An editor has changed many articles to make the font size of the references smaller ( example). This is a common thing to do on articles that have dozens of footnotes, and perhaps reasonable in that case. But many of the math articles only have a few references, so I don't see the need for the smaller font. The manual of style is silent on the issue of small vs. regular fonts in reference sections. What do others think? — Carl ( CBM · talk) 17:38, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
On November 1, 2007, Did you know? on the Wikipedia main page was updated with a fact from the article Bramble-Hilbert lemma. Jmath666 05:36, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the link. It may have gotten picked because the first sentence (which was partly quoted) makes sense even to those who "do not understand advanced math", say, beyond Calc I. Jmath666 21:10, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
The STIX Fonts Project has released their fonts for beta testing. — Ruud 21:42, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Didn't we deal with this before? Perhaps it needs more mathematical eyes on the problem. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:11, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
User:71.117.139.31 is making a bunch of changes to formulae with edit summaries like "fixed a variable", which I am reasonably sure are not correct. Can someone take a look? (this <math> stuff isn't my strong suit). -- Stormie 23:21, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
ScienceWorld has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ScienceWorld. At that page people should post their opinions---either Keep or Delete or Merge or Redirect or what-have-you.
My own view, and the reason why this page is where I'm posting this, is that the main reason to consider the topic notable is that this is a new effort by the same people who created MathWorld. When a new novel is to be published by an author who's won the Nobel Prize in literature, it can be considered notable, even before publication, because its author is so noteworthy. Michael Hardy 22:00, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
When is the last time someone from here looked at the article Mathematical problem? -- Lambiam 04:07, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
Page(s) related to this project have been created and/or added to one of the Wikipedia:Contents subpages (not by me).
This note is to let you know, so that experts in the field can expand them and check them for accuracy, and so that they can be added to any watchlists/tasklists, and have any appropriate project banners added, etc. Thanks. -- Quiddity 19:25, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Regulars here will recall that about a month ago, I raised the idea of taking an article on advanced mathematics to FAC, and proposed Homotopy groups of spheres as such an article, on the grounds that it is both highly sophisticated, and generally appealing. Originally, my ambitions were merely to refine the article at the time. However, I have been delighted by the response: many editors have joined in an endeavour to produce a comprehensive article on advanced mathematics, and the article has trebled in size! Here, R.e.b. deserves a special mention for adding so much deep material. (I have done little more than copyediting.)
However, the huge improvement of this article has raised questions of accessibility, presentation and balance that are hard to judge from close-up. I also noticed that the A-Class assessment program has fallen rather quiet. So I have nominated this article for A-Class, primarily to get WikiProject wide input on the current article and stimulate some discussion. Please take a look at the article, and add comments to the review page. Thank you in advance to all, and thank you once again to those who responded with such enthusiasm to my previous post. Geometry guy 19:34, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Hi. There seems to be a problem with the template of the article of the week (featured article) in the portal of Mathematics. The articles are not getting archived since June and i think that it gets updated automatically, often resulting in an empty article. There are some messages about the problem in the talk page, but we need the help of an administrator. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.180.224.85 ( talk) 15:05, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
I used to keep these up to date but I've been neglecting the portal since last May. Thankfully some other editors have stepped up. It is a lot of work for one person to keep the portal up to date. More involvement from editors here would be helpful.
Actually, I'd like to come up with another system for the portal so that the above problem doesn't happen. It would be nice to just have a pool of featured article snippits and have the portal randomly select one each week. People could add more snippits as they see fit and we would have rotating content without the annoying periodic redlinks. I'll have to think of a way to do this. -- Fropuff 16:44, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
What John Carter said. See Wikipedia:Portal/Instructions#Editing Archive for random portal component section for some (unclear?) instructions, and many examples of simple randomized content at the featured Portal:Cats, Portal:Environment, etc (click "Show new selections" to purge/refresh the page). Hope that helps. -- Quiddity 18:07, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I've updated the portal to use a slightly customized version of {{ Random portal component}}. I've placed the content at
I'll try to move our whole slew of existing snippits to the new locations. I'll also try and update the archive to reflect the new format. And then do the same thing with the pictures. Let me know if you see any problems. -- Fropuff 20:07, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
A confused person extensively rewrote the article titled improper integral. I reverted to the last version by Jitse Niesen. I left a message on the confused person's talk page explaining why at least some of what he wrote was erroneous. Possibly some assistance from some readers of this page in helping him out of his confusion will be needed later. Michael Hardy 16:33, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Could you please watch over average while keeping in mind that this is an introductory article to the topic? There's some good discussion and edits going on, but -- and I'm appealing to those of you who have kids trying to understand this topic -- could you please try to keep it simple in this article? Maybe encourage some of the discussion and text to move to more technical articles? Maybe try to simplify the article so that teens looking up "average" in Wikipedia won't be completely turned off? Illustrations would help a great deal. Shorter sentences and less jargon would help a lot. PLEASE help if you can! I'm not saying the information is bad or wrong, I'm just worried about it being in this general and basic article. -- Foggy Morning 02:39, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Casimir goes to Casimir is up for deletion. The AfD looks like it could use some input from those who know something about Casimir invariants. -- Salix alba ( talk) 08:16, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
There's an AFD on a Kazakh mathematician, Kareem Amin. It would be great to have some mathematical subject expertise on this? -- Lquilter 18:46, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
Lists (PLURAL, dammit!!) of mathematics topics is a featured list.
List (singular!!) of mathematics topics is not.
After the featured list got moved to lists of mathematics topics (plural "lists"), someone changed Wikipedia:Featured lists so that it said list of mathematics topics (singular "list"), which was a redirect to the non-featured list of mathematics articles. Then someone saw that the page listed at Wikipedia:featured lists was not a featured list, and deleted it. The error stood for almost seven months. I've changed the singular title to a disambiguation page. Michael Hardy 02:25, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
I found this forum dialog: http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/known-math/98/definable
There are somes things that would be very useful in the article. But I don't know if this is usable as a source. I tried to contact David Madore, he didn't answered. As he is a teacher in the best French math faculty, I think it would be better that another teacher try to contact him. His adress is on the bottom of the page. Barraki 21:21, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
A user has strewn {{ refimprovesect}} tags all over Probability. [4] What shall we do with those? Not only does this seem to go against the drift of the scientific citation guidelines, but also in general one would expect that in an article in summary style the references for the summarized material of the subtopics may be deferred to the main articles (as is also clearly suggested by Wikipedia:Summary style#Citations and external links). However, scanning the article for statements that are likely not covered by existing references, I noticed that the last section, Applications, has several unsourced challengeable statements in the first half, and then, starting with the weaselly proclamation that "It could be said that there is no such thing as probability", wanders off into an unsourced philosophical essay on Randomness. -- Lambiam 07:19, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
If anyone knows anything about this topic, could they assist at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Casimir goes to Casimir? Michael Hardy 20:42, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Hi, i am no maths expert so i ask someone here if this article: 2^x makes any sense. Is it encyclopedic? Accurate? Thanks. Woodym555 23:21, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
This Scientific Peer Review project can hardly be called successful. While there have been a steady but small flow of articles submitted for review, the actual reviews have been either non-existent or in no real way different from those done through the standard Wikipedia:Peer review process. Some editors will recall that the project was started with an enthusiastic discussion about identifying expert reviewers through an elected board. Unfortunately as time went by, it became clear there was no consensus on whether we had a board, or on how it was to be set up or on what it was supposed to do. There was also a lack of consensus on what "sciences" we were covering, and on many other aspects. In the end we sort of lapsed into a minimal review process which has staggered on for about 18 months. I think it is time we decided what to do about the project. Unless people can come up with a new way forward and enthusiastically implement it, I think we have to declare that this project be no longer active in any sense and that editors should ask for review at WP:PR. I am posting this on the talk pages of the major Science WikiProjects. Please feel free to publicize it elsewhere. Please add you comments at Wikipedia talk:Scientific peer review#Is this inactive?. -- Bduke 03:41, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
I need help with Halting problem and Godel's incompleteness theorem. User:Likebox, an avowed fan of Archimedes Plutonium, is adding some content both literally and figuratively incorrect to these, and I don't see any way to resolve it by myself. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 01:28, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
As Godel's incompleteness theorem has been reverted again, extra help would still be appreciated. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 21:17, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
I have made a request for comments here. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 19:32, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
Preclosure operator was misspelled as praclosure operator. When I corrected this, I realised that there is also an article prametric space, and this drew my attention to the zoo of generalized metrics articles. I think there are some serious issues there, but I am not very motivated to solve them alone since it is too far from my main interest. Please see my rant on the talk page for prametric space. I would appreciate help from someone who is a bit closer to the subject.
