See Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Tangent_between_two_circles. VG ☎ 13:37, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
The 2008/9 Schools Wikipedia is now available for browsing and feedback is welcome. Downloads start in two weeks so final improvements are possible; this is a big project with millions of users so it is worth doing well. The list of maths topics included is here. We have also included the Maths Portal. The subject list is quite a long list but feedback on what should be included or left out would be good. Also ideally if someone could split the 270 articles into two of three sub lists (preferably Pure Maths, Applied Maths and Statistics or something like that) it would help. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia CD Selection. -- BozMo talk 13:09, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
Please help to resolve this dispute. The articles Non-Newtonian calculus and Multiplicative calculus have come under sustained attack for including references to a self-published work which the opposing editors consider to be invalid as a reference.
The reference concerned is: Grossman and Katz. Non-Newtonian Calculus, ISBN 0912938013, Lee Press, 1972.
Points against:
Points for:
Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. However, caution should be exercised when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so. For example, a reliable self-published source on a given subject is likely to have been cited on that subject as authoritative by a reliable source.
Another point in favour of allowing Non-Newtonian calculus as a reference is that it is a very short book, it doesn't actually say all that much, there is not much there to verify in the first place and as such the above papers should be ample verification of its reliabilty. Delaszk ( talk) 19:16, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
How I wish my AfD had succeeded! I assumed that obscure nonsense was obviously non-notable...
Delaszk, if there is an edit war, you ought to be able to point to the problematic edits. I've been following the article and commenting on the talk page, and I've seen no evidence at all of an edit war (which, I'm sure you know, has a precise meaning on Wikipedia). I do not believe there is one; if you disagree, please point out the edits! Ozob ( talk) 23:45, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
A bigger issue with the article is that it doesn't conform to WP:FRINGE. This is clearly a fringe theory, which has been roundly rejected by the mainstream mathematical community, despite the best efforts of its closest adherents to promote it by the continual publication of monographs on the subject. The article, however, approaches the subject as though it were a legitimate area of mathematical research. This is clearly assigning undue weight to fringe views, and so is a violation of the neutral point of view policy. Most of the mathematical material in the article needs to get the chop, and the remainder of the article should be devoted to explaining how and why this was rejected. siℓℓy rabbit ( talk) 13:10, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:ANI#.22dubious_reference_....22.3F. VG ☎ 23:27, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
Over at WP:CS, I'm wondering what to do about various forms of the lambda calculus...please do drop by and chime in! -- mgreenbe ( talk) 13:04, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
How much is 85 billion divided by 200 million?
Is it 425000 or 42500? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.2.200.144 ( talk) 11:34, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Would appreciate neutral eyes on Esquisse d' un Programme, which has been deleted under WP:CSD#A1 by two different administrators (including myself). I am inclined to delete it again but I am interested in others' opinions first. Frank | talk 18:00, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
user:Espressobongo has been installing external links to something called "balloon calculus", which claims to be a novel approach to some aspects of calculus (see Special:Contributions/Espressobongo). When you go to the web site, it turns out that (as far as I can tell) you can't find out what it's all about unless you download their software. Opinions? Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:59, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
I think reporting this to WP:ANI and WP:SPAM was ill-advised. Persons knowledgeable in the subject matter had already dealt with it without newbie-biting. If people who've never heard of mathematics but who work daily on WP:SPAM start dealing with it, I expect they will tell me that since I am knowledgeable in the subject matter I am scum who should meekly obey them while they kick me. That's what they do. If a link constitutes spam, that's not necessarily because the page's owner intended it that way, and it is possible that the page's owner can alter it in such a way that the link has value, and we are better qualified to judge that sort of thing than are admins who've never heard of mathematics and who believe we should obey them because of it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:08, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
I didn't mean they told the alleged spammer he was scum; I meant those who are in the habit of enforcing rules against spam are sometimes gratuitously disrespectful, not to alleged spammers, but to subject-matter experts whose interest is in the topics of the articles on which alleged or suspected spam is posted. Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:07, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
I've just found this upon reading the article on Julia Sets:
"It is commonly believed that Julia sets are named in honor of Gaston Julia, the celebrated French mathematician. Unfortunately, this is a vicious lie perpetrated by sexist mathematical historians seeking to remove every last trace of female influence from the annals of the numerical arts. The true namesake of these sets is Julia Gaston, the renowned Amazon.com customer whose lofty literary tastes ( Vonnegut, Bradbury) are counterbalanced by her low-brow DVD selections ( Desperate Housewives) and silly video game preferences ( Lego Indiana Jones, Karaoke Revolution). Also, she appears to like cooking. See for yourself.
Fun facts about Julia Gaston:
"
I'm not to experienced, and can't find who added this rubbish. But can an admin get on the case and block the fool?
I've deleted most of this so that it simply reads "It is commonly believed that Julia sets are named in honor of Gaston Julia, the celebrated French mathematician."
This sentence may need to be rewritten: Is it names after him, or is it believed to be named after him? Δεκλαν Δαφισ (talk) 15:50, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Sorry for asking a question that isn't directly relevant to any maths articles, but I think this is one of the few places where I don't have to explain what the problem is. Many population numbers in Wikipedia look like "19,297,729 (2007 est.)". I consider this very embarassing, wondering (only rhetorically, of course) why we never see decimal points in this context. Do we have guidelines for or against reasonable rounding when our sources pretend some preposterous precision? -- Hans Adler ( talk) 22:46, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Avoid overly precise values where they are unlikely to be stable or accurate, or where the precision is unnecessary in the context (The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 metres per second is probably appropriate, but The distance from the Earth to the Sun is 149,014,769 kilometres and The population of Cape Town is 2,968,790 would usually not be, because both values are unstable at that level of precision, and readers are unlikely to care in the context.
A discussion at Talk:Gliese 581 c revolves around the OR-ness of converting data tables to diagrams of orbits. This might be of interest to you. 70.51.8.75 ( talk) 08:56, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
When I went to put in some new formulas, such as
they are not being formatted. Can anyone help? JRSpriggs ( talk) 14:08, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
I just reviewed one of the first articles that I have ever edited and I was wondering what criteria it needs to satisfy in order to be a feature article. I have already read the Wikipedia page on feature articles. At the moment, the article looks fine to me and the only problem is that the article seems to lack references. If I fix this, can I nominate it for a featured article (the mathematical correctness seems alright, I don't think further information can be added to the article either)? Or at least a good article? It does not seem so but if someone could tell me what criteria (specifically) that the article must satisfy I could fix that up.
Topology Expert ( talk) 15:33, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Thankyou all for your response. I appreciate it! I will try to make edits along those lines in the next couple of days and (hopefully) fix up the main problems.
