As some of you already know, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics recently started using User:Werdnabot to automatically archive its talk sections when ten days have passed since the last new comment. Perhaps we should start to think about whether we want to follow their example. JRSpriggs 11:51, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
OK. I tried to turn Werdnabot on for this page. It should run every six hours and archive sections 12 days old or older (last edit). I have never done this before, so I am not sure whether or how well it will work. JRSpriggs 09:28, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
The {{ archives}} template have an edit link at top right. → Aza Toth 11:21, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Current (possibly incomplete) list:
Add User:Lucky Eight; Big Omega in perfect number. Septentrionalis 15:28, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Some new stuff in texvc...
\begin{array}{c|lcr} 1 & a & = & a + b \\ 2 & b & = & c^2 + d \\ 3 & c + a & = & d \end{array} |
\underbrace{999...9}_n |
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\overbrace{999...9}^n |
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\underbrace{\overbrace{0}^{signbit} \!\!\! .101010101}_{mantissa} \times \underbrace{010101}_{exponente} previous version still cached, so added an e to the exponent to render the new image. |
\jmath \surd \ast \uplus \diamond \bigtriangleup \bigtriangledown \ominus \oslash \odot \bigcirc \amalg \prec \succ \preceq \succeq \dashv \asymp \doteq \parallel \longleftrightarrow
(awaiting scape at the moment)
→ Aza Toth 19:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Ok, the symbols have been scaped now, here they are:
\jmath |
\surd |
\ast |
\uplus |
||||
\diamond |
\bigtriangleup |
\bigtriangledown |
\ominus |
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\oslash |
\odot |
\bigcirc |
\amalg |
||||
\prec |
\succ |
\preceq |
\succeq |
||||
\dashv |
\asymp |
\doteq |
\parallel |
||||
\longleftrightarrow |
also, one symbol was mission from the help page, that is \rightleftharpoons: → Aza Toth 12:05, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Support for the array environment may be good news for equation series, so we no longer must mix TeX and tables. Compare the following use of array to the current version of this derivation.
Unfortunately, this example reveals two problems. (1) TeX is not using display style for the equations. (2) TeX cannot handle the elaborate labels with their wiki links. -- KSmrq T 15:53, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
<math>\begin{align} 0 & < \int_0^1\frac{x^4(1-x)^4}{1+x^2}\,dx && \\ & = \int_0^1\frac{x^4-4x^5+6x^6-4x^7+x^8}{1+x^2}\,dx && \text{(expanded terms in numerator)} \\ & = \int_0^1 \left(x^6-4x^5+5x^4-4x^2+4-\frac{4}{1+x^2}\right) \,dx && \text{(performed polynomial long division, an important aspect of formulating algebraic geometry)}\\ & = \left.\frac{x^7}{7}-\frac{2x^6}{3}+ x^5- \frac{4x^3}{3}+4x-4\arctan{x}\,\right|_0^1 && \text{(definite integration)} \\ & = \frac{1}{7}-\frac{2}{3}+1-\frac{4}{3}+4-\pi\ && \text{(substitute one for x, then zero for x, and subtract them—arctan(1) = π/4)} \\ & = \frac{22}{7}-\pi && \text{(addition)} \end{align}</math>
will look after bug 7774 is applied: [1] → Aza Toth 21:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
bug bugzilla:7774 is in the queue now, adding some more goofy stuff. → Aza Toth 21:54, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Just a quick question: do we have any guidelines over which we prefer - 'zeros' or 'zeroes'? This has probably been discussed before, but I can't see where ... Madmath789 18:33, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
“ | Most nouns ending in o preceded by a consonant also usually add -s to form the plural: alto, altos; casino, casinos; ego, egos; Latino, Latinos; memo, memos; neutrino, neutrinos; poncho, ponchos; silo, silos. However, some nouns ending in o preceded by a consonant add -es: echo, echoes; hero, heroes; jingo, jingoes; no, noes; potato, potatoes; tomato, tomatoes. Some nouns ending in o preceded by a consonant have two plural forms (the preferred form is given first): buffaloes or buffalos; cargoes or cargos; desperadoes or desperados; halos or haloes; mosquitoes or mosquitos; zeros or zeroes. | ” |
.
ZEROES. Dmharvey 00:11, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
I looked it up in the OED and found that they had listed 'the' plural as "zeroes". However, I saw that the form "zeroes" was not present in any of the quotations, which all had "zeros", so I sent an e-mail about it and recieved a response the conclusion of which was that "This is a complex matter, and the current recommended form for ZERO, both here and in our dictionaries of current English, is ZEROS". — Centrx→ talk • 15:29, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Tensor needs a lot of work. Discusssions a long time ago left the treatment fragmented over pages. Talk:Intermediate treatment of tensors has a recent long comment. I think a merge of Intermediate treatment of tensors into tensor might start some much-needed consolidation and imnprovement. Charles Matthews 10:51, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
I am a member of the small community people who actively research tetration. For the last few years I have operated tetration.org, one of the main resources for tetration on the Internet. I became invoked with Wikipedia when I noted that Wikipedia’s entry on tetration was rapidly climbing to the top of search engine queries on tetration. Being very impressed with the goals and achievements of Wikipedia, I contacted other people researching tetration and suggested that we collectively become involved in editing Wikipedia’s tetration entry.
I guess the other folks weren’t as infatuated with Wikipedia as I was, so I ended up making what I thought were some reasonable edits to the tetration and Ackermann function. Tetration is an area of mathematics that attracts much attention from the public and amateur mathematicians while only now is it just becoming a legitimate are of mathematics research. The problem is that people keep adding their non-peer reviewed research to the tetration page on extending tetration beyond the natural numbers Tetration - Extension to real numbers. I didn’t want to try and play cop on the tetration page, but neither did I feel comfortable remaining affiliated with an entry that I felt continually misrepresented what was known about tetration. The solution to the problem is to publish articles in peer reviewed journals that clarify what is and isn’t known about tetration.
My personal problem is that I have a large backlog of research on tetration and related subjects that I need to organize and publish. Just because Wikipedia is not appropriate for documenting research doesn’t mean that the underlying MediaWiki software isn’t magnificence in documenting research; hey, just ask the CIA. I have a new website at tetration.net using MediaWiki; having Asperger’s and over a dozen years as a software developer MediaWiki helps me to do a brain dump of my work. I like the idea of pulling my research together using MediaWiki, publishing it in a peer-reviewed journals and then releasing the entries constituting the peer-reviewed material under GFDL.
The reason I posted this here is I need help in understanding the etiquette and GFDL issues in using stuff like snippets of TeX from the Wikipedia. Can I just cite a Wikipedia entry for a snippet of TeX or must I release the entry under GFDL. Almost all of the TeX snippets I have used are at least slightly edited, how does that impact things. Daniel Geisler 21:23, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone confirm that Leon Henkin has died? Charles Matthews 13:10, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
This was a rather large update, that's wwhy it took such a long time. First of all, bug bugzilla:1182 is fixed, so non greek greek symbols () are not displayed as italics. Whats new is as following (\binom is more of a bugfix):
\begin{align} L & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty}\ {{\cos {1 \over x} \cdot {-1 \over x^2}}\over {-1 \over x^2}} \\ & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty} {\cos{1 \over x}} \cdot {-1 \over x^2} \cdot {x^2 \over -1} \\ & = \cos{1 \over \infty} = \cos{\ 0} = 1 \end{align} |
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\begin{alignat}{2} L & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty}\ {{\cos {1 \over x} \cdot {-1 \over x^2}}\over {-1 \over x^2}} &\quad& \text{by me} \\ & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty} {\cos{1 \over x}} \cdot {-1 \over x^2} \cdot {x^2 \over -1} && \text{by him} \\ & = \cos{1 \over \infty} = \cos{\ 0} = 1 && \text{Axiom 3} \end{alignat} |
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Foo \bigl( \begin{smallmatrix} a&b\\ c&d \end{smallmatrix} \bigr)$Bar |
Foo Bar |
A \xleftarrow{n+\mu-1} B \xrightarrow[T]{n\pm i-1} C |
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\binom{k}{2}\dbinom{k}{2}\tbinom{k}{2}\frac{k}{2}\dfrac{k}{2}\tfrac{k}{2} |
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\sideset{_*^*}{_n^'}\prod_a^b |
\vartriangle\triangledown\lozenge\circledS\measuredangle\nexists\Bbbk\backprime\blacktriangle\blacktriangledown |
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\blacksquare\blacklozenge\bigstar\sphericalangle\diagup\diagdown\dotplus\Cap\Cup\barwedge |
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\veebar\doublebarwedge\boxminus\boxtimes\boxdot\boxplus\divideontimes\ltimes\rtimes\leftthreetimes |
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\rightthreetimes\curlywedge\curlyvee\circleddash\circledast\circledcirc\centerdot\intercal\leqq\leqslant |
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\eqslantless\lessapprox\approxeq\lessdot\lll\lessgtr\lesseqgtr\lesseqqgtr\doteqdot\risingdotseq |
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\fallingdotseq\backsim\backsimeq\subseteqq\Subset\preccurlyeq\curlyeqprec\precsim\precapprox\vartriangleleft |
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\Vvdash\bumpeq\Bumpeq\geqq\geqslant\eqslantgtr\gtrsim\gtrapprox\eqsim\gtrdot |
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\ggg\gtrless\gtreqless\gtreqqless\eqcirc\circeq\triangleq\thicksim\thickapprox\supseteqq |
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\Supset\succcurlyeq\curlyeqsucc\succsim\succapprox\vartriangleright\shortmid\shortparallel\between\pitchfork |
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\varpropto\blacktriangleleft\therefore\backepsilon\blacktriangleright\because\nleqslant\nleqq\lneq\lneqq |
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\lvertneqq\lnsim\lnapprox\nprec\npreceq\precneqq\precnsim\precnapprox\nsim\nshortmid |
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\nvdash\nVdash\ntriangleleft\ntrianglelefteq\nsubseteq\nsubseteqq\varsubsetneq\subsetneqq\varsubsetneqq\ngtr |
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\ngeqslant\ngeqq\gneq\gneqq\gvertneqq\gnsim\gnapprox\nsucc\nsucceq\succneqq |
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\succnsim\succnapprox\ncong\nshortparallel\nparallel\nvDash\nVDash\ntriangleright\ntrianglerighteq\nsupseteq |
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\nsupseteqq\varsupsetneq\supsetneqq\varsupsetneqq\leftleftarrows\leftrightarrows\Lleftarrow\leftarrowtail\looparrowleft\leftrightharpoons |
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\curvearrowleft\circlearrowleft\Lsh\upuparrows\rightrightarrows\rightleftarrows\Rrightarrow\rightarrowtail\looparrowright\curvearrowright |
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\circlearrowright\Rsh\downdownarrows\multimap\leftrightsquigarrow\rightsquigarrow\nLeftarrow\nleftrightarrow\nRightarrow\nLeftrightarrow |
→ Aza Toth 14:36, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
I have a question about Factorization#Table method. Should it stay? Or is it too textbook-like? Thanks for your opinions. — Mets501 ( talk) 15:01, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
L'Hôpital's rule has had a couple of new proofs added to it, these were mentioned on Village pump(proposals) [3]. Could someone have a look over the changes [4]. -- Salix alba ( talk) 18:58, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
This is kind of off-topic, but anyone have any idea on why the titles of the articles on the person and rule uses L'Hôpital instead of L'Hospital? Is the reason that this is more common (if it is)? Certainly for the article on the person, shouldn't we stick with the spelling used by the person (L'Hospital) in question? I believe that is the usual guideline people have followed in other cases (as with umlauts), even when people often mangle the name in error. -- C S (Talk) 00:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone figure out why this is producing an error?