One particular question: Is there a standard term for something that satisfies all axioms of a metric except the triangle inequality? -- Hans Adler 14:43/ 15:08, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Geometry guy is a candidate for adminship. His RFA page is here for anyone who wishes to comment. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 21:37, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Surely every numerical analyst in the world is familiar with the remarkable work of Gene H. Golub. Those who knew him personally will be especially saddened to learn that he has just died suddenly and unexpectedly. -- KSmrq T 22:08, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Editor Snicoulaud ( talk · contribs) has just created an article called megalithic geometry and attempted to link to it from geometry. I have reverted the link; probably the article should be deleted as hokum. Have a look. -- KSmrq T 20:41, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Since editors here may not have access to the Alan Butler's book, the following summary from an Amazon customer might be helpful.
This material might possibly survive as an article on the book, which discusses the claims from a neutral point of view. Geometry guy 10:10, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
In the past month or so, several users have gone over large swaths of mathematics articles, leaving the above edit summary. Their edits usually amount to replacing math html with pseudographics characters, e.g. superscripts rendered as x<sup>2</sup> with x², greek λ with λ, the inequality symbol ≤ with ≤, etc. Here is latest that I've come across, but there are many more instances. I personally do not feel that these efforts result in any improvement, think that the term "cleanup" is rather misleading in this context, and dislike such changes for a number of reasons (cf questions below). But should we take a stand on this issue? Here are a few points that I think deserve being addressed:
Arcfrk 02:50, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't mind most of these edits, but the following is an abomination:
Any bot that insists on doing this should be humanely euthanized. Michael Hardy 18:53, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
– — … ° ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → · §
{{
mbox}}
protection), as browsers are permitted to break lines at such spaces.I agree with all of KSmrq's numbered points above. Michael Hardy 22:42, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
... and then if you want to get into advance (ha ha...) stuff:
Carl Friedrich Gauss has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Here is another example how media frenzy subverts the scholarly principles on which Wikipedia is ostensibly based. This article reports on a single paper, or rather, e-print (posted to ArXiv a few days ago), with that title. While the sexy title grabbed instant attention of many, I would like to question the wisdom of creating an article devoted to what will as likely as not turn out to be another crank theory. It raises a serious issue that should be addressed, namely,
According to the unanimous opinion of the commentators at the AfD for this article (which ended with the result "Snowball keep"), it's the fact that the media reported on it! With some stretch of imagination, it can, perhaps, be argued that the Daily Telegraph's article is a secondary source, although, obviously, the journalists who wrote the piece can hardly be qualified to make an informed judgement on the merits of the theory. On the other hand, WP:WWIN#Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought states:
As reading the article plainly reveals, in a situation like this, the best Wikipedia can do is offer quotes from blogs of various physists by the way of analysis. Which again begs the question:
I can live with the existence of many obscure articles promoting strange theories, but I am greatly alarmed by the argument put forward at the AfD and on the talk page of the article, which can be summarized as follows:
If this feedback loop continues, instead of becoming "the sum of human knowledge", Wikipedia may easily degenerate into a media-fed blog dealing with current events or, as in this case, original research. Arcfrk ( talk) 05:08, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks to the help of CBM/ Jitse Niesen and KSmrq who helped by pulling out the citation templates of WP math articles/providing improving remarks on the database, there is now a database containing the references of all WP math articles (as of approx. September 07). There are 5300 references, written by some 6000 authors. You can access the database at http://zeteo.info. The references are linked to their corresponding authors, publishers, and journals respectively. An author/publisher/journal is a separate database entity, thus providing the correct structure to uniformly host additional information like wikilink of an author, issn of a journal etc.
More or less manually I fed the data into the database. It was quite a bit of work to do this. I haven't attempted to verify the information which is now in the database. An in-depth check of a small sample of templates showed, that the stuff is generally pretty well-done, though. Using worldcat.org, I manually added ISSN's for the some 120 (total: 1200) journals. Hence, even merely recopying the result of the database most often improves the presentation of a reference. For example, in Atiyah-Singer index theorem, a reference reads
The output of the corresponding entry in the zeteo database is
{{
citation}}
: Check |author1-link=
value (
help); Check |journal=
value (
help)(notice the ISSN, wikilink of the first author, the page formatting using en-dash, the wikilink of the journal, the full name of the journal. The latter is achieved via a manually added redirect similar to the ones for WP articles).
Several options are available; for example it is easy to let it put out something like
for those who prefer footnote-style referencing. For your commodity, there is a little search engine template similar to the google toolbar etc., which can be integrated in the browser's menu. So, no excuses anymore :-) for not referencing an article when you actually know a reference off your head.
Anybody can add/update database items. It is possible to import bibtex files and let the database parse them, so you can relatively comfortably add the items of your personal bibtex file (it's pretty quick, I did 6.000 of them). A brief documentation can be found here, bugs and questions etc. can be reported here.
Enjoy! Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 22:49, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Please add your opinions on article simplification here. [6] -- Foggy Morning ( talk) 02:10, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
The Erdős disambiguation page included a moderately long list of things named after Paul Erdős. I created a new page called List of things named after Paul Erdős. I moved all those items to that page, and left a link to it on the disambiguation page. If there are other things that should be listed there, please add them. Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:12, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Two weeks ago I proposed to move Lists of mathematics topics to Portal:Mathematics/Lists. The request stalled for reasons explained at the WP:RM page (5th bullet of the linked section). More elaborate explanations for the stalling exist, most of them linked from the indicated WP:RM page section.
Basicly I ask the people of the Mathematics portal (and the mathematics project) to weigh in whether they think it a good idea to accept the "list of lists" page as a sub-page of the portal, hoping this would get the situation afloat again. The actual move proposal is discussed at Talk:Lists_of_mathematics_topics#Requested_move.
One of the issues is whether the mathematics "list of lists" page should lose its "featured" status. If it is kept in main namespace, I think it should, for WP:V and WP:NOR reasons (e.g. the only external sources are mentioned in the intro, second paragraph, but explaining they are deliberately ignored for no other apparent reason than wiki organisation). If the list is moved to portal namespace that reason for de-featuring ceases to exist (although featuredness should possibly be reiterated as a portal page). -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 10:55, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
We should overturn this move. Hardly anybody commented on it. We should solicit the opinions of about 500 Wikipedians who frequently edit mathematics articles. Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:08, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I've moved it back.