Topology Expert ( talk) 08:13, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Not sure if this should go here, but I encountered a problem related to geometry drawing, but did not find an article on it.
So basically, you have a compass. No ruler or anything else. This means you cannot draw a straight line. So given a line segment, use the compass to find the midpoint of it.
Anyways if there is any relevance in this, I thought it might be important to write an article related to geometry drawing? Any tips on the problem let me know ;). -- electricRush ( T C) 01:59, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Ask yourself the following question: let P be a property of topological spaces. Is it then necessarily the case that the phrase "locally P" has an unambiguous meaning for you, or does it have to be defined separately depending on what P is?
I would like to propose the following definition of "locally P" in all cases: we say that a space is "locally P at a point x" if there exists a base of neighborhoods of x each having the property P, and a space is "locally P" if it is locally P at each of its points. Here I had better add that by a "N is a neighborhood of a point x" I mean that x lies in the interior of N but N is not necessarily itself open: this is the more common terminology on wikipedia and elsewhere, but it is not universal.
If you compare this to the various meanings that "locally P" has had historically for various important properties P, you will see that the phrase "locally P" has different meanings for different people. For instance, the current article locally compact space has a very clear discussion of this ambiguity, and you can see that I am advocating the third definition of locally compact, which is the one used by Willard. However, Willard defines "locally connected" to mean that every point has a base of open connected neighborhoods, which is an apparently stronger condition. (In fact he does not explicitly define "locally connected at x".) However, Engelking defines "locally connected" according to the general scheme above. Interestingly, the article locally connected space does define "local connectedness at x" according to the above scheme, but a careful reading indicates that probably the Willard definition is intended: on the one hand, an arbitrary neighborhood is denoted by U, suggesting that it is supposed to be open, and more significantly there is an entire section on "weakly locally connected" which gives, formally, the same definition as before but in langauge that makes clearer that non-open neighborhoods are allowed. The article does make nicely clear the fact that the two terms are equivalent when applied to an entire space, but not when applied to a single point.
As far as I know, my proposed definition of "locally P" agrees with at least one of the standard definitions in the primary sources wherever it is defined, and the fact that it has an intrinsic meaning seems to be a big expository and pedagogical advantage. I propose that there be an article on "local property (topological space)" which carefully explains this convention and that it be used (with explicit reference and all due explanation) in general topology articles.
As a subsidiary point, I would like "weakly locally P" to mean that there exists at least one neighborhood of every point which has property P, so that P itself implies weakly locally P but not necessarily locally P. But this is less critical and I don't wish to push it as strongly. Plclark ( talk) 09:28, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
The definition sounds good to me since it satisfies:
Topology Expert ( talk) 11:26, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
In fact, the page local property already exists, and includes both what I want to call "locally P" and "weakly locally P". It does not give references, but the fact that it exists certainly suggests that I will succeed in finding references. I am willing to flesh out this page, and then my proposal becomes that people either use the terminology "locally P" consistently with the way it is used on this page or explain that the terminology that they are using is not consistent with that page but they are using it anyway because XXX (e.g. because it is the terminology used in their primary source). Plclark ( talk) 10:25, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Here is a reference for a general definition of "local property": [1], starting at the first complete sentence on the page. Ozob ( talk) 22:22, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I moved this article from the strange name "Stokes's theorem" just now. If anyone objects to this, let's talk at Talk:Stokes' theorem. Apparently Skewes' number has also been moved to "Skewes's number" and back recently. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 02:12, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
User:Yecril has been advocating a different format of writing mathematics using several templates and the <var> tag. Personally, I find it somewhat cumbersome, and don't see advantages that outweigh the difficulty in editing. Here are some examples:
I don't think these unilateral changes (which are not mentioned in the edit summaries) are a good idea. I want to get a sense of what other people think. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:01, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
The advantages of using wikicode for formulas:
The ultimate goal is to ask the texvc engine to do the same so that the output is identical to what comes out from the math island.
The reason the templates are not mentioned in edit summaries is that I never touch text that is readable and not problematic, so the summaries reflect the problem I was trying to address.
I am aware of the formula length problem, although using templates makes this a bit less drastic. My POV is that when you write down these things, you actually think about them using words, e.g. integral of exponent of minus x from zero to plus infinity is 1. This translates to the templates you have to call:
{{math|{{minteg|0|+∞|{{mexp|−<VAR >x</VAR >}} d<VAR >x</VAR >}} {{=}} 1}}
to get ∫+∞
0e−x dx = 1. The source is admittedly hard to read; TeX provides better visual clues. I can only repeat my argument about due dilligence: there are more readers than writers. More complicated formulae are usually better rendered stand-alone; I am not pushing for a wholesale replacement.
-- Yecril ( talk) 13:51, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
TeX can be copied as plain text but it cannot be copied with formatting except as an image. With images you cannot even navigate to a section because the document scrolls away while the images load. And it takes forever on a slow connection. MathML is not part of contemporary browsers so you get nothing at a public kiosk.
And how do you want to get semantic markup without typing? Computers are rather dumb beasts; you have to talk to them in capital letters. -- Yecril ( talk) 11:23, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
I would say that {{ minteg}} is much easier to read than its inline expansion. The difference is that you read what the author wanted to write, not the particular style he had to choose for his writing. I agree the letter "m" in the beginning is confusing, and there are templates that not use it, such as {{ radic}}; however, I think that polluting the main namespace with mathematical templates would be a bad idea. It would be best if you could get context-dependent templates but MediaWiki does not support it at present.
And if a user like Gandalf wants his formulas to be bigger, or silver, or on a yellow background, or whatever, he has no way of getting that effect. -- Yecril ( talk) 10:49, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
This is a bad idea for a couple of reasons:
This message approved by: VG ☎ 17:54, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Slight change of topic: The subscript 0 before the integral sign, in the above examples, looks purely awful. Is this notation actually used, anywhere? --
Trovatore (
talk) 19:34, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
This is a compromise:
I also find this style appealing because of the similarity with [1…n: from 0, integrate, to 1.
Also, if we decide to prefer one over the other, it would be as simple as changing {{ minteg}} to that effect, except for syntax #2. No bots, no nonsense. -- Yecril ( talk) 12:03, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Yecril ( contribs) just added an entry in his style at the article Almost prime. This should be a good test: rather than existing code being quickly converted, this should be ideally suited to the style. Anyone want to post a side-by-side of this?
