Katsushi ( talk · contribs · logs) has made some less-than-useful changes to several articles. He removed a mention of Rosser's theorem [1] from Prime-counting function and deleted a reference to Dusart's prime number bounds [2] on Prime number theorem. He had earlier removed some results on Wieferich prime (since re-added), and his recent change there also seems not to benefit the article. [3]
But I don't think these were done in bad faith, though his small number of edits made me wonder. I mainly think that we need to (1) show him how to discuss changes before removing material, and (2) keep an eye out on his changes in the meantime.
I also bring this up as a sanity check: if someone thinks I'm wrong to revert these changes, please say so!
CRGreathouse ( t | c) 00:26, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I can't see the point of retaining List of mathematics topics as a disambiguation page, but I may be overlooking something... Please comment on my redirect proposal at Talk:List of mathematics topics. -- Orlady ( talk) 16:35, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
At Wikipedia:Move navigational lists to portal namespace, it says:
Then it mentions lists of mathematics topics among the examples. I have added language to the effect that that is NOT a page that exists solely for the purpose of navigation. At Wikipedia talk:Move navigational lists to portal namespace it is also mentioned, and I've added some lengthier comments there. I understand "navigation" to mean finding your way to something when you already know what you're trying to get to. I don't think that's the main purpose of the page, let alone the only purpose.
Could others add their opinions to those discussions? Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:52, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
At the end of December, lists of mathematics topics ceased to be a featured list after this discussion. I don't recognize any of the names of the discussants. The MANY people who voted for featured list status did not participate. None of the participants gives any evidence of genuine understanding of the list.
This featured status was lost only because we who actually know something neglected to rescue it. I think we should try to get the featured status back.
Note the objection: lack of references. For some of the topics, references could come from the AMS subject categorization. For things like list of factorial and binomial topics or list of exponential topics, I think the references in the listed article suffice. It is unreasonable to ask for a reference for that particular name for a collection of articles on related topics.
So maybe we should add references when they exist and for those that don't, add some explanation to the article and mention the references in the articles linked to. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:40, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Is there a definitive definite definition of the notion of counting number? According to the article Cardinal number, to which Counting numbers redirects,
However, according to the our article Natural number, to which Counting number redirects,
According to the first article, 0 is definitely a counting number; according to the second article, it definitely is not. BTW, I think that Counting numbers and Counting number should redirect to the same article. -- Lambiam 18:51, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
In this article we have a marriage of inconvenience: Tangent lines and Tangent function coexisting in the same article, but not speaking to each other. Moreover, the geometric part, at least, is severely deficient (it's covered up by the overall length of the article). In particular, it doesn't even begin to address tangent lines to space curves and tangent planes to surfaces. Here is the problem: there are hundreds of incoming links, each of which will have to be fixed when the article is split. Can someone with a bit of time and AWB or similar experience commit to fixing these links? Then I'll go ahead and carry out the split. Arcfrk ( talk) 02:07, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I've removed the obsolete section on the trigonometric function "tangent" and would like to reiterate a request to volunteers with automated editing experience to fix the incoming links. Arcfrk ( talk) 05:54, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps we should have an article "Tangent (trigonometric function)" besides the redirect. Just informally, I'd say something like:
So I'd suggest a paragraph along those lines (no pun) explaining the differences and relationships, with links to everything for precise definitions and limitless elaborations. Pete St.John ( talk) 17:47, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone know anything about Troy Raeder? It has been suggested that the article is a hoax. Is it? Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:02, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Note that this page has been deleted. -- Cheeser1 ( talk) 21:23, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
A couple of times on Wikipedia, I have run into problems with simple calculations being branded as WP:SYN, WP:OR, and so on. When I say simple, I mean really simple. For example, if I have 3 surveys that give results as percentages, and one survey that gives its results as a ratio, I have been told that converting the 4th survey result into a percentage to compare with the other 3 constitutes OR (which I strongly disagree with). Recently I am dealing with a very simple probability and chemical concentration problem where the literature as far as I can tell has the calculation slightly incorrect (or does not include the correct caveats etc). I am told that correcting this oversight or error is possibly WP:SYN.
However, when I look at articles in physics or mathematics, I see all kinds of simple manipulations and calculations that are not repeated verbatim from some reference, but are simple restatements of the information with minor manipulations for the purposes of presentation. Where exactly is the line for OR in these situations?-- Filll ( talk) 14:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
If anyone ever tells me that converting 0.35 to 35% is "original research", I will respond that he should be ashamed of himself. Reading, writing, and 'rithmetic are taught in elementary school. What you were taught in elementary school is not your "original research". Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:17, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
A useful reference to use as ammunition in these arguments: Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines#Examples, derivations and restatements. — David Eppstein ( talk) 02:20, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Here we go, Bo Jacoby again. He has replaced the formula for polynomial multiplication
with the formal series
(he states below that only a finite number of terms is non-zero).
Other two of us are arguing on the talk page against it, that you should not invoke something as complex as formal power series to explain something as simple as polynomials. So far, we have no success. Any additional comments at Talk:Polynomial ring would be welcome. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 15:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
If I might offer a suggestion, having dealt with Mr. Jacoby before: It is pointless to let him draw you into endless discussions. No matter how logical or correct you are, he will always find some argument to keep the discussion going. I recommend that we drop the discussion here before we fill up this talk page with irrelevant arguments. Use consensus to overrule him at Polynomial ring and be done with it. He seems to thrive on baiting unsuspecting editors. VectorPosse ( talk) 01:15, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
As Silly Rabbit pointed out in the article's talk page, using "limitless" sums (with only finitely many nonzero terms) is quite standard, and, indeed, in many ways preferable. Moreover, I am stunned that mathematically educated people can argue that the sum 0 + 0 + 0 + … (or even ∑ 0 over any indexing set) can be anything but 0. Huh? Just because Bo said something, that doesn't make it untrue. However, all this tilting at windmills misses the point: that article doesn't have much content beyond defining the operations in a ring of polynomials in one variable, mumbling something about generalizations (including several variables), and giving a tangle of links. Our time would be spend much more productively if we concentrate on good quality exposition, rather than on the minor issues of the notation. I invite everyone to take a look and contribute to improving the article. Arcfrk ( talk) 04:27, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Ladies and gentlemen, I think all this talk about infinite sums is entirely beside the point (and probably due to the fact that our education exposes us to the difficult subject of convergent sums before the simpler matter of formal sums is well understood). In the polynomial setting there is (or should be) no topoplogy but the discrete one, and talking of convergence in any other sense is out of place. Using the limitless sums is not using formal power series expressions to define polynomial operations (which would be like using real arithmetic to define rational number arithmetic). Rather it is a simple question about linear combinations of infinite families. In linear algebra a linear combination cannot have infinitely many nonzero terms, that is simply not defined. However this does not exclude making linear combinations of infinite families of elements, or describing those combinations by the coefficients of each member; one just has to refrain from doing so with infinitely many nonzero coefficients. This is true in finite dimensional vector spaces like in infinite dimensional ones, but in the latter the discussion cannot be avoided if one wants to give any meaning to the notion of a basis (of which every vector should be a linear combination). And like it or not, a polynomial ring (over a field) is an infinite dimensional vector space, with a basis formed by the monomials. It is therefore quite natural to describe polynomials as limitless sums of distinct monomials each with a coefficient, as long as it can be checked that only finitely many coefficients (not terms!) are nonzero. This has nothing to do with convergence (but if you really want, you can observe that in a vector space that is given the discrete topology, the convergent sums are precisely those for which only finitely many terms are nonzero). Marc van Leeuwen ( talk) 07:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I was inspired by Qwfp's comment above to look at the ratings of our most frequently viewed articles. I tagged the top 500 articles by hitcount, and now VeblenBot will generate ratings data that you can view at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0/Frequently_viewed. Each of these articles received at least 18000 hits between Feb. 1 and Feb. 23, based on data I was given by User:Henrik from his site http://stats.grok.se; I made a list of the articles by hitcount here.
