the continued fraction x. The bi are the partial denominators, and the ratios ai / bi are the partial quotients.
If all the partial numerators are 1 and all the partial denominators (except b0) are positive integers, the continued fraction is a simple continued fraction, expressed in canonical form. Most of this article is devoted to simple continued fractions – see this related article for a more general discussion.
I'm posting this for comment. Is this definition sufficiently general? I suppose I could define a continued fraction as the composition of a (possibly infinite) sequence of Möbius transformations, but that wouldn't be very accessible, for the general reader.
Oh -- I also have a question. I'm not an expert on TeX. The ellipsis in the formula above is not quite right – it really should be replaced with three dots that descend to the right. Does anybody know the name for one of those?
Your feedback is welcome. I'll check back here regularly, or you can contact me on my talk page. DavidCBryant 16:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me like the correct thing to do would be to modify the generalized continued fraction article to fit your definition and discuss the various special cases there. The definition given at continued fraction seems to be the most common one and should probably remain the same. -- Fropuff 19:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I've just added the continued fraction for π given above to the List of formulae involving π (so I hope it's correct!). Michael Hardy 00:36, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Sylvester's sequence has been listed as a Good Article, thanks to a proposal by User:Anton Mravcek and a review by User:Twinxor. I'm a little surprised, given its low density of inline citations and our recent experiences with GA reviews, but pleasantly surprised. — David Eppstein 16:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the quibbles; I added the ISBN-10's and a longer caption. To my mind ISSN's do not belong on individual article references but rather the reference should wikilink the journal name (as the ones in this article already do) and the ISSN should go into the article about the journal. If I had a DOI link I'd include that, though. — David Eppstein 16:19, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
FYI, slashdot.org has evoked transreal number which is a recreate of a previously deleted article. I think its an prime example of mathematical illiteracy. Oh well. Afd, fix or delete. linas 19:46, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
A new {{ Calculus footer}} has been created. A discussion about it is going on at Talk:Calculus#Re: Addition of Template:Calculus footer. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 17:30, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi, all!
I just put a new article out in the big namespace. Please take a look at it and tell me what you think -- either here, or on my user talk page.
Thanks! DavidCBryant 02:10, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I came across the page List of mathematics articles and am concerned about the self-references in it. Outside of the {{ MathTopicTOC}} template, the entire page is written as if the reader is an editor of Wikipedia. This would cause confusion if the page were reused outside of Wikipedia. After discussing this with User:Oleg Alexandrov, it was suggested that the page could be moved to Wikipedia:List of mathematics articles. I would support such a move, but he opposed it on the grounds that the page would be difficult to move and that it belongs in the main namespace. I am seeking further input. Thanks. Khatru2 04:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Here's how I see it. The article you mention presently serves 3 purposes:
-- Fropuff 05:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
{{:List of mathematics articles}}
I really think all this is not worth the trouble. Yes, the list of mathematics articles has a dual purpose, both for editors and for readers. Theoretically speaking a split or a move to the Wikipedia namespace would be the right thing to do. Practically speaking it would be an inconvenience, and I really think that keeping things the way they are outweighs any advantages of separating the two. Let the readers read the first part in that article, the actual lists, and let the editors or potential editors wonder about the wikiproject link and the changes to the list. That's what I'd think, at least. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 15:53, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Some science articles are starting to produce introductory versions of themselves to make them more accessible to the average encyclopedia reader. You can see what has been done so far at special relativity, general relativity and evolution, all of which now have special introduction articles. These are intermediate between the very simple articles on Simple Wikipedia and the regular encyclopedia articles. They serve a valuable function in producing something that is useful for getting someone up to speed so that they can then tackle the real article. Those who want even simpler explanations can drop down to Simple Wikipedia. What do you think?-- Filll 22:55, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't know if I agree that simple intro articles are out of place. But I do think the concern of dividing up effort is a very valid one. I would agree that editing is not a "zero sum game", but I think that's the wrong thing to bring up. I think what Fropuff was referring to is the dividing up of expertise. Sure there are editors joining everyday, and if somebody puts in less effort, people will join who will pick up the slack. Unfortunately, that doesn't really address expertise. When one person, expert on a particular topic, stops editing, progress in that area may stop for a very long time (and errors start creeping in). It's not like there's a uniform distribution of experts joining, let alone a uniform distribution of expertise in the different areas.
I find it doubtful that even doing an incredible job would significantly increase the expertise level of editors. To really gain significant expertise takes considerable effort and dedication. People with that desire will want to study the material out of books. What Wikipedia offers is a useful synthesis of materials. I don't think a scenario where someone learns exclusively off Wikipedia is viable, even assuming a radical improvement.