\text{by adding in the} m+1 \text{terms.}
would be in normal LaTeX as \text{by adding in the $m+1$ terms.}
, but that's not allowed at the moment. Perhaps fill a bug request about that. →
Aza
Toth 15:48, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm planning on nominating Probability-based strategy for deletion (rationale on article talk page), and I suppose the Catalin Barboianu BLP as well. I thought I'd check see if the readership of this page thinks I'm mistaken before I do so. Pete.Hurd 22:10, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
When Werdnabot ran yesterday, it added the section "General Comment about Math articles from a non-mathematician" from this talk page to the archive, but it did not remove it from this page. I tried to remove it from this page manually, but I could not. There is a part of that section which does not appear in my edit window, and thus I cannot delete that part. Can someone else fix it, please? JRSpriggs 09:10, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I do not know why Werdnabot failed to remove that section. I can only guess that it might have to do with the embedded "< h 2 >"(minus blanks). I suspect that that code generates the same kind of section separation indication which stopped my editting from reaching the remainder of the section (as a normal section header beginning with ==<Section title>== would do). As far as the timing of the archiving goes, Werdnabot seems to base its decision on time-stamps with the format produced by ~~~~. If a different format is used, as with {{unsigned|<name>}}, then it does not count. If you examine the section in question in the archive, you will see that the last entry is on November 1, but it uses the "unsigned" format. JRSpriggs 07:54, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
The lists of suggestions for selected article / selected picture / "Did you know?" for the mathematics portal is begining to get rather small. Could people try and add some items to the lists? This is especially true of the images, as good/interesting maths images can be hard to track down. Tompw 20:17, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Pseudo data is up for deletion. Current version is non-mathematical although the term seems to be used quite widely in statistics. [5] -- Salix alba ( talk) 12:47, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Please comment: Mikio Sato. My comment: silliness. -- Pjacobi 09:57, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Anyone have any opinions on this edit? I'm almost certain that this "Imadada" is the newest WAREL clone, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong. I can't get Babelfish to translate the Japanese page for me; it coughs up some kind of error and asks me to send an e-mail. -- Trovatore 20:42, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
f(x) | This user is a member of WikiProject Mathematics. |
User:NerdyNSK kindly created a userbox for the project, which briefy existed on /Participants. How do people feel about this?
![]() | This user is a participant in WikiProject Mathematics. |
The old one should be modified to put the whole name of this project on the second line as in the new one. Both boxes should be shorter horizontally to reduce the empty space on the right. Then I would prefer the old one. If you want to avoid negativity, try using instead of . JRSpriggs 08:24, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Hello folks - I noticed an inconsistency with your importance rankings, and I thought maybe somebody might want to take a look. Nash equilibrium is rated "high" importance while Game theory is ranked "mid". It seems to me that a concept in a field ought not be more important than the field itself. I don't really care which way it goes, or even if it gets fixed, but I thought I'd let you all know. --best, kevin kzollman][ talk 20:15, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
From Steiner surface: "There are ten different types, including the Roman surface and cross-cap." - List of all ten? -- 201.51.252.63 23:55, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Just an FYI, since it falls under this WikiProject, I tagged the article Definable number with the Original Research tag. It's an interesting article, but it does not appear to be based on external published information. Rather, it is an exploration by the article's authors into the concept of definability. In fact, in the introductory paragraph, the article even concedes that the phrase "definable number" isn't a standard mathematical term, which begs the question if "Definable number" is even the proper title for the article!
Anyway, I'd recommend that interested people here check out the article. If you are familiar with references regarding "definable numbers", feel free to add them to verify that the article isn't just original research. Or, if the article does appear to be entirely original research, then it should be deleted from Wikipedia and/or moved to a site that allows for original mathematical research articles. I didn't immediately tag the article for deletion, though, since I thought it would be more prudent to let you guys and the article's authors try and address the concern first. It is, after all, a good read, so I'd rather see it be fixed than deleted. Dugwiki 18:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
hi, folks. hope someone could help me. how does one make one of those and put it in an article? thanks. Mct mht 05:17, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
(Originally posted on the wrong talk page. Moved here.) Just wanted to give you guys a heads up that in the course of perusing various mathematics articles recently I noticed a surprising number of them had no cited references. The information was accurate in these articles, far as I could tell, but they had little or no external citation. It might be a good idea for someone in this project with access to appropriate texts to try and add references that direct readers to verification.
In particular, it would be very nice if articles that state a theorem provide a reader with a citation that leads to an actual proof of that theorem. I've had a few times now where I read something, said "Hmm, that sounds true", but then wasn't quite sure how to go about proving it. Providing a reference or link to actual proofs would be a nice educational aid. Just a thought. Dugwiki 17:13, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
In the process of going through these articles, I took a closer look at PlanetMath and I wasn't sure if it can be used as a sole reference. It appears that PlanetMath is a Wiki style site for math articles, which is great, but like Wiki is doesn't seem to have a formalized fact checking scheme. I couldn't find any formal policy on PlanetMath for verification, fact checking, and so on. Therefore I'm not sure it can technically be used as the only reference for an article. It makes for a good external link, and a good source for creating new Wiki stub articles, but ultimately the Wiki articles would need a source such as a textbook from a major publisher or a math journal with a formal peer review system to use as a formal reference. Unless, that is, I'm missing something about how PlanetMath works. Dugwiki 17:24, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
To risk stating the obvious, I found google books to be a good way to dig for references. Yes, there searches bring up only a few pages, but it is often enough to tell whether a given book describes well the concept in question or not. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 18:12, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Using the most recent database dump and Mathbot's List of mathematics categories, I made a list of 7287 articles related to mathematics. I tried to eliminate as many stubs as I could, but some slipped through. Of the 7287 articles,
Thoughts? CMummert 00:11, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
One more piece of information. I sorted the unreferenced articles by category and put the results at User:CMummert/Unreferenced articles by category. There are some stubs included, but the general trend seems to be that short articles stating theorems and definitions are the primary contributors. The top seven categories for unreferenced articles are: #1 Mathematical theorems (222). #2 Linear algebra (99). #3 Group theory (97). #4 Abstract algebra (91). #5 Topology (85). #6 Polytopes (82). #7 Mathematical logic (81). #8 Geometry (76). #9 Probability theory (74). #10 Curves (63). CMummert 18:32, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
For some general references that might be appropriate to add to some of the above unreferenced mathematics articles please see: User:Paul August/Bibliography (this list some books in my personal library, and/or books which are searchable online at Amazon.com) For example I have just created a "References" section for the article topological space using that list. Perhaps we might want to create something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Bibliography? Paul August ☎ 19:48, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I think a communal bibliography page would be a great idea. I have my own at User:Fropuff/References, but it's fairly small and incomplete. I would suggest we stick to using proper citation templates for any such page. -- Fropuff 15:35, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
*{{cite book | author = Loan, Charles F. Van, Gene Howard Golub | title = Matrix Computations | year = Oct 11, 1996 | publisher = Johns Hopkins University Press | year = Oct 11, 1996 | id = ISBN 0801854148 }}
The page on Fermat's Last Theorem includes the following statement:
I think this is misleading, if not plainly incorrect. It is trivial to count elliptic curves over the rationals: there are denumerably many of them, since they are determined by polynomials in two variables which are quadratic in y and cubic in x, and there are plainly an infinity of them. As I understand it, the issue was not simply to show that there were equal numbers of each; again, this is trivial: there are denumerably many modular semistable elliptic curves. The issue, as I understand it, was starting from a semistable elliptic curve, to find a modular form which defined/determined the given elliptic curve. Perhaps someone who is more familiar with this could take a look and fix that paragraph? Magidin 16:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
There seems to be a discussion going on in Hypercube, Measure polytope, Tesseract, and N-cube about which name should be primary for which page. Tesseract is the 4d polytope, Measure polytope is currently the primary name for the general n-dimensional concept, N-cube has some odd marginally-related number-theoretic content, and Hypercube is currently a small disambiguation page. Contributors including myself disagree on whether Hypercube should redirect to one or the other polytope page, or what the proper name of each page should be. If you're interested, see the talk pages for these articles. — David Eppstein 18:30, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Found another article that needs some references, and thought someone here might be able to track it down. Monty Hell problem (not to be confused with the Monty Hall problem is currently apparently based largely on an internet forum discussion. Unfortunately, forum groups are not acceptable references since anybody can post anything they want on a forum. In particular, what needs to be verified is that the "Monty Hell problem" appeared in a publication of some sort somewhere at some point in time, and was called by that exact name. The specific description of the problem also needs to be verified.