There was no consensus at all for this move. The cited page on which the consensus was reached did not reach a consensus. And I didn't recognize even one name among those who commented there. HUNDREDS of daily Wikipedia editors have each edited HUNDREDS or (in my case and that of many others) THOUSANDS of mathematics articles, and they didn't participate in the discussion. We should broadly canvas to solicit opinions of those hundreds of mathematicians who edit here.
Oleg, you're experienced with bots, about which I know nothing. Is there a quick way to compile a list of frequent math editors to ask for their opinions on this? Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:17, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Maybe this is over. Someone closed the discussion as "no consensus". Then someone (the same person?---I don't remember) entered and said there was a broad consensus, on some other page! And then moved the article. On that other page the topic was not mentioned, except tangentially once or twice and no one seemed aware of the page in question. This project was notified of the discussion, but not of the other discussion on that other page. Experience makes me anticipate that in situations where illiterates solemnly declare themselves omniscient when making decisions about math articles and then tell people who've edited literally thousands of math articles and who know something, to go screw themselves, or something similarly polite, then they won't retreat politely. But let's wait and see what happens. Michael Hardy ( talk) 06:06, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
In some circumstances, one wishes unit symbols (cm, etc.) to always be upright (i.e. non-italic), even if enclosed in an italicized phrase, e.g. so as not to be confusable with italicized variables which might coincidentally use the same characters. I've created the template {{
itunit}} to do this for us trivially, without violating the XML semantic integrity of the XHTML italicized phrase that is output (which necessarily includes the unit). Instead of stopping and starting the emphasis, as in only ''3'' cm ''wide'' at the base
, you simply wrap the unit in the template: only ''3 {{itunit|cm}} wide'' at the base
(which yields "only 3 cm wide at the base", visually, without breaking the <em>...</em> XHTML span around the entire italicized phrase, as received by the browser). Enjoy! PS: Please feel free to notify other wikiprojects that may find use for this; I'm not a particant in the science & math projects, but created this to resolve a fight over at
WP:MOSNUM. —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)›
17:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Removed cfdnotice, cfd has completed. -- Kbdank71 17:38, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
This is the third nomination and with the concerns last time that the Math WikiProject wasn't notified I'm making sure you are the first to know about it this time around. __ meco 13:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
At the Deletion Review Page, where folks are discussing wether to overturn the deletion of the Erdos Number Categories, some folks are voting "endorse", with comments suggesting they mean "endorse the category". Unfortunately, "endorse" in this context means "endorse the closure of the ballot to delete", i.e. the deletion. I think most of us want to vote "overturn". There are examples of both kinds of votes, with clarifying comments, at that deletion review item and in other items near it. We certainly can't show any consensus if we vote mistakenly :-) Thanks, Pete St.John 19:18, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
In a probably forlorn attempt to stop another pointless fight, I will point out that Erdos numbers are nothing but a joke, one of the points of which is to fool people into taking them seriously. There sure seem to be a lot of people who have not yet figured this out. R.e.b. 16:59, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
While personally I would have preferred that the categories had been kept, to be honest that's mostly just because I thought it was sort of cool to be able to find mathematicians' Erdős numbers easily; I couldn't think of any strong argument that it was something that belonged in the category system, which is why I didn't contribute to the deletion discussion. While I have to allow that KSmrq has a point about the closing admin's handling of the situation, I do think he probably got to the right result.
Main point being, let's not let this turn into a math-wikiproject-against-the-world issue. It's not worth the political capital, especially when the argument one might make on the underlying substantive issue (as opposed to complaints about the closing admin) is so weak. It would be reasonable at this point to recreate a list article, I think, if one was deleted on the grounds that it was redundant with the categories, or to create a new one if one never existed. -- Trovatore 04:24, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
I've requested a Deletion Review, at this deletion review log item. It's awkward because of the related categories Erdos Number <<X>> that got destroyed, not to mention variant transliterations of "Erdos". But Wiki has a mechanism for consensus among admins, similar to consensus among editors for ordinary contributions, and I think it's fair to give that mechanism a chance to work. Pete St.John 18:23, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
The original vote to delete the category (in this recent 3rd attempt to delete it) had been 11-5 in favor of keeping it (not counting an anonymous IP who voted to delete). The Admin deleted anyway, on the grounds of prefering the arguments to delete. Currently, at the Deletion Review where I have requested overturning that deletion, the vote is close, 6 to overturn and 5 to endorse (the deletion). This isn't the overwhelming 2-1 majority that lost anyway to admin fiat, but I think the standards may be different in a Deletion Review among admins, than the standards applied by an admin reacting to editors. I think at least we are showing the admins that we have a beef. Personally, it seems to me that while we tire of rebutting the same circular objections perpetually, to no apparent effect, the deletionists do not tire. They are like vampires who crave blood but can't be killed. Pete St.John 22:35, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
What is all this talk about "among admins"? DRV isn't for admins only any more than CfD is. The only difference is that DRV is for reviewing a deletion, not simply talking about whether an article should be deleted. JPD ( talk) 12:51, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Discussion here about the best way to present Erdos numbers in articles is perfectly appropriate. But some editors are concerned that the discussion might be intended to disrupt the ongoing DRV. I don't think that is actually the case, but I hope everyone will keep it in mind, to foster collegiality. As usual, there is no massive conspiracy, just a disagreement about the best way to do something. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 16:12, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
The Deletion Review has been closed,and the deletion overturned. -- Ramsey2006 03:38, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a deletion review of Category:Erdős numbers. Since several of you participated in the previous discussion for this category, you may wish to participate in this relisting of the deletion review. The previous one was apparently closed as "relist" due to canvassing. - jc37 09:23, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
The second DRV for the third CfD of the Erdős numbers categories (whew!) has been closed. In the best tradition of Solomon, the result will satisfy neither extreme completely. Here is the closing summary:
Now, as it happens, I am not convinced that there is widespread agreement on the first point; however, it is true that editors both outside and inside the mathematics community have said something along these lines. I am puzzled that Xoloz has considered the merits of the arguments for and against deletion, rather than simply acknowledging a lack of consensus. This again seems to set aside community decisions in favor of one admin's choice. The closer's syllogism is: • Erdős numbers are widely considered trivial, • trivial data is inappropriate for categorization, therefore • Erdős numbers are inappropriate for categorization.