If anyone happens to edit the page, you can flesh out the source with a full citation:
Gérald Tenenbaum, Introduction To Analytic And Probabilistic Number Theory, Cambridge University Press (1995)
if desired. CRGreathouse ( t | c) 21:02, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Yecril version: File:Yecril.png
TeX version: File:Hardy.png
-- C S ( talk) 01:49, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Wow, CS's screenshot looks pretty nice. Here is what mine looks like in Konqueror 3.5.5. Methinks this has some accessibility issues for people using alternative browsers. siℓℓy rabbit ( talk) 12:25, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Here it is in emacs, my other browser of choice:
Cheers, siℓℓy rabbit ( talk) 12:32, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
The number p[k](n) of integers of at most k prime divisors from the initial segment [1...n] is asymptotic to^[1] p[k](n) ?1 ^n/[(log n)] ╖ ^(log log n)^(k - 1)/[(k - 1)!]
The number p[k](n) of positive integers less than or equal to n with at most k prime divisors (not necessarily distinct) is asymptotic to^[1] \pi_k(n) \sim \left( \frac{n}{\log n} \right) \frac{(\log\log n)^{k-1}}{(k - 1)!},
''x''<sup>2</sup>
), and display formulas which cannot be decently formatted this way indented on their own lines.--
Army
1987
(t
— c) 00:06, 11 October 2008 (UTC)I most definitely object to Yecril's characterization of my choice browser as "retarded". The problem is other browsers do exist, and something which may look ok to one set of users may definitely not look ok to another set. Even in Firefox, some of Yecril's earlier experimentations didn't look at all as advertised in his/her own screenshots. And before I upgrade to the "latest version of KDE", I assume that Yecril knows first-hand that this will *not* be an issue should I take the time to upgrade? siℓℓy rabbit ( talk) 15:27, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
See G127. Is this worth saving? Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:19, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Any additional ideas would be welcome. - jc37 06:58, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Originator's explanation: see Category talk:Graphs#Subcategory suggestion, and please continue the discussion there. Twri ( talk) 16:46, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
This article is, while in (IMO) mediocre state, rated A-class. Is there any particular processus to downgrade A-class articles like for GA and FA? Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 21:01, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alexander R. Povolotsky's problem 1. Three articles by this author about his problems have been AfD'd as original research. He claims that the "On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences" where they have entries, is "managed/edited by renowned scientist - Neil Sloane, therefore OEIS reference is a Reliable Source!" I guess the key question is, to what extent are entries there vetted. Anyone know enough to confirm or deny? Opinions would be useful at the AfD. JohnCD ( talk) 16:11, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
It is certainly a respected source, but whether it's reliable is another question. As far as I've been able to verify various things I've found there, it's accurate. There is certainly some vetting, but that doesn't necessarily mean checking all the numbers in submissions. It does mean mathematicians have read the submissions and approved them. Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:39, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
I would call it a reliable source (for WP purposes), certainly. But I agree with Ilmari Karonen that it does not establish notability.
CRGreathouse (
t |
c) 01:23, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi everyone. I think the article should because become a disambiguation page because the meanings of critical value in differential topology and statistics are completely unrelated. It should be split into two different pages. What does everyone else think? Gizza Discuss © 07:41, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree that it should become a disambiguation page. An article is supposed to be about a topic, not about different topics that accidentally have the same name. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:14, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
Just to let editors here know that there's a new mathematics featured article today. I know many project members have contributed to the article (and one is even cited!) so congratulations to all concerned! The main contributor to the article (by a large margin) is WillowW, so some of us are celebrating on her talk page. Geometry guy 20:26, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
AfD here. VG ☎ 02:54, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
From "On this day..." on the "main page:
Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:56, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Copy from archive of this page: "Dubious reference" at Graph isomorphism See Wikipedia:ANI#.22dubious_reference_....22.3F. VG ☎ 23:27, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
User Míkka said "The fact that it is repeated in some obscure articles by persons with little credentials in graph theory bears little weight" about the following persons: 1)M. I. Trofimov 2)E. A. Smolenskii 3)V. N. Zemlyachenko 4)N. M. Korneenko 5)R. I. Tyshkevich 6)R. T. Faizullin 7)A. V. Prolubnikov 8)Jitse Niesen 9)David Eppstein 10)Corneil 11)Gotlieb !!!--Tim32 (talk) 19:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, but Míkka restarted this edit war!-- Tim32 ( talk) 00:08, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to ask someone who is already an expert in plane geometry to look at Parallel postulate and the question at Talk:Parallel_postulate#Equivalence. The issue is whether the parallel postulate is equivalent to Playfair's axiom, and which other axioms are required to prove this equivalence. I recently noticed edits to the article by an IP editor, which also should be double-checked by an expert. Unfortunately I managed to avoid plane geometry in school and know almost no details about it. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:13, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
(See isosceles triangle theorem.)
I wasn't thinking of putting that into the article. Michael Hardy ( talk) 05:15, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Could someone have a look at Kepler's laws? I think the article needs to be rigorously pruned in the amount of mathematical proofs, since they are not illuminating the concepts, but rather tediously proving concepts that are rather easy to visualize. But maybe i'm seeing it wrong. Please discuss on Talk:Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Han-Kwang ( t) 20:56, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
The new article integral expression defines the term as follows: "monomials and polynomials are collectively called to be integral expressions." I have my doubts about this. Can anybody confirm that this definition is correct, preferably by adding a reference? -- Jitse Niesen ( talk) 13:47, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
I just noticed that the criteria of article ratings given at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0#Quality_grading_scheme does often not correspond to the status of given sample articles. For example, [ Trigonometric functions from March 2007] is given as an example for FA, but was recently demoted. Likewise [ this old revision of vector space] counts as B-class. Should we rediscuss the criteria or simply change the given examples? Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 07:28, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
Algebraic number theory is the current Mathematics COTM. A discussion has started at Talk:Algebraic number theory about how much introductory material the article should include, and whether a separate "Introduction to..." article is required for this topic. Wider participation in this discussion would be very welcome. Gandalf61 ( talk) 10:33, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
If one looks up many mathematical articles on wikipedia, a vast number of them would be good articles for a mathematical encyclopedia, but completely lousy ones for a general encyclopedia. Definitions are emphasised above illustration (no 's'), and definitions given are often precise, terse - excellent for a maths textbook, useless for the general encyclopedia.
I think this is inappropriate. We are writing for wikipedia, not mathworld - yet I think the articles on mathworld would be more useful to a non-mathematician.