I do believe I've seen this problem before, though, so my guess is it was taken from a publication somewhere and posted to the internet. The trick is finding a book of puzzles or logic or probability problems with this paradox. Dugwiki 23:17, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Is anyone willing to vouch for General intelligent design? It looks crankish to me. CMummert 20:11, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Proofs of trigonometric identities is a really messy article in two ways (at least):
Just delete it. Stuff like this is usually deleted because of what Jersey Devil said. We don't need to encourage more tutorial style articles. -- C S (Talk) 20:29, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
I made the following edit on the Recurring decimal article, creating a section where I show that recurring decimals can be expressed in the terms of an infinite series. [8] I just wanted to post it up here for others to check up on my edits (obviously people here are more experienced and I would hate to post up factually incorrect information).-- Jersey Devil 07:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
In the past few days, I've been editing a thing or two in
Elementary algebra, and coincidentally another person was too. We started adding things here and there, but it seems that the information is piling up. I'd say it might be too much information for an article that's supposed to be elementary. The section that I've been contributing in is 'System of linear equations'. There is a reference to the supposed main article, which is
System of linear equations. However, I can't help but notice that in the main article, there is a clear theoretical definition of the subject, but it has no examples. However, in
Elementary algebra, the subject is hardly defined, while examples are abundant. Moreover,
System of linear equations does reference to yet another article about systems of equations,
Simultaneous equations- not linear equations, but a system of equations in the end. I'm trying to think neutrally here... But why do we have three articles about basically the same thing? And apparently, they could all use some improvement -and I'm more than glad to help there.
I thought maybe a basic reference to the subject could be made (with basic examples maybe) in
Elementary algebra, while moving the more in-depth examples and info we are creating to the main article,
System of linear equations, at the same time merging it with
Simultaneous equations. That way, we would be cleaning up three articles and expanding a whole topic.
The three articles are about basically the same (Except
Elementary algebra, which has other information as well) but the information seems to be spread. The way I see it, that is unnecesary and confusing.
Again, I'd be glad to help with my (limited at best) knowledge in this particular topic, but I wanted this out of the way first. I really want to contribute to this subject, but I think it would be better if there was just one main topic about it, having of course, reference to it on
Elementary algebra (or other articles for that matter). I am asking for opinions because I think it might be too bold to edit, merge and move all those pages based on my opinion alone.
What do you think? Is this a good or bad idea? Why should we do this or why not? (
Quadrivium 23:17, 17 November 2006 (UTC))
The article (one liner microstub) is on AfD. Could someone take a look what it is worth? TIA Pavel Vozenilek 01:30, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Yesterday, Calculus was chosen as the collaboration of the week for people that want to push good articles to featured article status. I encourage people from the mathematics project to get involved as this is clearly one of the most important articles on mathematics and likely to be among the most visited. At first glance I would say that there is still a considerable amount of work to be done. Pascal.Tesson 18:32, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
In WP:MSM I didn't see anything about which infix to use for definitions. Some use , but I find this very misleading, since it already has two other meanings: equivalence (hence its Latex code) and identity. I would therefore advocate := or the equal sign with "def" underneath. (Sorry, I don't know the Latex code for that.) — Sebastian (talk) 04:58, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
= | ≔ | ≜ | ≝ | ≡ |
I feel strongly that we should not need the := type symbol here. If something is a definition we should say so in words. The proper use for := is for assignment in computer science. As far as I'm concerned, := is up there with iff as technical language we should always avoid. since it makes articles impenetrable. Charles Matthews 09:00, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
So it seems we have a consensus that we don't want for definitions. This Google search shows that we have less than 60 occurrences, so it is practically feasible to weed out the wrong ones.
Many of these cases may indeed be better expressed with words. But I would not completely rule out ":=". Trying to express every definition in words can get clumsy. E.g. I can't think of a way to rephrase "... where is the speed of light and is called the Lorentz factor" withouth distracting at least some readers. Moreover, readers who are unfamiliar with ":=" can enter it in the search field (although unfortunately they can't enter a single colon). — Sebastian (talk) 18:02, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
In writing about mathematics and physics, I've never found a problem using an equals sign and then stating, in words, whether what you're writing is a definition. I think anything else is just a gimmick. –
Joke 18:54, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
David, thanks for thinking of this. I still hope that there are not too many Unicode ≡ instances since it doesn't seem possible to use this in a formula. <math>a ≡ b</math> at least yields: Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): {\displaystyle a ≡ b} .
Salix and Joke: I think you're missing my point. Of course it is possible to write just an equal sign, but you're losing information: The colon tells the reader unobtrusively: "Don't worry about what this is all about and whether you've seen it before - it is just a definition." And I agree, it is not a problem for anybody who writes English reasonably well to state in words whether it's a definition. But how do you actually do this in a case like the above without overemphasizing a side issue and breaking the flow of thought? — Sebastian (talk) 22:52, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
For a whole week, none of the seven people who found it particularly important to highlight definitions made any contribution to actually achieve this. Since
it seems that simply replacing "\equiv" with ":=" wherever applicable would be the most sensitive thing to do for now. (Replacing it with just "=" is not good since it would delete information, and other alternatives were even less favored.) I am volunteering to do that. After that, I will be done, and the proponents of prose can edit these occurrences at their leisure. Let me know what you think. — Sebastian (talk) 21:00, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
I also strongly agree that ":=" is awfully ugly, and that it should be always avoided in math. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 03:27, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Charles, Salix and Lambian – you make enough good points to elevate your preferred solution (of banning ":=") within my margin of error close to my preferred solution (of allowing it where it helps). The reason I'm not entirely swayed is that I absolutely disagree with Lambian’s last remark: It is precisely because our math articles are often hard to understand that readers need help. Even small things can provide a straw for struggling readers to cling to. But I acknowledge that there is a tradeoff, and which solution actually provides more help is a moot judgment call. — Sebastian (talk) 20:57, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
OK, now that we agree that we don't want to use \equiv for definitions, we need to do two things:
Dang! I just realized that my original query yields far too few results. Unfortunately, searching for "math" does not, as I thought, yield all pages that contain the <math> tag, but only those that contain the word "math" in plain text - which are mostly entries like "J. Math. Pures Appl.". Replacing "math" in the query with "function" already yields 408 results. Does anyone have an idea how to filter all mathematical articles in a Google (or other) search? — Sebastian (talk) 18:05, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I replaced the list with the result of this query, which gives us a few too many articles, but at least we won't miss any. — Sebastian (talk) 19:25, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I just found out about this discussion, and I really need to register my strong objection to changing \equiv, :=, and = to , for a number of reasons:
Again, most of objection relates to the concept that we shouldn't make up our own conventions. This is really starting to bug me. Also, I don't think you've taken a broad enough poll to be establishing this as convention, and the discussion above doesn't look like consensus to me. Please stop, at least until it is clear that a consensus among editors (not just people in this discussion) has been reached. -- MOBle 19:46, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Adding my opinion based on lots of math experience... First a fact of math writing: The symbol \equiv has several common meanings in mathematics. Sometimes it means a definition, sometimes it means arithmetic congruence, sometimes it means equivalence under an equivalence relation. Probably it has other meanings. In a math paper or book, one has to see from context, or from an explicit explanation by the author (in words), what it means in each case. IMHO, that eliminates it as a standard Wikipedia conventional symbol for a definition. I don't have a strong opinion on := vs. other options, but I do think that when you define something, it always helps if you say that you're defining it, and then the = sign should be clear, and also := or =^def. (I have seen the latter used in print, though not often.) It comes down to the opinion expressed earlier, that if you want to be clear, you have to say what you mean in plain language, even if it's longer. End HO. Zaslav 06:11, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
The notation
conventionally means that the two random variables X and Y both have the same probability distribution. The letter "L" stands for "law"; probability distributions are sometimes called "laws". Michael Hardy 04:11, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
So, what exactly should we add to WP:MSM? How about the following:
We could also recommend "" , as used in Implementation of mathematics in set theory. — Sebastian (talk) 23:18, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Old version of table deleted - see new version below.
