I wonder if anybody knowing the subject of the articles edited by WATARU could take a look at some diffs and see if it makes sense what he wrote. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 15:09, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Some of us are discussing re-organizing the articles about the fourier transfrom, I thought this might be of general interest, so anyone interested should look at the Topology of articles discussion under the Continuous Fourier transform talk page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thenub314 ( talk • contribs) (Oops on my part Thenub314 00:29, 30 September 2006 (UTC))
I think we need to have a discussion about just what are the criteria for the various "importance" levels, and the "vital" tag, for the {{ maths rating}} template. Right now they seem to be the opinion of the person adding the template, which I have no terrible argument with (I certainly don't want to add another level of process), but we need to be aware that there can be disagreements.
My attention was brought to this by Salix alba's addition of "Top importance" and "vital" to the decimal article, an article the need for which I think is frankly marginal, at least from the perspective of mathematics. (I agree it's a very important topic from the perspective of history of mathematics.) -- Trovatore 20:20, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Core biographies, it the place most worthy of our attention, as it has the highest profile, being a key part of the WP:1.0 project. The job of selecting just ten mathematicans seems quite arbitary.
Also worrying is the coverage of mathematics in WP:CORE just 5 out of 150 article
WP:CORESUP the suplement with 150 more articles, and only 5 more maths articles
WP:V0.5 the first itteration of the 1.0 list, has
Thats now closed, selection was based partially of GA/FA's and core topics, plus a few we put forward. There will probably be another iteration before the final 1.0 release.
Possibly the best thing for us to do is assemble of list of perhaps 50 mathematics articles, which are of high importance and good quality. We can then pass these lists onto the various other projects as sugestions for inclusion. The 0.5 people were quite responsive, although we didn't have much to offer them at the time. -- Salix alba ( talk) 00:10, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Going back to the original point, which is basically asking how we decide what level of importance to give an article. I think several people (myself included) would naturally tend to equate importance with "importance in mathematics" - so something like the Pythagorean theorem would come out fairly low. However, the criteria given in the WP 1.0 subpage relate to an articles importance for a print encyclopedia. To me, this means we have consider importance to the readership as well as importance in mathematics. Consequently, the Pythagorean theorem comes out as top importance. In a nut shell, I give the artitcle an importance of Max{public importance, mathematical importance}. Because the grading of quality and importance is done by oen person, there will always be potential for disagreement. In that case, it's probably best to discuss it in the talk of the assessment page. Tompw 22:30, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
I've hastily added a new subsection to Pythagorean theorem on the proof found in Euclid's Elements. Doubtless it could bear further elaboration (since it's not really the full proof, but rather an illustration with an accompanying explanation). Also, could someone who knows how to do such things help with the alignment of the illustration, so the reader can more easily tell which illustration goes with which section? Michael Hardy 01:20, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
What I've noticed, in my quick, probably statistically invalid sample of a few articles, is that they could be benfitted greatly from graphs. For example, Venn diagram is clearly illustrated, as is a bit easier to understand than, let's say, Comparison test. Comparison test could benefit from the image on Convergent series, for example... and similar. That, IMO, could help many math articles be a bit closer to FA status. Tito xd( ?!?) 03:03, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
John Dee is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 21:02, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Geometry is just undergoing a major reworking. The previous article was just a history of the topic and has been moved to History of geometry. This now leaves Geometry as a stub, sugestions of how to structure the article welcome on the talk page. -- Salix alba ( talk) 09:24, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
I take the point abouy geometric group theory, which has a more complicated set of inputs than the other areas mentioned in that section. Euclidean geometry now is the geometry of Euclidean space, or the Euclidean group, post-Klein. Charles Matthews 07:05, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Synthetic geometry should be more fully described; I know just enugh about it to be cautious of "Euclid-style" without being able to edit myself. Septentrionalis 04:41, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Just a word of warning: The page Numeric spiral was created today by User:Noluz. The same user listed it on List of curves and in the External links of Archimedean spiral, but I just reverted both since Numeric spiral has nothing to do with curves at best, and at worst is numerology. Michael Kinyon 23:29, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Hi, it seems that a single-issue user (130.158.83.81) is keen to revert the controversy section of Gang Tian from my edits originally made here. His reversions are here and here.
My edits were intended to improve the quality of the writing of that section, to improve the wikilinks (for example, 130.158.83.81 insists on linking to Yau-Tian affair, which doesn't exist, rather than Tian-Yau affair), to improve the accuracy (according to my limited knowledge) and to add citation requests for unsupported assertions.
A later editor removed the controversy section altogether, after the 130.158.83.81s latest reversion. I have since restored the section for the time being, but perhaps removal is the best option. If we want to keep the section, then the version promoted by 130.158.83.81 seems objectively worse than my alternative. There is much room for improvement, but I just sought to make the section better than awful.
Anyway, I don't think that editor is breaking any rules, and I don't want to enter a daily edit war, but I thought I'd bring it to your attention. All the best-- Jpod2 08:59, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Just a couple quick thoughts as my time editing is limited recently. 1) Per WP:BLP do not merely add "citation needed" tags to dubious, potentially libelous information; remove it immediately - do not move it to the talk page. 2) The intro is rather bad as it overemphasizes his recent monograph with Morgan; that is not his most notable achievement or why he is a titled professor at MIT. It should be moved and noted in some kind of contributions section, with a brief description of his specializations in the intro. Also, for some reason he is listed as being a full professor at Princeton in a section. -- C S (Talk) 19:27, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Besides the fairly well-patrolled Poincare conjecture, Grigori Perelman, Tian-Yau affair, Manifold Destiny, and newer Gang Tian, those with the inclination should keep an eye on S.T. Yau (which doesn't appear watched as much) and Sylvia Nasar (not watched very much either). Recently there has been a couple rather defamatory edits to the Nasar article (based on what appears to be sheer speculation and poor sourcing). -- C S (Talk) 22:30, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
The page use to redirect to Lie group [3] but was changed into a small article which is pretty much barren.-- Jersey Devil 10:58, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Citation guidelines proposal currently states: "... editors in Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics want to clarify how these guidelines should be implemented for physics articles ...". Question: Can we change that to: "... editors in the WikiProjects Physics and Mathematics want to clarify how these guidelines should be implemented for physics and mathematics articles ..."? -- Lambiam Talk 17:20, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Just question to people in this project... has there ever been discussion or edit wars over the proofs or reasoning presented in mathematics articles? I have not seen any such discussion over mathematical details, so I would support the proposal... However, I would not mind, if all mathematics articles were as cited as 0.999.... I don't really see how such citations make reading or editing more difficult. I wonder what the people who worked on that article think about the excessive citing that was required to get it into FA quality. -- Vesal 20:36, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
That's true, but I take the attitude that the articles that are best off without in-line citations are probably not articles that we really want to become "Good Articles" (or, heavens, Featured Articles). It's crucial to recognize that there is a difference between Good Articles and good articles: this is particularly so, and will likely remain so indefinitely, with physics and math articles. Articles such as the
Littlewood-Richardson rule and
Bianchi classification (these don't exist yet – hint, hint) could probably be quite easily be made into good articles. But it is not at all clear it would be worth the effort to make them into Good Articles. –
Joke
00:16, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
More good GA fun. Derivative was awarded GA today and then imediatly reviewed, inline cites being one of the issues. Folks might like to comment. -- Salix alba ( talk) 16:29, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Just a notice... it would be wonderful if more people could help grade maths articles in Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0. Anyone can edit in additional important articles that should be included. It's *not* a job where an excessive number of cooks leads to inferior broth. Tompw 19:40, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
While looking into an OTRS ticket, I came across this edit. Does anyone know if this stuff is accurate? -- bainer ( talk) 08:31, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Graph invariant is a regular page. I propose to make it a subcategory of Graph Theory. Several pages would then belong to it:
Do you agree/disagree? pom 09:22, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
I created the category. I am not really happy with the content of the old Graph invariant page, so I did not copy it. How should graph invariants defined within a more general article be categorized and/or listed in this category? pom 16:22, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
There are several fairly active discussions going on about quality, citations and so on. The Project needs one more thing, really, which is an assessment of coverage and where it is going. At a moment when the coverage as a whole looks satisfactory, saying people should concentrate more on quality makes every sense.
We are not there yet, really. It is somewhat muddling to look at lists of articles, or of red links, and to try just from that to say how broad the coverage is. My gut feeling, though, is that 18 months ago we were mid-1950s, and now more like mid-1960s. That is, there is a historical way of thinking about this, and it is a helpful barometer. (In physics, the 1960s would be quarks and quasars, kind of thing, and it is not so odd there to ask about coverage in terms of what is adequately discussed in encyclopedia terms.)