One thing I want to point out about Brittanica and paper encyclopedias is that they really do a careful job of selection. By doing so, they can focus on fewer articles and ones in which it is much simpler to write well. Wikipedia does not have this advantage. Its strength is in large coverage. So it's really unfair and unrealistic to compare.
Since I got on this soapbox, I do want to say one thing about accessibility however. A common refrain is "Only a specialist can understand it and why would he or she need to read this?" This is wrong. The mistaken assumption is that because the reader did not understand it, the article is esoteric and cannot be understood by anyone other than an "expert". This leads to the tagging of numerous mathematical articles as being too technical. Of course, in reality, there are many people and many levels of expertise and many levels of mathematical maturity. A person adept in one technical subject can often learn something in another because of a high degree of maturity and understanding of how to cull the main ideas out.
Being too technical is an issue that we should be concerned about, but probably if there was less of what I just described, math editors would probably take these concerns more seriously. We try nonetheless.
Having said that, this concern has been raised before, again and again. There's been more of a focus on improving what we have, rather than extending it. People, with the desire, have improved articles such as mathematics and manifold. It took a great deal of effort and time. Right now I've been working on a rewrite of knot theory. It's taking a lot of time, and I certainly can't put in that much time regularly. There are also a few things I promised, but never got done. So the spirit is willing, but the flesh, as usual, is often weak. -- C S (Talk) 18:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
The article area of a disk could use some work. It may be the only Wikipedia article justifying the familiar πr2 expression, so it wouldn't hurt to bring it up to civilized standards. Michael Hardy 01:09, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Proofs of trigonometric identities is, in its present form, a horrible mess. Please help clean it up. Michael Hardy 19:12, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm encountering some concern about the size of the article Areas of mathematics. I saw a reference to a 64K (= 65,536 byte) limit in somebody's message (Oleg's?) recently.
Anyway, I want to learn more about that. Does anyone know where to look it up? Does the limit apply to the wiki markup file that an author/editor can access? Or does it apply to the XML file (sans images) that the server serves up? I'm certain the 64K limit doesn't count graphics ... I tried to load the Mandelbrot set article the other day, and my poor little box choked on it somewhere between 1.0 and 2.0 Mbytes. :(
Thanks for the help! DavidCBryant 20:53, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it's the infamous 00 debate again, and from many aspects I regret that I stepped in it, because it's really kind of a silly argument that doesn't matter much. However it does matter, at least a little, that the two mentioned articles asserted a consensus that does not exist.
(Precis of my position, which is not really the point, but just so you know where I'm coming from: The arguments for 00=1 make perfect sense for exponentiation as defined on the naturals, or even when the base is ineterpreted as a real and the exponent as a natural, because then we are indeed discussing an empty product. However they cease to convince in the context of real-number-to-real-number exponentiation. The natural number 0 and the real number 0.0 are distinct kinds of thing, and there is no reason 0.00.0 must be defined, merely because 00 is.)
Anyway as I say my position is beside the point. The point is that there are editors (well, one in particular, a difficult fellow whom some of you have encountered in the past) who want to preserve the articles in a state where they assert a consensus that does not in fact exist among mathematicians. I think you'll all agree that's wrong, whatever your views on the underlying "issue", if we can dignify it with that name. Please come and work on a broader-based approach. -- Trovatore 17:06, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
I left a comment to Bo Jacoby on the talk page of empty product. I encourage others to come and make a comment. -- C S (Talk) 11:39, 16 December 2006
Judging by this and other past "wars" with Bo Jacoby, it seems that he is really nothing more than a big bully. (And I don't feel like I'm resorting to an ad hominem attack when I say so. The evidence speaks for itself.) I worry about editors leaving the project over such things. I know I, for one, refuse to play into his specious and tangential arguments, since he seems to thrive on getting impassioned responses to his silliness. But if we all ignore him and choose to leave the debate, it seems he gets his way. Is there no recourse for dealing with bullying like this? VectorPosse 20:31, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
It's distressing that somehow this section on "bullying" actually contains some. -- C S (Talk) 10:32, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm curious how many cookies you passed out, Melchoir. Surely not as many as , but probably quite a few. How fast were they moving when you let fly (to cover a 3-parsec radius, I mean)? Is your arm sore? And why didn't I get one? ;^> DavidCBryant 12:17, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
A well-meaning, new editor has been making some additions to this article. I don't believe these follow NPOV, but I no longer have the energy to talk to this person. I tried explaining NPOV doesn't mean putting out one argument followed by counterargument, but somehow this person doesn't seem to understand and takes everything as an accusation of some type. His/her grasp of the facts and circumstances also seems tenuous. -- C S (Talk) 23:57, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I need an advice on how to group entries in List of operators. Any thoughts?-- Planemo 13:26, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
