Any edit to articles should improve the readers ability to understand the subject material. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.106.38.252 ( talk) 22:49, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
While we're talking about maths ratings, I've been noticing loads of mathematics pages on Wikipedia that don't have the wikiproject math tag on their discussion page. I've been tagging whatever I come across but there has been quite a large number of them. Is there an easy way to identify math-related wikipedia pages that don't have the wikiproject math tag? Rybu ( talk) 19:54, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
I should point out there is a benefit to tagging the articles that are most important to us: it helps them get selected for release versions of wikipedia. Wikipedia 0.7, a test release, is almost done, and the goal is to finish Wikipedia 0.8 soon after that now that the tools are more developed. So particularly articles that would be tagged as Top- or High-priority should have a project banner ASAP. But I think most of those are probably already tagged. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 21:46, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
From the archives I see that this has been discussed over an year ago ( here), but I'm not too clear about the situation. It seems currently that Category:GA-Class_mathematics_articles is a strict superset of Category:Bplus-Class_mathematics_articles. The first category actually includes all GA-class articles + Bplus-class articles. Why do we do this? This means all Bplus articles are in two categories. A related question is why do we have Bplus and B, instead of B and C (which would make us consistent with other wikiprojects)? For instance, see Talk:Gottfried_Leibniz where it is rated C-class under WikiProject Mathematics too, to make it consistent with all the other WPs which have assigned it C-class. -- Robin ( talk) 04:39, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
I just changed Euclid from C class to Start since we don't use C. There are over 50 other articles with math rating C; I though it would be a good idea to check before changing all of them. I found some previous discussion about adding C for WPM (see archives 38 and 42) but nothing seems to have come from it. Any thoughts?-- RDBury ( talk) 18:22, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Came across Additive K-theory during my new page patrol. Right now, the article consists of just the formula and nothing else (no explanation, etc.). It definitely can't stay as it is, but I know nothing about this topic to expand the article. Anyone here able to take a look? Singularity42 ( talk) 06:42, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I have proposed David Foreman (mathematician) for deletion (PROD). If you feel Dr. Foreman does meet the standards at WP:PROF, please remove the proposed deletion notice, or discuss the issue on the article's talk page. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 01:19, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Such things as the above are occasionally found in Wikipedia articles. They are not among the things found next to the word "Insert" nor the one found next to "Symbols" in the menu that contains those items and also "Wiki Markup", "Greek", "Cyrillic", etc. Where are they found? Are they tabulated somewhere? Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:54, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Approximately finite dimensional C*-algebra - Bilinear map - Cancellation property - Compact-open topology - Differential geometry of surfaces - Dragon curve - Functor - Galois connection - Graded C*-algebra - Group action - Group ring - Hereditary C*-subalgebra - Integral domain - Kaplansky density theorem - Koszul complex - Lie group - Light's associativity test - Multibrot set - Natural transformation - Noncommutative integral - Permutation group - Polynomial code - Resolution (logic) - Riemannian connection on a surface - Scalar (mathematics) - Similar matrix - Spectrum of a C*-algebra - Table of mathematical symbols - Transfer principle - Vector bundle - Vector flow - Zappa-Szép product
Hi all, I was wondering if we could get some help from this project. I'm working on the Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links project, and one of the most-linked dabs is Limit. This comes almost completely via the redirects Convergence (mathematics) and Limit (mathematics). This is a tricky one, and we don't want to get it wrong. Could someone help us point these articles to the correct target? You can find the lists here and here. Thanks! -- JaGa talk 03:33, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
I've started a discussion on Template talk:Infobox scientist (see here) about the possible removal of the "Religious stance" field from this template. This isn't exactly a mathematical issue, but many mathematician bio's use this template so I thought people here might like the chance to comment. Comments will be appreciated. Cheers, Ben ( talk) 22:27, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks everyone for the input. This has now been removed. Now that most articles using the template will have a superfluous 'religion' field, I'm wondering if anyone know of a bot that can clean up the articles using the template? Or should it just be left? Cheers, Ben ( talk) 22:32, 30 November 2009 (UTC).
I stumbled across this random mathematics page that was posted to the English Wikipedia in Spanish-- Variedad Nehari. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know a thing about advanced mathematics and frankly don't have the least clue what the article is talking about. I gave it a quick translation to English, but it definitely needs some attention by a mathematician for accuracy's sake. I'd like to move the article to an English name, but have no idea what the real name of the concept is, much less whether it's valid or original research (one of the infoboxes added by the original editor raised a bit of a flag with that when the "creator" name matched his username, although there are references cited).
I noticed there's been page requests for Nehari theorem and the Nehari extension problem on the "Missing science pages" list, and the original author seems to translate it to the "Nehari manifold" when he posted the image... Admittedly trawling Google and investigating the results still leaves me lost as to where it may belong, or if it belongs at all. If anyone might be able to give this article a better name, or let me know if it should be suggested for deletion or what... I'd appreciate it. :) Thanks! Tehae ( talk) 00:52, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
I've tagged Variedad Nehari as {{ db-g6}} since there is no need for a redirect from a Spanish translation of the title. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 23:25, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
The mathworld article [2] says is an obsolete term for Tensor product. If that is the case then the article Dyadic tensor should just redirect there instead of having it's own article. Is there some context where Dyadic is still in current usage or is this something that can be added to another article as an aka?-- RDBury ( talk) 02:27, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Actually, this article needs to get merged with dyadics and dyadic product, since they all treat exactly the same object but with slightly different notation. Any suggestions? objections? Sławomir Biały ( talk) 18:56, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Hey, does anyone have Springerlink access? If so, could they email me the various Springerlink papers linked to on my userpage? Thanks, Nousernamesleft ( talk) 23:46, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
The new articles Convolution for Optical Broad-beam Responses in Scattering Media and Monte Carlo method for photon transport read like papers in the IEEE transactions rather than encyclopedia articles. I don't know what to do with them, but something is definitely wrong here. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 21:53, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at talk:Monty Hall problem#Changes suggested by JeffJor, Martin Hogbin, and Glkanter. Rick Block ( talk) 04:06, 3 December 2009 (UTC) (Using {{ Please see}})
To truth value and common conception this time. It looks like we have to have a thread like this once in a while. Pcap ping 02:51, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
We have no list of q-analogs.