I noticed a couple interesting things:
— Carl ( CBM · talk) 23:10, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
One thing that's really conspicuous in the graphs given by this site is that fewer people view Wikipedia math articles on Sundays than on other days of the week. Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:39, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
It's not ONLY statistics; I've seen it in some geometry articles too. Michael Hardy ( talk) 13:52, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Can we use the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Frequently viewed as a source of inspiration for reviving or revitalizing the Wikipedia:Mathematics Collaboration of the Month? The urgency of improvement corresponds to some formula like F/Q, where F = frequency of viewing and Q = current quality, both on a scale from 0 to infinity.
The following all have viewing rank < 100 and quality assessment Start or Stub:
rank | frequency | quality | article |
---|---|---|---|
15 | 225847 | Start | Definition |
21 | 208253 | Start | Newton's laws of motion |
34 | 162784 | Stub | Dependent and independent variables |
46 | 133395 | Start | Median |
54 | 124845 | Start | Confidence interval |
55 | 124585 | Start | Area |
57 | 119522 | Start | Volume |
60 | 117634 | Start | Butterfly effect |
65 | 109750 | Start | Analysis of variance |
68 | 107413 | Start | Hexagon |
76 | 100266 | Start | Probability |
Definition looks like a good place to start. The current article contains almost nothing about definitions in mathematics. It is actually a bit embarrassing hodgepodge, and we might be better off with an article Definition (mathematics) with a summary in the other article. -- Lambiam 23:04, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Someone has created this page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Golden ratio. Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:17, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Game theory 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. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peter Andersen ( talk • contribs)
In this edit, someone deleted some material from an article, complaining of a lack of any reference. It seems to me that any mathematics article that contains elementary material includes derivations that are justified by the fact that the reader sees the steps in the argument, not by references. This section is easy to understand.
Are there other opinions about this here? Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:49, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I personally don't like the deleted passage, but that has nothing to do with lack of references. I think the explanation kinda sucks, apologies to the author of that passage. I can just imagine some student sitting there staring at it and wondering "what does `enter' and `clear' have to do with anything?" It's like a joke with a twenty minute setup. Loisel ( talk) 03:56, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
I will dispute the assertion that it's a matter of choice or expediency or convention. It is not a convention; it is a fact. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:14, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm really puzzled as to why a 20-minute set-up would be needed rather than a 30-second set-up. I can't imagine a simpler intuitive explanation; this seems like a model of simplicity. No complications at all. So "Quale", can you explain your objections instead of merely telling us your bottom-line conclusion? Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:19, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Certainly the "CLEAR" button is found on all calculators. The "ENTER" button is found on many. These seem like easy points that anyone would grasp instantly. Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:01, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Please can someone have a look at my comment on Talk:Fresnel integral#Cornu spiral images. Articles like this will slowly decay if they are not watched by people with mathematical knowledge. JonH ( talk) 12:58, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm beginning an expansion/reconstruction of the Emmy Noether article, with a goal of making it an FA. Alas, I know next to nothing about math (beyond how to solve 2x+10=5). Once I'm done with the biographical data, I'll be enlisting some folks to help explain her theories – but in the meantime, I wonder if there is a book or two which might help me (a numerically illiterate English teacher) understand what she worked on. =) Thanks in advance. – Scartol • Tok 15:43, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
I've found two volumes dedicated to Noether that discuss both her biography and her scientific contributions:
They also contain personal recollections of Noether by her colleagues and students and the famous obituary of Noether by van der Waerden. Arcfrk ( talk) 19:20, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Is a featured article review, please comment and help bring up to current featured article standards! Judgesurreal777 ( talk) 01:52, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
A deletion discussion of a (fringe) mathematical article. I put it in a category that I'm not sure mathbot will pick up on for its current activity lists, but project participants might find the discussion of interest. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Megalithic geometry (2nd nomination). — David Eppstein ( talk) 18:02, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Hi all, would someone please be so kind and a) check the contributions of User:Tilman Piesk regarding Logical connectives and hexadecimal numbers b) check uplodaded pictures by this user e.g. Image:Logictesseract.jpg, [14] and others. He just confirmed on de:WP that he actually invented these signs. I am not very familiar with the deletion policies within en:WP but I think this should be at least a massive breach of Wikipedia:No original research. Thanks and kind regards P.S: It might be worth for an sysop to check edits by this user on other wikipedia projects as well. -- Meisterkoch ( talk) 19:32, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I think that it would be positive to have more portals related to mathematics, we have enough good content for that. In fine, one for each topic from Template:Mathematics-footer (just one for algebra). We have already portal:logic, portal:category theory and portal:geometry. I would like to launch a collaborative effort for that. Cenarium ( talk) 17:42, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm just curious, would a centralized portal be better than several branches? I don't know if we're making it harder by dividing up things so finely. -- Cheeser1 ( talk) 22:10, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I and another editor have been involved in an editing dispute at Gauss-Newton algorithm for around a month now, with no solution in sight. I would really appreciate it to get other editors opinion about how it is best to present the material.
As it currently stands, the article does not present the algorithm in one piece. Instead, parts of it are mixed together within a derivation of the algorithm for data fitting theory, even if
My proposal is to
Some more background can also be found at Talk:Gauss-Newton algorithm, although I would appreciate a discussion here, where more people could get involved. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 02:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
The nub of this problem is that there are two quite different areas of application of the Gauss-Newton method (GN).