IMHO, having such a "list" is not that good an idea. the term "operator" is used in a hell of a lotta places in mathematics, making a comprehensive listing difficult and somewhat pointless. and having an incomplete list, as that article is right now, is misleading, unless one is very specific about the context and what is meant by an "operator". right now it looks rather like an ungainly collection. for instance, an operator theorist would find few items on that list to be of interest; in any case, they are well-covered elsewhere. i am sure such examples abound from other fields, say the boundary operator from homology. also, some entries in the list seem rather funny, e.g. taking the inverse of a function is listed, so is the arc-length of a curve and the L^2 norm. sure one can use whatever terminology one wants, but calling every trivial thing an "operator" doesn't help the credibility or the utility of the "list". Mct mht 18:25, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
in light of the fact that the article has undergone further edits. i would like to state again that, if one insists on having such a list, one must be very specific about what's meant by an operator, in what particular context(s). right now it's a rather incoherent collection, including the see also links. a case might be made that an article listing all common integral transforms has a place in WP. but calling, say, the L2 norm an "operator" is not a good idea. i doubt there's single piece of literature that uses that terminology. there are quite a few such misleading examples in that list right now. Mct mht 12:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I need to represent the following probability mathematically using the correct wikicode/syntax.
A person is presented with 7 questions and 7 answers. What are the odds of them correctly pairing off 4 of them?
perfectblue 09:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
<math>\Pr(C \geq 4) = \frac{23}{1260}?</math>I don't know why, but I thought that there was a way of doing this where you fed in the data and the equation, and it calculated it on the server and presented it to the user.
If all 5040 permutations of the seven answers are equally probable, then the answer is given in the article titled rencontres numbers as 70/5040 = 1/72. Michael Hardy 20:38, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
To Lambiam: I am sorry that I did not notice that you had got the answer first. If you are correct about using a predetermined value, then presumably that would be the five correct that the "experts" called for. Then the probability would be, using your figures, (21+0+1)/5040 = 22/5040. However, then she failed the test, so I do not know how relevant that probability is in the case of failure. JRSpriggs 12:25, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Luigi Fantappiè could stand a cleanup job. It seems a touch heavy on the uncritical adoration. Anville 23:49, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Lseixas ( talk · contribs) has been going around changing the symbol for differential, e.g. "dt" to "\mathrm{d}t" inside Tex expressions at General relativity and elsewhere. If I remember correctly, KSmrq ( talk · contribs) told us to do the exact opposite. Is there an agreed standard symbol for the differential? JRSpriggs 09:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
If there's a controversy about this subject, including verifiable sources such as the ISO convention mentioned above, shouldn't something of the history of this controversy be mentioned in Leibniz's notation for differentiation? And why is that article separate from Leibniz notation, and why do those two articles use two different versions of the convention? — David Eppstein 21:47, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
With regards to the ISO standard, I think it's mostly meant to be applied to physics and engineering. I think IUPAC chimed in at one point or another with a similar standard for chemistry. On the other hand, like I mentioned above, mathematicians have never really gone along with all of it. ( So ppppppthtthhthththth! ;) Lunch 22:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
It seems that there are strong references for roman d: CBE manual (Scientific Style and Format 6ed 1994 CUP cf p208) and Swanson's Math into Type. pom 23:22, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Mine too. Let's try a variation:
That looks a little bit better, but still
is what I'm accustomed to and is what I see in most books, every day. If one must use the Roman "d", one should still have the space between "f(t)" and "dt". Thus: \int f(t)\,dt. Michael Hardy 01:16, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
There's a really interesting discussion going on about this article. The main problem seems to be that it is very difficult to explain what this is. Unfortunately, currently the article reads something like a diatribe on how the notion of "word problem" is nonsense. This article seems to have been in this kind of state for over three years. -- C S (Talk) 19:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm thinking of putting this article as a FAC, but before I do so, I would love the opinion of a few math editors, so I can get the article even better before letting it be the subject of the scrutiny of the rest of the Wikipedia community. As I've never been through the featured article process before (nor have I been involved in it), any comments/help with the article would be greatly appreciated. — Mets501 ( talk) 21:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
This is being revised, especially the infamous section 2b about inline citation. It seems to me that even the edits I did not do are in a sensible direction; after some jumping up and down at Wikipedia:Good articles/Review#Johann Sebastian Bach (where it is perhaps clearer than on mathematical articles what sort of points are at issue), some mutual understanding may have been attained. Please come help. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:40, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
If you have an opinion about whether the article should be named "Exclusive or" or "Exclusive disjunction", come on down to Talk:Exclusive disjunction and share your opinion. Samboy 09:09, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Recently the vector notation on a huge number of pages was changed from bold style () to arrow style (), in an effort to make notation on wikipedia more homogeneous. In paticular the Maxwell's Equations section has been changed.