Before | After | Found in | Comments |
where | where we define and | Discrete Fourier transform | |
where the division is performed element-wise | where the division is defined as to be performed element-wise | Discrete Fourier transform | |
The action is defined as the
integral of the
Lagrangian for an input evolution between the two time points |
The action is defined as the
integral of the
Lagrangian for an input evolution between the two time points |
Action (physics) | Copy defined term in sentence for clarity. |
another action function is often defined:Hamilton's characteristic function . | another action function, Hamilton's characteristic function , is often introduced. It is defined as . | Action (physics) | Move "defined" closer to equation. |
the final and initial positions, and , are specified in advance. | the final and initial positions are specified in advance as and . | Action (physics) | use "specified ... as" to indicate definition. |
The difference between these two evolutions is infinitesimally small at all times: | The difference between these two evolutions, which we will call , is infinitesimally small at all times: | Action (physics) | The original equation served two purposes: Defining and showing which term is small. Explain these two verbatim. |
Optimal stopping uses ≡ to state the distribution of a random variable. That is, they write X ≡ D where X is a variable and D is a distribution. Is that one of the uses of ≡ we should be avoiding, or is it ok? Maybe it should be a membership symbol rather than either = or ≡? — David Eppstein 21:31, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Added bug bugzilla:7753. → Aza Toth 21:45, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
I was just informed on the talk page for an article that I help maintain that some people here appear to believe that Wikipedia gets to revise a century of usage by ditching , and that, indeed, said decision has "already been made".
Pardon my saying so, but no, that's not really Wikipedia's decision to make. is in wide use in all sorts of places. Those who claim to have math degrees and to have never seen it before, well, I don't know what math classes you were taking, but there is a strong reason that Knuth put the character in TeX's math font, and it wasn't perversity.
I see that some believe this issue is "decided", but that's absurd. \equiv is not going from articles I edit, because it is there in all the references I use and all the papers I read. If you don't like it, the place to take it up is with organizations like the American Mathematical Society, and not in a Wikipedia project talk page. Abolishing it is the moral equivalent of Wikipedia deciding, as a matter of style, to rename Hydrogen "Element One" because that is "more logical". No, sorry, that's not what we get to do around here. Wikipedia is a reference, not a place to try to change the world's notational conventions. This is an encyclopedia, not a reform movement. If you don't like the way professionals in certain fields write their equations, take it up with them directly.
Repeating, in the specific case of particular pages I edit regularly, I've checked the standard notation in reference works, and it is \equiv (i.e. ), and so that is how it should remain on those pages until such time as the textbooks and papers in the field change. Let me know when you have gotten all the textbooks revised. -- Pmetzger 21:12, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
For what it is worth, I should point out to readers here that using ≡ for definitions is very common in physics (much more common than := or alternatives). In fact, the first five textbooks I pulled off my shelf all use it. They are
I agree that good prose is the best solution, but I wouldn't go so far as to banish ≡ from physics articles. It is, after all, a very standard notation in that field. -- Fropuff 01:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
It seems the obvious answer here is that physics represents a field where ≡ is both commonly used and unambiguous (while in mathematics it is not - to me in means congruence modulo something) and in that case it seems only reasonable to follow the publications in the field and use ≡ in the physics articles on subjects that traditionally use it. On the other hand I tend to agree with with the eventual consensus view here, at least for pure mathematics articles, that ≡ isn't the best option due to rarity and ambiguity of meaning, and that clear prose is the answer. Leland McInnes 09:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Re #1: This is not a "jihad against symbols"
[10]. It is an endeavor to disambiguate the different uses of \equiv (demonstrated so nicely by Lambiam above).
Re #2: It is the best, but it takes a lot of time. We're still at about 300 occurrences - if you really feel strongly about this, please help by editing the articles on
/equivlist.
If this is not immediately obvous to you, please read the older parts of this section. I'm tired of hearing these misconceptions over and over again. — Sebastian (talk) 02:31, 4 December 2006 (UTC), amended 03:47, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Here is American Institute of Physics, AIP Style Manual,, 4th ed. 1990, Appendix F:Special symbols available for typesetting, p. 44:
Note that ≝ is nowhere to be found. Nor is :=, but that of course can be composed of two characters without a special typesetting symbol. Gene Nygaard 14:08, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Sebastian, I believe, claims that the beginning of this discussion shows that everyone agrees that adding prose, presumably such forms as "We define" and so forth, is the best option. This is not at all obvious to me; but if it is so, let's agree to go do it, as part of the slow improvement that is Wikipedia. It will take a long time; but so will lots of other important things. Septentrionalis 18:19, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Here's a table with the options we have so far - please feel free to amend: — Sebastian (talk) 19:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Option | Basis | Remaining effort (person hours) | Quality (A...F) | Certainty of outcome |
Leave as is | haphazard | 0 | F (ambiguous) | certain (trivially) |
Annotate as we go | consensus | 30 | A | unlikely (has not worked so far) |
Annotate now | consensus | 30 | A | low (few volunteers) |
repl \equiv with =^def | lesser evil | 2 | E (notation unfamiliar to some) | certain (already done for 75% of all articles on /equivlist) |
Finish math \equiv replacements, revert all \equiv replacement made on non-math articles | Allow for field differences, avoid stepping on toes | 10 | B | 50/50, sporadic |
One question to all who believe that slow improvement (the "ant algorithm") fixes the problem: Why are you confident that it will improve formulas with \equiv signs, but not formulas with =^def signs? — Sebastian (talk) 19:41, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Way too serious. I mean, way way too serious about a format issue. As on some other points (e.g. spelling) if there is not going to be a settled consensus, just try not to annoy others on this. The wiki way isn't about six-week threads that settle nothing. Charles Matthews 22:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
I've created Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/equivlistrevert for reverting non-math changes. Sebastian, you should finish the job you've done on /equivlist with math articles. johnpseudo 15:47, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I did some edits to Euler reciprocity relationship. I agree with whoever put the "context" tag there: its opening sentence is horribly abrupt, not informing the reader that mathematics is what the article is to be about, etc. But I wonder if this article ought to exist. As nearly as I can understand it, it's another statement of what is called Clairaut's theorem. (If you tell me that it's obviously supposed to be Clairaut's theorem, that may be because I edited it to say what I guessed it was intended to say.) Michael Hardy 01:25, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Now I've put "merge" tags on these three articles. Michael Hardy 04:13, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
The STIX Fonts project will make the beta version of its fonts available for download in early December. This will be a great boon to all mathematics readers, and of special interest to the Wikipedia mathematics community. The fonts come with a generous license, and now would be a good time for experts here to review it to decide if it will cause any problems for us. For example, does item 2 apply if a Wikipedia page displays an equation as a PNG typeset with these fonts? (What is considered a "derivative work"?) -- KSmrq T 10:38, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Hey there folks. I've been sorting through the {{expert}} tags over the last few days and there are a couple requets in your pile. Could you take a look at Category:Pages needing expert attention from the Mathematics Portal? Don't be thrown by the word portal; It's pretty much just a category of math articles that requested expert help. Thanks much! -- Brad Beattie (talk) 19:03, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Some of the interwiki links provided on this page describe another theorem, also credited to Thales of Miletus, proving that parallel lines intersecting a pair of intersecting lines create similar triangles. (See the featured article on the French wikipedia, fr:Théorème de Thalès for probably the best explanation). What is this theorem called in English, and is there an article here about it? (There should be.) Rigadoun (talk) 16:22, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I made a number of corrections to the article Inverse trigonometric function, in particular to the section Definitions as integrals, which was riddled with errors (about as many as it has formulas). It would be a good idea if someone who has access to a textbook with such formulas, or Abramowitz & Stegun, checked this, and if possible perhaps also the other formulas in the article. -- Lambiam Talk 17:15, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I hadn't noticed we now have "align"---thanks for mentioning this. Using \begin{matrix}, etc., for this produced some really ugly results in many cases. Michael Hardy 03:44, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
These were formerly a single article, which conflated LRD processes with long-tailed distributions as if the presence of a long-tailed distribution only ever arose as a result of LRD, and vice versa, and that they were, in effect, two aspects of a single concept. Terms like "memoryless distribution" were used...