In the final revision of the article I present both areas of application with roughly equal importance, pointing out both the similarities and the differences between them. This compromise was an attempt to satisfy User: Oleg Alexandrov in the light of the extensive discussion on Talk:Gauss-Newton algorithm. However, Oleg is not satisfied and wants the article to treat GN as a single algorithm. I believe that this is wrong because, although the defining equations are the same, they are obtained by making different assumptions and for that reason the implementations of the algorithm are different. After repeated attempts had been made to revise the article in terms of a single algorithm, it finally became clear to me that it was an impossible task; the two applications have to be treated separately in spite of their similarities. Petergans ( talk) 09:08, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
The differences between the two fields do not appear to be great.
The first should really be dealt with by giving the method, with a note that the sign convention varies' the second can be combined into a single section on Convergence. Neither justifies a double presentation.
Inspired (provoked?) by the above, as well as mention in recent discussions that statistics articles are frequently viewed but need improvement, I wonder if there would be an interest in creating a "probability and statistics" sub-project of Wikiproject Mathematics? There's a first draft of a subproject page in my sandbox. If interested, please add your name and any comments at WP:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Probability and statistics.
A sub-project (aka task force or work group) seems more suitable than a separate Wikiproject for the reasons discussed at WP:task force, not least that WikiProject Mathematics has already has good procedural and technical infrastructure including an excellent assessment procedure.
I know there's already a WikiProject Probability but that's been virtually inactive for the last 18 months. I guess I am suggesting that it should be "frozen" and interest redirected to this sub-project. Regards, Qwfp ( talk) 10:57, 12 March 2008 (UTC).
After sleeping on Michael's and others' comments and starting to see their point, I'd like to invite further discussion on whether statistics / probability and statistics should be a sub-project/task force/work group of WP:WPM or whether it would be better to set up a separate (but related) full WikiProject. Again please comment over at WP:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Probability and statistics rather than here so the conversation is in one place. I just thought I'd notify you of its expanded scope. I seem to be largely debating with myself over there just at present and I'd appreciate some informed opinion. I'll post again here when we close the debate to let you know the outcome and to close this thread. Qwfp ( talk) 09:16, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
The consensus of the discussion (archived here) clearly favoured creation of WikiProject Statistics, which has now taken place. Further discussion is very welcome on the WikiProject Statistics talk page and new members are of course also very welcome (most of whom I imagine will wish to also remain members of WikiProject Mathematics). I expect WikiProject Statistics will coordinate with WikiProject Mathematics on many articles and activities of mutual interest. Qwfp ( talk) 22:30, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Why are so many math pages so dense? They often show mathematical proofs with the sparsest of explanation. Seems contradictory to the spirit of wikipedia... Alex Andrei —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.118.181.220 ( talk) 01:36, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Still, Alex does have a point -- there are plenty of math pages that are not easily accessible even by those who have the background to understand the material, because the articles are just poorly written and/or omit needed context. Such articles are still usually (though not always) better than nothing -- they'll be useful to some people, and those people can then go clean them up. That strikes me as very much in the Wiki spirit. -- Trovatore ( talk) 08:32, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Statistics now exists. On that page you can add your name to a list of participants. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:06, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I've just declined this for speedy deletion after a quick Google check. I'd appreciate help on fixing this article up, since my math is rudimentary. If it does deserve to be deleted, please let me know. Thanks, bibliomaniac 15 Midway upon life's journey... 04:14, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
I've marked Frobenius solution to the hypergeometric equation for cleanup. Please help. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm no expert in differential equations - does this warrant its own article, rather than just a note in the article on hypergeometric equation? It appears to be a somewhat lengthy textbook derivation. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 20:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
FYI, Myrzakulov equations (2nd nomination) to delete this article. Benji boi 22:19, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone know who Link Starbureiy is? An article about him was created and deleted with no "prod" template and no AfD discussion. What's the story? Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:59, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Y'all talk amongst yourselves ;-) Ling.Nut ( talk) 02:50, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Rationalisation (mathematics) appears to have originated just yesterday as a translation of an article on Spanish Wikipedia. I did a bit of cleanup on it, then I thought it should probably get merged into an existing article. But I'm not sure such an article exists.
Whatever is done, the article in its present form clearly needs more work. Michael Hardy ( talk) 15:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, it seems to be a moderately big deal in secondary-school mathematics in the USA too. But I don't see that we have any article about it except this one, and I find that a bit surprising. Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:59, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Definitely we need an article on rationalizing denominators and rationalizing numerators, and it won't be just a dictionary defintion. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:28, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
It has been proposed to move Proof that 22/7 exceeds π to Wikibooks. Discuss at Talk:Proof that 22/7 exceeds π#Move/Copy to Wikibooks. -- Lambiam 02:22, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
A heads up that the article Wiener sausage has been put up for AfD. Regards. -- Malcolmxl5 ( talk) 00:02, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Here are some things I've found on this:
...and a large number of others found by Google Scholar. Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:44, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm thinking that at this point a close per WP:SNOW might be in order - does anyone think I should go ahead and do it as a nonadmin? (I know, generally if one !votes, one does not close, but in this case it seems irrelevant, no?) -- Cheeser1 ( talk) 04:12, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
This list of references was chosen specifically for use in the AfD discussion. From Google Scholar I picked out cases with the term "Wiener sausage" in the title. How best to pick references to put in the article may be a different sort of question. Michael Hardy ( talk) 13:19, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Also consider the following references:
but also:
83.112.141.114 ( talk) 16:54, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
I could use some more eyeballs on this page.
In my view, to help people get to the article they want most quickly, it is helpful to include structure in the page to group together meanings primarily related to Entropy in a thermodynamic sense, and those primarily related to Entropy in an Information Theory sense. However, because there is no provision for this is the WP:DAB guidelines, various editors specialising in disambiguation (who may know rather more about disambiguation than they do about entropy), would prefer to see all the links muddled together in a single (IMO much harder to navigate) long alphabetical list. Cf this diff: [20].
Since dab pages are supposed to help readers who do know something about the subject find the article they want, I'd greatly appreciate if members of this project could look at the two versions above, and then leave their thoughts on the talk page.