If Erdős numbers are meant to be fun trivia, I'm disheartened; this process has destroyed most of the fun for me. The category for Erdős number 1 will be relisted. Those who have not been thoroughly beaten down by the opposition, and who feel they can refute the Xoloz syllogism, may wish to participate. If you choose to do so, I strongly suggest concise, fact-filled arguments. In particular, do not let opponents bait flamewars; do not discuss motives; do not revisit past conflicts. -- KSmrq T 22:56, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
I think that at this point, we should consider the creation of Erdos number lists together with a Mathematician infobox template shamelessly plagerized from the Scientist infobox, that would contain a field for Erdos number, and would also have a link to the Erdos number lists for ease in navagation. I think that a separate Mathematician infobox is preferable to attempting to add the Erdos number field to the Scientist infobox because such an optional field was once part of the scientist infobox, and was deleted in a previous deletion discussion, along with the left/right handedness field with which it was compared. Seems to me like a battle not worth refighting. I think that as a practical matter we can reproduce most of the usefullness of the Erdos number categories in this way, while avoiding (hopefully!) all the controversy and wasted energy that goes into the category stuff. As for the possibility of retaining a a single category for Erdos number 1, I can't really see the need for the category if it just acts as a parallel system to the proposed list/infobox combination. One system is easier to maintain than two parallel systems. I propose that we don't even bother with relisting it ourselves, and if it gets relisted anyway, focus instead on attempting to use the relisted CfD to get a solid and undeniable consensus for allowing the list/infobox combination that we can point to later, so that we can build up the list/infobox combination without having to worry about having to fight any more silly battles over it in the future. -- Ramsey2006 00:15, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Simply as a personal note — I don't really expect anyone to be swayed by this — I hate infoboxes. They reinforce the notion that a complex thing (in this case a person) can be encapsulated by a neat box with a small number of fields, like a baseball card. Paul August ☎ 02:57, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Part of the recent controversy regarding the Erdos Number Categories seems to be philosophical disagreement about what constitutes good encocylopedia material. BHG, an admin who led the opposition, has formulated some of that philosophy at Not a Database in WikiTalk. The piece enunciates some of the things we heard in the debate, e.g. "the category must define the subject of the article". In comparing-- and contrasting-- the Wiki to a relational database, BHG presents some of their PoV in a manner that might be comprehensible to us. (That in itself is comendable.) I invite concerned parties to read it and comment. If we're going to play together in the sandbox we need to have some common language. Thanks, Pete St.John ( talk) 17:39, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
With the categories decisively gone, I have created List of people by Erdős number. Ntsimp ( talk) 18:54, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
I wanted to make some commutative diagrams (in the context of pin groups and related topics), and couldn't find any documentation; people seem to make them in many ways. I figured out how to make SVG commutative diagrams, so that it's now quite easy, and documented it at: meta:Help:Displaying a formula#Commutative_diagrams.
Hope this helps!
Nbarth ( talk) 22:33, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I just finished a major expansion of dessin d'enfant. I'd appreciate it if some people who know more than I about Riemann surfaces and algebraic number theory (not difficult!) could take a look and make sure I haven't said something stupid. Edits or general feedback on readability, content, etc., would be welcome, too, of course. PS: As a deliberate stylistic decision, I tried to follow Gowers' advice to put examples first [10] [11] — I'd also appreciate feedback on how well that worked. — David Eppstein ( talk) 04:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I just noticed that Template:Proof was deleted, with almost no discussion, and certainly without a single mathematician participating in the debate. You may recall that the function of this template was to handle the job of the controversial notion of math articles with non-notable proofs of assertions therein (typically, non-notable or even pedestrian proofs found in textbooks). For some examples, see Category:Article proofs. After lengthly discussion, it was decided that such proofs don't really belong in article space, and yet perhaps its harmless to keep them around. Thus, the template served to mark thier status as being in purgatory, and attempted to explain why a purgatory exists.
Sadly, all this seemed to be quite lost on the foks who deleted the template.
I'm somewhat frustrated that a small band of "crazies", to quote KSmrq, can so quickly and easily damage positions arrived at through long and hard consensus debate. Isn't there something that can be done to limit this kind of damage? If *this* group, after effort and debate, got rid of the template and/or the proofs, that would be fine. But to find outsiders come in, misunderstand, trample, and decamp, I find that quite frustrating. linas ( talk) 04:35, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Please see the debate in Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Proofs, or at least skim it; and don't neglect to look at the archived debate as well. The primary problems are these:
Myself, I'm undecided. I like the core concept that "theorems should have proofs". Actually providing such proofs in WP presents some serious operational challanges, such as the standard-of-quaility, referencing, and vigilance issues. We do not currently have any standards or guidelines in place by which article proofs can be judged to be good or bad, adequate or inadequate. linas ( talk) 14:32, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
User:CBM wrote:
That statement might seem like a grudging admission that, gee, maybe some proofs are good enough to be barely allowed into polite society...
However, some proofs are of far greater interest than the bare fact being proved, especially when the technique of proof is the brilliant, or in some cases at least exceptionally clever, insight involved (e.g.
Cantor's diagonal argument,
Cantor's back-and-forth method,
proof that π is irrational,
proof that 22 over 7 exceeds π,
Archimedes' use of infinitesimals), or the statement is one of those simple things in number theory that any 9th-grader can understand in an instant but the proof of the statement, on the other hand, is a major intellectual breakthrough or at least a substantial enough achievement to be widely known among mathematicians (e.g.
Fermat's last theorem,
Brun's theorem).
Michael Hardy (
talk)
17:03, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Atropos has essentially apologised on my talk page for not realising that the template had a useful function. If a reworded template would be helpful, I'd be happy to undelete the old one to provide a starting point and preserve the edit history. Geometry guy 19:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Index lists is a complex issue which I've tried to summarize. It concerns pages in mainspace like List of timelines, Lists of mathematics topics, and List of film topics. Its scope is currently a few hundred pages, and potentially a few thousand pages. Feedback would be appreciated. -- Quiddity ( talk) 19:14, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I randomly clicked on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Count today and found a rather round number. Of course we all know that divisibility by 1000 is no big deal, but it makes a good excuse to celebrate the good work by many contributors over many years to create so many mathematics articles. Geometry guy 22:42, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
What is this counting? Is it the number of contributors to articles in the "mathematics" categories? Or to this discussion page? Or the number of articles at list of mathematics articles? Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I notice that all the space on WP:MATH front page is devoted to FA- and A-class articles or similar, but nowhere is there an area (or link to an area) where articles/other pages undergoing AfD or similar deletion discussion can be listed. :-(
That said I nominated a mathematician and physician of unknown notability, James M. McCanney, for deletion. AfD is here. Might not be widely-published as he's said to be "anti-establishment". Just a heads up. Pegasus «C¦ T» 07:23, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Error-correcting codes with feedback has been nominated for deletion, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Error-correcting codes with feedback 132.205.99.122 ( talk) 23:05, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I guess folks have seen the Wikipedia:The Core Contest which is offering a $100 prize for the most improved core topic. Constant as well a quite a few of our basic articles in on the list. It could be a good time to foucs on improving one of these. -- Salix alba ( talk) 23:19, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Is anyone here familiar with the "equivalence symbol" used in the last row of this table? [12] It looks like an equals sign with a caret on top. I've never seen it anywhere else. Should it be mentioned somewhere on Wikipedia, such as in the equals sign article? -- Itub ( talk) 07:28, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Error-correcting codes with feedback.
Normally I would expect this to get listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity. But it hasn't. It bore the "Information theory" category. Apparently articles with that category don't show up on the current activity page. I've added the "Mathematics" category for now.