Yes, I know that some mathematical concepts are difficult. Perhaps some even utterly defy explanation within the grasp of the intelligent layperson. But if we are contributing to a general-purpose encyclopedia, shouldn't we at least try?
mike40033 ( talk) 01:21, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
siℓℓy rabbit ( talk) wrote: "I think the overall consensus is that many mathematics articles would benefit from more examples, more pictures, and more prose." May I add to this: more algorithms, more short listings and more applications? For example, this year I took part in Intel Threading Challenge Contest and in the forum ( http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/) we used mathematical articles from Wiki very intensive. But sometime some Wiki editors try to save "pure mathematical view", see for example Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#"Dubious reference" at Graph isomorphism (2) - edit war restarted!!!: here a few persons want to delete an important link to GI chemical applications because it is link to chemical journal. At the same time I asked them "Can you find many sources about chemical applications in pure mathematical journals? For example, in J. of Graph Theory?" Of course, they could find nothing.I want to show that not only pure mathematical sources have to be used for mathematical articles.-- Tim32 ( talk) 20:12, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm confused here. We started out on a discussion on making mathematics articles more accessible yet have somehow got distracted into a discussion as to whether an emprical result should be included in a specific article. My first thought is that the amount of time devoted to these very narrow discussions is actually distracting us from the task of improving accessibility. Rather than such discussions I'd much rather see the article on Chemical graph theory develop to more than a stub, it could certainly use some illustrations. But then maybe its easier to have a nice flame war than it is to work on articles. -- Salix ( talk): 23:30, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Chemistry always has had a close relation with Graph Theory. Actually, the word "Graph" comes from a paper published in Nature. Shall I recall that most of the terminology of Graph Theory comes from chemistry, that the first paper dedicated to spectral graph theory (E. Hückel, Quantentheoretische Beitrage zum Benzolproblem, Z. Phys. 70(1931), 204-286) was about quantum chemistry, that some graph theorists still study subjects closely related to chemistry (like fullerenes and isomers)... I don't know if you would have the same kind of opposition if one would like to add a reference to Topological Graph Theory in the entry dedicated to Topology? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.198.117.189 ( talk) 19:54, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
An anon added this paragraph to Mathematical notation [6]:
The content seems essentially fine but unpolished; I'm more concerned about the prominence of the addition. Any thoughts? I'm loathe to revert right now.
CRGreathouse ( t | c) 04:52, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
This paragraph is overstating things. When does sin-1x ever mean anything other than arcsin ? Everything needs to be taken in context. In this respect mathematics is no different from any other language. Delaszk ( talk) 06:06, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
There is a difference between
and
The latter may mean you're multiplying s, i, the reciprocal of n, and x. The former does not. Likewise there is a difference between
and
And the part about determinants seems silly. Michael Hardy ( talk) 15:56, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
And, by the way, if it is handwritten on a board, could you make this distinction? Boris Tsirelson ( talk) 20:32, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Interestingly, for n=-1 is not . Well, mathematical formulas are intended for humans only; expressions in a programming language are not. Boris Tsirelson ( talk) 21:37, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
A related observation: about 90 percents of mathematicians of my generation hate programming. (Is it true for new generations?) I was initially puzzled to see it, but then I understood: they hate to be REALLY exact! They express exact relations in non-exact languages (and understand one another exactly). Boris Tsirelson ( talk) 21:59, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
I've made an attempt to write a paragraph which puts things in better perspective. The Mathematical notation article now includes: "Depending on the context, the same symbol or notation can be used to represent different concepts, therefore to fullly understand a piece of mathematical writing it is important to first check the definitions that an author gives for the notations that they have used. This may be problematical if the author assumes the reader knows what they are talking about." Delaszk ( talk) 07:28, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
Let's move this to Talk:Mathematical_notation#Example_of_differing_notation. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:14, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Hello. The new article on Nikolai Nikolaevich Nekhoroshev used to say that he passed away on 19 October of this year. I removed it for the time being because I could not find a source for this, so you will have to look at a previous revision. Can anybody confirm his death? -- Jitse Niesen ( talk) 09:43, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
There is what I believe to be an error on the page for the Cook-Levin theorem. I posted today, and I also found that Taejo had already noticed it. Vegasprof ( talk) 16:11, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
I recently initiated a merge discussion at limit of a function. Of the 4 editors seemed in favor of some type of merge, but one editor is very against. He made the reasonable point that "limit concept is one of the central ones in mathematics, drastic changes in the current configuration should be discussed at WPMath." So I thought I would bring it up here. The articles involved are limit of a function, limit of a sequence, (ε,_δ)-definition_of_limit, and limit (mathematics). Fresh input would be greatly appreciated. Thenub314 ( talk) 21:22, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
I had a quick look, and it indeed appears that the (at least) four existing limit-related articles do not work well together. Starting from the most obvious, there should be no need for (ε,_δ)-definition_of_limit: part of that content belongs to the article that discusses limits on metric spaces (and more specific cases as suitable). If people really insist it should be searchable in WP, one could leave it as a redirect to a relevant section in the right article.
Second, Limit (mathematics) mainly discusses the limit concept in topology, primarily specializing in the "elementary" cases of sequences and functions defined on subsets of R or a more general metric space. Suitably enough Limit (category theory) is mentioned (linked away), while some other limits in mathematics (lim sup, homotopy limits) are not. It would make more sense to have Limit (mathematics) as a disambiguation page, which could use a paragraph or two to discuss the general "flavour" of concepts baptised limits in various parts of mathematics. The discussion of topological limits in their various guises (easily the most notable of these) should be in a separate article, where most of Limit (mathematics) should be moved; it would also be an opportunity to improve the exposition significantly - currently it is essentially left to the reader to work out which definitions are special cases of the more general ones. Limit (mathematical analysis) discussed on the article talk pages would be too specific for this article, where eventually limits of filters and nets should be discussed and linked to the more specialised definitions.
As for Limit of a function and Limit of a sequence, I would keep them as separate articles, link them to the more general limit in topology article and make it clear they are special cases. Some duplication (and more detailed discussion) in these articles would do not harm. But the logical structure of the article should be in line with the logic of the content, so some coordination is needed.
Finally, for whatever reason, much prominence is given in these articles to writing definitions that have just been presented adequatly in plain English again using quantifier´notation. Sometimes this is done as if writing more technical-looking formula (with shorthand that is really seldom used outside blackboard) would make the definition more precise or properly mathematical. If the intention is to make the definitions understandable this additional notational complexity is, at least in my view, not useful. Stca74 ( talk) 12:06, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
I am in agreement with
Stca74, and Carl (
CBM). How do people feel about just merging the ε/δ article and preforming some minor clean up on the others?
Thenub314 (
talk) 15:58, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
See Talk:Gamma function#Baffling rendering of definition, although there's a typo there. It appears that the lead definition is rendering as t≈-1 instead of tz-1, and I don't know why, either. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:29, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
All of the articles mentioned are being discussed on the talk page of semiregular space (I proposed semiregular space for deletion and currently there is a proposal that semiregular space is merged with locally regular space). Please contribute if you have any opinions.