I've tried to separate the two, but I'm no expert, and I'm pretty sure the result is still a mess. Can anyone with some probability/statistics/queueing theory knowledge help tidy these up and proofread them for errors? -- The Anome 00:03, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I just made an article on a serial plagiarist Dǎnuţ Marcu. The hope is that "contributions" of this person become better known. Please take a look and contribute to make the article adherent to WP style. Also, keep an eye on it - I am afriad there might be a "speedy deletion" move by the Marcu himself. Mhym 02:29, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
That second sentence is clearly unsourced and a violation of WP:BLP, and so I removed it. Unfortunately, mhym, whom I'm sure is familiar with the policy, has re-added it. I suggest people watch the article to make sure these violations are not re-added. -- C S (Talk) 04:10, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
As some of you already know, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics recently started using User:Werdnabot to automatically archive its talk sections when ten days have passed since the last new comment. Perhaps we should start to think about whether we want to follow their example. JRSpriggs 11:51, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
OK. I tried to turn Werdnabot on for this page. It should run every six hours and archive sections 12 days old or older (last edit). I have never done this before, so I am not sure whether or how well it will work. JRSpriggs 09:28, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
The {{ archives}} template have an edit link at top right. → Aza Toth 11:21, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Current (possibly incomplete) list:
Add User:Lucky Eight; Big Omega in perfect number. Septentrionalis 15:28, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Some new stuff in texvc...
\begin{array}{c|lcr} 1 & a & = & a + b \\ 2 & b & = & c^2 + d \\ 3 & c + a & = & d \end{array} |
\underbrace{999...9}_n |
|
\overbrace{999...9}^n |
|
\underbrace{\overbrace{0}^{signbit} \!\!\! .101010101}_{mantissa} \times \underbrace{010101}_{exponente} previous version still cached, so added an e to the exponent to render the new image. |
\jmath \surd \ast \uplus \diamond \bigtriangleup \bigtriangledown \ominus \oslash \odot \bigcirc \amalg \prec \succ \preceq \succeq \dashv \asymp \doteq \parallel \longleftrightarrow
(awaiting scape at the moment)
→ Aza Toth 19:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Ok, the symbols have been scaped now, here they are:
\jmath |
\surd |
\ast |
\uplus |
||||
\diamond |
\bigtriangleup |
\bigtriangledown |
\ominus |
||||
\oslash |
\odot |
\bigcirc |
\amalg |
||||
\prec |
\succ |
\preceq |
\succeq |
||||
\dashv |
\asymp |
\doteq |
\parallel |
||||
\longleftrightarrow |
also, one symbol was mission from the help page, that is \rightleftharpoons: → Aza Toth 12:05, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Support for the array environment may be good news for equation series, so we no longer must mix TeX and tables. Compare the following use of array to the current version of this derivation.
Unfortunately, this example reveals two problems. (1) TeX is not using display style for the equations. (2) TeX cannot handle the elaborate labels with their wiki links. -- KSmrq T 15:53, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
<math>\begin{align} 0 & < \int_0^1\frac{x^4(1-x)^4}{1+x^2}\,dx && \\ & = \int_0^1\frac{x^4-4x^5+6x^6-4x^7+x^8}{1+x^2}\,dx && \text{(expanded terms in numerator)} \\ & = \int_0^1 \left(x^6-4x^5+5x^4-4x^2+4-\frac{4}{1+x^2}\right) \,dx && \text{(performed polynomial long division, an important aspect of formulating algebraic geometry)}\\ & = \left.\frac{x^7}{7}-\frac{2x^6}{3}+ x^5- \frac{4x^3}{3}+4x-4\arctan{x}\,\right|_0^1 && \text{(definite integration)} \\ & = \frac{1}{7}-\frac{2}{3}+1-\frac{4}{3}+4-\pi\ && \text{(substitute one for x, then zero for x, and subtract them—arctan(1) = π/4)} \\ & = \frac{22}{7}-\pi && \text{(addition)} \end{align}</math>
will look after bug 7774 is applied: [1] → Aza Toth 21:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
bug bugzilla:7774 is in the queue now, adding some more goofy stuff. → Aza Toth 21:54, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Just a quick question: do we have any guidelines over which we prefer - 'zeros' or 'zeroes'? This has probably been discussed before, but I can't see where ... Madmath789 18:33, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
“ | Most nouns ending in o preceded by a consonant also usually add -s to form the plural: alto, altos; casino, casinos; ego, egos; Latino, Latinos; memo, memos; neutrino, neutrinos; poncho, ponchos; silo, silos. However, some nouns ending in o preceded by a consonant add -es: echo, echoes; hero, heroes; jingo, jingoes; no, noes; potato, potatoes; tomato, tomatoes. Some nouns ending in o preceded by a consonant have two plural forms (the preferred form is given first): buffaloes or buffalos; cargoes or cargos; desperadoes or desperados; halos or haloes; mosquitoes or mosquitos; zeros or zeroes. | ” |
.
ZEROES. Dmharvey 00:11, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
I looked it up in the OED and found that they had listed 'the' plural as "zeroes". However, I saw that the form "zeroes" was not present in any of the quotations, which all had "zeros", so I sent an e-mail about it and recieved a response the conclusion of which was that "This is a complex matter, and the current recommended form for ZERO, both here and in our dictionaries of current English, is ZEROS". — Centrx→ talk • 15:29, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Tensor needs a lot of work. Discusssions a long time ago left the treatment fragmented over pages. Talk:Intermediate treatment of tensors has a recent long comment. I think a merge of Intermediate treatment of tensors into tensor might start some much-needed consolidation and imnprovement. Charles Matthews 10:51, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
I am a member of the small community people who actively research tetration. For the last few years I have operated tetration.org, one of the main resources for tetration on the Internet. I became invoked with Wikipedia when I noted that Wikipedia’s entry on tetration was rapidly climbing to the top of search engine queries on tetration. Being very impressed with the goals and achievements of Wikipedia, I contacted other people researching tetration and suggested that we collectively become involved in editing Wikipedia’s tetration entry.
I guess the other folks weren’t as infatuated with Wikipedia as I was, so I ended up making what I thought were some reasonable edits to the tetration and Ackermann function. Tetration is an area of mathematics that attracts much attention from the public and amateur mathematicians while only now is it just becoming a legitimate are of mathematics research. The problem is that people keep adding their non-peer reviewed research to the tetration page on extending tetration beyond the natural numbers Tetration - Extension to real numbers. I didn’t want to try and play cop on the tetration page, but neither did I feel comfortable remaining affiliated with an entry that I felt continually misrepresented what was known about tetration. The solution to the problem is to publish articles in peer reviewed journals that clarify what is and isn’t known about tetration.
My personal problem is that I have a large backlog of research on tetration and related subjects that I need to organize and publish. Just because Wikipedia is not appropriate for documenting research doesn’t mean that the underlying MediaWiki software isn’t magnificence in documenting research; hey, just ask the CIA. I have a new website at tetration.net using MediaWiki; having Asperger’s and over a dozen years as a software developer MediaWiki helps me to do a brain dump of my work. I like the idea of pulling my research together using MediaWiki, publishing it in a peer-reviewed journals and then releasing the entries constituting the peer-reviewed material under GFDL.
The reason I posted this here is I need help in understanding the etiquette and GFDL issues in using stuff like snippets of TeX from the Wikipedia. Can I just cite a Wikipedia entry for a snippet of TeX or must I release the entry under GFDL. Almost all of the TeX snippets I have used are at least slightly edited, how does that impact things. Daniel Geisler 21:23, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone confirm that Leon Henkin has died? Charles Matthews 13:10, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
This was a rather large update, that's wwhy it took such a long time. First of all, bug bugzilla:1182 is fixed, so non greek greek symbols () are not displayed as italics. Whats new is as following (\binom is more of a bugfix):
\begin{align} L & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty}\ {{\cos {1 \over x} \cdot {-1 \over x^2}}\over {-1 \over x^2}} \\ & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty} {\cos{1 \over x}} \cdot {-1 \over x^2} \cdot {x^2 \over -1} \\ & = \cos{1 \over \infty} = \cos{\ 0} = 1 \end{align} |
|
\begin{alignat}{2} L & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty}\ {{\cos {1 \over x} \cdot {-1 \over x^2}}\over {-1 \over x^2}} &\quad& \text{by me} \\ & = \lim_{|x| \to \infty} {\cos{1 \over x}} \cdot {-1 \over x^2} \cdot {x^2 \over -1} && \text{by him} \\ & = \cos{1 \over \infty} = \cos{\ 0} = 1 && \text{Axiom 3} \end{alignat} |
|
Foo \bigl( \begin{smallmatrix} a&b\\ c&d \end{smallmatrix} \bigr)$Bar |
Foo Bar |
A \xleftarrow{n+\mu-1} B \xrightarrow[T]{n\pm i-1} C |
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\binom{k}{2}\dbinom{k}{2}\tbinom{k}{2}\frac{k}{2}\dfrac{k}{2}\tfrac{k}{2} |
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\sideset{_*^*}{_n^'}\prod_a^b |
\vartriangle\triangledown\lozenge\circledS\measuredangle\nexists\Bbbk\backprime\blacktriangle\blacktriangledown |
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\blacksquare\blacklozenge\bigstar\sphericalangle\diagup\diagdown\dotplus\Cap\Cup\barwedge |
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\veebar\doublebarwedge\boxminus\boxtimes\boxdot\boxplus\divideontimes\ltimes\rtimes\leftthreetimes |
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\rightthreetimes\curlywedge\curlyvee\circleddash\circledast\circledcirc\centerdot\intercal\leqq\leqslant |
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\eqslantless\lessapprox\approxeq\lessdot\lll\lessgtr\lesseqgtr\lesseqqgtr\doteqdot\risingdotseq |
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\fallingdotseq\backsim\backsimeq\subseteqq\Subset\preccurlyeq\curlyeqprec\precsim\precapprox\vartriangleleft |
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\Vvdash\bumpeq\Bumpeq\geqq\geqslant\eqslantgtr\gtrsim\gtrapprox\eqsim\gtrdot |
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\ggg\gtrless\gtreqless\gtreqqless\eqcirc\circeq\triangleq\thicksim\thickapprox\supseteqq |
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\Supset\succcurlyeq\curlyeqsucc\succsim\succapprox\vartriangleright\shortmid\shortparallel\between\pitchfork |
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\varpropto\blacktriangleleft\therefore\backepsilon\blacktriangleright\because\nleqslant\nleqq\lneq\lneqq |
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\lvertneqq\lnsim\lnapprox\nprec\npreceq\precneqq\precnsim\precnapprox\nsim\nshortmid |
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\nvdash\nVdash\ntriangleleft\ntrianglelefteq\nsubseteq\nsubseteqq\varsubsetneq\subsetneqq\varsubsetneqq\ngtr |
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\ngeqslant\ngeqq\gneq\gneqq\gvertneqq\gnsim\gnapprox\nsucc\nsucceq\succneqq |
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\succnsim\succnapprox\ncong\nshortparallel\nparallel\nvDash\nVDash\ntriangleright\ntrianglerighteq\nsupseteq |
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\nsupseteqq\varsupsetneq\supsetneqq\varsupsetneqq\leftleftarrows\leftrightarrows\Lleftarrow\leftarrowtail\looparrowleft\leftrightharpoons |
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\curvearrowleft\circlearrowleft\Lsh\upuparrows\rightrightarrows\rightleftarrows\Rrightarrow\rightarrowtail\looparrowright\curvearrowright |
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\circlearrowright\Rsh\downdownarrows\multimap\leftrightsquigarrow\rightsquigarrow\nLeftarrow\nleftrightarrow\nRightarrow\nLeftrightarrow |
→ Aza Toth 14:36, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
I have a question about Factorization#Table method. Should it stay? Or is it too textbook-like? Thanks for your opinions. — Mets501 ( talk) 15:01, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
L'Hôpital's rule has had a couple of new proofs added to it, these were mentioned on Village pump(proposals) [3]. Could someone have a look over the changes [4]. -- Salix alba ( talk) 18:58, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
This is kind of off-topic, but anyone have any idea on why the titles of the articles on the person and rule uses L'Hôpital instead of L'Hospital? Is the reason that this is more common (if it is)? Certainly for the article on the person, shouldn't we stick with the spelling used by the person (L'Hospital) in question? I believe that is the usual guideline people have followed in other cases (as with umlauts), even when people often mangle the name in error. -- C S (Talk) 00:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone figure out why this is producing an error?