Oleg, are you the person who manages the software that determines which things show up on the "current activity" page? Can you do something about this? Michael Hardy 23:17, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Logical necessity of inconsistency has been listed on AfD. — Ruud 23:41, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Someone here said the integral at Srinivasa_Ramanujan#Contacting_English_mathematicians is incorrect. Could anyone look into this? Also, I would appreciate if some editors could verify the other mathematical statements in LaTeX. I don't think I messed up anywhere when I wrote those bits a few months ago, but I'd appreciate some confirmation in any case. Thanks in advance, Nishkid64 ( talk) 03:24, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
An editor has changed many articles to make the font size of the references smaller ( example). This is a common thing to do on articles that have dozens of footnotes, and perhaps reasonable in that case. But many of the math articles only have a few references, so I don't see the need for the smaller font. The manual of style is silent on the issue of small vs. regular fonts in reference sections. What do others think? — Carl ( CBM · talk) 17:38, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
On November 1, 2007, Did you know? on the Wikipedia main page was updated with a fact from the article Bramble-Hilbert lemma. Jmath666 05:36, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the link. It may have gotten picked because the first sentence (which was partly quoted) makes sense even to those who "do not understand advanced math", say, beyond Calc I. Jmath666 21:10, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
The STIX Fonts Project has released their fonts for beta testing. — Ruud 21:42, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Didn't we deal with this before? Perhaps it needs more mathematical eyes on the problem. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:11, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
User:71.117.139.31 is making a bunch of changes to formulae with edit summaries like "fixed a variable", which I am reasonably sure are not correct. Can someone take a look? (this <math> stuff isn't my strong suit). -- Stormie 23:21, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
ScienceWorld has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ScienceWorld. At that page people should post their opinions---either Keep or Delete or Merge or Redirect or what-have-you.
My own view, and the reason why this page is where I'm posting this, is that the main reason to consider the topic notable is that this is a new effort by the same people who created MathWorld. When a new novel is to be published by an author who's won the Nobel Prize in literature, it can be considered notable, even before publication, because its author is so noteworthy. Michael Hardy 22:00, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
When is the last time someone from here looked at the article Mathematical problem? -- Lambiam 04:07, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
Page(s) related to this project have been created and/or added to one of the Wikipedia:Contents subpages (not by me).
This note is to let you know, so that experts in the field can expand them and check them for accuracy, and so that they can be added to any watchlists/tasklists, and have any appropriate project banners added, etc. Thanks. -- Quiddity 19:25, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Regulars here will recall that about a month ago, I raised the idea of taking an article on advanced mathematics to FAC, and proposed Homotopy groups of spheres as such an article, on the grounds that it is both highly sophisticated, and generally appealing. Originally, my ambitions were merely to refine the article at the time. However, I have been delighted by the response: many editors have joined in an endeavour to produce a comprehensive article on advanced mathematics, and the article has trebled in size! Here, R.e.b. deserves a special mention for adding so much deep material. (I have done little more than copyediting.)
However, the huge improvement of this article has raised questions of accessibility, presentation and balance that are hard to judge from close-up. I also noticed that the A-Class assessment program has fallen rather quiet. So I have nominated this article for A-Class, primarily to get WikiProject wide input on the current article and stimulate some discussion. Please take a look at the article, and add comments to the review page. Thank you in advance to all, and thank you once again to those who responded with such enthusiasm to my previous post. Geometry guy 19:34, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Hi. There seems to be a problem with the template of the article of the week (featured article) in the portal of Mathematics. The articles are not getting archived since June and i think that it gets updated automatically, often resulting in an empty article. There are some messages about the problem in the talk page, but we need the help of an administrator. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.180.224.85 ( talk) 15:05, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
I used to keep these up to date but I've been neglecting the portal since last May. Thankfully some other editors have stepped up. It is a lot of work for one person to keep the portal up to date. More involvement from editors here would be helpful.
Actually, I'd like to come up with another system for the portal so that the above problem doesn't happen. It would be nice to just have a pool of featured article snippits and have the portal randomly select one each week. People could add more snippits as they see fit and we would have rotating content without the annoying periodic redlinks. I'll have to think of a way to do this. -- Fropuff 16:44, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
What John Carter said. See Wikipedia:Portal/Instructions#Editing Archive for random portal component section for some (unclear?) instructions, and many examples of simple randomized content at the featured Portal:Cats, Portal:Environment, etc (click "Show new selections" to purge/refresh the page). Hope that helps. -- Quiddity 18:07, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I've updated the portal to use a slightly customized version of {{ Random portal component}}. I've placed the content at
I'll try to move our whole slew of existing snippits to the new locations. I'll also try and update the archive to reflect the new format. And then do the same thing with the pictures. Let me know if you see any problems. -- Fropuff 20:07, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
A confused person extensively rewrote the article titled improper integral. I reverted to the last version by Jitse Niesen. I left a message on the confused person's talk page explaining why at least some of what he wrote was erroneous. Possibly some assistance from some readers of this page in helping him out of his confusion will be needed later. Michael Hardy 16:33, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Could you please watch over average while keeping in mind that this is an introductory article to the topic? There's some good discussion and edits going on, but -- and I'm appealing to those of you who have kids trying to understand this topic -- could you please try to keep it simple in this article? Maybe encourage some of the discussion and text to move to more technical articles? Maybe try to simplify the article so that teens looking up "average" in Wikipedia won't be completely turned off? Illustrations would help a great deal. Shorter sentences and less jargon would help a lot. PLEASE help if you can! I'm not saying the information is bad or wrong, I'm just worried about it being in this general and basic article. -- Foggy Morning 02:39, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Casimir goes to Casimir is up for deletion. The AfD looks like it could use some input from those who know something about Casimir invariants. -- Salix alba ( talk) 08:16, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
There's an AFD on a Kazakh mathematician, Kareem Amin. It would be great to have some mathematical subject expertise on this? -- Lquilter 18:46, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
Lists (PLURAL, dammit!!) of mathematics topics is a featured list.
List (singular!!) of mathematics topics is not.
After the featured list got moved to lists of mathematics topics (plural "lists"), someone changed Wikipedia:Featured lists so that it said list of mathematics topics (singular "list"), which was a redirect to the non-featured list of mathematics articles. Then someone saw that the page listed at Wikipedia:featured lists was not a featured list, and deleted it. The error stood for almost seven months. I've changed the singular title to a disambiguation page. Michael Hardy 02:25, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
I found this forum dialog: http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/known-math/98/definable
There are somes things that would be very useful in the article. But I don't know if this is usable as a source. I tried to contact David Madore, he didn't answered. As he is a teacher in the best French math faculty, I think it would be better that another teacher try to contact him. His adress is on the bottom of the page. Barraki 21:21, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
A user has strewn {{ refimprovesect}} tags all over Probability. [4] What shall we do with those? Not only does this seem to go against the drift of the scientific citation guidelines, but also in general one would expect that in an article in summary style the references for the summarized material of the subtopics may be deferred to the main articles (as is also clearly suggested by Wikipedia:Summary style#Citations and external links). However, scanning the article for statements that are likely not covered by existing references, I noticed that the last section, Applications, has several unsourced challengeable statements in the first half, and then, starting with the weaselly proclamation that "It could be said that there is no such thing as probability", wanders off into an unsourced philosophical essay on Randomness. -- Lambiam 07:19, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
If anyone knows anything about this topic, could they assist at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Casimir goes to Casimir? Michael Hardy 20:42, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Hi, i am no maths expert so i ask someone here if this article: 2^x makes any sense. Is it encyclopedic? Accurate? Thanks. Woodym555 23:21, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
This Scientific Peer Review project can hardly be called successful. While there have been a steady but small flow of articles submitted for review, the actual reviews have been either non-existent or in no real way different from those done through the standard Wikipedia:Peer review process. Some editors will recall that the project was started with an enthusiastic discussion about identifying expert reviewers through an elected board. Unfortunately as time went by, it became clear there was no consensus on whether we had a board, or on how it was to be set up or on what it was supposed to do. There was also a lack of consensus on what "sciences" we were covering, and on many other aspects. In the end we sort of lapsed into a minimal review process which has staggered on for about 18 months. I think it is time we decided what to do about the project. Unless people can come up with a new way forward and enthusiastically implement it, I think we have to declare that this project be no longer active in any sense and that editors should ask for review at WP:PR. I am posting this on the talk pages of the major Science WikiProjects. Please feel free to publicize it elsewhere. Please add you comments at Wikipedia talk:Scientific peer review#Is this inactive?. -- Bduke 03:41, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
I need help with Halting problem and Godel's incompleteness theorem. User:Likebox, an avowed fan of Archimedes Plutonium, is adding some content both literally and figuratively incorrect to these, and I don't see any way to resolve it by myself. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 01:28, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
As Godel's incompleteness theorem has been reverted again, extra help would still be appreciated. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 21:17, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
I have made a request for comments here. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 19:32, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
Preclosure operator was misspelled as praclosure operator. When I corrected this, I realised that there is also an article prametric space, and this drew my attention to the zoo of generalized metrics articles. I think there are some serious issues there, but I am not very motivated to solve them alone since it is too far from my main interest. Please see my rant on the talk page for prametric space. I would appreciate help from someone who is a bit closer to the subject.