Topology Expert ( talk) 09:42, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
This dispute has sat there for months. Can the mathematical public help settle it? Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:33, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Tangent_between_two_circles. VG ☎ 13:37, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
The 2008/9 Schools Wikipedia is now available for browsing and feedback is welcome. Downloads start in two weeks so final improvements are possible; this is a big project with millions of users so it is worth doing well. The list of maths topics included is here. We have also included the Maths Portal. The subject list is quite a long list but feedback on what should be included or left out would be good. Also ideally if someone could split the 270 articles into two of three sub lists (preferably Pure Maths, Applied Maths and Statistics or something like that) it would help. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia CD Selection. -- BozMo talk 13:09, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
Please help to resolve this dispute. The articles Non-Newtonian calculus and Multiplicative calculus have come under sustained attack for including references to a self-published work which the opposing editors consider to be invalid as a reference.
The reference concerned is: Grossman and Katz. Non-Newtonian Calculus, ISBN 0912938013, Lee Press, 1972.
Points against:
Points for:
Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. However, caution should be exercised when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so. For example, a reliable self-published source on a given subject is likely to have been cited on that subject as authoritative by a reliable source.
Another point in favour of allowing Non-Newtonian calculus as a reference is that it is a very short book, it doesn't actually say all that much, there is not much there to verify in the first place and as such the above papers should be ample verification of its reliabilty. Delaszk ( talk) 19:16, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
How I wish my AfD had succeeded! I assumed that obscure nonsense was obviously non-notable...
Delaszk, if there is an edit war, you ought to be able to point to the problematic edits. I've been following the article and commenting on the talk page, and I've seen no evidence at all of an edit war (which, I'm sure you know, has a precise meaning on Wikipedia). I do not believe there is one; if you disagree, please point out the edits! Ozob ( talk) 23:45, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
A bigger issue with the article is that it doesn't conform to WP:FRINGE. This is clearly a fringe theory, which has been roundly rejected by the mainstream mathematical community, despite the best efforts of its closest adherents to promote it by the continual publication of monographs on the subject. The article, however, approaches the subject as though it were a legitimate area of mathematical research. This is clearly assigning undue weight to fringe views, and so is a violation of the neutral point of view policy. Most of the mathematical material in the article needs to get the chop, and the remainder of the article should be devoted to explaining how and why this was rejected. siℓℓy rabbit ( talk) 13:10, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:ANI#.22dubious_reference_....22.3F. VG ☎ 23:27, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
Over at WP:CS, I'm wondering what to do about various forms of the lambda calculus...please do drop by and chime in! -- mgreenbe ( talk) 13:04, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
How much is 85 billion divided by 200 million?
Is it 425000 or 42500? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.2.200.144 ( talk) 11:34, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Would appreciate neutral eyes on Esquisse d' un Programme, which has been deleted under WP:CSD#A1 by two different administrators (including myself). I am inclined to delete it again but I am interested in others' opinions first. Frank | talk 18:00, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
user:Espressobongo has been installing external links to something called "balloon calculus", which claims to be a novel approach to some aspects of calculus (see Special:Contributions/Espressobongo). When you go to the web site, it turns out that (as far as I can tell) you can't find out what it's all about unless you download their software. Opinions? Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:59, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
I think reporting this to WP:ANI and WP:SPAM was ill-advised. Persons knowledgeable in the subject matter had already dealt with it without newbie-biting. If people who've never heard of mathematics but who work daily on WP:SPAM start dealing with it, I expect they will tell me that since I am knowledgeable in the subject matter I am scum who should meekly obey them while they kick me. That's what they do. If a link constitutes spam, that's not necessarily because the page's owner intended it that way, and it is possible that the page's owner can alter it in such a way that the link has value, and we are better qualified to judge that sort of thing than are admins who've never heard of mathematics and who believe we should obey them because of it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:08, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
I didn't mean they told the alleged spammer he was scum; I meant those who are in the habit of enforcing rules against spam are sometimes gratuitously disrespectful, not to alleged spammers, but to subject-matter experts whose interest is in the topics of the articles on which alleged or suspected spam is posted. Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:07, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
I've just found this upon reading the article on Julia Sets:
"It is commonly believed that Julia sets are named in honor of Gaston Julia, the celebrated French mathematician. Unfortunately, this is a vicious lie perpetrated by sexist mathematical historians seeking to remove every last trace of female influence from the annals of the numerical arts. The true namesake of these sets is Julia Gaston, the renowned Amazon.com customer whose lofty literary tastes ( Vonnegut, Bradbury) are counterbalanced by her low-brow DVD selections ( Desperate Housewives) and silly video game preferences ( Lego Indiana Jones, Karaoke Revolution). Also, she appears to like cooking. See for yourself.
Fun facts about Julia Gaston:
"
I'm not to experienced, and can't find who added this rubbish. But can an admin get on the case and block the fool?
I've deleted most of this so that it simply reads "It is commonly believed that Julia sets are named in honor of Gaston Julia, the celebrated French mathematician."
This sentence may need to be rewritten: Is it names after him, or is it believed to be named after him? Δεκλαν Δαφισ (talk) 15:50, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Sorry for asking a question that isn't directly relevant to any maths articles, but I think this is one of the few places where I don't have to explain what the problem is. Many population numbers in Wikipedia look like "19,297,729 (2007 est.)". I consider this very embarassing, wondering (only rhetorically, of course) why we never see decimal points in this context. Do we have guidelines for or against reasonable rounding when our sources pretend some preposterous precision? -- Hans Adler ( talk) 22:46, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Avoid overly precise values where they are unlikely to be stable or accurate, or where the precision is unnecessary in the context (The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 metres per second is probably appropriate, but The distance from the Earth to the Sun is 149,014,769 kilometres and The population of Cape Town is 2,968,790 would usually not be, because both values are unstable at that level of precision, and readers are unlikely to care in the context.
A discussion at Talk:Gliese 581 c revolves around the OR-ness of converting data tables to diagrams of orbits. This might be of interest to you. 70.51.8.75 ( talk) 08:56, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
When I went to put in some new formulas, such as
they are not being formatted. Can anyone help? JRSpriggs ( talk) 14:08, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
I just reviewed one of the first articles that I have ever edited and I was wondering what criteria it needs to satisfy in order to be a feature article. I have already read the Wikipedia page on feature articles. At the moment, the article looks fine to me and the only problem is that the article seems to lack references. If I fix this, can I nominate it for a featured article (the mathematical correctness seems alright, I don't think further information can be added to the article either)? Or at least a good article? It does not seem so but if someone could tell me what criteria (specifically) that the article must satisfy I could fix that up.
Topology Expert ( talk) 15:33, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Thankyou all for your response. I appreciate it! I will try to make edits along those lines in the next couple of days and (hopefully) fix up the main problems.