Thanks, Jheald ( talk) 23:23, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
There is certainly a problem with having an article "Entropy" that develops the notion of thermodynamical entropy without giving even a hint of important alternative uses (there is a half-hearted attempt to mention them in the last third of the text, which is too late for all practical purposes and just turns the article into a sort of a bloated disambiguation page). Specifically concerning the revert war going on: whatever the rules say, it's unacceptable to substitute wrong definitions for the correct ones. There are quite a few disambiguation pages with the meanings structured according to the disciplines that they belong to. I also see nothing at the dab manual of style preventing this format, which is obviously superior to alphabetical lists where, for example, anasthesiological entropy comes ahead of the primary uses in information theory and ergodic theory. I have made my attempt at clearing the mess, but don't hold your breath. Arcfrk ( talk) 03:00, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I have accidentally discovered the templates {{ Zbl}} and {{ JFM} , which automatically link to Zentralblatt and JFM databases much in the same way as {{ MathSciNet}} links to MathSciNet (Math Reviews online) and {{ Springer}} links to the Springer EOM. These templates make entering bibliographical links a lot easier and should be better known. Shouldn't they be described at the Math Editor's resources page? There is apparently also a template {{ Scholarpedia}}, but it is presently very basic, without a field for the full bibliographical record or even the author's (as opposed to curator's) name. Arcfrk ( talk) 03:25, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Fermat's Last Theorem in fiction has been nominated for deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fermat's Last Theorem in fiction. -- Lambiam 00:27, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
I am currently engaging in a debate with a User:RQG who seems to feel that the lead paragraph of Talk:Connection (mathematics) should be rewritten to include references to Teleparallelism. He has started an RfC on it, but so far the wider community has not yet gotten involved. It is becoming quite tiresome. silly rabbit ( talk) 22:17, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
User:Niemeyerstein en is working on a new article called Locating engine. He's a relatively new editor, and the technical applications are relatively new, but this article is mainly on the math and statistics involved, which is not new. If anyone here is interested in contributing or helping locate sources, that would be great. The technology involves, quoting:
- Dan Dank55 ( talk) 03:56, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
These three articles have a considerable overlap. Is there any general consensus about what should be included in the articles?
For example, is it OK to trim the definition section and any other content of group theory which is already present in the group article? Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 19:30, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
The wikipedia convention has been that articles with the word "elementary" in the title are directed at secondary-school or high-school readers. Unfortunately, this does not describe the elementary group theory article. If/when a merge is performed, I would really really like to call on someone to present groups at the secondary/high-school level, at least abelian groups if nothing else. Heck, you could teach abelian groups of order 3,4,5 in primary school, and I view it as a major loss that this is not done so. It would be a natural fit during discussions of fractions and prime numbers. linas ( talk) 03:00, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I just started a stub on this mathematical equation site, and someone added a speedy deleteion tag to it. Comments to its talk page. R.e.b. ( talk) 01:29, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Monty Hall problem 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. - Chardish ( talk) 06:13, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to propose this article as a good article. Before formally doing so, I would like to ask for some help concerning grammar and prose etc. (I'm not a native speaker, so my linguistic abilities are modest). Obviously, any other improvements are also welcome. (This article is the current collaboration of the month, but the collaboration currently involves only two editors - somehow this collaboration needs a renaissance). Thank you, Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 22:25, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
We have a page Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs, which states:
In the course of several years valuable ideas and insights have been presented there, but no conclusions have been extracted from the discussions. I suggest that we use that page to try to work on some tentative guidelines concerning:
It should be clear that it is undesirable to include proofs for every single mathematical proposition stated in some article. In general there should be something special about it, such as that the proof itself (rather than just the theorem) is notable (as for the proof by infinite descent that the square root of 2 is irrational), or gives additional value that is not evident from the bare statement of the theorem (as may be the case for constructive proofs). In some cases ( 0.999... = 1, Monty Hall) the argument for giving proofs may be that many people find the well-known result hard to believe. Particular elegance may also be a factor, as for the proof that 22/7 exceeds π.
If a proof is given, it should either be included in a section of the article that discusses the theorem being proved, or get an article of its own, with a title like "Proof of the abc conjecture", or "Proof that γ is irrational". There are no subpages in article space: "7 exceeds π" is not a subpage of "Proof that 22".
There is no talk page Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs. What we could do is move Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs to its own talk page, and use the then free main page for working on a text giving guidance on when and how to include proofs. Does this idea appeal to a sufficient number of people that we may hope to actually get somewhere? -- Lambiam 16:37, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Energy minimization is a new article in which the "displayed" math does not conform to Wikipedia conventions in some respects. But it's all non-editable images. We can't have that; we need to change to TeX. One thing I'd change is where it says
Clearly it should say either
or
Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:49, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
BACK TO THE MAIN POINT: It's all non-editable images. It needs to get replaced. (I did replace ONE of them.) Michael Hardy ( talk) 05:10, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
It appears they've all been replaced, unless I'm mistaken. -- Cheeser1 ( talk) 06:52, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
(I realize some may not like the implied "for all".) Jmath666 ( talk) 03:51, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Derivation of the Routh array disregards most standard Wikipedia conventions and lacks any initial context-setting. It seems as if whoever wrote it expected it to be seen ONLY by those who follow links from one or more other articles that set the context.
It could use some attention. Michael Hardy ( talk) 15:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Zaxxonal and silly rabbit: It isn't a question of whether the topic is notable enough - we already have an article on the topic. The question is whether including this derivation runs afoul of our mission of being an encyclopedia rather than a textbook. There is no clear agreement at the moment about "proof subpages" or "derivation subpages"; in any case, the existence of some such subpages can't be used as an argument for including more of them. My personal opinion is that lengthy derivations are not in line with our mission, but may be in line with the mission of our sister project Wikibooks. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 19:12, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I concur with Carl. As the author has admitted, this is his first piece of writing on wikipedia. I feel that we should provide some guidance to him about what wikipedia is and what it is not. It may be tempting to view wikipedia as a universal depository of all knowledge, whether it be done for altruistic or selfish reasons, but there are inherent dangers in such inclusiveness. Hence, we have policies such as "Wikipedia is not a textbook" which restrict the scope of the project. The piece under discussion (I will not go so far as to call it an article) is a textbook case of violating this policy. There are many wikis out there that collect technical information of various sorts, which usually have a narrow topical focus and may aim at supplanting or even replacing the monographs on their subject, e.g. Dispersive PDE wiki. But wikipedia's primary aim is to be an encyclopaedia. In this sense, I think that distiction between derivations and proofs is an important one, and we should be careful not to open the floodgates to all sorts of technical writing and data storage (the criterion here is not whether it is boring, but whether it is encyclopaedic). Arcfrk ( talk) 02:17, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Michael - The changes your have indicated as needed have been made. Your feedback has been constructive and exceptional. Thank you. -- Zaxxonal ( talk) 16:28, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
The discussion is essentially a debate on the content of this article, so it has been moved to talk:function (mathematics)#Definitions. Cenarium Talk 17:55, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Can someone with good knowledge of formatting conventions take a look at " History of Calculus"? A certain editor went through it recently linking every instance of Newton's and Leibniz's name being mentioned. What are the rules here? Arcfrk ( talk) 04:27, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Katsushi ( talk · contribs · logs) has made some less-than-useful changes to several articles. He removed a mention of Rosser's theorem [1] from Prime-counting function and deleted a reference to Dusart's prime number bounds [2] on Prime number theorem. He had earlier removed some results on Wieferich prime (since re-added), and his recent change there also seems not to benefit the article. [3]
But I don't think these were done in bad faith, though his small number of edits made me wonder. I mainly think that we need to (1) show him how to discuss changes before removing material, and (2) keep an eye out on his changes in the meantime.