Extrapolating, we might have a reasonably full coverage in about four years time. Don't groan: it would be an amazing achievement to say we had a survey that good. There are always going to be topics left out, but the criterion is that writing an article to fill a gap would not involve a long trail of red links to further concepts on which it depended. The basic vocabulary would be there.
Charles Matthews 10:28, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
I noticed a number of problematic edits by User:Karl-H on topics relating to the Riemann hypothesis. I tried fixing some, but am out of energy at the moment. I believe that the gist of what he's trying to say is mostly correct, but he is not a native English speaker, and he's not a mathematician, and he's writing up original interpretations of research papers he did not quite understand. The edits wreck to flow of the articles, the language is fractured, ungrammatical, mis-capitalized, and worst: the formulas are fractured, incomplete or wrong; see for example Chebyshev function, Hilbert-Polya conjecture, etc. I just can't get to this stuff in the next few weeks. linas 19:28, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
Whereas I 100% agree with We should write good articles, not Good Articles, I want to bring to everybody's attention that the GA candidateship of Order theory is on hold [4] for failing the criteria 2a, 2b,2c of It is factually accurate and verifiable. -- Pjacobi 22:31, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Trovatore drew my attention to the fact that there is a consensus against navigational templates in maths articles of any kind. I was completely unaware of this... could someone kindly explain why this is the case?
I always thought navigation boxes were one of things that made Wikipedia so much better than any print encyclopedia. Also, Calculus topics all have a box at the top right; and {{ mathematics-footer}} exsists and is used, so the rule is clearly not applied in all cases.
This cropped up because I had begun implementing the contents of User:Tompw/maths templates. Tompw 15:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Those footers are awful ({{ Geometry-footer}} & {{ Analysis-footer}}). They are a bunch words strung together with no organization, not even alphabetical. And how is "Category:Geometry" a topic in geometry? IMO, a lack of hierarchical organization is a deficiency in many subject areas that makes it hard to take in the "big picture". The Encyclopædia Britannica has a Propædia that organizes all knowledge in a hierarchy. Since WP is electronic there can be several hierarchies. -- Jtir 17:18, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
I have tossed around the idea with a couple other WPers about the idea of starting a project to develop some math templates like the ones used in the German wikipedia (see de:Gruppetheorie for an example). I think it would be nice to get together some people interested in this, and hash out some ideas and guidelines about what we could use in the English WP. If we were to let a template system grow organically, I think it will quickly get out of control and become inconsistent... being more of an annoyance than a help. But, if we can plan out from the start, I think we could set up a very nice, usable navigation aid that will not detract from the articles. How would you all feel about such a project (it could be a separate wikiproject or a subproject of this one)? - grubber 19:01, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Group |
---|
Field |
Algebra |
Related topics |
Ring |
Field |
Sub topics |
Abelian group |
simple group |
Yay! Lots of people are engaging in a mature and adult discussion about this idea. :-) More to the point, I'm not sure a parent/sibling/child box is the answer. The trouble is that one area of maths doesn't always relate to other areas in a hierachichal (sp) fashion. It's not like bilogy, where a genus is considered as a member of a fmaily, in comparison with that family's other genuses, and as collection of its species. So, the concept of sibling areas doesn't really hold. That said, the parent/children bit works far better. With groups, the parent is Algebraic Structures (and Alegbra in general), and the children are things like Abelian Groups, simple grouprs, quotients, products, sub-groups, major theorums etc. The trouble this leads to is a large number of children - see #3 below. People's complaints about my navigation boxes seemed to fallinto three categories:
I am still left with the idea that those navigational templates are a bad idea. For example, {{ Analysis-footer}} contains a random bunch of things, starting with calculus, going to harmonic analysis, then List of integrals and Table of derivatives, to finish with the entire Category:Calculus. Linkcruft basically.
I strongly disagree with any hierarchical navigational boxes as suggested above. That would basically duplicate the category system.
If anybody is full of energy, what this project trully needs is to work on categories containing a huge amount of articles, splitting them into smaller one by topic which would also make navigation easier. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 02:05, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I strongly agree with
Jitse and
Oleg. The categories need work, so why use potentially different hierarchies in garish boxes at the top bottom of the article that just get in the way?
VectorPosse
06:55, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't want to put too much pressure on the people who have so far proposed some templates but...I don't really like what I've seen thus far. I understand that these are works in progress, but unless I see a concrete example that I like, right now these navigation templates seem like more trouble than they're worth. They seem like the infoboxes on bios, which are often, in my experience, just cluttered or useless. I suppose people have been harping about similar things so I'll stop with that.
Let me just reiterate a "philsophical" argument, due to David Eppstein, which I believe has been missed as it is not listed, for instance, in the list of arguments above. I believe the desire to create this kind of hierarchical system is really unnatural for a lot of mathematics. For some areas, it may "work". But here "work" doesn't mean that it really reflects an inherent hierarchy of concepts, but someone's training. So, for example, with group theory, many in the U.S. learn group theory in this rather pedestrian (albeit elegant) way where one starts with the group axioms, proceeds Bourbaki-style, learning eventually about group actions, etc. But for people with a different background or philosophy, this is really quite strange. For example, I believe there are major Russian schools of mathematics that would not teach group theory this way. Ok, enough philosophizing.... -- C S (Talk) 08:34, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I'll weigh in with the majority opinion, that nav-boxes are inherently evil. My complaint is that I find that they provide a distorted view of the world, echoing some structure that was fashionable three decades ago. They typically give prominence to some inane topic while completely snubbing something more important. A well-written article will already contain all of the needed links to all of the topics that need to be linked. The nav-box offers nothing more than a quick escape for those with a short attention span. linas 05:57, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
I removed {{ analysis-footer}} and {{ geometry-footer}} from articles. The discussion here shows that people would prefer not to have these nav-boxes. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 15:35, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
As stated in the section above on Navigation Boxes, the Category system is better. However, many categories are over-full, for example, Category:Set theory. In such cases, we should create more subcategories (and subsubcategories, etc.). And we should also remove excessive categories from the articles. A good example is Category:Large cardinals which is a subcategory of Category:Cardinal numbers with little or no overlap. Unfortunately, overlap is common in other cases. JRSpriggs 07:54, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I haven't poked around much through the Wikipedia math categories so this is a bit naive, but I have a question: how well do the categories comport with the Mathematics Subject Classification (MSC) of the AMS? Dave Rusin has a general overview here and uses it in his articles [5]. The AMS has some descriptions of it here and here. I guess I'm thinking it's worthwhile to not re-invent the wheel. Lunch 22:18, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Any fixed system of categories is going to suffer from sclerosis. It is basically very un-wiki to say 'here, use this already-fabricated classification'. Works for biology, perhaps, but in mathematics you are for example going to have areas of combinatorics that take on their own identity as things move ahead. Charles Matthews 15:24, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Of course it is harder to check out right now, because the weird way subcategories are listed means it is on the second page of Category:Set theory... Categories really should not be allowed to go over 200 entries. You really need to refine categories on a page into one or more subcategories, not just add them, or this problem gets no better. Charles Matthews 09:12, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
The Proof by symmetry looks kind of encyclopedic to me. Any comments on that? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 03:09, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
The article Euclidean group is a large amount of little factoids, which added together make, in my view, a pain to read. The article is primarily the work of User:Patrick. I like much more the original version by Charles Matthews (see current version and good old version). I would vote for a rewrite of the article using the older version or a revert. Comments? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 04:23, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
I've done some work on the ordering of sections, and other tweaks. It shouldn't be too hard to put this into approved 'concentric' style. Charles Matthews 15:35, 13 October 2006 (UTC) OK, that should be somewhat better now. The only point of real concern I have is this: does the article really need the non-closed subgroups enumerated? I would have thought the closed subgroups were enough. Charles Matthews 15:52, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
The categories Category:Erdős number 1 etc. (not to be confused with Category:Wikipedians with Erdős number 1) are nominated for deletion. If you have an opinion on this, comment on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 October 8#Erdős number categories. You probably have to be fast, as the nomination was six days ago. -- Jitse Niesen ( talk) 05:40, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
I observe that this article has (recently, I believe) become congested with umlauts. Unless, as we are not likely to, we change the spelling of Noetherian ring, this should be straightened out, with a reasonable allowance of "Noether"s for a mathematician who is usually so called in English, and who died on the faculty of Bryn Mawr College. Septentrionalis 15:36, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
I came across this article recently, and actually made some edits on it. The Lebesgue measure argument (as defined in the WP article) proves the uncountability of the reals via measure theory. As best I can tell the purpose of the argument is that it avoids the use of Cantor's diagonal argument and can be considered constructive,although I haven't actually checked whether the argument is in fact constructive. Googling on Lebesgue measure argument (verbatim) I get only two hits, from wikipedia both. Though the argument is valid and interesting (if actually constructive), does this article not violate WP:OR?