\text{by adding in the} m+1 \text{terms.}
would be in normal LaTeX as \text{by adding in the $m+1$ terms.}
, but that's not allowed at the moment. Perhaps fill a bug request about that. →
Aza
Toth 15:48, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm planning on nominating Probability-based strategy for deletion (rationale on article talk page), and I suppose the Catalin Barboianu BLP as well. I thought I'd check see if the readership of this page thinks I'm mistaken before I do so. Pete.Hurd 22:10, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
When Werdnabot ran yesterday, it added the section "General Comment about Math articles from a non-mathematician" from this talk page to the archive, but it did not remove it from this page. I tried to remove it from this page manually, but I could not. There is a part of that section which does not appear in my edit window, and thus I cannot delete that part. Can someone else fix it, please? JRSpriggs 09:10, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I do not know why Werdnabot failed to remove that section. I can only guess that it might have to do with the embedded "< h 2 >"(minus blanks). I suspect that that code generates the same kind of section separation indication which stopped my editting from reaching the remainder of the section (as a normal section header beginning with ==<Section title>== would do). As far as the timing of the archiving goes, Werdnabot seems to base its decision on time-stamps with the format produced by ~~~~. If a different format is used, as with {{unsigned|<name>}}, then it does not count. If you examine the section in question in the archive, you will see that the last entry is on November 1, but it uses the "unsigned" format. JRSpriggs 07:54, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
The lists of suggestions for selected article / selected picture / "Did you know?" for the mathematics portal is begining to get rather small. Could people try and add some items to the lists? This is especially true of the images, as good/interesting maths images can be hard to track down. Tompw 20:17, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Pseudo data is up for deletion. Current version is non-mathematical although the term seems to be used quite widely in statistics. [5] -- Salix alba ( talk) 12:47, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Please comment: Mikio Sato. My comment: silliness. -- Pjacobi 09:57, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Anyone have any opinions on this edit? I'm almost certain that this "Imadada" is the newest WAREL clone, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong. I can't get Babelfish to translate the Japanese page for me; it coughs up some kind of error and asks me to send an e-mail. -- Trovatore 20:42, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
f(x) | This user is a member of WikiProject Mathematics. |
User:NerdyNSK kindly created a userbox for the project, which briefy existed on /Participants. How do people feel about this?
![]() | This user is a participant in WikiProject Mathematics. |
The old one should be modified to put the whole name of this project on the second line as in the new one. Both boxes should be shorter horizontally to reduce the empty space on the right. Then I would prefer the old one. If you want to avoid negativity, try using instead of . JRSpriggs 08:24, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Hello folks - I noticed an inconsistency with your importance rankings, and I thought maybe somebody might want to take a look. Nash equilibrium is rated "high" importance while Game theory is ranked "mid". It seems to me that a concept in a field ought not be more important than the field itself. I don't really care which way it goes, or even if it gets fixed, but I thought I'd let you all know. --best, kevin kzollman][ talk 20:15, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
From Steiner surface: "There are ten different types, including the Roman surface and cross-cap." - List of all ten? -- 201.51.252.63 23:55, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Just an FYI, since it falls under this WikiProject, I tagged the article Definable number with the Original Research tag. It's an interesting article, but it does not appear to be based on external published information. Rather, it is an exploration by the article's authors into the concept of definability. In fact, in the introductory paragraph, the article even concedes that the phrase "definable number" isn't a standard mathematical term, which begs the question if "Definable number" is even the proper title for the article!
Anyway, I'd recommend that interested people here check out the article. If you are familiar with references regarding "definable numbers", feel free to add them to verify that the article isn't just original research. Or, if the article does appear to be entirely original research, then it should be deleted from Wikipedia and/or moved to a site that allows for original mathematical research articles. I didn't immediately tag the article for deletion, though, since I thought it would be more prudent to let you guys and the article's authors try and address the concern first. It is, after all, a good read, so I'd rather see it be fixed than deleted. Dugwiki 18:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
hi, folks. hope someone could help me. how does one make one of those and put it in an article? thanks. Mct mht 05:17, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
(Originally posted on the wrong talk page. Moved here.) Just wanted to give you guys a heads up that in the course of perusing various mathematics articles recently I noticed a surprising number of them had no cited references. The information was accurate in these articles, far as I could tell, but they had little or no external citation. It might be a good idea for someone in this project with access to appropriate texts to try and add references that direct readers to verification.
In particular, it would be very nice if articles that state a theorem provide a reader with a citation that leads to an actual proof of that theorem. I've had a few times now where I read something, said "Hmm, that sounds true", but then wasn't quite sure how to go about proving it. Providing a reference or link to actual proofs would be a nice educational aid. Just a thought. Dugwiki 17:13, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
In the process of going through these articles, I took a closer look at PlanetMath and I wasn't sure if it can be used as a sole reference. It appears that PlanetMath is a Wiki style site for math articles, which is great, but like Wiki is doesn't seem to have a formalized fact checking scheme. I couldn't find any formal policy on PlanetMath for verification, fact checking, and so on. Therefore I'm not sure it can technically be used as the only reference for an article. It makes for a good external link, and a good source for creating new Wiki stub articles, but ultimately the Wiki articles would need a source such as a textbook from a major publisher or a math journal with a formal peer review system to use as a formal reference. Unless, that is, I'm missing something about how PlanetMath works. Dugwiki 17:24, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
To risk stating the obvious, I found google books to be a good way to dig for references. Yes, there searches bring up only a few pages, but it is often enough to tell whether a given book describes well the concept in question or not. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 18:12, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Using the most recent database dump and Mathbot's List of mathematics categories, I made a list of 7287 articles related to mathematics. I tried to eliminate as many stubs as I could, but some slipped through. Of the 7287 articles,
Thoughts? CMummert 00:11, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
One more piece of information. I sorted the unreferenced articles by category and put the results at User:CMummert/Unreferenced articles by category. There are some stubs included, but the general trend seems to be that short articles stating theorems and definitions are the primary contributors. The top seven categories for unreferenced articles are: #1 Mathematical theorems (222). #2 Linear algebra (99). #3 Group theory (97). #4 Abstract algebra (91). #5 Topology (85). #6 Polytopes (82). #7 Mathematical logic (81). #8 Geometry (76). #9 Probability theory (74). #10 Curves (63). CMummert 18:32, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
For some general references that might be appropriate to add to some of the above unreferenced mathematics articles please see: User:Paul August/Bibliography (this list some books in my personal library, and/or books which are searchable online at Amazon.com) For example I have just created a "References" section for the article topological space using that list. Perhaps we might want to create something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Bibliography? Paul August ☎ 19:48, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I think a communal bibliography page would be a great idea. I have my own at User:Fropuff/References, but it's fairly small and incomplete. I would suggest we stick to using proper citation templates for any such page. -- Fropuff 15:35, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
*{{cite book | author = Loan, Charles F. Van, Gene Howard Golub | title = Matrix Computations | year = Oct 11, 1996 | publisher = Johns Hopkins University Press | year = Oct 11, 1996 | id = ISBN 0801854148 }}
The page on Fermat's Last Theorem includes the following statement:
I think this is misleading, if not plainly incorrect. It is trivial to count elliptic curves over the rationals: there are denumerably many of them, since they are determined by polynomials in two variables which are quadratic in y and cubic in x, and there are plainly an infinity of them. As I understand it, the issue was not simply to show that there were equal numbers of each; again, this is trivial: there are denumerably many modular semistable elliptic curves. The issue, as I understand it, was starting from a semistable elliptic curve, to find a modular form which defined/determined the given elliptic curve. Perhaps someone who is more familiar with this could take a look and fix that paragraph? Magidin 16:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
There seems to be a discussion going on in Hypercube, Measure polytope, Tesseract, and N-cube about which name should be primary for which page. Tesseract is the 4d polytope, Measure polytope is currently the primary name for the general n-dimensional concept, N-cube has some odd marginally-related number-theoretic content, and Hypercube is currently a small disambiguation page. Contributors including myself disagree on whether Hypercube should redirect to one or the other polytope page, or what the proper name of each page should be. If you're interested, see the talk pages for these articles. — David Eppstein 18:30, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Found another article that needs some references, and thought someone here might be able to track it down. Monty Hell problem (not to be confused with the Monty Hall problem is currently apparently based largely on an internet forum discussion. Unfortunately, forum groups are not acceptable references since anybody can post anything they want on a forum. In particular, what needs to be verified is that the "Monty Hell problem" appeared in a publication of some sort somewhere at some point in time, and was called by that exact name. The specific description of the problem also needs to be verified.