After it's created, it should be added to the Lists of mathematics topics. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:16, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I don't yet have any opinions on the new article tited Gaussian q-distribution (beyond the formatting cleanups I did) but an obvious problem is that hardly any articles link to it. Could anyone who knows of any articles that should link to it attent to that? Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:10, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
There is a proposal to delete the article on Robert Williams (geometer). Participants here may wish to comment in the deletion discussion.— Finell 02:50, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
My dear Catalog of articles in probability theory is proposed for deletion. Do you agree? Boris Tsirelson ( talk) 07:01, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
The reason stated in the prod is not entirely accurate. List of mathematics articles is exclusively maintained by a bot, although the article comes just short of explicitly saying that this is what is going on. So the "nonstandard method of editing" is not unprecedented. Moreover, if there is room on Wikipedia for List of mathematics articles, Index of physics articles, Index of logic articles, etc., then there should also be room for a Catalog of articles in probability theory. I'm going to be bold and remove the prod tag. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 08:45, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm obviously opposed to the AfD. See section below for a solution. Pcap ping 11:44, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I think this is the best solution to avoid mishaps, like the above. I suggest we write a template, say Template:Math index edit instructions that displays a warning box like we have for (say) BLP articles in edit mode. It should have a parameter so the link for the editing instructions may vary from one index to another.
To prevent moves that break the bot like we had with the List of mathematics articles sub-articles, I think such articles should be move protected as well. I don't think it's possible to display a warning in that case, but hopefully the sysop trying to move them will hopefully hit edit before moving them... Pcap ping 11:44, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Does anyone besides me ever look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity? This gets updated daily, except when it doesn't. And when it doesn't, I seem to be the only person who notifies Jitse Niesen that it's not happening. The list of mathematics articles supposedly also gets updated daily, except that now that hasn't happened since December 1st. Every time a math category is added to an article, bots add it to that list at the next daily update. I've added some statistics category tags to articles that formerly had only biology-related tags within the past few days; normally that would cause bots to add it to the math articles list, and that in turn would get it mentioned under "New articles" on the "Current activities" page. That has cease happening for several days now. I've notified Oleg Alexandrov and I await developments.
But I'm wondering, am I really the only person who notices when this happens? Or do others notice and assume someone else will attend to it eventually? Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:35, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
"Most of the categories don't have new additions ever day."
What should one infer from that? I don't think there's ever a day when none of them has any additions. I look every day.
There are indeed changes on that page, to things other than new articles. But new articles ceased to get added several days ago. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:46, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I have it on my watchlist, and I often look at the updates. But if it isn't updated, I don't notice that it's missing from the watchlist page. — Dominus ( talk) 22:37, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Oleg has now intervened and mathbot has done its first update of the list of mathematics articles since six days earlier. Thus when Jitse's bot updates the "current activities" page (in about 10 or 11 hours, I think?) it should show more recent new articles than those from the 1st of December. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:10, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
I just created an article on double recursion based upon Robinson's paper (see ref). However, I was not familiar with the topic until I read Robinson's work. For anyone more familiar, is this how the term is generally understood? Also, the use of the phrase "obtained by substitution" seems a bit out of date or imprecise, can anyone suggest a more modern and/or more precise formulation? Thanks, — sligocki ( talk) 01:55, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
Since this is one of the bigger projects, and that a couple of Wikipedia-Books are math-related, could this project adopt the book-class? This would really help WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, as the WP Math people can oversee books like Mathematics much better than we could as far as merging, deletion, content, and such are concerned. Eventually there probably will be a "Books for discussion" process, so that would be incorporated in the Article Alerts. I'm placing this here rather than on the template page since several taskforces would be concerned.
There's an article in this week Signpost if you aren't familiar with Wikipedia-Books and classes in general. Thanks. Headbomb { ταλκ κοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
The reason I ask is that some people object to non-controversial template changes without asking permission first (its rare, but there are people more concerned with bureaucracy and procedure than anything else), which can delay editprotected requests etc... And also because wikipedia-books are relatively unknown, so if there are questions about them I can explain what they are and so on.
What I'm asking of WP Math is simply to keep an eye out on the books to make sure that they make sense, and are POV/OR free in scope. More enthusiastic members could make sure they are well-structured, and that each book is linked to a relevant articles (using {{ Wikipedia-Books}}). Even more enthusiastic members could go through the PDF and see if they render properly. And some could even write books for each of the "big" subfields of mathematics, one on Lie algebra, one on operators, one on linear algebra, etc... But nothing's really "required" of anyone, after all I can't force anyone to do anything :P.
Beyond the mere categorization, is that the project banners should be on the talk page so people looking for help can quickly get to the relevant Wikiprojects. Anyway, seems like there is consensus to make the change, so I'll get on it. If you have questions, just ask. Headbomb { ταλκ κοντριβς – WP Physics} 06:13, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm not convinced automated linking to that article is appropriate because the article as it is now is only about propositional logic, but the links to it are made in more general contexts, e.g. unification. Pcap ping 04:40, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Let's file a request at the Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal. In order to do this, we need:
OK, that's what we need. Let's fill in the blanks so we can file. Ozob ( talk) 23:28, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Where was consensus reached in favor of creating fake subpages like Cardioid/Proofs for proofs? Maybe it's time to revive the discussion on proof guidelines... Balabiot ( talk) 08:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
My personal opinion on these is that if the proof itself is of encyclopedic interest, we should include it in the main article, and take care to write it up clearly. On the other hand, most proofs are not of encyclopedic interest (although they are obviously of mathematical interest). For that sort of thing, the reader would be better served by a proper text, and we should simply point them towards one. Our goal here is to present the highlights of a subject in a few thousand words, rather than to write textbooks.