{{
cite book}}
: |edition=
has extra text (
help); you could cite that as a source. —
David Eppstein
18:00, 16 October 2006 (UTC)I don't think it violates NOR, but I also don't think it's a particularly useful article as it stands. The hard part of the argument is that the measure of R as a whole is not zero, and that's not even touched in the article. When you fill everything in, I don't think it's any more "constructive" than the diagonal argument (which is pretty constructive, looked at the right way; for example, it's an intuitionistically valid proof that there's no surjection from ω onto 2ω). The article also has a very unenlightening title. -- Trovatore 18:36, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Actually my question about whether this was OR concerned not so much whether the proof is OR, but whether the association of the name "Lebesgue measure argument" to the argument is actually supported in the literature. When I first came to WP over two years ago, I wouldn't have given this matter any thought -- any reasonable name would have suitable. However, with what seems the increasing trend toward WP:Wikilawyering at every junction I think this issue has to be addressed.-- CSTAR 00:26, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Based on the above comments, I put a Proposed AfD banner on the article.-- CSTAR 02:56, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Look at the recent edit history of history of numerical approximations of π. User:DavidWBrooks has inserted this bit of wisdom into the article:
“ | It has been known for millennia that π, the ratio between the circumference and radius of any circle, | ” |
("radius"! Sic.)
“ | is a mathematical constant, but no method of calculation was available until fairly recently. | ” |
Of course someone came to clean up this nonsense, but here's what he ( user:Henning Makholm) wrote:
“ | Unfortunately no practical system for calculating with numbers is able to express π exactly. Though this fact was only proved rigorously in recent time, it has been suspected since the earliest times | ” |
Is there something remotely approximating some correct statement in that? If so, what is it? (Makholm left the ratio as circumference-to-radius rather than circumference-to-diameter.) Michael Hardy 21:05, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Why presume 1882? That was the year when π was proved transcendental. But that's got nothing at all to do (as far as I can see at this moment) with whether any "practical system for calculating with numbers is able to express π exactly". Anyone who thinks transcendence is about "practical systems for computing exactly" should get committed forthwith to the State Hospital for the Criminally Innumerate. Michael Hardy 02:09, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Arbitrarily-precise approximation is different from exact computation: one wants to be able to test, e.g., inequalities of expressions involving pi, and be guaranteed of an answer in a finite time, while you can keep computing as many digits of precision as you like and not be able to tell whether something is or is not equal to zero. And there is a sense in which transcendentalness is a barrier to expressing numbers exactly in a practical computational system, but irrationality isn't: see e.g. this page describing exact representations for algebraic numbers in the LEDA system. It says "LEDA cannot deal with transcendental numbers, at least not without loss of precision - there is no number type class in LEDA that could represent π or e exactly." Of course, the inability to express these numbers in a single system is not the same as a rigorous proof that no such system can exist, and I know of no rigorous proof that it's impossible perform exact computations in the extension of the algebraics by π. So I don't think the statement in the article is quite right... — David Eppstein 06:28, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
David Epstein wrote:
By that standard one can also say that "log23" expresses a number exactly. Is there some reason to limit it to algebraic numbers? If not, then the year 1882, suggested above, does not seen relevant. If it is possible to define precisely something that Henning Makholm could have meant that is actually correct, then it seems very irresponsible to write in sich a horribly vague way about such a thing, and then claim that something expressed so vaguely was proved. It can't be proved if it can't be precisely expressed. So far we're still left guessing what was meant, even after Henning Makholm's comments here. Michael Hardy 22:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I see your point, David. However, I think you may be mislead by viewing some CASes (computer algebra systems), where you might do exact simplification of expressions involving algebraic roots, but not as easily with π. In the first place, there are CASes and even pocket calculators where e.g. sin π cos π is replaced automatically by exactly -1, if you wish; some CASes may do much more advanced substitutions involving π; and more to the point, already Archimedes performed exact calculations with π (see
talk:history of numerical approximations of π#Intro graf). IMO, 'computable' isn't synonymous with 'computable within a present-day CAS'.
JoergenB
23:18, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
There is, in fact, a specific technical reason to limit things to algebraic numbers: there exist algorithms that allow a computational system to reliably determine whether two given algebraic-number representations represent equal or unequal numbers. Therefore it is possible to guarantee that the result of a test such as x ≥ y, performed as part of some larger computation, will return in a finite time: one applies the equality algorithm first, and only after it returns unequal do you need to evaluate x and y to sufficient precision to tell them apart. There are no similar equality testing algorithms known, and therefore no similar finite-time guarantees, for systems of numbers generalizing the algebraics but also allowing logs, e, or π.
Also, I wouldn't call these systems CAS. They are libraries for performing calculations with numbers as part of computer programs, similar in spirit to a standard floating point library but allowing the representation of exact algebraic numbers in place of approximate floats. But they don't do some of the other operations that a typical CAS would, such as symbolic integration.— David Eppstein 23:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Do you mean ONLY that none is known, or rather that it is known (can be proved) that none can exist? If the former, it certainly doesn't justify saying that it has been PROVED that something specific about π cannot be done. Michael Hardy 23:59, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
If your expertise allows you to contribute in a meaningful way to articles involving Hamiltonians and their applications, please take a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics#Hamiltonian articles. -- Lambiam Talk 01:35, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
In Talk:Borel algebra the following question is proposed by User:Leocat:
Now by Kuratowski's theorem, both objects are uncountable polish spaces and hence Borel isomorphic, so "there exists" an isomorphism. My guess is that this isomorphism is constructible, but I don't know enough about constructive mathematics to know for sure.
If anybody knows the answer to this question, you can post it there.-- CSTAR 02:30, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
There are currently no articles or subcategories in Category:Infinity paradoxes which is a subcategory of Category:Infinity. Possibly related articles are in Category:Paradoxes of naive set theory which is in Category:Basic concepts in infinite set theory which is in Category:Infinity. Does anyone want to put something in the empty category or shall we delete it? JRSpriggs 08:17, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Apparently, someone beat me to the punch and deleted it already. I was going to add the template tonight. JRSpriggs 02:08, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
I've added "eigendecomposition" as a synonym for "spectral decomposition" in the spectral theorem article: I'm almost completely sure that's right, but my maths is a bit rusty these days -- could someone more up-to-date double-check this, please? -- The Anome 11:59, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Do people think it would be a good idea if I had MetsBot tag all pages in Category:Mathematics with {{ Maths rating|class=|importance=}}? — Mets501 ( talk) 01:15, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
Tompw 10:07, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
Any consensus on the policy on fractional powers? We write the squareroot sign for powers of one half, but what about cube roots? Do we put the squareroot with the 3 above, or do we put ^1/3? And the others? yandman 09:57, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I have to say, I don't think I have ever seen the notation in a book above introductory college textbooks. In journals it is very common to use the superscript even for square roots when it would simplify notation. (e.g. a lot of people prefer
to
and for long formulae you would definitely use parentheses and an exponent instead of a very large square root sign.) Using an exponent has the added benefit that simple formulae with exponents will not render to .png for people (such as myself) who have their math tags set to render to text for simple formulae. – Joke 00:05, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
I definitely agree. Out of habit I might have used the formula
but I think either looks great, especially compared to the inline formula you produced. – Joke 00:35, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Note: it is generally a good idea to use linear notation in sub- and superscripts (, not ). Particularly when the formulas are rendered in low resolution as they are here. Fredrik Johansson 22:45, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia mathematics editors are brilliant and well-educated, naturally. Yet many have never studied the art of readable writing, especially for the general public. I’d like to offer a few suggestions. With your approval, they may later find their way into our Manual of Style.
I begin by quoting two well-known mathematicians.
When I give a lecture or write a paper, I consider myself lucky if I can convey one idea clearly, so that my audience pays attention, understands, remembers, and is inspired. This is more difficult than it sounds! Both mathematicians quoted above agree. Thus the heart of good technical writing is our first guideline:
Halmos next says to know your audience, and again I agree; yet for Wikipedia the audience can include university faculty, the general public, and youngsters. Readability studies suggest several ways to help. Two basic guidelines, with broad empirical support, are:
And more technically,
These studies also emphasize the value of structure, as do both our mathematicians. Structure occurs on three levels: sentence, paragraph, and article. All three should be clear, logical, and memorable. And I have just illustrated the next suggestion:
Examples of twos include if–then and either–or. More generally, balanced structure and parallel structure help the reader. This is less useful at the paragraph level; but we can suggest the following.