I do believe I've seen this problem before, though, so my guess is it was taken from a publication somewhere and posted to the internet. The trick is finding a book of puzzles or logic or probability problems with this paradox. Dugwiki 23:17, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Is anyone willing to vouch for General intelligent design? It looks crankish to me. CMummert 20:11, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Proofs of trigonometric identities is a really messy article in two ways (at least):
Just delete it. Stuff like this is usually deleted because of what Jersey Devil said. We don't need to encourage more tutorial style articles. -- C S (Talk) 20:29, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
I made the following edit on the Recurring decimal article, creating a section where I show that recurring decimals can be expressed in the terms of an infinite series. [8] I just wanted to post it up here for others to check up on my edits (obviously people here are more experienced and I would hate to post up factually incorrect information).-- Jersey Devil 07:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
In the past few days, I've been editing a thing or two in
Elementary algebra, and coincidentally another person was too. We started adding things here and there, but it seems that the information is piling up. I'd say it might be too much information for an article that's supposed to be elementary. The section that I've been contributing in is 'System of linear equations'. There is a reference to the supposed main article, which is
System of linear equations. However, I can't help but notice that in the main article, there is a clear theoretical definition of the subject, but it has no examples. However, in
Elementary algebra, the subject is hardly defined, while examples are abundant. Moreover,
System of linear equations does reference to yet another article about systems of equations,
Simultaneous equations- not linear equations, but a system of equations in the end. I'm trying to think neutrally here... But why do we have three articles about basically the same thing? And apparently, they could all use some improvement -and I'm more than glad to help there.
I thought maybe a basic reference to the subject could be made (with basic examples maybe) in
Elementary algebra, while moving the more in-depth examples and info we are creating to the main article,
System of linear equations, at the same time merging it with
Simultaneous equations. That way, we would be cleaning up three articles and expanding a whole topic.
The three articles are about basically the same (Except
Elementary algebra, which has other information as well) but the information seems to be spread. The way I see it, that is unnecesary and confusing.
Again, I'd be glad to help with my (limited at best) knowledge in this particular topic, but I wanted this out of the way first. I really want to contribute to this subject, but I think it would be better if there was just one main topic about it, having of course, reference to it on
Elementary algebra (or other articles for that matter). I am asking for opinions because I think it might be too bold to edit, merge and move all those pages based on my opinion alone.
What do you think? Is this a good or bad idea? Why should we do this or why not? (
Quadrivium 23:17, 17 November 2006 (UTC))
The article (one liner microstub) is on AfD. Could someone take a look what it is worth? TIA Pavel Vozenilek 01:30, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Yesterday, Calculus was chosen as the collaboration of the week for people that want to push good articles to featured article status. I encourage people from the mathematics project to get involved as this is clearly one of the most important articles on mathematics and likely to be among the most visited. At first glance I would say that there is still a considerable amount of work to be done. Pascal.Tesson 18:32, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
In WP:MSM I didn't see anything about which infix to use for definitions. Some use , but I find this very misleading, since it already has two other meanings: equivalence (hence its Latex code) and identity. I would therefore advocate := or the equal sign with "def" underneath. (Sorry, I don't know the Latex code for that.) — Sebastian (talk) 04:58, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
= | ≔ | ≜ | ≝ | ≡ |
I feel strongly that we should not need the := type symbol here. If something is a definition we should say so in words. The proper use for := is for assignment in computer science. As far as I'm concerned, := is up there with iff as technical language we should always avoid. since it makes articles impenetrable. Charles Matthews 09:00, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
So it seems we have a consensus that we don't want for definitions. This Google search shows that we have less than 60 occurrences, so it is practically feasible to weed out the wrong ones.
Many of these cases may indeed be better expressed with words. But I would not completely rule out ":=". Trying to express every definition in words can get clumsy. E.g. I can't think of a way to rephrase "... where is the speed of light and is called the Lorentz factor" withouth distracting at least some readers. Moreover, readers who are unfamiliar with ":=" can enter it in the search field (although unfortunately they can't enter a single colon). — Sebastian (talk) 18:02, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
In writing about mathematics and physics, I've never found a problem using an equals sign and then stating, in words, whether what you're writing is a definition. I think anything else is just a gimmick. –
Joke 18:54, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
David, thanks for thinking of this. I still hope that there are not too many Unicode ≡ instances since it doesn't seem possible to use this in a formula. <math>a ≡ b</math> at least yields: Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): {\displaystyle a ≡ b} .
Salix and Joke: I think you're missing my point. Of course it is possible to write just an equal sign, but you're losing information: The colon tells the reader unobtrusively: "Don't worry about what this is all about and whether you've seen it before - it is just a definition." And I agree, it is not a problem for anybody who writes English reasonably well to state in words whether it's a definition. But how do you actually do this in a case like the above without overemphasizing a side issue and breaking the flow of thought? — Sebastian (talk) 22:52, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
For a whole week, none of the seven people who found it particularly important to highlight definitions made any contribution to actually achieve this. Since
it seems that simply replacing "\equiv" with ":=" wherever applicable would be the most sensitive thing to do for now. (Replacing it with just "=" is not good since it would delete information, and other alternatives were even less favored.) I am volunteering to do that. After that, I will be done, and the proponents of prose can edit these occurrences at their leisure. Let me know what you think. — Sebastian (talk) 21:00, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
I also strongly agree that ":=" is awfully ugly, and that it should be always avoided in math. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 03:27, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Charles, Salix and Lambian – you make enough good points to elevate your preferred solution (of banning ":=") within my margin of error close to my preferred solution (of allowing it where it helps). The reason I'm not entirely swayed is that I absolutely disagree with Lambian’s last remark: It is precisely because our math articles are often hard to understand that readers need help. Even small things can provide a straw for struggling readers to cling to. But I acknowledge that there is a tradeoff, and which solution actually provides more help is a moot judgment call. — Sebastian (talk) 20:57, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
OK, now that we agree that we don't want to use \equiv for definitions, we need to do two things:
Dang! I just realized that my original query yields far too few results. Unfortunately, searching for "math" does not, as I thought, yield all pages that contain the <math> tag, but only those that contain the word "math" in plain text - which are mostly entries like "J. Math. Pures Appl.". Replacing "math" in the query with "function" already yields 408 results. Does anyone have an idea how to filter all mathematical articles in a Google (or other) search? — Sebastian (talk) 18:05, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I replaced the list with the result of this query, which gives us a few too many articles, but at least we won't miss any. — Sebastian (talk) 19:25, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I just found out about this discussion, and I really need to register my strong objection to changing \equiv, :=, and = to , for a number of reasons:
Again, most of objection relates to the concept that we shouldn't make up our own conventions. This is really starting to bug me. Also, I don't think you've taken a broad enough poll to be establishing this as convention, and the discussion above doesn't look like consensus to me. Please stop, at least until it is clear that a consensus among editors (not just people in this discussion) has been reached. -- MOBle 19:46, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Adding my opinion based on lots of math experience... First a fact of math writing: The symbol \equiv has several common meanings in mathematics. Sometimes it means a definition, sometimes it means arithmetic congruence, sometimes it means equivalence under an equivalence relation. Probably it has other meanings. In a math paper or book, one has to see from context, or from an explicit explanation by the author (in words), what it means in each case. IMHO, that eliminates it as a standard Wikipedia conventional symbol for a definition. I don't have a strong opinion on := vs. other options, but I do think that when you define something, it always helps if you say that you're defining it, and then the = sign should be clear, and also := or =^def. (I have seen the latter used in print, though not often.) It comes down to the opinion expressed earlier, that if you want to be clear, you have to say what you mean in plain language, even if it's longer. End HO. Zaslav 06:11, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
The notation
conventionally means that the two random variables X and Y both have the same probability distribution. The letter "L" stands for "law"; probability distributions are sometimes called "laws". Michael Hardy 04:11, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
So, what exactly should we add to WP:MSM? How about the following:
We could also recommend "" , as used in Implementation of mathematics in set theory. — Sebastian (talk) 23:18, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Old version of table deleted - see new version below.