Looking through three of the articles that RDBury listed, I had a few comments:
— Carl ( CBM · talk) 14:09, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
As far as the proofs with encyclopedic interest are concerned, those would comprise proofs being famous, using a common/wekk known proof technique or similar, they could indeed be handled in the original article. The question however is what to do with average proofs that might be offered as an additional service to readers and how to ensure correctness in such scenarios. I think that if we offer such average proofs, then a proof subpage might be the appropriate place. At least colluding the main article and possibly affecting its structure/readability with such proofs is imho not desirable. A problem that i see with such proofs is maintenance and to assure correctness, which might require more work/effort than checking normal articles. However it is definitely a nice service to readers. In any case this ultimately may need to be addressed or voted by the larger community, because if we formulate a guideline just based on a smaller set of currently involved or active editors (without having necessary a consent in the larger community) then this will be a setup for constant and possibly rather bitter quarrels. I would favour reviving the project mentioned above and making sure, that its outcome is to very least sanctioned with a clear majority by science/math editors at large (not just active portal members).-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 14:52, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
I generally think that Wikipedia is not the place for detailed proofs, unless such proofs are themselves notable. For instance, we currently give two detailed proofs of the Ascoli-Arzela theorem in the article. Only the first of these (the classic diagonalization proof) is worth presenting, in my opinion. However, my own opinions were overridden by two other editors there. As for /proofs subpages, these are almost always detailed proofs of silly/obvious/unimportant facts with very little quality control. Most of these were probably moved out of the main article by someone who felt that they didn't belong there, but was unwilling to delete the material outright. I think it is safe to start taking a harder line on proofs in articles, and especially /proofs subpages. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 20:34, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
My understanding is the following: As WP:Subpages explains, there is no such thing as a "subpage" in the main namespace. For example, Cardioid/Proofs is simply a Wikipedia article, with a somewhat strange title "Cardioid/Proofs". My immediate reaction would be to propose it for deletion: the topic does not seem to be sufficiently notable to merit a stand-alone article (and even if it did, the title should be changed, as it violates WP:NAME). WP:NOHARM isn't an argument to keep articles, regardless of whether their title happens to contain a slash. What am I missing? — Miym ( talk) 21:53, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Just treat as a cleanup issue. The slash construction is ugly, anyway: if the page can't stand up as Proof of X, where X is like "divergence of the harmonic series" or "Lagrange's theorem" or something of the same stature, then it should be deleted if there is no reason to merge. There is no real point of principle. Charles Matthews ( talk) 22:54, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
The following pages may be of some use regarding this topic:
Paul August ☎ 23:00, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Well formalities aside (subpage or its own page, or a side article to main article, etc.) there is still the question, whether we should allow average proofs as a service to readers within WP or not and I still think no matter which way we decide, the decision requires a sanctioning from a larger community nt just a few people discussing that here.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 00:11, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
It seems to me that the discussion is getting into the weeds a bit. To me the immediate question is what to do with articles named 'X/Proofs', not decide what should be done with proofs in general. My impression of the discussion so far is that, regardless of the original justification for creating these articles, the naming convention being used no longer fits Wikipedia guidelines, and something should be done with these articles to bring them into line. I'm also getting the impression that deciding exactly what should be done needs to be on a case by case basis. This first option would be to rename the article to 'Proof of the Y property of X' or something similar. There are already many article like this (see w:Category:Article proofs) but, from what I've seen, many of the article in the list above do not meet notability criteria independently. So it seems that some sort of merge or delete would be appropriate in most cases. I personally don't think deletion is a good idea unless the article is pure cruft and I'm not seeing that in these articles. The worst article I looked at was Parabola/Proofs but I think that can still be cleaned up and merged into the main article. In some cases, such as Addition of natural numbers/Proofs, a move to Wikibooks might be more appropriate. In any case, it seems to be that the next step is to go through the articles and add appropriate tags (merge, wikibooks, etc.) to them so their fate can be discussed on an individual basis, just as with any other articles with names that do not meet guidelines.-- RDBury ( talk) 02:54, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
User:Good Olfactory has been moving articles like Seifert–van Kampen theorem, with an unspaced endash, to the corresponding title Seifert – van Kampen theorem, with a spaced endash. I assume there is decidedly consensus against moves of this kind. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 02:34, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Just so everyone knows, User:Tony1 has reverted my own edit and Ozob's to the MoS. So far at least myself, Ozob, and Michael Hardy have all objected to the current rule in one way or another. This is a long shot from being Wikipedia-wide consensus, but I think folks need to make some noise about this problem. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 12:53, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Is Harold Edwards worth a Wikipedia article?
Not pleased with this nomination: basically no discussion before nomination, snarling up the process of cleanup of the contribution. The title is hopeless. After investigation, this looks to me like a merge into Connes embedding conjecture, which also needs cleanup. The mathematics involved is serious current research. There is a relist notice on the AfD, so now would be the time to get this back on track. Charles Matthews ( talk) 08:29, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Maybe someone can improve on this edit or on the article generally. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:25, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
If anyone is familiar with Noncommutative measure and integration, it's a stub with a lot of potential for expansion. I rewrote the first sentence to remove an excessively close paraphrase, but I don't know enough about the field to add any decent context to the article. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 23:04, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Recently the Asymptote article was almost completely rewritten with no prior discussion much less consensus. See this diff [12]. This is a highly visible article (it just misses being a top 500 most viewed) so I am requesting comment on the changes. I've already put in my opinion at Talk:Asymptote#Recent changes.-- RDBury ( talk) 22:59, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
We are thinking of adding a section with maths and logic symbols in the edittools that you see below the edit window when editing any page here at Wikipedia. We could need some help from the maths people here to get that section right. See discussion at MediaWiki talk:Edittools#Math and logic.