Topology Expert ( talk) 08:13, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Not sure if this should go here, but I encountered a problem related to geometry drawing, but did not find an article on it.
So basically, you have a compass. No ruler or anything else. This means you cannot draw a straight line. So given a line segment, use the compass to find the midpoint of it.
Anyways if there is any relevance in this, I thought it might be important to write an article related to geometry drawing? Any tips on the problem let me know ;). -- electricRush ( T C) 01:59, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Ask yourself the following question: let P be a property of topological spaces. Is it then necessarily the case that the phrase "locally P" has an unambiguous meaning for you, or does it have to be defined separately depending on what P is?
I would like to propose the following definition of "locally P" in all cases: we say that a space is "locally P at a point x" if there exists a base of neighborhoods of x each having the property P, and a space is "locally P" if it is locally P at each of its points. Here I had better add that by a "N is a neighborhood of a point x" I mean that x lies in the interior of N but N is not necessarily itself open: this is the more common terminology on wikipedia and elsewhere, but it is not universal.
If you compare this to the various meanings that "locally P" has had historically for various important properties P, you will see that the phrase "locally P" has different meanings for different people. For instance, the current article locally compact space has a very clear discussion of this ambiguity, and you can see that I am advocating the third definition of locally compact, which is the one used by Willard. However, Willard defines "locally connected" to mean that every point has a base of open connected neighborhoods, which is an apparently stronger condition. (In fact he does not explicitly define "locally connected at x".) However, Engelking defines "locally connected" according to the general scheme above. Interestingly, the article locally connected space does define "local connectedness at x" according to the above scheme, but a careful reading indicates that probably the Willard definition is intended: on the one hand, an arbitrary neighborhood is denoted by U, suggesting that it is supposed to be open, and more significantly there is an entire section on "weakly locally connected" which gives, formally, the same definition as before but in langauge that makes clearer that non-open neighborhoods are allowed. The article does make nicely clear the fact that the two terms are equivalent when applied to an entire space, but not when applied to a single point.
As far as I know, my proposed definition of "locally P" agrees with at least one of the standard definitions in the primary sources wherever it is defined, and the fact that it has an intrinsic meaning seems to be a big expository and pedagogical advantage. I propose that there be an article on "local property (topological space)" which carefully explains this convention and that it be used (with explicit reference and all due explanation) in general topology articles.
As a subsidiary point, I would like "weakly locally P" to mean that there exists at least one neighborhood of every point which has property P, so that P itself implies weakly locally P but not necessarily locally P. But this is less critical and I don't wish to push it as strongly. Plclark ( talk) 09:28, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
The definition sounds good to me since it satisfies:
Topology Expert ( talk) 11:26, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
In fact, the page local property already exists, and includes both what I want to call "locally P" and "weakly locally P". It does not give references, but the fact that it exists certainly suggests that I will succeed in finding references. I am willing to flesh out this page, and then my proposal becomes that people either use the terminology "locally P" consistently with the way it is used on this page or explain that the terminology that they are using is not consistent with that page but they are using it anyway because XXX (e.g. because it is the terminology used in their primary source). Plclark ( talk) 10:25, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Here is a reference for a general definition of "local property": [1], starting at the first complete sentence on the page. Ozob ( talk) 22:22, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I moved this article from the strange name "Stokes's theorem" just now. If anyone objects to this, let's talk at Talk:Stokes' theorem. Apparently Skewes' number has also been moved to "Skewes's number" and back recently. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 02:12, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
User:Yecril has been advocating a different format of writing mathematics using several templates and the <var> tag. Personally, I find it somewhat cumbersome, and don't see advantages that outweigh the difficulty in editing. Here are some examples:
I don't think these unilateral changes (which are not mentioned in the edit summaries) are a good idea. I want to get a sense of what other people think. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:01, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
The advantages of using wikicode for formulas:
The ultimate goal is to ask the texvc engine to do the same so that the output is identical to what comes out from the math island.
The reason the templates are not mentioned in edit summaries is that I never touch text that is readable and not problematic, so the summaries reflect the problem I was trying to address.
I am aware of the formula length problem, although using templates makes this a bit less drastic. My POV is that when you write down these things, you actually think about them using words, e.g. integral of exponent of minus x from zero to plus infinity is 1. This translates to the templates you have to call:
{{math|{{minteg|0|+∞|{{mexp|−<VAR >x</VAR >}} d<VAR >x</VAR >}} {{=}} 1}}
to get ∫+∞
0e−x dx = 1. The source is admittedly hard to read; TeX provides better visual clues. I can only repeat my argument about due dilligence: there are more readers than writers. More complicated formulae are usually better rendered stand-alone; I am not pushing for a wholesale replacement.
-- Yecril ( talk) 13:51, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
TeX can be copied as plain text but it cannot be copied with formatting except as an image. With images you cannot even navigate to a section because the document scrolls away while the images load. And it takes forever on a slow connection. MathML is not part of contemporary browsers so you get nothing at a public kiosk.
And how do you want to get semantic markup without typing? Computers are rather dumb beasts; you have to talk to them in capital letters. -- Yecril ( talk) 11:23, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
I would say that {{ minteg}} is much easier to read than its inline expansion. The difference is that you read what the author wanted to write, not the particular style he had to choose for his writing. I agree the letter "m" in the beginning is confusing, and there are templates that not use it, such as {{ radic}}; however, I think that polluting the main namespace with mathematical templates would be a bad idea. It would be best if you could get context-dependent templates but MediaWiki does not support it at present.
And if a user like Gandalf wants his formulas to be bigger, or silver, or on a yellow background, or whatever, he has no way of getting that effect. -- Yecril ( talk) 10:49, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
This is a bad idea for a couple of reasons:
This message approved by: VG ☎ 17:54, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Slight change of topic: The subscript 0 before the integral sign, in the above examples, looks purely awful. Is this notation actually used, anywhere? --
Trovatore (
talk) 19:34, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
This is a compromise:
I also find this style appealing because of the similarity with [1…n: from 0, integrate, to 1.
Also, if we decide to prefer one over the other, it would be as simple as changing {{ minteg}} to that effect, except for syntax #2. No bots, no nonsense. -- Yecril ( talk) 12:03, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Yecril ( contribs) just added an entry in his style at the article Almost prime. This should be a good test: rather than existing code being quickly converted, this should be ideally suited to the style. Anyone want to post a side-by-side of this?