I also bring this up as a sanity check: if someone thinks I'm wrong to revert these changes, please say so!
CRGreathouse ( t | c) 00:26, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I can't see the point of retaining List of mathematics topics as a disambiguation page, but I may be overlooking something... Please comment on my redirect proposal at Talk:List of mathematics topics. -- Orlady ( talk) 16:35, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
At Wikipedia:Move navigational lists to portal namespace, it says:
Then it mentions lists of mathematics topics among the examples. I have added language to the effect that that is NOT a page that exists solely for the purpose of navigation. At Wikipedia talk:Move navigational lists to portal namespace it is also mentioned, and I've added some lengthier comments there. I understand "navigation" to mean finding your way to something when you already know what you're trying to get to. I don't think that's the main purpose of the page, let alone the only purpose.
Could others add their opinions to those discussions? Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:52, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
At the end of December, lists of mathematics topics ceased to be a featured list after this discussion. I don't recognize any of the names of the discussants. The MANY people who voted for featured list status did not participate. None of the participants gives any evidence of genuine understanding of the list.
This featured status was lost only because we who actually know something neglected to rescue it. I think we should try to get the featured status back.
Note the objection: lack of references. For some of the topics, references could come from the AMS subject categorization. For things like list of factorial and binomial topics or list of exponential topics, I think the references in the listed article suffice. It is unreasonable to ask for a reference for that particular name for a collection of articles on related topics.
So maybe we should add references when they exist and for those that don't, add some explanation to the article and mention the references in the articles linked to. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:40, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Is there a definitive definite definition of the notion of counting number? According to the article Cardinal number, to which Counting numbers redirects,
However, according to the our article Natural number, to which Counting number redirects,
According to the first article, 0 is definitely a counting number; according to the second article, it definitely is not. BTW, I think that Counting numbers and Counting number should redirect to the same article. -- Lambiam 18:51, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
In this article we have a marriage of inconvenience: Tangent lines and Tangent function coexisting in the same article, but not speaking to each other. Moreover, the geometric part, at least, is severely deficient (it's covered up by the overall length of the article). In particular, it doesn't even begin to address tangent lines to space curves and tangent planes to surfaces. Here is the problem: there are hundreds of incoming links, each of which will have to be fixed when the article is split. Can someone with a bit of time and AWB or similar experience commit to fixing these links? Then I'll go ahead and carry out the split. Arcfrk ( talk) 02:07, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I've removed the obsolete section on the trigonometric function "tangent" and would like to reiterate a request to volunteers with automated editing experience to fix the incoming links. Arcfrk ( talk) 05:54, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps we should have an article "Tangent (trigonometric function)" besides the redirect. Just informally, I'd say something like:
So I'd suggest a paragraph along those lines (no pun) explaining the differences and relationships, with links to everything for precise definitions and limitless elaborations. Pete St.John ( talk) 17:47, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone know anything about Troy Raeder? It has been suggested that the article is a hoax. Is it? Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:02, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Note that this page has been deleted. -- Cheeser1 ( talk) 21:23, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
A couple of times on Wikipedia, I have run into problems with simple calculations being branded as WP:SYN, WP:OR, and so on. When I say simple, I mean really simple. For example, if I have 3 surveys that give results as percentages, and one survey that gives its results as a ratio, I have been told that converting the 4th survey result into a percentage to compare with the other 3 constitutes OR (which I strongly disagree with). Recently I am dealing with a very simple probability and chemical concentration problem where the literature as far as I can tell has the calculation slightly incorrect (or does not include the correct caveats etc). I am told that correcting this oversight or error is possibly WP:SYN.
However, when I look at articles in physics or mathematics, I see all kinds of simple manipulations and calculations that are not repeated verbatim from some reference, but are simple restatements of the information with minor manipulations for the purposes of presentation. Where exactly is the line for OR in these situations?-- Filll ( talk) 14:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
If anyone ever tells me that converting 0.35 to 35% is "original research", I will respond that he should be ashamed of himself. Reading, writing, and 'rithmetic are taught in elementary school. What you were taught in elementary school is not your "original research". Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:17, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
A useful reference to use as ammunition in these arguments: Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines#Examples, derivations and restatements. — David Eppstein ( talk) 02:20, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Here we go, Bo Jacoby again. He has replaced the formula for polynomial multiplication
with the formal series
(he states below that only a finite number of terms is non-zero).
Other two of us are arguing on the talk page against it, that you should not invoke something as complex as formal power series to explain something as simple as polynomials. So far, we have no success. Any additional comments at Talk:Polynomial ring would be welcome. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 15:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
If I might offer a suggestion, having dealt with Mr. Jacoby before: It is pointless to let him draw you into endless discussions. No matter how logical or correct you are, he will always find some argument to keep the discussion going. I recommend that we drop the discussion here before we fill up this talk page with irrelevant arguments. Use consensus to overrule him at Polynomial ring and be done with it. He seems to thrive on baiting unsuspecting editors. VectorPosse ( talk) 01:15, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
As Silly Rabbit pointed out in the article's talk page, using "limitless" sums (with only finitely many nonzero terms) is quite standard, and, indeed, in many ways preferable. Moreover, I am stunned that mathematically educated people can argue that the sum 0 + 0 + 0 + … (or even ∑ 0 over any indexing set) can be anything but 0. Huh? Just because Bo said something, that doesn't make it untrue. However, all this tilting at windmills misses the point: that article doesn't have much content beyond defining the operations in a ring of polynomials in one variable, mumbling something about generalizations (including several variables), and giving a tangle of links. Our time would be spend much more productively if we concentrate on good quality exposition, rather than on the minor issues of the notation. I invite everyone to take a look and contribute to improving the article. Arcfrk ( talk) 04:27, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Ladies and gentlemen, I think all this talk about infinite sums is entirely beside the point (and probably due to the fact that our education exposes us to the difficult subject of convergent sums before the simpler matter of formal sums is well understood). In the polynomial setting there is (or should be) no topoplogy but the discrete one, and talking of convergence in any other sense is out of place. Using the limitless sums is not using formal power series expressions to define polynomial operations (which would be like using real arithmetic to define rational number arithmetic). Rather it is a simple question about linear combinations of infinite families. In linear algebra a linear combination cannot have infinitely many nonzero terms, that is simply not defined. However this does not exclude making linear combinations of infinite families of elements, or describing those combinations by the coefficients of each member; one just has to refrain from doing so with infinitely many nonzero coefficients. This is true in finite dimensional vector spaces like in infinite dimensional ones, but in the latter the discussion cannot be avoided if one wants to give any meaning to the notion of a basis (of which every vector should be a linear combination). And like it or not, a polynomial ring (over a field) is an infinite dimensional vector space, with a basis formed by the monomials. It is therefore quite natural to describe polynomials as limitless sums of distinct monomials each with a coefficient, as long as it can be checked that only finitely many coefficients (not terms!) are nonzero. This has nothing to do with convergence (but if you really want, you can observe that in a vector space that is given the discrete topology, the convergent sums are precisely those for which only finitely many terms are nonzero). Marc van Leeuwen ( talk) 07:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I was inspired by Qwfp's comment above to look at the ratings of our most frequently viewed articles. I tagged the top 500 articles by hitcount, and now VeblenBot will generate ratings data that you can view at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0/Frequently_viewed. Each of these articles received at least 18000 hits between Feb. 1 and Feb. 23, based on data I was given by User:Henrik from his site http://stats.grok.se; I made a list of the articles by hitcount here.