-- David Göthberg ( talk) 13:56, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
The other day I added a couple dozen article to the 'Articles containing proofs' category and it appears to have caused a couple of them to be added to the list of mathematical articles. While I expect that 99% of the articles that contain proofs will be mathematical, is that enough of a certainty that the article should automatically go to WPM? There might be articles in theoretical physics or philosophy, for example, that contain proofs but should not necessarily be considered mathematical articles. In any case, I would would hope that mathematical articles in this category would be categorized sufficiently in other ways so that it is unnecessary to use this as a criterion.-- RDBury ( talk) 19:07, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Proof for 1st exponential integral was just created, and I don't know what to think of it. Is this an appropriate article? Nyttend ( talk) 03:38, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
I would merge Lazy S to Table of mathematical symbols but I have never encountered a lazy S and can't say what they are used for. The symbol from the article is "∽", which is not \sim "". Does anyone else know what a lazy S is good for, apart from cattle branding? — Carl ( CBM · talk) 18:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
The above issue and some of the other recent threads have convinced me that is is high time to turn the seemingly endless discussion about proofs in Wikipedia into an actual guideline. To further that end, I've drafted an outline of what that proposal should be and put it on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs with the intent that, after due discussion and editing, it will be put on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs and fleshed out. If you are interested in this issue, please go over the outline and add appropriate comments.
On a related topic, I've also been going through the list of articles named 'X/Proofs' with an eye toward renaming them or merging them with other articles as a result of an earlier thread. See User:RDBury/Proofs articles for cleanup for the current status. The article most recently tagged for a merge was Ellipse which is a top 500 article.-- RDBury ( talk) 11:37, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
In addition to the "/Proofs" articles discussed above, we also have a few "Examples" articles. One particularly bad one is Examples of boundary value problems. I redirected it to Boundary value problem in November, but some IP undid that today. I don't want to have anything else to do with it. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 22:57, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Just like the proofs articles discussed above, we have an article Turing machine gallery which cannot stand alone, due to lack of context. However, the article clearly states at the top that "The following article is a supplement to the article Turing machine." Is this sort of article fine? -- Robin ( talk) 23:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
The person who did this edit is unwilling to explain to me in what respect the article looked like a "personal reflection". It seems to me I've seen that tag added to the tops of articles a fairly large number of times and I've never understood any of them. Is it possible that there are some people to whom any writing on the subject of mathematics looks like "personal reflection"? I don't know why that would happen, but it might explain some of what I've seen. Michael Hardy ( talk) 15:27, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Jezhotwells: Your only answer on your talk page was your statement that it looked like a personal reflection or essay, so you tagged it accordingly. Then I asked in what respect it looked like a personal reflection or essay, since I saw not even the faintest resemblance to anything like that. You never answered, nor did you respond to my email. I don't see how the version that you tagged could appear to anyone to look like a personal reflection or essay. I thought maybe you could explain that. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:53, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Et tu, Brute? From one of our own senior editors. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 14:32, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Here is a list of math articles tagged with {{ Essay-like}}. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 15:56, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
essay-like
parameter, or just {{essay-like}}
itself?
Algebraist 18:30, 18 December 2009 (UTC)Re Algebraist: the original list was just {{ essay}}. I did another query using the relevant category, then thinned that down to just "essay" complaints. That leaves the following articles. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 19:16, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Another thought: Part of the problem may be the template itself could be worded better. If you follow the link you find the statement "[P]lease do not use Wikipedia for ... [p]ersonal essays that state your particular feelings about a topic." It wasn't clear to me (at least) that that's what the template is supposed to point out until I actually followed the link. It's a bit more serious an issue the stylistic one I thought the tag was about, which is it seems to be used for. And if this is actually the correct interpretation then it's hard to see when it would ever be properly applied to a math article. OR I can see, but are people going to write an article on what they think of the Leibniz and Newton calculus controversy?-- RDBury ( talk) 19:31, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Here's another guess: People see the phrase "Let X be a bounded linear operator...." and think that phrasing something with an imperative verb form is an expression of personal feelings. Or they see the phrase "thus we conclude that..." in the middle of a proof and think that's an argument for one's personal take on something. Once I actually did see a math article tagged as a "personal reflection or essay" with an edit summary saying it was because the word "we" was used in that way in the middle of the somewhat long article. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:18, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm being told at
user talk:jezhotwells that the following sorts of things are what justifies labeling an article as like as essay or personal reflection:
Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:21, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Maybe there should be a more specific tag, for inappropriate use of first person? It really is proscribed by our manual of style, most of our mathematics articles already successfully avoid it, and in most cases it's easy to avoid. Of course, the issue would be not so much creating the tag as persuading the drive-by taggers to use the right tag. — David Eppstein ( talk) 16:00, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Conventions on first-person pronouns should not apply to figures of speech that no one would take literally. In a google search for the phrase "we assume", restricted to en.wikipedia.org, I find several thousand hits, and 19 of the first 20 are for mathematics-related articles. Maybe non-mathematicians are not so familiar with this conventional usage. Still, it seems irresponsible to treat it as if it's intended literally. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:17, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
How would your reasoning apply to the exception stated in the manual: "No intact copies of this ancient work have come down to us", or something like that? Certainly there are cases in which there are better ways to phrase something than the editorial "we". "We assume throughout the proof that the formal system remains fixed" could be said in other ways, but the reasons why your recent edit to pizza theorem is an improvement don't seem to apply to that case. Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:16, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Jezhotwells: Wikipedia is supposed to be collegial. I had to post to your page several times and send you an email before you would even tell me what you found essay-like in certain articles you tagged. This was BEFORE the postings you later characterized as "long-winded rantings". You still haven't answered in regard to one particular article you tagged, that never contained any of the sorts of pronouns that offended you. Why would you simply ignore an inquiry like that? Wikipedians should collaborate. Michael Hardy ( talk) 07:43, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Does anyone have thoughts on Template:SubSup? It's far from standard practice; I am contemplating nominating it for deletion, but maybe there is a use for it. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 01:26, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Trigintaduonion has been nominated for deletion. Gandalf61 ( talk) 16:06, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Hypercube is becoming more infested with bizarre made-up terminology (e.g. "nulleract", a word with a grand total of zero hits in MathSciNet ⋃ Google scholar). More eyes on it and the other edits of Distortiondude ( talk · contribs) would be appreciated. — David Eppstein ( talk) 03:09, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Is anyone able to have a quick look at Fundamental lemma of Langlands and Shelstad please? I don't really know anything about the topic, but the first sentence just doesn't seem to make sense. Cheers, Ben ( talk) 18:13, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Please watch the page Hilbert's second problem; there is a dispute over the statement of the problem.