One particular question: Is there a standard term for something that satisfies all axioms of a metric except the triangle inequality? -- Hans Adler 14:43/ 15:08, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Geometry guy is a candidate for adminship. His RFA page is here for anyone who wishes to comment. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 21:37, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Surely every numerical analyst in the world is familiar with the remarkable work of Gene H. Golub. Those who knew him personally will be especially saddened to learn that he has just died suddenly and unexpectedly. -- KSmrq T 22:08, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Editor Snicoulaud ( talk · contribs) has just created an article called megalithic geometry and attempted to link to it from geometry. I have reverted the link; probably the article should be deleted as hokum. Have a look. -- KSmrq T 20:41, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Since editors here may not have access to the Alan Butler's book, the following summary from an Amazon customer might be helpful.
This material might possibly survive as an article on the book, which discusses the claims from a neutral point of view. Geometry guy 10:10, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
In the past month or so, several users have gone over large swaths of mathematics articles, leaving the above edit summary. Their edits usually amount to replacing math html with pseudographics characters, e.g. superscripts rendered as x<sup>2</sup> with x², greek λ with λ, the inequality symbol ≤ with ≤, etc. Here is latest that I've come across, but there are many more instances. I personally do not feel that these efforts result in any improvement, think that the term "cleanup" is rather misleading in this context, and dislike such changes for a number of reasons (cf questions below). But should we take a stand on this issue? Here are a few points that I think deserve being addressed:
Arcfrk 02:50, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't mind most of these edits, but the following is an abomination:
Any bot that insists on doing this should be humanely euthanized. Michael Hardy 18:53, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
– — … ° ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → · §
{{
mbox}}
protection), as browsers are permitted to break lines at such spaces.I agree with all of KSmrq's numbered points above. Michael Hardy 22:42, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
... and then if you want to get into advance (ha ha...) stuff:
Carl Friedrich Gauss has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Here is another example how media frenzy subverts the scholarly principles on which Wikipedia is ostensibly based. This article reports on a single paper, or rather, e-print (posted to ArXiv a few days ago), with that title. While the sexy title grabbed instant attention of many, I would like to question the wisdom of creating an article devoted to what will as likely as not turn out to be another crank theory. It raises a serious issue that should be addressed, namely,
According to the unanimous opinion of the commentators at the AfD for this article (which ended with the result "Snowball keep"), it's the fact that the media reported on it! With some stretch of imagination, it can, perhaps, be argued that the Daily Telegraph's article is a secondary source, although, obviously, the journalists who wrote the piece can hardly be qualified to make an informed judgement on the merits of the theory. On the other hand, WP:WWIN#Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought states:
As reading the article plainly reveals, in a situation like this, the best Wikipedia can do is offer quotes from blogs of various physists by the way of analysis. Which again begs the question:
I can live with the existence of many obscure articles promoting strange theories, but I am greatly alarmed by the argument put forward at the AfD and on the talk page of the article, which can be summarized as follows:
If this feedback loop continues, instead of becoming "the sum of human knowledge", Wikipedia may easily degenerate into a media-fed blog dealing with current events or, as in this case, original research. Arcfrk ( talk) 05:08, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks to the help of CBM/ Jitse Niesen and KSmrq who helped by pulling out the citation templates of WP math articles/providing improving remarks on the database, there is now a database containing the references of all WP math articles (as of approx. September 07). There are 5300 references, written by some 6000 authors. You can access the database at http://zeteo.info. The references are linked to their corresponding authors, publishers, and journals respectively. An author/publisher/journal is a separate database entity, thus providing the correct structure to uniformly host additional information like wikilink of an author, issn of a journal etc.
More or less manually I fed the data into the database. It was quite a bit of work to do this. I haven't attempted to verify the information which is now in the database. An in-depth check of a small sample of templates showed, that the stuff is generally pretty well-done, though. Using worldcat.org, I manually added ISSN's for the some 120 (total: 1200) journals. Hence, even merely recopying the result of the database most often improves the presentation of a reference. For example, in Atiyah-Singer index theorem, a reference reads
The output of the corresponding entry in the zeteo database is
{{
citation}}
: Check |author1-link=
value (
help); Check |journal=
value (
help)(notice the ISSN, wikilink of the first author, the page formatting using en-dash, the wikilink of the journal, the full name of the journal. The latter is achieved via a manually added redirect similar to the ones for WP articles).
Several options are available; for example it is easy to let it put out something like
for those who prefer footnote-style referencing. For your commodity, there is a little search engine template similar to the google toolbar etc., which can be integrated in the browser's menu. So, no excuses anymore :-) for not referencing an article when you actually know a reference off your head.
Anybody can add/update database items. It is possible to import bibtex files and let the database parse them, so you can relatively comfortably add the items of your personal bibtex file (it's pretty quick, I did 6.000 of them). A brief documentation can be found here, bugs and questions etc. can be reported here.
Enjoy! Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 22:49, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Please add your opinions on article simplification here. [6] -- Foggy Morning ( talk) 02:10, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
The Erdős disambiguation page included a moderately long list of things named after Paul Erdős. I created a new page called List of things named after Paul Erdős. I moved all those items to that page, and left a link to it on the disambiguation page. If there are other things that should be listed there, please add them. Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:12, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Two weeks ago I proposed to move Lists of mathematics topics to Portal:Mathematics/Lists. The request stalled for reasons explained at the WP:RM page (5th bullet of the linked section). More elaborate explanations for the stalling exist, most of them linked from the indicated WP:RM page section.
Basicly I ask the people of the Mathematics portal (and the mathematics project) to weigh in whether they think it a good idea to accept the "list of lists" page as a sub-page of the portal, hoping this would get the situation afloat again. The actual move proposal is discussed at Talk:Lists_of_mathematics_topics#Requested_move.
One of the issues is whether the mathematics "list of lists" page should lose its "featured" status. If it is kept in main namespace, I think it should, for WP:V and WP:NOR reasons (e.g. the only external sources are mentioned in the intro, second paragraph, but explaining they are deliberately ignored for no other apparent reason than wiki organisation). If the list is moved to portal namespace that reason for de-featuring ceases to exist (although featuredness should possibly be reiterated as a portal page). -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 10:55, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
We should overturn this move. Hardly anybody commented on it. We should solicit the opinions of about 500 Wikipedians who frequently edit mathematics articles. Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:08, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I've moved it back.