Is this such a good idea? To begin with, mathematical notation is not in fact consistent, with different persons, groups, countries and even continents often using quite different notation. What is more appropriate to some may be less aprropriate to others. Notation vary's across fields as well. It doesn't seem wise to impose a single notation for all of Wikipedia when no over all consensus exits. ObsessiveMathsFreak 15:18, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
\vec
to produce bold, leaving \overrightarrow
to produce ?
—Ben FrantzDale
18:21, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I find the {{ Calculus footer}} template to be rather ugly, either with stuff hidden or stuff shown. I would suggest that it be rewritten keeping only the most relevant calculus topics, instead of the huge amalgam of links, whether they show up or are hidden. Comments? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 20:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi. I have nominated the FA Regular polytope to be review to see if it still complies with the featured article criterias. You are welcome to comment at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Regular polytope.
Fred - Chess 22:57, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Regular polytope has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Sandy ( Talk) 23:27, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
this change at Perfect number by Chikushi ( talk · contribs) looks a lot like User:WAREL. It's his first edit, and the formula is byte-for-byte identical to this edit by MIYAJ ( talk · contribs), blocked as a sock puppet of User:WAREL. Did I do right in reverting it? — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:41, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
There have also been a sequence of WAREL-like edits to perfect number recently by Sugakusha ( talk · contribs), Kotobakarihakirai ( talk · contribs), Goodboy Johnny ( talk · contribs), and InterCommunication ( talk · contribs). Each of those names is a new account that only has edits to perfect number. The first one has been blocked and marked as a suspected sock but the other three have not yet. Given this repeated abuse, and evasion of repeated blocks, would protection for perfect number be in order? — David Eppstein 18:22, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
bumped into the above article, apparently on AfD for non-notable, and thought maybe it should be brought to attention here. if that Terrence Tao is indeed a (sufficiently regular) contributor, as claimed, seems to me it is very possible that the website is well-known or becoming so, among specialists. if that's the case, non-notability certainly gets disqualified as a reason for AfD, in my opinion. Mct mht 05:37, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
GurchBot 2 ( talk · contribs) moved all archives with non-standard names to standarized names. E.g. changing "Archive12" to "Archive 12" and leaving a redirect behind. By so doing, GurchBot 2 has messed up the archives at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics and probably many others which use Werdnabot to archive their talk pages. It did not change the Werdnabot invocations to show the new file name for the current archive so Werdnabot added the archived material to the redirects which were left behind. Also, a minor point, GurchBot 2 did not change the archive lists to point at the new file names so they are now all going thru the redirects. This is a real mess. JRSpriggs 03:58, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
I am working on a guideline, Wikipedia:Writing about math. Can you people please look at it? -- Ineffable3000 23:33, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
I think that the Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky article should be switched from the scope of wikiproject Russian history to wikiproject mathematics since his importance is in the history of mathematics not the history of Russia. NikolaiLobachevsky 06:35:01 12/26/2006 (UTC)
There are a number of graph theory articles that I was going to put a {{ maths rating}} template on, but I couldn't find the right category. Does it go under topology? I couldn't find any graph theory articles already tagged. grendel| khan 16:11, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Category:Graph theory or its subcategories. — David Eppstein 16:33, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
It is also on this page, 4 sections up. -- Lambiam Talk 18:55, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Paul August, with enthusiastic support, has found a seat on the Wikipedia Arbitrary Committee. (Did I spell that right? ;-D) He joins Charles Matthews, another mathematician. (Why these two fine editors would prefer to settle squabbles rather than write mathematics articles, I cannot imagine.) I congratulate Paul on his success, and look forward to many excellent, even-handed decisions. -- KSmrq T 22:20, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Duja ( talk · contribs) has just moved "Mu-operator" to "μ-operator". This is the third (or is it the fourth?) time someone has done this; on the earlier occasions the move was reversed. My understanding was that we had an agreement to keep the Latinized spelling of the Greek letters in the titles of mathematics articles. Please someone (an administrator) reverse this. JRSpriggs 10:55, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:18, 30 December 2006 (UTC)