CRGreathouse ( t | c) 04:00, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
A certain editor who seems to have been following me around for the past few days seems to be convinced that GJMS operator should be merged to Paneitz operator. Comments in the interest of expediting a so-called "consensus" that I am expected to "wait for" are appreciated. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 17:22, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I just wanted to call attention to two articles from the copyvio cleanup effort. There are now a bunch of article that have been tagged and may be deleted in a week or less if they aren't fixed. The two I wanted to mention in particular are:
-- RDBury ( talk) 18:57, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I just looked at the former Measure algebra and at the corresponding paper "THE MEASURE ALGEBRA DOES NOT ALWAYS EMBED" by ALAN DOW AND KLAAS PIETER HART. I did not find any copyvio. The main theorem is formulated shortly in the WP article; is it forbidden? No phrases from the introduction copied, no fragments of proofs, nothing like that. The due credit is given to the source (and some other sources are cited). What should I (we) do with it? Boris Tsirelson ( talk) 16:34, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Hessian form of an elliptic curve is quite obviously in need of some work. Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:13, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
On a completely unrelated note, can I request people to use the "new section" button to start new sections instead of section-editing the last section on the page? This makes it much easier for people reading edit summaries. -- Robin ( talk) 04:19, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
The article titled sixth dimension smells a bit funny. What do we think? (Maybe I'll look more closely tomorrow......) Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
To RDBury's question: I found this simply by looking at the daily list of new articles on the current activities page, and I look at that every day. Michael Hardy ( talk) 05:32, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Anyone up for a short-term collaboration (a week or so) on a basic (undergrad or lower), medium-sized article?
Potential articles I might enjoy improving (in a random order): Gaussian integer; Fundamental theorem of Galois theory, Seifert–van Kampen theorem, some graph theory, some logic, etc.
Would be nice to reach GA but I don't want to put myself any pressure. 92.149.147.129 ( talk) 00:22, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I went ahead and remove collaboration of the month from the project page. It doesn't look like there is moch interest in a revival and it's embarrassing to have the link if it doesn't go anywhere.-- RDBury ( talk) 11:17, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
It has long seemed to me that when "=" or the like follows a piecewise definition like this, a right curly brace of the same size as the left brace should precede it. Is there a way to do that using \cases or does it require manual insertion? Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:39, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
I've edited normal distribution, using \left. and \right\} for this thing. Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:41, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
Just to let everyone know, I have changed the "Mathematics Collaboration of the Month" to Polynomial identity ring. A lot of research has been done on such rings lately; it has proved an extremely useful tool by which one may probe deeply into the structure of both commutative and noncommutative rings. -- PS T 13:50, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
How can I join? Protactinium-231 (talk) 14:55, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
Comments are welcome at Talk:Spherical harmonics. The current revision is sourced to Courant and Hilbert's classic text. An editor wishes to change the treatment from the established one. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 22:28, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
Can someone take a look at this software (nominated for deletion) and see if it's worthy of mention in radial basis functions? Thanks, Pcap ping 01:24, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
Unless I missed it, the article titled two-sided Laplace transform does not mention that that transform is one-to-one. Do we have an article we could link to that either states or proves that result? Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:41, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
Any edit to articles should improve the readers ability to understand the subject material. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.106.38.252 ( talk) 22:49, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
While we're talking about maths ratings, I've been noticing loads of mathematics pages on Wikipedia that don't have the wikiproject math tag on their discussion page. I've been tagging whatever I come across but there has been quite a large number of them. Is there an easy way to identify math-related wikipedia pages that don't have the wikiproject math tag? Rybu ( talk) 19:54, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
I should point out there is a benefit to tagging the articles that are most important to us: it helps them get selected for release versions of wikipedia. Wikipedia 0.7, a test release, is almost done, and the goal is to finish Wikipedia 0.8 soon after that now that the tools are more developed. So particularly articles that would be tagged as Top- or High-priority should have a project banner ASAP. But I think most of those are probably already tagged. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 21:46, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
From the archives I see that this has been discussed over an year ago ( here), but I'm not too clear about the situation. It seems currently that Category:GA-Class_mathematics_articles is a strict superset of Category:Bplus-Class_mathematics_articles. The first category actually includes all GA-class articles + Bplus-class articles. Why do we do this? This means all Bplus articles are in two categories. A related question is why do we have Bplus and B, instead of B and C (which would make us consistent with other wikiprojects)? For instance, see Talk:Gottfried_Leibniz where it is rated C-class under WikiProject Mathematics too, to make it consistent with all the other WPs which have assigned it C-class. -- Robin ( talk) 04:39, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