If anyone happens to edit the page, you can flesh out the source with a full citation:
Gérald Tenenbaum, Introduction To Analytic And Probabilistic Number Theory, Cambridge University Press (1995)
if desired. CRGreathouse ( t | c) 21:02, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Yecril version: File:Yecril.png
TeX version: File:Hardy.png
-- C S ( talk) 01:49, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Wow, CS's screenshot looks pretty nice. Here is what mine looks like in Konqueror 3.5.5. Methinks this has some accessibility issues for people using alternative browsers. siℓℓy rabbit ( talk) 12:25, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Here it is in emacs, my other browser of choice:
Cheers, siℓℓy rabbit ( talk) 12:32, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
The number p[k](n) of integers of at most k prime divisors from the initial segment [1...n] is asymptotic to^[1] p[k](n) ?1 ^n/[(log n)] ╖ ^(log log n)^(k - 1)/[(k - 1)!]
The number p[k](n) of positive integers less than or equal to n with at most k prime divisors (not necessarily distinct) is asymptotic to^[1] \pi_k(n) \sim \left( \frac{n}{\log n} \right) \frac{(\log\log n)^{k-1}}{(k - 1)!},
''x''<sup>2</sup>
), and display formulas which cannot be decently formatted this way indented on their own lines.--
Army
1987
(t
— c) 00:06, 11 October 2008 (UTC)I most definitely object to Yecril's characterization of my choice browser as "retarded". The problem is other browsers do exist, and something which may look ok to one set of users may definitely not look ok to another set. Even in Firefox, some of Yecril's earlier experimentations didn't look at all as advertised in his/her own screenshots. And before I upgrade to the "latest version of KDE", I assume that Yecril knows first-hand that this will *not* be an issue should I take the time to upgrade? siℓℓy rabbit ( talk) 15:27, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
See G127. Is this worth saving? Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:19, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Any additional ideas would be welcome. - jc37 06:58, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Originator's explanation: see Category talk:Graphs#Subcategory suggestion, and please continue the discussion there. Twri ( talk) 16:46, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
This article is, while in (IMO) mediocre state, rated A-class. Is there any particular processus to downgrade A-class articles like for GA and FA? Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 21:01, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alexander R. Povolotsky's problem 1. Three articles by this author about his problems have been AfD'd as original research. He claims that the "On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences" where they have entries, is "managed/edited by renowned scientist - Neil Sloane, therefore OEIS reference is a Reliable Source!" I guess the key question is, to what extent are entries there vetted. Anyone know enough to confirm or deny? Opinions would be useful at the AfD. JohnCD ( talk) 16:11, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
It is certainly a respected source, but whether it's reliable is another question. As far as I've been able to verify various things I've found there, it's accurate. There is certainly some vetting, but that doesn't necessarily mean checking all the numbers in submissions. It does mean mathematicians have read the submissions and approved them. Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:39, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
I would call it a reliable source (for WP purposes), certainly. But I agree with Ilmari Karonen that it does not establish notability.
CRGreathouse (
t |
c) 01:23, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi everyone. I think the article should because become a disambiguation page because the meanings of critical value in differential topology and statistics are completely unrelated. It should be split into two different pages. What does everyone else think? Gizza Discuss © 07:41, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree that it should become a disambiguation page. An article is supposed to be about a topic, not about different topics that accidentally have the same name. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:14, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
Just to let editors here know that there's a new mathematics featured article today. I know many project members have contributed to the article (and one is even cited!) so congratulations to all concerned! The main contributor to the article (by a large margin) is WillowW, so some of us are celebrating on her talk page. Geometry guy 20:26, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
AfD here. VG ☎ 02:54, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
From "On this day..." on the "main page:
Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:56, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Copy from archive of this page: "Dubious reference" at Graph isomorphism See Wikipedia:ANI#.22dubious_reference_....22.3F. VG ☎ 23:27, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
User Míkka said "The fact that it is repeated in some obscure articles by persons with little credentials in graph theory bears little weight" about the following persons: 1)M. I. Trofimov 2)E. A. Smolenskii 3)V. N. Zemlyachenko 4)N. M. Korneenko 5)R. I. Tyshkevich 6)R. T. Faizullin 7)A. V. Prolubnikov 8)Jitse Niesen 9)David Eppstein 10)Corneil 11)Gotlieb !!!--Tim32 (talk) 19:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, but Míkka restarted this edit war!-- Tim32 ( talk) 00:08, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to ask someone who is already an expert in plane geometry to look at Parallel postulate and the question at Talk:Parallel_postulate#Equivalence. The issue is whether the parallel postulate is equivalent to Playfair's axiom, and which other axioms are required to prove this equivalence. I recently noticed edits to the article by an IP editor, which also should be double-checked by an expert. Unfortunately I managed to avoid plane geometry in school and know almost no details about it. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:13, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
(See isosceles triangle theorem.)
I wasn't thinking of putting that into the article. Michael Hardy ( talk) 05:15, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Could someone have a look at Kepler's laws? I think the article needs to be rigorously pruned in the amount of mathematical proofs, since they are not illuminating the concepts, but rather tediously proving concepts that are rather easy to visualize. But maybe i'm seeing it wrong. Please discuss on Talk:Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Han-Kwang ( t) 20:56, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
The new article integral expression defines the term as follows: "monomials and polynomials are collectively called to be integral expressions." I have my doubts about this. Can anybody confirm that this definition is correct, preferably by adding a reference? -- Jitse Niesen ( talk) 13:47, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
I just noticed that the criteria of article ratings given at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0#Quality_grading_scheme does often not correspond to the status of given sample articles. For example, [ Trigonometric functions from March 2007] is given as an example for FA, but was recently demoted. Likewise [ this old revision of vector space] counts as B-class. Should we rediscuss the criteria or simply change the given examples? Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 07:28, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
Algebraic number theory is the current Mathematics COTM. A discussion has started at Talk:Algebraic number theory about how much introductory material the article should include, and whether a separate "Introduction to..." article is required for this topic. Wider participation in this discussion would be very welcome. Gandalf61 ( talk) 10:33, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
If one looks up many mathematical articles on wikipedia, a vast number of them would be good articles for a mathematical encyclopedia, but completely lousy ones for a general encyclopedia. Definitions are emphasised above illustration (no 's'), and definitions given are often precise, terse - excellent for a maths textbook, useless for the general encyclopedia.
I think this is inappropriate. We are writing for wikipedia, not mathworld - yet I think the articles on mathworld would be more useful to a non-mathematician.