At the article level, the order and content of sections should never leave the reader disoriented. Work for a natural flow, a sense of inevitability. We want readers to know where they’ve been and where they’re going.
Pay particular attention to the introduction, especially the first paragraph. The first sentence should both engage readers, and orient them to what is to come. It need not summarize the article.
All of the suggestions so far apply to any kind of writing. I have a few personal touchstones for mathematics. It is natural to include theorems and proofs, but I also try to incorporate:
Finally, I do my best to sneak in a little humor. Some may damn this as “unencyclopedic”, but the best teachers have always done so. We all know, when we’re honest with ourselves, that when we laugh, we learn. With that in mind, I end with another quotation.
Perhaps another time I can add links to writing resources. Meanwhile, take what you can of value from these suggestions, and help make Wikipedia better. -- KSmrq T 16:04, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
Simenon apparently used to draft his books by locking himself in a room for 72 hours, to get a draft. When he had recovered from that, he went through crossing out all the adjectives and adverbs he could find ... Charles Matthews 15:13, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I think your readership might be better served by providing more background explanation and examples of advanced math concepts designed for a lay audience than your current pages do. Since Wolfram Mathworld already does an excellent job of rigorous textbook style explanations with all of the relevant equations why not just link to them for this content and give Wikipedia readers a simplified plain English version with some real-world applications (along with the graphs suggested above, and perhaps historical development and relevance and maybe some nice pictures of engineering applications etc.) to get them started? --—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.174.240.33 ( talk) 22 October, 2006
The article titled uses of trigonometry, which I originated and which is still mostly my material, is an example of the sort of thing requested here. On the other hand, some of the statistics articles tell you what a concept is used for without ever saying what it is. Those would be greatly improved by more technical material. Michael Hardy 20:33, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
In topology and related branches of mathematics, a continuous function is, loosely speaking, a function from one topological space to another which preserves open sets. Originally, the idea of continuity was a generalization of the informal idea of smoothness, or lack of discontinuity. The first statement of the idea of continuity was by Euler in 1784, relating to plane curves. Other mathematicians, including Bolzano and Cauchy, then refined and extended the idea of continuity. Continuous functions are the raison d'être of topology itself.
In the case of real numbers, a continuous function corresponds to a graph that you can draw without lifting your pen from the paper; that is, without any gaps or jumps.
To chime in... from what I've seen, most of the mathematics articles do not even have an introduction that would be accessible to a non-math-major. I don't think it has to be this way, although I appreciate the difficulty of explaining these concepts to the layperson. As an example, I was just looking at the
Measure (mathematics) article, and this is definitely something that can be understood intuitively, but while the first sentence mentions "size" and "volume", it does not explore these concrete concepts and launches straight into abstraction, even within that sentence. Overall, the collection of mathematics articles seems like an excellent survey of modern mathematics, and perhaps useful for jogging your memory if you've forgotten some detail, but it is not functional as general encyclopedia content. The places where it really seem silly are where a very fundamental concept is explained, something that any mathematician MUST know, and yet it is explained using language and notation that only a mathematician well-versed in that particular subfield could understand. —The preceding
unsigned comment was added by
65.95.229.253 (
talk •
contribs) 1 November 2006 .
Since the discussions seem to have abated for some time now, I am asking the Mathematics and Physics WikiProjects if they support the new citation guidelines that I (and others) have devised. The point of the guidelines is to establish an appropriate, sensible standard for referencing articles in our fields so that we are less likely to run into objections (such as those that have come up recently) when we try to write technical articles that others then tell us are impropoerly sourced. I think these guidelines are now well thought out enough that they can be added to the main pages of the two WikiProjects and perhaps linked from WP:CITE. I should also note that they seem to have attracted some encouragement from outside the WikiProjects, on their talk page, mine, and on WP:CITE.
One outstanding issue is where to move the page. I don't have any great ideas. Wikipedia:WikiProjects Mathematics and Physics/Citation guidelines is too cumbersome. We could just leave it under physics as Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Citation guidelines or be BOLD and put it at Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines (presumably this would mean we would have to engage with the rest of the community to ensure there is consensus). I submit we should go with Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Citation guidelines and once we have consensus here go to Wikipedia:WikiProject Biology and Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry (and wherever else seems appropriate) to solicit their opinions, and then move it out of the physics WikiProject. We could even eventually go ask the wider Wikipedia community what they think at WP:CITE but I think that should be left as a longer term project. – Joke 22:14, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 00:20, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
The various mathematician-stub templates are currently being discussed at Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion/Log/2006/October/19 Affected templates {{ mathbiostub}}, {{ mathbio-stub}}, {{ math-bio-stub}}, {{ mathematician-stub}}. -- Salix alba ( talk) 11:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I was fiddling with some formulas, and seem to have stumbled over the following theorem: given any topological space X and any homomorphism , there exists a measure such that it is preserved by the pushforward (aka the direct image functor on the category of measurable spaces(?)); equivalently, there is always a measure such that g is a measure-preserving map, and furthermore, this measure is unique. This theorem is little more than a fancy-pants version of the Frobenius-Perron theorem, and the measure is more or less the Haar measure. I was wondering if this theorem has a name? Is it in textbooks? Or is it supposed to be a nameless corollary of the theorem that defines the Haar measure? Thanks. linas 03:35, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Is there any way to obtain a count of how many articles are in the Mathematics category or any of the categories beneath it, that is, articles that are in the scope of this project? What about other science projects such as Physics, Chemistry, etc.? CMummert 16:43, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
It's kind of easier to figure that mathematics is 1% of enWP and then you count using the Main Page. (The proportion has been dropping, but slowly ...) Charles Matthews 21:27, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Apart from the fact that I think it's annoying to be told Atiyah has Erdős number 4, as if this was on the same level as a Fields Medal: I think we should point out clearly that any information here should be verifiable. Apart from a complete list of collaborators of Erdős, it is going to be hard to verify numbers at all; certainly the only assertion you'd responsibly get is ≤ 3 and so on. Charles Matthews 19:01, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Michael Francis Atiyah coauthored with Laurel A. Smith MR0343269 (49 #8013) Laurel A. Smith coauthored with Persi W. Diaconis MR0954495 (89m:60163) Persi W. Diaconis coauthored with Paul Erdös1 MR2126886 (2005m:60011)
It's original research to enter two names on a web query form and report the result of that form? It does take some checking afterwards to make sure the papers it returns are real joint publications, but the chain it gives you is readily verifiable, often without further need of their database. — David Eppstein 22:03, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Briefly browsing the archives suggests that this has not been discussed here before (and correct me if I am wrong). It seems like a good idea to bring it up now, seeing that said article has recently been the main page featured article and all.
Long ago, KSmrq has rewritten the article (which was then named Proof that 0.999... = 1) to look something like this (I'll refer to that as the "old" version). It stayed in that form for quite a while, until this edit, where Melchoir has begun a massive rewrite, ultimately resulting in something like this (I'll refer to that as the "new" version). In the meantime, the article has been, with overwhelming support, moved to the new title 0.999... to more faithfully represent its new (and old) content (as can be seen in this archive).
KSmrq has strongly opposed the move and the rewrite, and very frequently criticizes the new version and the editors who have worked on it. Needless to say, I have the greatest admiration for KSmrq's opinion, but happen to personally disagree with him on this matter (I accept some parts of the criticism, though, and believe these should be worked on on a case-by-case basis). I also got the impression that there are not many other editors who agree with him. In my opinion, while the fact that this article has become featured in its current incarnation obviously proves nothing, it supports this impression.
I therefore invite everyone here to share your opinions on the matter, with hope to finally settle this matter once and for all. I'll emphasize that it is not necessarily my wish to see consensus supporting the new version (which, again, is more to my taste), but rather to see consensus supporting some version, and having the article become as good as it can be as a result.
Those with some extra time on their hands could also skim through the extremely numerous reactions to the article (in Talk:0.999... and Talk:0.999.../Arguments) from the last two days, and see if they give them any ideas for possible changes to improve the article.