I just changed Euclid from C class to Start since we don't use C. There are over 50 other articles with math rating C; I though it would be a good idea to check before changing all of them. I found some previous discussion about adding C for WPM (see archives 38 and 42) but nothing seems to have come from it. Any thoughts?-- RDBury ( talk) 18:22, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Came across Additive K-theory during my new page patrol. Right now, the article consists of just the formula and nothing else (no explanation, etc.). It definitely can't stay as it is, but I know nothing about this topic to expand the article. Anyone here able to take a look? Singularity42 ( talk) 06:42, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I have proposed David Foreman (mathematician) for deletion (PROD). If you feel Dr. Foreman does meet the standards at WP:PROF, please remove the proposed deletion notice, or discuss the issue on the article's talk page. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 01:19, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Such things as the above are occasionally found in Wikipedia articles. They are not among the things found next to the word "Insert" nor the one found next to "Symbols" in the menu that contains those items and also "Wiki Markup", "Greek", "Cyrillic", etc. Where are they found? Are they tabulated somewhere? Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:54, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Approximately finite dimensional C*-algebra - Bilinear map - Cancellation property - Compact-open topology - Differential geometry of surfaces - Dragon curve - Functor - Galois connection - Graded C*-algebra - Group action - Group ring - Hereditary C*-subalgebra - Integral domain - Kaplansky density theorem - Koszul complex - Lie group - Light's associativity test - Multibrot set - Natural transformation - Noncommutative integral - Permutation group - Polynomial code - Resolution (logic) - Riemannian connection on a surface - Scalar (mathematics) - Similar matrix - Spectrum of a C*-algebra - Table of mathematical symbols - Transfer principle - Vector bundle - Vector flow - Zappa-Szép product
Hi all, I was wondering if we could get some help from this project. I'm working on the Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links project, and one of the most-linked dabs is Limit. This comes almost completely via the redirects Convergence (mathematics) and Limit (mathematics). This is a tricky one, and we don't want to get it wrong. Could someone help us point these articles to the correct target? You can find the lists here and here. Thanks! -- JaGa talk 03:33, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
I've started a discussion on Template talk:Infobox scientist (see here) about the possible removal of the "Religious stance" field from this template. This isn't exactly a mathematical issue, but many mathematician bio's use this template so I thought people here might like the chance to comment. Comments will be appreciated. Cheers, Ben ( talk) 22:27, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks everyone for the input. This has now been removed. Now that most articles using the template will have a superfluous 'religion' field, I'm wondering if anyone know of a bot that can clean up the articles using the template? Or should it just be left? Cheers, Ben ( talk) 22:32, 30 November 2009 (UTC).
I stumbled across this random mathematics page that was posted to the English Wikipedia in Spanish-- Variedad Nehari. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know a thing about advanced mathematics and frankly don't have the least clue what the article is talking about. I gave it a quick translation to English, but it definitely needs some attention by a mathematician for accuracy's sake. I'd like to move the article to an English name, but have no idea what the real name of the concept is, much less whether it's valid or original research (one of the infoboxes added by the original editor raised a bit of a flag with that when the "creator" name matched his username, although there are references cited).
I noticed there's been page requests for Nehari theorem and the Nehari extension problem on the "Missing science pages" list, and the original author seems to translate it to the "Nehari manifold" when he posted the image... Admittedly trawling Google and investigating the results still leaves me lost as to where it may belong, or if it belongs at all. If anyone might be able to give this article a better name, or let me know if it should be suggested for deletion or what... I'd appreciate it. :) Thanks! Tehae ( talk) 00:52, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
I've tagged Variedad Nehari as {{ db-g6}} since there is no need for a redirect from a Spanish translation of the title. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 23:25, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
The mathworld article [2] says is an obsolete term for Tensor product. If that is the case then the article Dyadic tensor should just redirect there instead of having it's own article. Is there some context where Dyadic is still in current usage or is this something that can be added to another article as an aka?-- RDBury ( talk) 02:27, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Actually, this article needs to get merged with dyadics and dyadic product, since they all treat exactly the same object but with slightly different notation. Any suggestions? objections? Sławomir Biały ( talk) 18:56, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Hey, does anyone have Springerlink access? If so, could they email me the various Springerlink papers linked to on my userpage? Thanks, Nousernamesleft ( talk) 23:46, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
The new articles Convolution for Optical Broad-beam Responses in Scattering Media and Monte Carlo method for photon transport read like papers in the IEEE transactions rather than encyclopedia articles. I don't know what to do with them, but something is definitely wrong here. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 21:53, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at talk:Monty Hall problem#Changes suggested by JeffJor, Martin Hogbin, and Glkanter. Rick Block ( talk) 04:06, 3 December 2009 (UTC) (Using {{ Please see}})
To truth value and common conception this time. It looks like we have to have a thread like this once in a while. Pcap ping 02:51, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
We have no list of q-analogs.
After it's created, it should be added to the Lists of mathematics topics. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:16, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I don't yet have any opinions on the new article tited Gaussian q-distribution (beyond the formatting cleanups I did) but an obvious problem is that hardly any articles link to it. Could anyone who knows of any articles that should link to it attent to that? Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:10, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
There is a proposal to delete the article on Robert Williams (geometer). Participants here may wish to comment in the deletion discussion.— Finell 02:50, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
My dear Catalog of articles in probability theory is proposed for deletion. Do you agree? Boris Tsirelson ( talk) 07:01, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
The reason stated in the prod is not entirely accurate. List of mathematics articles is exclusively maintained by a bot, although the article comes just short of explicitly saying that this is what is going on. So the "nonstandard method of editing" is not unprecedented. Moreover, if there is room on Wikipedia for List of mathematics articles, Index of physics articles, Index of logic articles, etc., then there should also be room for a Catalog of articles in probability theory. I'm going to be bold and remove the prod tag. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 08:45, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm obviously opposed to the AfD. See section below for a solution. Pcap ping 11:44, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I think this is the best solution to avoid mishaps, like the above. I suggest we write a template, say Template:Math index edit instructions that displays a warning box like we have for (say) BLP articles in edit mode. It should have a parameter so the link for the editing instructions may vary from one index to another.