There was no consensus at all for this move. The cited page on which the consensus was reached did not reach a consensus. And I didn't recognize even one name among those who commented there. HUNDREDS of daily Wikipedia editors have each edited HUNDREDS or (in my case and that of many others) THOUSANDS of mathematics articles, and they didn't participate in the discussion. We should broadly canvas to solicit opinions of those hundreds of mathematicians who edit here.
Oleg, you're experienced with bots, about which I know nothing. Is there a quick way to compile a list of frequent math editors to ask for their opinions on this? Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:17, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Maybe this is over. Someone closed the discussion as "no consensus". Then someone (the same person?---I don't remember) entered and said there was a broad consensus, on some other page! And then moved the article. On that other page the topic was not mentioned, except tangentially once or twice and no one seemed aware of the page in question. This project was notified of the discussion, but not of the other discussion on that other page. Experience makes me anticipate that in situations where illiterates solemnly declare themselves omniscient when making decisions about math articles and then tell people who've edited literally thousands of math articles and who know something, to go screw themselves, or something similarly polite, then they won't retreat politely. But let's wait and see what happens. Michael Hardy ( talk) 06:06, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
In some circumstances, one wishes unit symbols (cm, etc.) to always be upright (i.e. non-italic), even if enclosed in an italicized phrase, e.g. so as not to be confusable with italicized variables which might coincidentally use the same characters. I've created the template {{
itunit}} to do this for us trivially, without violating the XML semantic integrity of the XHTML italicized phrase that is output (which necessarily includes the unit). Instead of stopping and starting the emphasis, as in only ''3'' cm ''wide'' at the base
, you simply wrap the unit in the template: only ''3 {{itunit|cm}} wide'' at the base
(which yields "only 3 cm wide at the base", visually, without breaking the <em>...</em> XHTML span around the entire italicized phrase, as received by the browser). Enjoy! PS: Please feel free to notify other wikiprojects that may find use for this; I'm not a particant in the science & math projects, but created this to resolve a fight over at
WP:MOSNUM. —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)›
17:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Removed cfdnotice, cfd has completed. -- Kbdank71 17:38, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
This is the third nomination and with the concerns last time that the Math WikiProject wasn't notified I'm making sure you are the first to know about it this time around. __ meco 13:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
At the Deletion Review Page, where folks are discussing wether to overturn the deletion of the Erdos Number Categories, some folks are voting "endorse", with comments suggesting they mean "endorse the category". Unfortunately, "endorse" in this context means "endorse the closure of the ballot to delete", i.e. the deletion. I think most of us want to vote "overturn". There are examples of both kinds of votes, with clarifying comments, at that deletion review item and in other items near it. We certainly can't show any consensus if we vote mistakenly :-) Thanks, Pete St.John 19:18, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
In a probably forlorn attempt to stop another pointless fight, I will point out that Erdos numbers are nothing but a joke, one of the points of which is to fool people into taking them seriously. There sure seem to be a lot of people who have not yet figured this out. R.e.b. 16:59, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
While personally I would have preferred that the categories had been kept, to be honest that's mostly just because I thought it was sort of cool to be able to find mathematicians' Erdős numbers easily; I couldn't think of any strong argument that it was something that belonged in the category system, which is why I didn't contribute to the deletion discussion. While I have to allow that KSmrq has a point about the closing admin's handling of the situation, I do think he probably got to the right result.
Main point being, let's not let this turn into a math-wikiproject-against-the-world issue. It's not worth the political capital, especially when the argument one might make on the underlying substantive issue (as opposed to complaints about the closing admin) is so weak. It would be reasonable at this point to recreate a list article, I think, if one was deleted on the grounds that it was redundant with the categories, or to create a new one if one never existed. -- Trovatore 04:24, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
I've requested a Deletion Review, at this deletion review log item. It's awkward because of the related categories Erdos Number <<X>> that got destroyed, not to mention variant transliterations of "Erdos". But Wiki has a mechanism for consensus among admins, similar to consensus among editors for ordinary contributions, and I think it's fair to give that mechanism a chance to work. Pete St.John 18:23, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
The original vote to delete the category (in this recent 3rd attempt to delete it) had been 11-5 in favor of keeping it (not counting an anonymous IP who voted to delete). The Admin deleted anyway, on the grounds of prefering the arguments to delete. Currently, at the Deletion Review where I have requested overturning that deletion, the vote is close, 6 to overturn and 5 to endorse (the deletion). This isn't the overwhelming 2-1 majority that lost anyway to admin fiat, but I think the standards may be different in a Deletion Review among admins, than the standards applied by an admin reacting to editors. I think at least we are showing the admins that we have a beef. Personally, it seems to me that while we tire of rebutting the same circular objections perpetually, to no apparent effect, the deletionists do not tire. They are like vampires who crave blood but can't be killed. Pete St.John 22:35, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
What is all this talk about "among admins"? DRV isn't for admins only any more than CfD is. The only difference is that DRV is for reviewing a deletion, not simply talking about whether an article should be deleted. JPD ( talk) 12:51, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Discussion here about the best way to present Erdos numbers in articles is perfectly appropriate. But some editors are concerned that the discussion might be intended to disrupt the ongoing DRV. I don't think that is actually the case, but I hope everyone will keep it in mind, to foster collegiality. As usual, there is no massive conspiracy, just a disagreement about the best way to do something. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 16:12, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
The Deletion Review has been closed,and the deletion overturned. -- Ramsey2006 03:38, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a deletion review of Category:Erdős numbers. Since several of you participated in the previous discussion for this category, you may wish to participate in this relisting of the deletion review. The previous one was apparently closed as "relist" due to canvassing. - jc37 09:23, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
The second DRV for the third CfD of the Erdős numbers categories (whew!) has been closed. In the best tradition of Solomon, the result will satisfy neither extreme completely. Here is the closing summary:
Now, as it happens, I am not convinced that there is widespread agreement on the first point; however, it is true that editors both outside and inside the mathematics community have said something along these lines. I am puzzled that Xoloz has considered the merits of the arguments for and against deletion, rather than simply acknowledging a lack of consensus. This again seems to set aside community decisions in favor of one admin's choice. The closer's syllogism is: • Erdős numbers are widely considered trivial, • trivial data is inappropriate for categorization, therefore • Erdős numbers are inappropriate for categorization.