Since Talk:0.999... is a mess right now, I suggest that replies are made on this page. -- Meni Rosenfeld ( talk) 16:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
We should just redirect this page to 1 (number), you know. Merge or not? Charles Matthews 09:29, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
I've mentioned this before, but I want to get it implemented now. See MediaWiki talk:Common.css#span.texhtml. — Mets501 ( talk) 21:48, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
I wonder if anybody knowing the subject of the articles edited by WATARU could take a look at some diffs and see if it makes sense what he wrote. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 15:09, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Some of us are discussing re-organizing the articles about the fourier transfrom, I thought this might be of general interest, so anyone interested should look at the Topology of articles discussion under the Continuous Fourier transform talk page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thenub314 ( talk • contribs) (Oops on my part Thenub314 00:29, 30 September 2006 (UTC))
I think we need to have a discussion about just what are the criteria for the various "importance" levels, and the "vital" tag, for the {{ maths rating}} template. Right now they seem to be the opinion of the person adding the template, which I have no terrible argument with (I certainly don't want to add another level of process), but we need to be aware that there can be disagreements.
My attention was brought to this by Salix alba's addition of "Top importance" and "vital" to the decimal article, an article the need for which I think is frankly marginal, at least from the perspective of mathematics. (I agree it's a very important topic from the perspective of history of mathematics.) -- Trovatore 20:20, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Core biographies, it the place most worthy of our attention, as it has the highest profile, being a key part of the WP:1.0 project. The job of selecting just ten mathematicans seems quite arbitary.
Also worrying is the coverage of mathematics in WP:CORE just 5 out of 150 article
WP:CORESUP the suplement with 150 more articles, and only 5 more maths articles
WP:V0.5 the first itteration of the 1.0 list, has
Thats now closed, selection was based partially of GA/FA's and core topics, plus a few we put forward. There will probably be another iteration before the final 1.0 release.
Possibly the best thing for us to do is assemble of list of perhaps 50 mathematics articles, which are of high importance and good quality. We can then pass these lists onto the various other projects as sugestions for inclusion. The 0.5 people were quite responsive, although we didn't have much to offer them at the time. -- Salix alba ( talk) 00:10, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Going back to the original point, which is basically asking how we decide what level of importance to give an article. I think several people (myself included) would naturally tend to equate importance with "importance in mathematics" - so something like the Pythagorean theorem would come out fairly low. However, the criteria given in the WP 1.0 subpage relate to an articles importance for a print encyclopedia. To me, this means we have consider importance to the readership as well as importance in mathematics. Consequently, the Pythagorean theorem comes out as top importance. In a nut shell, I give the artitcle an importance of Max{public importance, mathematical importance}. Because the grading of quality and importance is done by oen person, there will always be potential for disagreement. In that case, it's probably best to discuss it in the talk of the assessment page. Tompw 22:30, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
I've hastily added a new subsection to Pythagorean theorem on the proof found in Euclid's Elements. Doubtless it could bear further elaboration (since it's not really the full proof, but rather an illustration with an accompanying explanation). Also, could someone who knows how to do such things help with the alignment of the illustration, so the reader can more easily tell which illustration goes with which section? Michael Hardy 01:20, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
What I've noticed, in my quick, probably statistically invalid sample of a few articles, is that they could be benfitted greatly from graphs. For example, Venn diagram is clearly illustrated, as is a bit easier to understand than, let's say, Comparison test. Comparison test could benefit from the image on Convergent series, for example... and similar. That, IMO, could help many math articles be a bit closer to FA status. Tito xd( ?!?) 03:03, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
John Dee is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 21:02, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Geometry is just undergoing a major reworking. The previous article was just a history of the topic and has been moved to History of geometry. This now leaves Geometry as a stub, sugestions of how to structure the article welcome on the talk page. -- Salix alba ( talk) 09:24, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
I take the point abouy geometric group theory, which has a more complicated set of inputs than the other areas mentioned in that section. Euclidean geometry now is the geometry of Euclidean space, or the Euclidean group, post-Klein. Charles Matthews 07:05, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Synthetic geometry should be more fully described; I know just enugh about it to be cautious of "Euclid-style" without being able to edit myself. Septentrionalis 04:41, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Just a word of warning: The page Numeric spiral was created today by User:Noluz. The same user listed it on List of curves and in the External links of Archimedean spiral, but I just reverted both since Numeric spiral has nothing to do with curves at best, and at worst is numerology. Michael Kinyon 23:29, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Hi, it seems that a single-issue user (130.158.83.81) is keen to revert the controversy section of Gang Tian from my edits originally made here. His reversions are here and here.
My edits were intended to improve the quality of the writing of that section, to improve the wikilinks (for example, 130.158.83.81 insists on linking to Yau-Tian affair, which doesn't exist, rather than Tian-Yau affair), to improve the accuracy (according to my limited knowledge) and to add citation requests for unsupported assertions.
A later editor removed the controversy section altogether, after the 130.158.83.81s latest reversion. I have since restored the section for the time being, but perhaps removal is the best option. If we want to keep the section, then the version promoted by 130.158.83.81 seems objectively worse than my alternative. There is much room for improvement, but I just sought to make the section better than awful.
Anyway, I don't think that editor is breaking any rules, and I don't want to enter a daily edit war, but I thought I'd bring it to your attention. All the best-- Jpod2 08:59, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Just a couple quick thoughts as my time editing is limited recently. 1) Per WP:BLP do not merely add "citation needed" tags to dubious, potentially libelous information; remove it immediately - do not move it to the talk page. 2) The intro is rather bad as it overemphasizes his recent monograph with Morgan; that is not his most notable achievement or why he is a titled professor at MIT. It should be moved and noted in some kind of contributions section, with a brief description of his specializations in the intro. Also, for some reason he is listed as being a full professor at Princeton in a section. -- C S (Talk) 19:27, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Besides the fairly well-patrolled Poincare conjecture, Grigori Perelman, Tian-Yau affair, Manifold Destiny, and newer Gang Tian, those with the inclination should keep an eye on S.T. Yau (which doesn't appear watched as much) and Sylvia Nasar (not watched very much either). Recently there has been a couple rather defamatory edits to the Nasar article (based on what appears to be sheer speculation and poor sourcing). -- C S (Talk) 22:30, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
The page use to redirect to Lie group [3] but was changed into a small article which is pretty much barren.-- Jersey Devil 10:58, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Citation guidelines proposal currently states: "... editors in Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics want to clarify how these guidelines should be implemented for physics articles ...". Question: Can we change that to: "... editors in the WikiProjects Physics and Mathematics want to clarify how these guidelines should be implemented for physics and mathematics articles ..."? -- Lambiam Talk 17:20, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Just question to people in this project... has there ever been discussion or edit wars over the proofs or reasoning presented in mathematics articles? I have not seen any such discussion over mathematical details, so I would support the proposal... However, I would not mind, if all mathematics articles were as cited as 0.999.... I don't really see how such citations make reading or editing more difficult. I wonder what the people who worked on that article think about the excessive citing that was required to get it into FA quality. -- Vesal 20:36, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
That's true, but I take the attitude that the articles that are best off without in-line citations are probably not articles that we really want to become "Good Articles" (or, heavens, Featured Articles). It's crucial to recognize that there is a difference between Good Articles and good articles: this is particularly so, and will likely remain so indefinitely, with physics and math articles. Articles such as the
Littlewood-Richardson rule and
Bianchi classification (these don't exist yet – hint, hint) could probably be quite easily be made into good articles. But it is not at all clear it would be worth the effort to make them into Good Articles. –
Joke
00:16, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
More good GA fun. Derivative was awarded GA today and then imediatly reviewed, inline cites being one of the issues. Folks might like to comment. -- Salix alba ( talk) 16:29, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Just a notice... it would be wonderful if more people could help grade maths articles in Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0. Anyone can edit in additional important articles that should be included. It's *not* a job where an excessive number of cooks leads to inferior broth. Tompw 19:40, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
While looking into an OTRS ticket, I came across this edit. Does anyone know if this stuff is accurate? -- bainer ( talk) 08:31, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Graph invariant is a regular page. I propose to make it a subcategory of Graph Theory. Several pages would then belong to it:
Do you agree/disagree? pom 09:22, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
I created the category. I am not really happy with the content of the old Graph invariant page, so I did not copy it. How should graph invariants defined within a more general article be categorized and/or listed in this category? pom 16:22, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
There are several fairly active discussions going on about quality, citations and so on. The Project needs one more thing, really, which is an assessment of coverage and where it is going. At a moment when the coverage as a whole looks satisfactory, saying people should concentrate more on quality makes every sense.
We are not there yet, really. It is somewhat muddling to look at lists of articles, or of red links, and to try just from that to say how broad the coverage is. My gut feeling, though, is that 18 months ago we were mid-1950s, and now more like mid-1960s. That is, there is a historical way of thinking about this, and it is a helpful barometer. (In physics, the 1960s would be quarks and quasars, kind of thing, and it is not so odd there to ask about coverage in terms of what is adequately discussed in encyclopedia terms.)