To prevent moves that break the bot like we had with the List of mathematics articles sub-articles, I think such articles should be move protected as well. I don't think it's possible to display a warning in that case, but hopefully the sysop trying to move them will hopefully hit edit before moving them... Pcap ping 11:44, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Does anyone besides me ever look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity? This gets updated daily, except when it doesn't. And when it doesn't, I seem to be the only person who notifies Jitse Niesen that it's not happening. The list of mathematics articles supposedly also gets updated daily, except that now that hasn't happened since December 1st. Every time a math category is added to an article, bots add it to that list at the next daily update. I've added some statistics category tags to articles that formerly had only biology-related tags within the past few days; normally that would cause bots to add it to the math articles list, and that in turn would get it mentioned under "New articles" on the "Current activities" page. That has cease happening for several days now. I've notified Oleg Alexandrov and I await developments.
But I'm wondering, am I really the only person who notices when this happens? Or do others notice and assume someone else will attend to it eventually? Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:35, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
"Most of the categories don't have new additions ever day."
What should one infer from that? I don't think there's ever a day when none of them has any additions. I look every day.
There are indeed changes on that page, to things other than new articles. But new articles ceased to get added several days ago. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:46, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I have it on my watchlist, and I often look at the updates. But if it isn't updated, I don't notice that it's missing from the watchlist page. — Dominus ( talk) 22:37, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Oleg has now intervened and mathbot has done its first update of the list of mathematics articles since six days earlier. Thus when Jitse's bot updates the "current activities" page (in about 10 or 11 hours, I think?) it should show more recent new articles than those from the 1st of December. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:10, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
I just created an article on double recursion based upon Robinson's paper (see ref). However, I was not familiar with the topic until I read Robinson's work. For anyone more familiar, is this how the term is generally understood? Also, the use of the phrase "obtained by substitution" seems a bit out of date or imprecise, can anyone suggest a more modern and/or more precise formulation? Thanks, — sligocki ( talk) 01:55, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
Since this is one of the bigger projects, and that a couple of Wikipedia-Books are math-related, could this project adopt the book-class? This would really help WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, as the WP Math people can oversee books like Mathematics much better than we could as far as merging, deletion, content, and such are concerned. Eventually there probably will be a "Books for discussion" process, so that would be incorporated in the Article Alerts. I'm placing this here rather than on the template page since several taskforces would be concerned.
There's an article in this week Signpost if you aren't familiar with Wikipedia-Books and classes in general. Thanks. Headbomb { ταλκ κοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
The reason I ask is that some people object to non-controversial template changes without asking permission first (its rare, but there are people more concerned with bureaucracy and procedure than anything else), which can delay editprotected requests etc... And also because wikipedia-books are relatively unknown, so if there are questions about them I can explain what they are and so on.
What I'm asking of WP Math is simply to keep an eye out on the books to make sure that they make sense, and are POV/OR free in scope. More enthusiastic members could make sure they are well-structured, and that each book is linked to a relevant articles (using {{ Wikipedia-Books}}). Even more enthusiastic members could go through the PDF and see if they render properly. And some could even write books for each of the "big" subfields of mathematics, one on Lie algebra, one on operators, one on linear algebra, etc... But nothing's really "required" of anyone, after all I can't force anyone to do anything :P.
Beyond the mere categorization, is that the project banners should be on the talk page so people looking for help can quickly get to the relevant Wikiprojects. Anyway, seems like there is consensus to make the change, so I'll get on it. If you have questions, just ask. Headbomb { ταλκ κοντριβς – WP Physics} 06:13, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm not convinced automated linking to that article is appropriate because the article as it is now is only about propositional logic, but the links to it are made in more general contexts, e.g. unification. Pcap ping 04:40, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Let's file a request at the Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal. In order to do this, we need:
OK, that's what we need. Let's fill in the blanks so we can file. Ozob ( talk) 23:28, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Where was consensus reached in favor of creating fake subpages like Cardioid/Proofs for proofs? Maybe it's time to revive the discussion on proof guidelines... Balabiot ( talk) 08:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
My personal opinion on these is that if the proof itself is of encyclopedic interest, we should include it in the main article, and take care to write it up clearly. On the other hand, most proofs are not of encyclopedic interest (although they are obviously of mathematical interest). For that sort of thing, the reader would be better served by a proper text, and we should simply point them towards one. Our goal here is to present the highlights of a subject in a few thousand words, rather than to write textbooks.