I noticed a couple interesting things:
— Carl ( CBM · talk) 23:10, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
One thing that's really conspicuous in the graphs given by this site is that fewer people view Wikipedia math articles on Sundays than on other days of the week. Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:39, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
It's not ONLY statistics; I've seen it in some geometry articles too. Michael Hardy ( talk) 13:52, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Can we use the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Frequently viewed as a source of inspiration for reviving or revitalizing the Wikipedia:Mathematics Collaboration of the Month? The urgency of improvement corresponds to some formula like F/Q, where F = frequency of viewing and Q = current quality, both on a scale from 0 to infinity.
The following all have viewing rank < 100 and quality assessment Start or Stub:
rank | frequency | quality | article |
---|---|---|---|
15 | 225847 | Start | Definition |
21 | 208253 | Start | Newton's laws of motion |
34 | 162784 | Stub | Dependent and independent variables |
46 | 133395 | Start | Median |
54 | 124845 | Start | Confidence interval |
55 | 124585 | Start | Area |
57 | 119522 | Start | Volume |
60 | 117634 | Start | Butterfly effect |
65 | 109750 | Start | Analysis of variance |
68 | 107413 | Start | Hexagon |
76 | 100266 | Start | Probability |
Definition looks like a good place to start. The current article contains almost nothing about definitions in mathematics. It is actually a bit embarrassing hodgepodge, and we might be better off with an article Definition (mathematics) with a summary in the other article. -- Lambiam 23:04, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Someone has created this page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Golden ratio. Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:17, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Game theory 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. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peter Andersen ( talk • contribs)
In this edit, someone deleted some material from an article, complaining of a lack of any reference. It seems to me that any mathematics article that contains elementary material includes derivations that are justified by the fact that the reader sees the steps in the argument, not by references. This section is easy to understand.
Are there other opinions about this here? Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:49, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I personally don't like the deleted passage, but that has nothing to do with lack of references. I think the explanation kinda sucks, apologies to the author of that passage. I can just imagine some student sitting there staring at it and wondering "what does `enter' and `clear' have to do with anything?" It's like a joke with a twenty minute setup. Loisel ( talk) 03:56, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
I will dispute the assertion that it's a matter of choice or expediency or convention. It is not a convention; it is a fact. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:14, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm really puzzled as to why a 20-minute set-up would be needed rather than a 30-second set-up. I can't imagine a simpler intuitive explanation; this seems like a model of simplicity. No complications at all. So "Quale", can you explain your objections instead of merely telling us your bottom-line conclusion? Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:19, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Certainly the "CLEAR" button is found on all calculators. The "ENTER" button is found on many. These seem like easy points that anyone would grasp instantly. Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:01, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Please can someone have a look at my comment on Talk:Fresnel integral#Cornu spiral images. Articles like this will slowly decay if they are not watched by people with mathematical knowledge. JonH ( talk) 12:58, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm beginning an expansion/reconstruction of the Emmy Noether article, with a goal of making it an FA. Alas, I know next to nothing about math (beyond how to solve 2x+10=5). Once I'm done with the biographical data, I'll be enlisting some folks to help explain her theories – but in the meantime, I wonder if there is a book or two which might help me (a numerically illiterate English teacher) understand what she worked on. =) Thanks in advance. – Scartol • Tok 15:43, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
I've found two volumes dedicated to Noether that discuss both her biography and her scientific contributions:
They also contain personal recollections of Noether by her colleagues and students and the famous obituary of Noether by van der Waerden. Arcfrk ( talk) 19:20, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Is a featured article review, please comment and help bring up to current featured article standards! Judgesurreal777 ( talk) 01:52, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
A deletion discussion of a (fringe) mathematical article. I put it in a category that I'm not sure mathbot will pick up on for its current activity lists, but project participants might find the discussion of interest. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Megalithic geometry (2nd nomination). — David Eppstein ( talk) 18:02, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Hi all, would someone please be so kind and a) check the contributions of User:Tilman Piesk regarding Logical connectives and hexadecimal numbers b) check uplodaded pictures by this user e.g. Image:Logictesseract.jpg, [14] and others. He just confirmed on de:WP that he actually invented these signs. I am not very familiar with the deletion policies within en:WP but I think this should be at least a massive breach of Wikipedia:No original research. Thanks and kind regards P.S: It might be worth for an sysop to check edits by this user on other wikipedia projects as well. -- Meisterkoch ( talk) 19:32, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I think that it would be positive to have more portals related to mathematics, we have enough good content for that. In fine, one for each topic from Template:Mathematics-footer (just one for algebra). We have already portal:logic, portal:category theory and portal:geometry. I would like to launch a collaborative effort for that. Cenarium ( talk) 17:42, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm just curious, would a centralized portal be better than several branches? I don't know if we're making it harder by dividing up things so finely. -- Cheeser1 ( talk) 22:10, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I and another editor have been involved in an editing dispute at Gauss-Newton algorithm for around a month now, with no solution in sight. I would really appreciate it to get other editors opinion about how it is best to present the material.
As it currently stands, the article does not present the algorithm in one piece. Instead, parts of it are mixed together within a derivation of the algorithm for data fitting theory, even if
My proposal is to
Some more background can also be found at Talk:Gauss-Newton algorithm, although I would appreciate a discussion here, where more people could get involved. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 02:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
The nub of this problem is that there are two quite different areas of application of the Gauss-Newton method (GN).