Extrapolating, we might have a reasonably full coverage in about four years time. Don't groan: it would be an amazing achievement to say we had a survey that good. There are always going to be topics left out, but the criterion is that writing an article to fill a gap would not involve a long trail of red links to further concepts on which it depended. The basic vocabulary would be there.
Charles Matthews 10:28, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
I noticed a number of problematic edits by User:Karl-H on topics relating to the Riemann hypothesis. I tried fixing some, but am out of energy at the moment. I believe that the gist of what he's trying to say is mostly correct, but he is not a native English speaker, and he's not a mathematician, and he's writing up original interpretations of research papers he did not quite understand. The edits wreck to flow of the articles, the language is fractured, ungrammatical, mis-capitalized, and worst: the formulas are fractured, incomplete or wrong; see for example Chebyshev function, Hilbert-Polya conjecture, etc. I just can't get to this stuff in the next few weeks. linas 19:28, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
Whereas I 100% agree with We should write good articles, not Good Articles, I want to bring to everybody's attention that the GA candidateship of Order theory is on hold [4] for failing the criteria 2a, 2b,2c of It is factually accurate and verifiable. -- Pjacobi 22:31, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Trovatore drew my attention to the fact that there is a consensus against navigational templates in maths articles of any kind. I was completely unaware of this... could someone kindly explain why this is the case?
I always thought navigation boxes were one of things that made Wikipedia so much better than any print encyclopedia. Also, Calculus topics all have a box at the top right; and {{ mathematics-footer}} exsists and is used, so the rule is clearly not applied in all cases.
This cropped up because I had begun implementing the contents of User:Tompw/maths templates. Tompw 15:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Those footers are awful ({{ Geometry-footer}} & {{ Analysis-footer}}). They are a bunch words strung together with no organization, not even alphabetical. And how is "Category:Geometry" a topic in geometry? IMO, a lack of hierarchical organization is a deficiency in many subject areas that makes it hard to take in the "big picture". The Encyclopædia Britannica has a Propædia that organizes all knowledge in a hierarchy. Since WP is electronic there can be several hierarchies. -- Jtir 17:18, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
I have tossed around the idea with a couple other WPers about the idea of starting a project to develop some math templates like the ones used in the German wikipedia (see de:Gruppetheorie for an example). I think it would be nice to get together some people interested in this, and hash out some ideas and guidelines about what we could use in the English WP. If we were to let a template system grow organically, I think it will quickly get out of control and become inconsistent... being more of an annoyance than a help. But, if we can plan out from the start, I think we could set up a very nice, usable navigation aid that will not detract from the articles. How would you all feel about such a project (it could be a separate wikiproject or a subproject of this one)? - grubber 19:01, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Group |
---|
Field |
Algebra |
Related topics |
Ring |
Field |
Sub topics |
Abelian group |
simple group |
Yay! Lots of people are engaging in a mature and adult discussion about this idea. :-) More to the point, I'm not sure a parent/sibling/child box is the answer. The trouble is that one area of maths doesn't always relate to other areas in a hierachichal (sp) fashion. It's not like bilogy, where a genus is considered as a member of a fmaily, in comparison with that family's other genuses, and as collection of its species. So, the concept of sibling areas doesn't really hold. That said, the parent/children bit works far better. With groups, the parent is Algebraic Structures (and Alegbra in general), and the children are things like Abelian Groups, simple grouprs, quotients, products, sub-groups, major theorums etc. The trouble this leads to is a large number of children - see #3 below. People's complaints about my navigation boxes seemed to fallinto three categories:
I am still left with the idea that those navigational templates are a bad idea. For example, {{ Analysis-footer}} contains a random bunch of things, starting with calculus, going to harmonic analysis, then List of integrals and Table of derivatives, to finish with the entire Category:Calculus. Linkcruft basically.
I strongly disagree with any hierarchical navigational boxes as suggested above. That would basically duplicate the category system.
If anybody is full of energy, what this project trully needs is to work on categories containing a huge amount of articles, splitting them into smaller one by topic which would also make navigation easier. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 02:05, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I strongly agree with
Jitse and
Oleg. The categories need work, so why use potentially different hierarchies in garish boxes at the top bottom of the article that just get in the way?
VectorPosse
06:55, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't want to put too much pressure on the people who have so far proposed some templates but...I don't really like what I've seen thus far. I understand that these are works in progress, but unless I see a concrete example that I like, right now these navigation templates seem like more trouble than they're worth. They seem like the infoboxes on bios, which are often, in my experience, just cluttered or useless. I suppose people have been harping about similar things so I'll stop with that.
Let me just reiterate a "philsophical" argument, due to David Eppstein, which I believe has been missed as it is not listed, for instance, in the list of arguments above. I believe the desire to create this kind of hierarchical system is really unnatural for a lot of mathematics. For some areas, it may "work". But here "work" doesn't mean that it really reflects an inherent hierarchy of concepts, but someone's training. So, for example, with group theory, many in the U.S. learn group theory in this rather pedestrian (albeit elegant) way where one starts with the group axioms, proceeds Bourbaki-style, learning eventually about group actions, etc. But for people with a different background or philosophy, this is really quite strange. For example, I believe there are major Russian schools of mathematics that would not teach group theory this way. Ok, enough philosophizing.... -- C S (Talk) 08:34, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I'll weigh in with the majority opinion, that nav-boxes are inherently evil. My complaint is that I find that they provide a distorted view of the world, echoing some structure that was fashionable three decades ago. They typically give prominence to some inane topic while completely snubbing something more important. A well-written article will already contain all of the needed links to all of the topics that need to be linked. The nav-box offers nothing more than a quick escape for those with a short attention span. linas 05:57, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
I removed {{ analysis-footer}} and {{ geometry-footer}} from articles. The discussion here shows that people would prefer not to have these nav-boxes. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 15:35, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
As stated in the section above on Navigation Boxes, the Category system is better. However, many categories are over-full, for example, Category:Set theory. In such cases, we should create more subcategories (and subsubcategories, etc.). And we should also remove excessive categories from the articles. A good example is Category:Large cardinals which is a subcategory of Category:Cardinal numbers with little or no overlap. Unfortunately, overlap is common in other cases. JRSpriggs 07:54, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I haven't poked around much through the Wikipedia math categories so this is a bit naive, but I have a question: how well do the categories comport with the Mathematics Subject Classification (MSC) of the AMS? Dave Rusin has a general overview here and uses it in his articles [5]. The AMS has some descriptions of it here and here. I guess I'm thinking it's worthwhile to not re-invent the wheel. Lunch 22:18, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Any fixed system of categories is going to suffer from sclerosis. It is basically very un-wiki to say 'here, use this already-fabricated classification'. Works for biology, perhaps, but in mathematics you are for example going to have areas of combinatorics that take on their own identity as things move ahead. Charles Matthews 15:24, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Of course it is harder to check out right now, because the weird way subcategories are listed means it is on the second page of Category:Set theory... Categories really should not be allowed to go over 200 entries. You really need to refine categories on a page into one or more subcategories, not just add them, or this problem gets no better. Charles Matthews 09:12, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
The Proof by symmetry looks kind of encyclopedic to me. Any comments on that? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 03:09, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
The article Euclidean group is a large amount of little factoids, which added together make, in my view, a pain to read. The article is primarily the work of User:Patrick. I like much more the original version by Charles Matthews (see current version and good old version). I would vote for a rewrite of the article using the older version or a revert. Comments? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 04:23, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
I've done some work on the ordering of sections, and other tweaks. It shouldn't be too hard to put this into approved 'concentric' style. Charles Matthews 15:35, 13 October 2006 (UTC) OK, that should be somewhat better now. The only point of real concern I have is this: does the article really need the non-closed subgroups enumerated? I would have thought the closed subgroups were enough. Charles Matthews 15:52, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
The categories Category:Erdős number 1 etc. (not to be confused with Category:Wikipedians with Erdős number 1) are nominated for deletion. If you have an opinion on this, comment on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 October 8#Erdős number categories. You probably have to be fast, as the nomination was six days ago. -- Jitse Niesen ( talk) 05:40, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
I observe that this article has (recently, I believe) become congested with umlauts. Unless, as we are not likely to, we change the spelling of Noetherian ring, this should be straightened out, with a reasonable allowance of "Noether"s for a mathematician who is usually so called in English, and who died on the faculty of Bryn Mawr College. Septentrionalis 15:36, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
I came across this article recently, and actually made some edits on it. The Lebesgue measure argument (as defined in the WP article) proves the uncountability of the reals via measure theory. As best I can tell the purpose of the argument is that it avoids the use of Cantor's diagonal argument and can be considered constructive,although I haven't actually checked whether the argument is in fact constructive. Googling on Lebesgue measure argument (verbatim) I get only two hits, from wikipedia both. Though the argument is valid and interesting (if actually constructive), does this article not violate WP:OR?