Yes, I know that some mathematical concepts are difficult. Perhaps some even utterly defy explanation within the grasp of the intelligent layperson. But if we are contributing to a general-purpose encyclopedia, shouldn't we at least try?
mike40033 ( talk) 01:21, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
siℓℓy rabbit ( talk) wrote: "I think the overall consensus is that many mathematics articles would benefit from more examples, more pictures, and more prose." May I add to this: more algorithms, more short listings and more applications? For example, this year I took part in Intel Threading Challenge Contest and in the forum ( http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/) we used mathematical articles from Wiki very intensive. But sometime some Wiki editors try to save "pure mathematical view", see for example Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#"Dubious reference" at Graph isomorphism (2) - edit war restarted!!!: here a few persons want to delete an important link to GI chemical applications because it is link to chemical journal. At the same time I asked them "Can you find many sources about chemical applications in pure mathematical journals? For example, in J. of Graph Theory?" Of course, they could find nothing.I want to show that not only pure mathematical sources have to be used for mathematical articles.-- Tim32 ( talk) 20:12, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm confused here. We started out on a discussion on making mathematics articles more accessible yet have somehow got distracted into a discussion as to whether an emprical result should be included in a specific article. My first thought is that the amount of time devoted to these very narrow discussions is actually distracting us from the task of improving accessibility. Rather than such discussions I'd much rather see the article on Chemical graph theory develop to more than a stub, it could certainly use some illustrations. But then maybe its easier to have a nice flame war than it is to work on articles. -- Salix ( talk): 23:30, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Chemistry always has had a close relation with Graph Theory. Actually, the word "Graph" comes from a paper published in Nature. Shall I recall that most of the terminology of Graph Theory comes from chemistry, that the first paper dedicated to spectral graph theory (E. Hückel, Quantentheoretische Beitrage zum Benzolproblem, Z. Phys. 70(1931), 204-286) was about quantum chemistry, that some graph theorists still study subjects closely related to chemistry (like fullerenes and isomers)... I don't know if you would have the same kind of opposition if one would like to add a reference to Topological Graph Theory in the entry dedicated to Topology? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.198.117.189 ( talk) 19:54, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
An anon added this paragraph to Mathematical notation [6]:
The content seems essentially fine but unpolished; I'm more concerned about the prominence of the addition. Any thoughts? I'm loathe to revert right now.
CRGreathouse ( t | c) 04:52, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
This paragraph is overstating things. When does sin-1x ever mean anything other than arcsin ? Everything needs to be taken in context. In this respect mathematics is no different from any other language. Delaszk ( talk) 06:06, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
There is a difference between
and
The latter may mean you're multiplying s, i, the reciprocal of n, and x. The former does not. Likewise there is a difference between
and
And the part about determinants seems silly. Michael Hardy ( talk) 15:56, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
And, by the way, if it is handwritten on a board, could you make this distinction? Boris Tsirelson ( talk) 20:32, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Interestingly, for n=-1 is not . Well, mathematical formulas are intended for humans only; expressions in a programming language are not. Boris Tsirelson ( talk) 21:37, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
A related observation: about 90 percents of mathematicians of my generation hate programming. (Is it true for new generations?) I was initially puzzled to see it, but then I understood: they hate to be REALLY exact! They express exact relations in non-exact languages (and understand one another exactly). Boris Tsirelson ( talk) 21:59, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
I've made an attempt to write a paragraph which puts things in better perspective. The Mathematical notation article now includes: "Depending on the context, the same symbol or notation can be used to represent different concepts, therefore to fullly understand a piece of mathematical writing it is important to first check the definitions that an author gives for the notations that they have used. This may be problematical if the author assumes the reader knows what they are talking about." Delaszk ( talk) 07:28, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
Let's move this to Talk:Mathematical_notation#Example_of_differing_notation. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:14, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Hello. The new article on Nikolai Nikolaevich Nekhoroshev used to say that he passed away on 19 October of this year. I removed it for the time being because I could not find a source for this, so you will have to look at a previous revision. Can anybody confirm his death? -- Jitse Niesen ( talk) 09:43, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
There is what I believe to be an error on the page for the Cook-Levin theorem. I posted today, and I also found that Taejo had already noticed it. Vegasprof ( talk) 16:11, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
I recently initiated a merge discussion at limit of a function. Of the 4 editors seemed in favor of some type of merge, but one editor is very against. He made the reasonable point that "limit concept is one of the central ones in mathematics, drastic changes in the current configuration should be discussed at WPMath." So I thought I would bring it up here. The articles involved are limit of a function, limit of a sequence, (ε,_δ)-definition_of_limit, and limit (mathematics). Fresh input would be greatly appreciated. Thenub314 ( talk) 21:22, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
I had a quick look, and it indeed appears that the (at least) four existing limit-related articles do not work well together. Starting from the most obvious, there should be no need for (ε,_δ)-definition_of_limit: part of that content belongs to the article that discusses limits on metric spaces (and more specific cases as suitable). If people really insist it should be searchable in WP, one could leave it as a redirect to a relevant section in the right article.
Second, Limit (mathematics) mainly discusses the limit concept in topology, primarily specializing in the "elementary" cases of sequences and functions defined on subsets of R or a more general metric space. Suitably enough Limit (category theory) is mentioned (linked away), while some other limits in mathematics (lim sup, homotopy limits) are not. It would make more sense to have Limit (mathematics) as a disambiguation page, which could use a paragraph or two to discuss the general "flavour" of concepts baptised limits in various parts of mathematics. The discussion of topological limits in their various guises (easily the most notable of these) should be in a separate article, where most of Limit (mathematics) should be moved; it would also be an opportunity to improve the exposition significantly - currently it is essentially left to the reader to work out which definitions are special cases of the more general ones. Limit (mathematical analysis) discussed on the article talk pages would be too specific for this article, where eventually limits of filters and nets should be discussed and linked to the more specialised definitions.
As for Limit of a function and Limit of a sequence, I would keep them as separate articles, link them to the more general limit in topology article and make it clear they are special cases. Some duplication (and more detailed discussion) in these articles would do not harm. But the logical structure of the article should be in line with the logic of the content, so some coordination is needed.
Finally, for whatever reason, much prominence is given in these articles to writing definitions that have just been presented adequatly in plain English again using quantifier´notation. Sometimes this is done as if writing more technical-looking formula (with shorthand that is really seldom used outside blackboard) would make the definition more precise or properly mathematical. If the intention is to make the definitions understandable this additional notational complexity is, at least in my view, not useful. Stca74 ( talk) 12:06, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
I am in agreement with
Stca74, and Carl (
CBM). How do people feel about just merging the ε/δ article and preforming some minor clean up on the others?
Thenub314 (
talk) 15:58, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
See Talk:Gamma function#Baffling rendering of definition, although there's a typo there. It appears that the lead definition is rendering as t≈-1 instead of tz-1, and I don't know why, either. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:29, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
All of the articles mentioned are being discussed on the talk page of semiregular space (I proposed semiregular space for deletion and currently there is a proposal that semiregular space is merged with locally regular space). Please contribute if you have any opinions.
Topology Expert ( talk) 09:42, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
This dispute has sat there for months. Can the mathematical public help settle it? Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:33, 3 November 2008 (UTC)