In the final revision of the article I present both areas of application with roughly equal importance, pointing out both the similarities and the differences between them. This compromise was an attempt to satisfy User: Oleg Alexandrov in the light of the extensive discussion on Talk:Gauss-Newton algorithm. However, Oleg is not satisfied and wants the article to treat GN as a single algorithm. I believe that this is wrong because, although the defining equations are the same, they are obtained by making different assumptions and for that reason the implementations of the algorithm are different. After repeated attempts had been made to revise the article in terms of a single algorithm, it finally became clear to me that it was an impossible task; the two applications have to be treated separately in spite of their similarities. Petergans ( talk) 09:08, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
The differences between the two fields do not appear to be great.
The first should really be dealt with by giving the method, with a note that the sign convention varies' the second can be combined into a single section on Convergence. Neither justifies a double presentation.
Inspired (provoked?) by the above, as well as mention in recent discussions that statistics articles are frequently viewed but need improvement, I wonder if there would be an interest in creating a "probability and statistics" sub-project of Wikiproject Mathematics? There's a first draft of a subproject page in my sandbox. If interested, please add your name and any comments at WP:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Probability and statistics.
A sub-project (aka task force or work group) seems more suitable than a separate Wikiproject for the reasons discussed at WP:task force, not least that WikiProject Mathematics has already has good procedural and technical infrastructure including an excellent assessment procedure.
I know there's already a WikiProject Probability but that's been virtually inactive for the last 18 months. I guess I am suggesting that it should be "frozen" and interest redirected to this sub-project. Regards, Qwfp ( talk) 10:57, 12 March 2008 (UTC).
After sleeping on Michael's and others' comments and starting to see their point, I'd like to invite further discussion on whether statistics / probability and statistics should be a sub-project/task force/work group of WP:WPM or whether it would be better to set up a separate (but related) full WikiProject. Again please comment over at WP:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Probability and statistics rather than here so the conversation is in one place. I just thought I'd notify you of its expanded scope. I seem to be largely debating with myself over there just at present and I'd appreciate some informed opinion. I'll post again here when we close the debate to let you know the outcome and to close this thread. Qwfp ( talk) 09:16, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
The consensus of the discussion (archived here) clearly favoured creation of WikiProject Statistics, which has now taken place. Further discussion is very welcome on the WikiProject Statistics talk page and new members are of course also very welcome (most of whom I imagine will wish to also remain members of WikiProject Mathematics). I expect WikiProject Statistics will coordinate with WikiProject Mathematics on many articles and activities of mutual interest. Qwfp ( talk) 22:30, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Why are so many math pages so dense? They often show mathematical proofs with the sparsest of explanation. Seems contradictory to the spirit of wikipedia... Alex Andrei —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.118.181.220 ( talk) 01:36, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Still, Alex does have a point -- there are plenty of math pages that are not easily accessible even by those who have the background to understand the material, because the articles are just poorly written and/or omit needed context. Such articles are still usually (though not always) better than nothing -- they'll be useful to some people, and those people can then go clean them up. That strikes me as very much in the Wiki spirit. -- Trovatore ( talk) 08:32, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Statistics now exists. On that page you can add your name to a list of participants. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:06, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I've just declined this for speedy deletion after a quick Google check. I'd appreciate help on fixing this article up, since my math is rudimentary. If it does deserve to be deleted, please let me know. Thanks, bibliomaniac 15 Midway upon life's journey... 04:14, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
I've marked Frobenius solution to the hypergeometric equation for cleanup. Please help. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm no expert in differential equations - does this warrant its own article, rather than just a note in the article on hypergeometric equation? It appears to be a somewhat lengthy textbook derivation. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 20:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
FYI, Myrzakulov equations (2nd nomination) to delete this article. Benji boi 22:19, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone know who Link Starbureiy is? An article about him was created and deleted with no "prod" template and no AfD discussion. What's the story? Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:59, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Y'all talk amongst yourselves ;-) Ling.Nut ( talk) 02:50, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Rationalisation (mathematics) appears to have originated just yesterday as a translation of an article on Spanish Wikipedia. I did a bit of cleanup on it, then I thought it should probably get merged into an existing article. But I'm not sure such an article exists.
Whatever is done, the article in its present form clearly needs more work. Michael Hardy ( talk) 15:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, it seems to be a moderately big deal in secondary-school mathematics in the USA too. But I don't see that we have any article about it except this one, and I find that a bit surprising. Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:59, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Definitely we need an article on rationalizing denominators and rationalizing numerators, and it won't be just a dictionary defintion. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:28, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
It has been proposed to move Proof that 22/7 exceeds π to Wikibooks. Discuss at Talk:Proof that 22/7 exceeds π#Move/Copy to Wikibooks. -- Lambiam 02:22, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
A heads up that the article Wiener sausage has been put up for AfD. Regards. -- Malcolmxl5 ( talk) 00:02, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Here are some things I've found on this:
...and a large number of others found by Google Scholar. Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:44, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm thinking that at this point a close per WP:SNOW might be in order - does anyone think I should go ahead and do it as a nonadmin? (I know, generally if one !votes, one does not close, but in this case it seems irrelevant, no?) -- Cheeser1 ( talk) 04:12, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
This list of references was chosen specifically for use in the AfD discussion. From Google Scholar I picked out cases with the term "Wiener sausage" in the title. How best to pick references to put in the article may be a different sort of question. Michael Hardy ( talk) 13:19, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Also consider the following references:
but also:
83.112.141.114 ( talk) 16:54, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
I could use some more eyeballs on this page.
In my view, to help people get to the article they want most quickly, it is helpful to include structure in the page to group together meanings primarily related to Entropy in a thermodynamic sense, and those primarily related to Entropy in an Information Theory sense. However, because there is no provision for this is the WP:DAB guidelines, various editors specialising in disambiguation (who may know rather more about disambiguation than they do about entropy), would prefer to see all the links muddled together in a single (IMO much harder to navigate) long alphabetical list. Cf this diff: [20].
Since dab pages are supposed to help readers who do know something about the subject find the article they want, I'd greatly appreciate if members of this project could look at the two versions above, and then leave their thoughts on the talk page.