{{
cite book}}
: |edition=
has extra text (
help); you could cite that as a source. —
David Eppstein
18:00, 16 October 2006 (UTC)I don't think it violates NOR, but I also don't think it's a particularly useful article as it stands. The hard part of the argument is that the measure of R as a whole is not zero, and that's not even touched in the article. When you fill everything in, I don't think it's any more "constructive" than the diagonal argument (which is pretty constructive, looked at the right way; for example, it's an intuitionistically valid proof that there's no surjection from ω onto 2ω). The article also has a very unenlightening title. -- Trovatore 18:36, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Actually my question about whether this was OR concerned not so much whether the proof is OR, but whether the association of the name "Lebesgue measure argument" to the argument is actually supported in the literature. When I first came to WP over two years ago, I wouldn't have given this matter any thought -- any reasonable name would have suitable. However, with what seems the increasing trend toward WP:Wikilawyering at every junction I think this issue has to be addressed.-- CSTAR 00:26, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Based on the above comments, I put a Proposed AfD banner on the article.-- CSTAR 02:56, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Look at the recent edit history of history of numerical approximations of π. User:DavidWBrooks has inserted this bit of wisdom into the article:
“ | It has been known for millennia that π, the ratio between the circumference and radius of any circle, | ” |
("radius"! Sic.)
“ | is a mathematical constant, but no method of calculation was available until fairly recently. | ” |
Of course someone came to clean up this nonsense, but here's what he ( user:Henning Makholm) wrote:
“ | Unfortunately no practical system for calculating with numbers is able to express π exactly. Though this fact was only proved rigorously in recent time, it has been suspected since the earliest times | ” |
Is there something remotely approximating some correct statement in that? If so, what is it? (Makholm left the ratio as circumference-to-radius rather than circumference-to-diameter.) Michael Hardy 21:05, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Why presume 1882? That was the year when π was proved transcendental. But that's got nothing at all to do (as far as I can see at this moment) with whether any "practical system for calculating with numbers is able to express π exactly". Anyone who thinks transcendence is about "practical systems for computing exactly" should get committed forthwith to the State Hospital for the Criminally Innumerate. Michael Hardy 02:09, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Arbitrarily-precise approximation is different from exact computation: one wants to be able to test, e.g., inequalities of expressions involving pi, and be guaranteed of an answer in a finite time, while you can keep computing as many digits of precision as you like and not be able to tell whether something is or is not equal to zero. And there is a sense in which transcendentalness is a barrier to expressing numbers exactly in a practical computational system, but irrationality isn't: see e.g. this page describing exact representations for algebraic numbers in the LEDA system. It says "LEDA cannot deal with transcendental numbers, at least not without loss of precision - there is no number type class in LEDA that could represent π or e exactly." Of course, the inability to express these numbers in a single system is not the same as a rigorous proof that no such system can exist, and I know of no rigorous proof that it's impossible perform exact computations in the extension of the algebraics by π. So I don't think the statement in the article is quite right... — David Eppstein 06:28, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
David Epstein wrote:
By that standard one can also say that "log23" expresses a number exactly. Is there some reason to limit it to algebraic numbers? If not, then the year 1882, suggested above, does not seen relevant. If it is possible to define precisely something that Henning Makholm could have meant that is actually correct, then it seems very irresponsible to write in sich a horribly vague way about such a thing, and then claim that something expressed so vaguely was proved. It can't be proved if it can't be precisely expressed. So far we're still left guessing what was meant, even after Henning Makholm's comments here. Michael Hardy 22:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I see your point, David. However, I think you may be mislead by viewing some CASes (computer algebra systems), where you might do exact simplification of expressions involving algebraic roots, but not as easily with π. In the first place, there are CASes and even pocket calculators where e.g. sin π cos π is replaced automatically by exactly -1, if you wish; some CASes may do much more advanced substitutions involving π; and more to the point, already Archimedes performed exact calculations with π (see
talk:history of numerical approximations of π#Intro graf). IMO, 'computable' isn't synonymous with 'computable within a present-day CAS'.
JoergenB
23:18, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
There is, in fact, a specific technical reason to limit things to algebraic numbers: there exist algorithms that allow a computational system to reliably determine whether two given algebraic-number representations represent equal or unequal numbers. Therefore it is possible to guarantee that the result of a test such as x ≥ y, performed as part of some larger computation, will return in a finite time: one applies the equality algorithm first, and only after it returns unequal do you need to evaluate x and y to sufficient precision to tell them apart. There are no similar equality testing algorithms known, and therefore no similar finite-time guarantees, for systems of numbers generalizing the algebraics but also allowing logs, e, or π.
Also, I wouldn't call these systems CAS. They are libraries for performing calculations with numbers as part of computer programs, similar in spirit to a standard floating point library but allowing the representation of exact algebraic numbers in place of approximate floats. But they don't do some of the other operations that a typical CAS would, such as symbolic integration.— David Eppstein 23:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Do you mean ONLY that none is known, or rather that it is known (can be proved) that none can exist? If the former, it certainly doesn't justify saying that it has been PROVED that something specific about π cannot be done. Michael Hardy 23:59, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
If your expertise allows you to contribute in a meaningful way to articles involving Hamiltonians and their applications, please take a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics#Hamiltonian articles. -- Lambiam Talk 01:35, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
In Talk:Borel algebra the following question is proposed by User:Leocat:
Now by Kuratowski's theorem, both objects are uncountable polish spaces and hence Borel isomorphic, so "there exists" an isomorphism. My guess is that this isomorphism is constructible, but I don't know enough about constructive mathematics to know for sure.
If anybody knows the answer to this question, you can post it there.-- CSTAR 02:30, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
There are currently no articles or subcategories in Category:Infinity paradoxes which is a subcategory of Category:Infinity. Possibly related articles are in Category:Paradoxes of naive set theory which is in Category:Basic concepts in infinite set theory which is in Category:Infinity. Does anyone want to put something in the empty category or shall we delete it? JRSpriggs 08:17, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Apparently, someone beat me to the punch and deleted it already. I was going to add the template tonight. JRSpriggs 02:08, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
I've added "eigendecomposition" as a synonym for "spectral decomposition" in the spectral theorem article: I'm almost completely sure that's right, but my maths is a bit rusty these days -- could someone more up-to-date double-check this, please? -- The Anome 11:59, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Do people think it would be a good idea if I had MetsBot tag all pages in Category:Mathematics with {{ Maths rating|class=|importance=}}? — Mets501 ( talk) 01:15, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
Tompw 10:07, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
Any consensus on the policy on fractional powers? We write the squareroot sign for powers of one half, but what about cube roots? Do we put the squareroot with the 3 above, or do we put ^1/3? And the others? yandman 09:57, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I have to say, I don't think I have ever seen the notation in a book above introductory college textbooks. In journals it is very common to use the superscript even for square roots when it would simplify notation. (e.g. a lot of people prefer
to
and for long formulae you would definitely use parentheses and an exponent instead of a very large square root sign.) Using an exponent has the added benefit that simple formulae with exponents will not render to .png for people (such as myself) who have their math tags set to render to text for simple formulae. – Joke 00:05, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
I definitely agree. Out of habit I might have used the formula
but I think either looks great, especially compared to the inline formula you produced. – Joke 00:35, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Note: it is generally a good idea to use linear notation in sub- and superscripts (, not ). Particularly when the formulas are rendered in low resolution as they are here. Fredrik Johansson 22:45, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia mathematics editors are brilliant and well-educated, naturally. Yet many have never studied the art of readable writing, especially for the general public. I’d like to offer a few suggestions. With your approval, they may later find their way into our Manual of Style.
I begin by quoting two well-known mathematicians.
When I give a lecture or write a paper, I consider myself lucky if I can convey one idea clearly, so that my audience pays attention, understands, remembers, and is inspired. This is more difficult than it sounds! Both mathematicians quoted above agree. Thus the heart of good technical writing is our first guideline:
Halmos next says to know your audience, and again I agree; yet for Wikipedia the audience can include university faculty, the general public, and youngsters. Readability studies suggest several ways to help. Two basic guidelines, with broad empirical support, are:
And more technically,
These studies also emphasize the value of structure, as do both our mathematicians. Structure occurs on three levels: sentence, paragraph, and article. All three should be clear, logical, and memorable. And I have just illustrated the next suggestion:
Examples of twos include if–then and either–or. More generally, balanced structure and parallel structure help the reader. This is less useful at the paragraph level; but we can suggest the following.