If Erdős numbers are meant to be fun trivia, I'm disheartened; this process has destroyed most of the fun for me. The category for Erdős number 1 will be relisted. Those who have not been thoroughly beaten down by the opposition, and who feel they can refute the Xoloz syllogism, may wish to participate. If you choose to do so, I strongly suggest concise, fact-filled arguments. In particular, do not let opponents bait flamewars; do not discuss motives; do not revisit past conflicts. -- KSmrq T 22:56, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
I think that at this point, we should consider the creation of Erdos number lists together with a Mathematician infobox template shamelessly plagerized from the Scientist infobox, that would contain a field for Erdos number, and would also have a link to the Erdos number lists for ease in navagation. I think that a separate Mathematician infobox is preferable to attempting to add the Erdos number field to the Scientist infobox because such an optional field was once part of the scientist infobox, and was deleted in a previous deletion discussion, along with the left/right handedness field with which it was compared. Seems to me like a battle not worth refighting. I think that as a practical matter we can reproduce most of the usefullness of the Erdos number categories in this way, while avoiding (hopefully!) all the controversy and wasted energy that goes into the category stuff. As for the possibility of retaining a a single category for Erdos number 1, I can't really see the need for the category if it just acts as a parallel system to the proposed list/infobox combination. One system is easier to maintain than two parallel systems. I propose that we don't even bother with relisting it ourselves, and if it gets relisted anyway, focus instead on attempting to use the relisted CfD to get a solid and undeniable consensus for allowing the list/infobox combination that we can point to later, so that we can build up the list/infobox combination without having to worry about having to fight any more silly battles over it in the future. -- Ramsey2006 00:15, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Simply as a personal note — I don't really expect anyone to be swayed by this — I hate infoboxes. They reinforce the notion that a complex thing (in this case a person) can be encapsulated by a neat box with a small number of fields, like a baseball card. Paul August ☎ 02:57, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Part of the recent controversy regarding the Erdos Number Categories seems to be philosophical disagreement about what constitutes good encocylopedia material. BHG, an admin who led the opposition, has formulated some of that philosophy at Not a Database in WikiTalk. The piece enunciates some of the things we heard in the debate, e.g. "the category must define the subject of the article". In comparing-- and contrasting-- the Wiki to a relational database, BHG presents some of their PoV in a manner that might be comprehensible to us. (That in itself is comendable.) I invite concerned parties to read it and comment. If we're going to play together in the sandbox we need to have some common language. Thanks, Pete St.John ( talk) 17:39, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
With the categories decisively gone, I have created List of people by Erdős number. Ntsimp ( talk) 18:54, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
I wanted to make some commutative diagrams (in the context of pin groups and related topics), and couldn't find any documentation; people seem to make them in many ways. I figured out how to make SVG commutative diagrams, so that it's now quite easy, and documented it at: meta:Help:Displaying a formula#Commutative_diagrams.
Hope this helps!
Nbarth ( talk) 22:33, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I just finished a major expansion of dessin d'enfant. I'd appreciate it if some people who know more than I about Riemann surfaces and algebraic number theory (not difficult!) could take a look and make sure I haven't said something stupid. Edits or general feedback on readability, content, etc., would be welcome, too, of course. PS: As a deliberate stylistic decision, I tried to follow Gowers' advice to put examples first [10] [11] — I'd also appreciate feedback on how well that worked. — David Eppstein ( talk) 04:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I just noticed that Template:Proof was deleted, with almost no discussion, and certainly without a single mathematician participating in the debate. You may recall that the function of this template was to handle the job of the controversial notion of math articles with non-notable proofs of assertions therein (typically, non-notable or even pedestrian proofs found in textbooks). For some examples, see Category:Article proofs. After lengthly discussion, it was decided that such proofs don't really belong in article space, and yet perhaps its harmless to keep them around. Thus, the template served to mark thier status as being in purgatory, and attempted to explain why a purgatory exists.
Sadly, all this seemed to be quite lost on the foks who deleted the template.
I'm somewhat frustrated that a small band of "crazies", to quote KSmrq, can so quickly and easily damage positions arrived at through long and hard consensus debate. Isn't there something that can be done to limit this kind of damage? If *this* group, after effort and debate, got rid of the template and/or the proofs, that would be fine. But to find outsiders come in, misunderstand, trample, and decamp, I find that quite frustrating. linas ( talk) 04:35, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Please see the debate in Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Proofs, or at least skim it; and don't neglect to look at the archived debate as well. The primary problems are these:
Myself, I'm undecided. I like the core concept that "theorems should have proofs". Actually providing such proofs in WP presents some serious operational challanges, such as the standard-of-quaility, referencing, and vigilance issues. We do not currently have any standards or guidelines in place by which article proofs can be judged to be good or bad, adequate or inadequate. linas ( talk) 14:32, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
User:CBM wrote:
That statement might seem like a grudging admission that, gee, maybe some proofs are good enough to be barely allowed into polite society...
However, some proofs are of far greater interest than the bare fact being proved, especially when the technique of proof is the brilliant, or in some cases at least exceptionally clever, insight involved (e.g.
Cantor's diagonal argument,
Cantor's back-and-forth method,
proof that π is irrational,
proof that 22 over 7 exceeds π,
Archimedes' use of infinitesimals), or the statement is one of those simple things in number theory that any 9th-grader can understand in an instant but the proof of the statement, on the other hand, is a major intellectual breakthrough or at least a substantial enough achievement to be widely known among mathematicians (e.g.
Fermat's last theorem,
Brun's theorem).
Michael Hardy (
talk)
17:03, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Atropos has essentially apologised on my talk page for not realising that the template had a useful function. If a reworded template would be helpful, I'd be happy to undelete the old one to provide a starting point and preserve the edit history. Geometry guy 19:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Index lists is a complex issue which I've tried to summarize. It concerns pages in mainspace like List of timelines, Lists of mathematics topics, and List of film topics. Its scope is currently a few hundred pages, and potentially a few thousand pages. Feedback would be appreciated. -- Quiddity ( talk) 19:14, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I randomly clicked on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Count today and found a rather round number. Of course we all know that divisibility by 1000 is no big deal, but it makes a good excuse to celebrate the good work by many contributors over many years to create so many mathematics articles. Geometry guy 22:42, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
What is this counting? Is it the number of contributors to articles in the "mathematics" categories? Or to this discussion page? Or the number of articles at list of mathematics articles? Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I notice that all the space on WP:MATH front page is devoted to FA- and A-class articles or similar, but nowhere is there an area (or link to an area) where articles/other pages undergoing AfD or similar deletion discussion can be listed. :-(
That said I nominated a mathematician and physician of unknown notability, James M. McCanney, for deletion. AfD is here. Might not be widely-published as he's said to be "anti-establishment". Just a heads up. Pegasus «C¦ T» 07:23, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Error-correcting codes with feedback has been nominated for deletion, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Error-correcting codes with feedback 132.205.99.122 ( talk) 23:05, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I guess folks have seen the Wikipedia:The Core Contest which is offering a $100 prize for the most improved core topic. Constant as well a quite a few of our basic articles in on the list. It could be a good time to foucs on improving one of these. -- Salix alba ( talk) 23:19, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Is anyone here familiar with the "equivalence symbol" used in the last row of this table? [12] It looks like an equals sign with a caret on top. I've never seen it anywhere else. Should it be mentioned somewhere on Wikipedia, such as in the equals sign article? -- Itub ( talk) 07:28, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Error-correcting codes with feedback.
Normally I would expect this to get listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity. But it hasn't. It bore the "Information theory" category. Apparently articles with that category don't show up on the current activity page. I've added the "Mathematics" category for now.
Oleg, are you the person who manages the software that determines which things show up on the "current activity" page? Can you do something about this? Michael Hardy 23:17, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Logical necessity of inconsistency has been listed on AfD. — Ruud 23:41, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Someone here said the integral at Srinivasa_Ramanujan#Contacting_English_mathematicians is incorrect. Could anyone look into this? Also, I would appreciate if some editors could verify the other mathematical statements in LaTeX. I don't think I messed up anywhere when I wrote those bits a few months ago, but I'd appreciate some confirmation in any case. Thanks in advance, Nishkid64 ( talk) 03:24, 2 December 2007 (UTC)