Thanks, Jheald ( talk) 23:23, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
There is certainly a problem with having an article "Entropy" that develops the notion of thermodynamical entropy without giving even a hint of important alternative uses (there is a half-hearted attempt to mention them in the last third of the text, which is too late for all practical purposes and just turns the article into a sort of a bloated disambiguation page). Specifically concerning the revert war going on: whatever the rules say, it's unacceptable to substitute wrong definitions for the correct ones. There are quite a few disambiguation pages with the meanings structured according to the disciplines that they belong to. I also see nothing at the dab manual of style preventing this format, which is obviously superior to alphabetical lists where, for example, anasthesiological entropy comes ahead of the primary uses in information theory and ergodic theory. I have made my attempt at clearing the mess, but don't hold your breath. Arcfrk ( talk) 03:00, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I have accidentally discovered the templates {{ Zbl}} and {{ JFM} , which automatically link to Zentralblatt and JFM databases much in the same way as {{ MathSciNet}} links to MathSciNet (Math Reviews online) and {{ Springer}} links to the Springer EOM. These templates make entering bibliographical links a lot easier and should be better known. Shouldn't they be described at the Math Editor's resources page? There is apparently also a template {{ Scholarpedia}}, but it is presently very basic, without a field for the full bibliographical record or even the author's (as opposed to curator's) name. Arcfrk ( talk) 03:25, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Fermat's Last Theorem in fiction has been nominated for deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fermat's Last Theorem in fiction. -- Lambiam 00:27, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
I am currently engaging in a debate with a User:RQG who seems to feel that the lead paragraph of Talk:Connection (mathematics) should be rewritten to include references to Teleparallelism. He has started an RfC on it, but so far the wider community has not yet gotten involved. It is becoming quite tiresome. silly rabbit ( talk) 22:17, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
User:Niemeyerstein en is working on a new article called Locating engine. He's a relatively new editor, and the technical applications are relatively new, but this article is mainly on the math and statistics involved, which is not new. If anyone here is interested in contributing or helping locate sources, that would be great. The technology involves, quoting:
- Dan Dank55 ( talk) 03:56, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
These three articles have a considerable overlap. Is there any general consensus about what should be included in the articles?
For example, is it OK to trim the definition section and any other content of group theory which is already present in the group article? Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 19:30, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
The wikipedia convention has been that articles with the word "elementary" in the title are directed at secondary-school or high-school readers. Unfortunately, this does not describe the elementary group theory article. If/when a merge is performed, I would really really like to call on someone to present groups at the secondary/high-school level, at least abelian groups if nothing else. Heck, you could teach abelian groups of order 3,4,5 in primary school, and I view it as a major loss that this is not done so. It would be a natural fit during discussions of fractions and prime numbers. linas ( talk) 03:00, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I just started a stub on this mathematical equation site, and someone added a speedy deleteion tag to it. Comments to its talk page. R.e.b. ( talk) 01:29, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Monty Hall problem 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. - Chardish ( talk) 06:13, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to propose this article as a good article. Before formally doing so, I would like to ask for some help concerning grammar and prose etc. (I'm not a native speaker, so my linguistic abilities are modest). Obviously, any other improvements are also welcome. (This article is the current collaboration of the month, but the collaboration currently involves only two editors - somehow this collaboration needs a renaissance). Thank you, Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 22:25, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
We have a page Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs, which states:
In the course of several years valuable ideas and insights have been presented there, but no conclusions have been extracted from the discussions. I suggest that we use that page to try to work on some tentative guidelines concerning:
It should be clear that it is undesirable to include proofs for every single mathematical proposition stated in some article. In general there should be something special about it, such as that the proof itself (rather than just the theorem) is notable (as for the proof by infinite descent that the square root of 2 is irrational), or gives additional value that is not evident from the bare statement of the theorem (as may be the case for constructive proofs). In some cases ( 0.999... = 1, Monty Hall) the argument for giving proofs may be that many people find the well-known result hard to believe. Particular elegance may also be a factor, as for the proof that 22/7 exceeds π.
If a proof is given, it should either be included in a section of the article that discusses the theorem being proved, or get an article of its own, with a title like "Proof of the abc conjecture", or "Proof that γ is irrational". There are no subpages in article space: "7 exceeds π" is not a subpage of "Proof that 22".
There is no talk page Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs. What we could do is move Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs to its own talk page, and use the then free main page for working on a text giving guidance on when and how to include proofs. Does this idea appeal to a sufficient number of people that we may hope to actually get somewhere? -- Lambiam 16:37, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Energy minimization is a new article in which the "displayed" math does not conform to Wikipedia conventions in some respects. But it's all non-editable images. We can't have that; we need to change to TeX. One thing I'd change is where it says
Clearly it should say either
or
Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:49, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
BACK TO THE MAIN POINT: It's all non-editable images. It needs to get replaced. (I did replace ONE of them.) Michael Hardy ( talk) 05:10, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
It appears they've all been replaced, unless I'm mistaken. -- Cheeser1 ( talk) 06:52, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
(I realize some may not like the implied "for all".) Jmath666 ( talk) 03:51, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Derivation of the Routh array disregards most standard Wikipedia conventions and lacks any initial context-setting. It seems as if whoever wrote it expected it to be seen ONLY by those who follow links from one or more other articles that set the context.
It could use some attention. Michael Hardy ( talk) 15:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Zaxxonal and silly rabbit: It isn't a question of whether the topic is notable enough - we already have an article on the topic. The question is whether including this derivation runs afoul of our mission of being an encyclopedia rather than a textbook. There is no clear agreement at the moment about "proof subpages" or "derivation subpages"; in any case, the existence of some such subpages can't be used as an argument for including more of them. My personal opinion is that lengthy derivations are not in line with our mission, but may be in line with the mission of our sister project Wikibooks. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 19:12, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I concur with Carl. As the author has admitted, this is his first piece of writing on wikipedia. I feel that we should provide some guidance to him about what wikipedia is and what it is not. It may be tempting to view wikipedia as a universal depository of all knowledge, whether it be done for altruistic or selfish reasons, but there are inherent dangers in such inclusiveness. Hence, we have policies such as "Wikipedia is not a textbook" which restrict the scope of the project. The piece under discussion (I will not go so far as to call it an article) is a textbook case of violating this policy. There are many wikis out there that collect technical information of various sorts, which usually have a narrow topical focus and may aim at supplanting or even replacing the monographs on their subject, e.g. Dispersive PDE wiki. But wikipedia's primary aim is to be an encyclopaedia. In this sense, I think that distiction between derivations and proofs is an important one, and we should be careful not to open the floodgates to all sorts of technical writing and data storage (the criterion here is not whether it is boring, but whether it is encyclopaedic). Arcfrk ( talk) 02:17, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Michael - The changes your have indicated as needed have been made. Your feedback has been constructive and exceptional. Thank you. -- Zaxxonal ( talk) 16:28, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
The discussion is essentially a debate on the content of this article, so it has been moved to talk:function (mathematics)#Definitions. Cenarium Talk 17:55, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Can someone with good knowledge of formatting conventions take a look at " History of Calculus"? A certain editor went through it recently linking every instance of Newton's and Leibniz's name being mentioned. What are the rules here? Arcfrk ( talk) 04:27, 31 March 2008 (UTC)