At the article level, the order and content of sections should never leave the reader disoriented. Work for a natural flow, a sense of inevitability. We want readers to know where they’ve been and where they’re going.
Pay particular attention to the introduction, especially the first paragraph. The first sentence should both engage readers, and orient them to what is to come. It need not summarize the article.
All of the suggestions so far apply to any kind of writing. I have a few personal touchstones for mathematics. It is natural to include theorems and proofs, but I also try to incorporate:
Finally, I do my best to sneak in a little humor. Some may damn this as “unencyclopedic”, but the best teachers have always done so. We all know, when we’re honest with ourselves, that when we laugh, we learn. With that in mind, I end with another quotation.
Perhaps another time I can add links to writing resources. Meanwhile, take what you can of value from these suggestions, and help make Wikipedia better. -- KSmrq T 16:04, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
Simenon apparently used to draft his books by locking himself in a room for 72 hours, to get a draft. When he had recovered from that, he went through crossing out all the adjectives and adverbs he could find ... Charles Matthews 15:13, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I think your readership might be better served by providing more background explanation and examples of advanced math concepts designed for a lay audience than your current pages do. Since Wolfram Mathworld already does an excellent job of rigorous textbook style explanations with all of the relevant equations why not just link to them for this content and give Wikipedia readers a simplified plain English version with some real-world applications (along with the graphs suggested above, and perhaps historical development and relevance and maybe some nice pictures of engineering applications etc.) to get them started? --—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.174.240.33 ( talk) 22 October, 2006
The article titled uses of trigonometry, which I originated and which is still mostly my material, is an example of the sort of thing requested here. On the other hand, some of the statistics articles tell you what a concept is used for without ever saying what it is. Those would be greatly improved by more technical material. Michael Hardy 20:33, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
In topology and related branches of mathematics, a continuous function is, loosely speaking, a function from one topological space to another which preserves open sets. Originally, the idea of continuity was a generalization of the informal idea of smoothness, or lack of discontinuity. The first statement of the idea of continuity was by Euler in 1784, relating to plane curves. Other mathematicians, including Bolzano and Cauchy, then refined and extended the idea of continuity. Continuous functions are the raison d'être of topology itself.
In the case of real numbers, a continuous function corresponds to a graph that you can draw without lifting your pen from the paper; that is, without any gaps or jumps.
To chime in... from what I've seen, most of the mathematics articles do not even have an introduction that would be accessible to a non-math-major. I don't think it has to be this way, although I appreciate the difficulty of explaining these concepts to the layperson. As an example, I was just looking at the
Measure (mathematics) article, and this is definitely something that can be understood intuitively, but while the first sentence mentions "size" and "volume", it does not explore these concrete concepts and launches straight into abstraction, even within that sentence. Overall, the collection of mathematics articles seems like an excellent survey of modern mathematics, and perhaps useful for jogging your memory if you've forgotten some detail, but it is not functional as general encyclopedia content. The places where it really seem silly are where a very fundamental concept is explained, something that any mathematician MUST know, and yet it is explained using language and notation that only a mathematician well-versed in that particular subfield could understand. —The preceding
unsigned comment was added by
65.95.229.253 (
talk •
contribs) 1 November 2006 .
Since the discussions seem to have abated for some time now, I am asking the Mathematics and Physics WikiProjects if they support the new citation guidelines that I (and others) have devised. The point of the guidelines is to establish an appropriate, sensible standard for referencing articles in our fields so that we are less likely to run into objections (such as those that have come up recently) when we try to write technical articles that others then tell us are impropoerly sourced. I think these guidelines are now well thought out enough that they can be added to the main pages of the two WikiProjects and perhaps linked from WP:CITE. I should also note that they seem to have attracted some encouragement from outside the WikiProjects, on their talk page, mine, and on WP:CITE.
One outstanding issue is where to move the page. I don't have any great ideas. Wikipedia:WikiProjects Mathematics and Physics/Citation guidelines is too cumbersome. We could just leave it under physics as Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Citation guidelines or be BOLD and put it at Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines (presumably this would mean we would have to engage with the rest of the community to ensure there is consensus). I submit we should go with Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Citation guidelines and once we have consensus here go to Wikipedia:WikiProject Biology and Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry (and wherever else seems appropriate) to solicit their opinions, and then move it out of the physics WikiProject. We could even eventually go ask the wider Wikipedia community what they think at WP:CITE but I think that should be left as a longer term project. – Joke 22:14, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 00:20, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
The various mathematician-stub templates are currently being discussed at Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion/Log/2006/October/19 Affected templates {{ mathbiostub}}, {{ mathbio-stub}}, {{ math-bio-stub}}, {{ mathematician-stub}}. -- Salix alba ( talk) 11:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I was fiddling with some formulas, and seem to have stumbled over the following theorem: given any topological space X and any homomorphism , there exists a measure such that it is preserved by the pushforward (aka the direct image functor on the category of measurable spaces(?)); equivalently, there is always a measure such that g is a measure-preserving map, and furthermore, this measure is unique. This theorem is little more than a fancy-pants version of the Frobenius-Perron theorem, and the measure is more or less the Haar measure. I was wondering if this theorem has a name? Is it in textbooks? Or is it supposed to be a nameless corollary of the theorem that defines the Haar measure? Thanks. linas 03:35, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Is there any way to obtain a count of how many articles are in the Mathematics category or any of the categories beneath it, that is, articles that are in the scope of this project? What about other science projects such as Physics, Chemistry, etc.? CMummert 16:43, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
It's kind of easier to figure that mathematics is 1% of enWP and then you count using the Main Page. (The proportion has been dropping, but slowly ...) Charles Matthews 21:27, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Apart from the fact that I think it's annoying to be told Atiyah has Erdős number 4, as if this was on the same level as a Fields Medal: I think we should point out clearly that any information here should be verifiable. Apart from a complete list of collaborators of Erdős, it is going to be hard to verify numbers at all; certainly the only assertion you'd responsibly get is ≤ 3 and so on. Charles Matthews 19:01, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Michael Francis Atiyah coauthored with Laurel A. Smith MR0343269 (49 #8013) Laurel A. Smith coauthored with Persi W. Diaconis MR0954495 (89m:60163) Persi W. Diaconis coauthored with Paul Erdös1 MR2126886 (2005m:60011)
It's original research to enter two names on a web query form and report the result of that form? It does take some checking afterwards to make sure the papers it returns are real joint publications, but the chain it gives you is readily verifiable, often without further need of their database. — David Eppstein 22:03, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Briefly browsing the archives suggests that this has not been discussed here before (and correct me if I am wrong). It seems like a good idea to bring it up now, seeing that said article has recently been the main page featured article and all.
Long ago, KSmrq has rewritten the article (which was then named Proof that 0.999... = 1) to look something like this (I'll refer to that as the "old" version). It stayed in that form for quite a while, until this edit, where Melchoir has begun a massive rewrite, ultimately resulting in something like this (I'll refer to that as the "new" version). In the meantime, the article has been, with overwhelming support, moved to the new title 0.999... to more faithfully represent its new (and old) content (as can be seen in this archive).
KSmrq has strongly opposed the move and the rewrite, and very frequently criticizes the new version and the editors who have worked on it. Needless to say, I have the greatest admiration for KSmrq's opinion, but happen to personally disagree with him on this matter (I accept some parts of the criticism, though, and believe these should be worked on on a case-by-case basis). I also got the impression that there are not many other editors who agree with him. In my opinion, while the fact that this article has become featured in its current incarnation obviously proves nothing, it supports this impression.
I therefore invite everyone here to share your opinions on the matter, with hope to finally settle this matter once and for all. I'll emphasize that it is not necessarily my wish to see consensus supporting the new version (which, again, is more to my taste), but rather to see consensus supporting some version, and having the article become as good as it can be as a result.
Those with some extra time on their hands could also skim through the extremely numerous reactions to the article (in Talk:0.999... and Talk:0.999.../Arguments) from the last two days, and see if they give them any ideas for possible changes to improve the article.
Since Talk:0.999... is a mess right now, I suggest that replies are made on this page. -- Meni Rosenfeld ( talk) 16:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
We should just redirect this page to 1 (number), you know. Merge or not? Charles Matthews 09:29, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
I've mentioned this before, but I want to get it implemented now. See MediaWiki talk:Common.css#span.texhtml. — Mets501 ( talk) 21:48, 28 October 2006 (UTC)