Before | After | Found in | Comments |
where | where we define and | Discrete Fourier transform | |
where the division is performed element-wise | where the division is defined as to be performed element-wise | Discrete Fourier transform | |
The action is defined as the
integral of the
Lagrangian for an input evolution between the two time points |
The action is defined as the
integral of the
Lagrangian for an input evolution between the two time points |
Action (physics) | Copy defined term in sentence for clarity. |
another action function is often defined:Hamilton's characteristic function . | another action function, Hamilton's characteristic function , is often introduced. It is defined as . | Action (physics) | Move "defined" closer to equation. |
the final and initial positions, and , are specified in advance. | the final and initial positions are specified in advance as and . | Action (physics) | use "specified ... as" to indicate definition. |
The difference between these two evolutions is infinitesimally small at all times: | The difference between these two evolutions, which we will call , is infinitesimally small at all times: | Action (physics) | The original equation served two purposes: Defining and showing which term is small. Explain these two verbatim. |
Optimal stopping uses ≡ to state the distribution of a random variable. That is, they write X ≡ D where X is a variable and D is a distribution. Is that one of the uses of ≡ we should be avoiding, or is it ok? Maybe it should be a membership symbol rather than either = or ≡? — David Eppstein 21:31, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Added bug bugzilla:7753. → Aza Toth 21:45, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
I was just informed on the talk page for an article that I help maintain that some people here appear to believe that Wikipedia gets to revise a century of usage by ditching , and that, indeed, said decision has "already been made".
Pardon my saying so, but no, that's not really Wikipedia's decision to make. is in wide use in all sorts of places. Those who claim to have math degrees and to have never seen it before, well, I don't know what math classes you were taking, but there is a strong reason that Knuth put the character in TeX's math font, and it wasn't perversity.
I see that some believe this issue is "decided", but that's absurd. \equiv is not going from articles I edit, because it is there in all the references I use and all the papers I read. If you don't like it, the place to take it up is with organizations like the American Mathematical Society, and not in a Wikipedia project talk page. Abolishing it is the moral equivalent of Wikipedia deciding, as a matter of style, to rename Hydrogen "Element One" because that is "more logical". No, sorry, that's not what we get to do around here. Wikipedia is a reference, not a place to try to change the world's notational conventions. This is an encyclopedia, not a reform movement. If you don't like the way professionals in certain fields write their equations, take it up with them directly.
Repeating, in the specific case of particular pages I edit regularly, I've checked the standard notation in reference works, and it is \equiv (i.e. ), and so that is how it should remain on those pages until such time as the textbooks and papers in the field change. Let me know when you have gotten all the textbooks revised. -- Pmetzger 21:12, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
For what it is worth, I should point out to readers here that using ≡ for definitions is very common in physics (much more common than := or alternatives). In fact, the first five textbooks I pulled off my shelf all use it. They are
I agree that good prose is the best solution, but I wouldn't go so far as to banish ≡ from physics articles. It is, after all, a very standard notation in that field. -- Fropuff 01:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
It seems the obvious answer here is that physics represents a field where ≡ is both commonly used and unambiguous (while in mathematics it is not - to me in means congruence modulo something) and in that case it seems only reasonable to follow the publications in the field and use ≡ in the physics articles on subjects that traditionally use it. On the other hand I tend to agree with with the eventual consensus view here, at least for pure mathematics articles, that ≡ isn't the best option due to rarity and ambiguity of meaning, and that clear prose is the answer. Leland McInnes 09:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Re #1: This is not a "jihad against symbols"
[10]. It is an endeavor to disambiguate the different uses of \equiv (demonstrated so nicely by Lambiam above).
Re #2: It is the best, but it takes a lot of time. We're still at about 300 occurrences - if you really feel strongly about this, please help by editing the articles on
/equivlist.
If this is not immediately obvous to you, please read the older parts of this section. I'm tired of hearing these misconceptions over and over again. — Sebastian (talk) 02:31, 4 December 2006 (UTC), amended 03:47, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Here is American Institute of Physics, AIP Style Manual,, 4th ed. 1990, Appendix F:Special symbols available for typesetting, p. 44:
Note that ≝ is nowhere to be found. Nor is :=, but that of course can be composed of two characters without a special typesetting symbol. Gene Nygaard 14:08, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Sebastian, I believe, claims that the beginning of this discussion shows that everyone agrees that adding prose, presumably such forms as "We define" and so forth, is the best option. This is not at all obvious to me; but if it is so, let's agree to go do it, as part of the slow improvement that is Wikipedia. It will take a long time; but so will lots of other important things. Septentrionalis 18:19, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Here's a table with the options we have so far - please feel free to amend: — Sebastian (talk) 19:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Option | Basis | Remaining effort (person hours) | Quality (A...F) | Certainty of outcome |
Leave as is | haphazard | 0 | F (ambiguous) | certain (trivially) |
Annotate as we go | consensus | 30 | A | unlikely (has not worked so far) |
Annotate now | consensus | 30 | A | low (few volunteers) |
repl \equiv with =^def | lesser evil | 2 | E (notation unfamiliar to some) | certain (already done for 75% of all articles on /equivlist) |
Finish math \equiv replacements, revert all \equiv replacement made on non-math articles | Allow for field differences, avoid stepping on toes | 10 | B | 50/50, sporadic |
One question to all who believe that slow improvement (the "ant algorithm") fixes the problem: Why are you confident that it will improve formulas with \equiv signs, but not formulas with =^def signs? — Sebastian (talk) 19:41, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Way too serious. I mean, way way too serious about a format issue. As on some other points (e.g. spelling) if there is not going to be a settled consensus, just try not to annoy others on this. The wiki way isn't about six-week threads that settle nothing. Charles Matthews 22:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
I've created Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/equivlistrevert for reverting non-math changes. Sebastian, you should finish the job you've done on /equivlist with math articles. johnpseudo 15:47, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I did some edits to Euler reciprocity relationship. I agree with whoever put the "context" tag there: its opening sentence is horribly abrupt, not informing the reader that mathematics is what the article is to be about, etc. But I wonder if this article ought to exist. As nearly as I can understand it, it's another statement of what is called Clairaut's theorem. (If you tell me that it's obviously supposed to be Clairaut's theorem, that may be because I edited it to say what I guessed it was intended to say.) Michael Hardy 01:25, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Now I've put "merge" tags on these three articles. Michael Hardy 04:13, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
The STIX Fonts project will make the beta version of its fonts available for download in early December. This will be a great boon to all mathematics readers, and of special interest to the Wikipedia mathematics community. The fonts come with a generous license, and now would be a good time for experts here to review it to decide if it will cause any problems for us. For example, does item 2 apply if a Wikipedia page displays an equation as a PNG typeset with these fonts? (What is considered a "derivative work"?) -- KSmrq T 10:38, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Hey there folks. I've been sorting through the {{expert}} tags over the last few days and there are a couple requets in your pile. Could you take a look at Category:Pages needing expert attention from the Mathematics Portal? Don't be thrown by the word portal; It's pretty much just a category of math articles that requested expert help. Thanks much! -- Brad Beattie (talk) 19:03, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Some of the interwiki links provided on this page describe another theorem, also credited to Thales of Miletus, proving that parallel lines intersecting a pair of intersecting lines create similar triangles. (See the featured article on the French wikipedia, fr:Théorème de Thalès for probably the best explanation). What is this theorem called in English, and is there an article here about it? (There should be.) Rigadoun (talk) 16:22, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I made a number of corrections to the article Inverse trigonometric function, in particular to the section Definitions as integrals, which was riddled with errors (about as many as it has formulas). It would be a good idea if someone who has access to a textbook with such formulas, or Abramowitz & Stegun, checked this, and if possible perhaps also the other formulas in the article. -- Lambiam Talk 17:15, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I hadn't noticed we now have "align"---thanks for mentioning this. Using \begin{matrix}, etc., for this produced some really ugly results in many cases. Michael Hardy 03:44, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
These were formerly a single article, which conflated LRD processes with long-tailed distributions as if the presence of a long-tailed distribution only ever arose as a result of LRD, and vice versa, and that they were, in effect, two aspects of a single concept. Terms like "memoryless distribution" were used...
I've tried to separate the two, but I'm no expert, and I'm pretty sure the result is still a mess. Can anyone with some probability/statistics/queueing theory knowledge help tidy these up and proofread them for errors? -- The Anome 00:03, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I just made an article on a serial plagiarist Dǎnuţ Marcu. The hope is that "contributions" of this person become better known. Please take a look and contribute to make the article adherent to WP style. Also, keep an eye on it - I am afriad there might be a "speedy deletion" move by the Marcu himself. Mhym 02:29, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
That second sentence is clearly unsourced and a violation of WP:BLP, and so I removed it. Unfortunately, mhym, whom I'm sure is familiar with the policy, has re-added it. I suggest people watch the article to make sure these violations are not re-added. -- C S (Talk) 04:10, 26 November 2006 (UTC)