Looking through three of the articles that RDBury listed, I had a few comments:
— Carl ( CBM · talk) 14:09, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
As far as the proofs with encyclopedic interest are concerned, those would comprise proofs being famous, using a common/wekk known proof technique or similar, they could indeed be handled in the original article. The question however is what to do with average proofs that might be offered as an additional service to readers and how to ensure correctness in such scenarios. I think that if we offer such average proofs, then a proof subpage might be the appropriate place. At least colluding the main article and possibly affecting its structure/readability with such proofs is imho not desirable. A problem that i see with such proofs is maintenance and to assure correctness, which might require more work/effort than checking normal articles. However it is definitely a nice service to readers. In any case this ultimately may need to be addressed or voted by the larger community, because if we formulate a guideline just based on a smaller set of currently involved or active editors (without having necessary a consent in the larger community) then this will be a setup for constant and possibly rather bitter quarrels. I would favour reviving the project mentioned above and making sure, that its outcome is to very least sanctioned with a clear majority by science/math editors at large (not just active portal members).-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 14:52, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
I generally think that Wikipedia is not the place for detailed proofs, unless such proofs are themselves notable. For instance, we currently give two detailed proofs of the Ascoli-Arzela theorem in the article. Only the first of these (the classic diagonalization proof) is worth presenting, in my opinion. However, my own opinions were overridden by two other editors there. As for /proofs subpages, these are almost always detailed proofs of silly/obvious/unimportant facts with very little quality control. Most of these were probably moved out of the main article by someone who felt that they didn't belong there, but was unwilling to delete the material outright. I think it is safe to start taking a harder line on proofs in articles, and especially /proofs subpages. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 20:34, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
My understanding is the following: As WP:Subpages explains, there is no such thing as a "subpage" in the main namespace. For example, Cardioid/Proofs is simply a Wikipedia article, with a somewhat strange title "Cardioid/Proofs". My immediate reaction would be to propose it for deletion: the topic does not seem to be sufficiently notable to merit a stand-alone article (and even if it did, the title should be changed, as it violates WP:NAME). WP:NOHARM isn't an argument to keep articles, regardless of whether their title happens to contain a slash. What am I missing? — Miym ( talk) 21:53, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Just treat as a cleanup issue. The slash construction is ugly, anyway: if the page can't stand up as Proof of X, where X is like "divergence of the harmonic series" or "Lagrange's theorem" or something of the same stature, then it should be deleted if there is no reason to merge. There is no real point of principle. Charles Matthews ( talk) 22:54, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
The following pages may be of some use regarding this topic:
Paul August ☎ 23:00, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Well formalities aside (subpage or its own page, or a side article to main article, etc.) there is still the question, whether we should allow average proofs as a service to readers within WP or not and I still think no matter which way we decide, the decision requires a sanctioning from a larger community nt just a few people discussing that here.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 00:11, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
It seems to me that the discussion is getting into the weeds a bit. To me the immediate question is what to do with articles named 'X/Proofs', not decide what should be done with proofs in general. My impression of the discussion so far is that, regardless of the original justification for creating these articles, the naming convention being used no longer fits Wikipedia guidelines, and something should be done with these articles to bring them into line. I'm also getting the impression that deciding exactly what should be done needs to be on a case by case basis. This first option would be to rename the article to 'Proof of the Y property of X' or something similar. There are already many article like this (see w:Category:Article proofs) but, from what I've seen, many of the article in the list above do not meet notability criteria independently. So it seems that some sort of merge or delete would be appropriate in most cases. I personally don't think deletion is a good idea unless the article is pure cruft and I'm not seeing that in these articles. The worst article I looked at was Parabola/Proofs but I think that can still be cleaned up and merged into the main article. In some cases, such as Addition of natural numbers/Proofs, a move to Wikibooks might be more appropriate. In any case, it seems to be that the next step is to go through the articles and add appropriate tags (merge, wikibooks, etc.) to them so their fate can be discussed on an individual basis, just as with any other articles with names that do not meet guidelines.-- RDBury ( talk) 02:54, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
User:Good Olfactory has been moving articles like Seifert–van Kampen theorem, with an unspaced endash, to the corresponding title Seifert – van Kampen theorem, with a spaced endash. I assume there is decidedly consensus against moves of this kind. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 02:34, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Just so everyone knows, User:Tony1 has reverted my own edit and Ozob's to the MoS. So far at least myself, Ozob, and Michael Hardy have all objected to the current rule in one way or another. This is a long shot from being Wikipedia-wide consensus, but I think folks need to make some noise about this problem. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 12:53, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Is Harold Edwards worth a Wikipedia article?
Not pleased with this nomination: basically no discussion before nomination, snarling up the process of cleanup of the contribution. The title is hopeless. After investigation, this looks to me like a merge into Connes embedding conjecture, which also needs cleanup. The mathematics involved is serious current research. There is a relist notice on the AfD, so now would be the time to get this back on track. Charles Matthews ( talk) 08:29, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Maybe someone can improve on this edit or on the article generally. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:25, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
If anyone is familiar with Noncommutative measure and integration, it's a stub with a lot of potential for expansion. I rewrote the first sentence to remove an excessively close paraphrase, but I don't know enough about the field to add any decent context to the article. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 23:04, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Recently the Asymptote article was almost completely rewritten with no prior discussion much less consensus. See this diff [12]. This is a highly visible article (it just misses being a top 500 most viewed) so I am requesting comment on the changes. I've already put in my opinion at Talk:Asymptote#Recent changes.-- RDBury ( talk) 22:59, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
We are thinking of adding a section with maths and logic symbols in the edittools that you see below the edit window when editing any page here at Wikipedia. We could need some help from the maths people here to get that section right. See discussion at MediaWiki talk:Edittools#Math and logic.
-- David Göthberg ( talk) 13:56, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
The other day I added a couple dozen article to the 'Articles containing proofs' category and it appears to have caused a couple of them to be added to the list of mathematical articles. While I expect that 99% of the articles that contain proofs will be mathematical, is that enough of a certainty that the article should automatically go to WPM? There might be articles in theoretical physics or philosophy, for example, that contain proofs but should not necessarily be considered mathematical articles. In any case, I would would hope that mathematical articles in this category would be categorized sufficiently in other ways so that it is unnecessary to use this as a criterion.-- RDBury ( talk) 19:07, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Proof for 1st exponential integral was just created, and I don't know what to think of it. Is this an appropriate article? Nyttend ( talk) 03:38, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
I would merge Lazy S to Table of mathematical symbols but I have never encountered a lazy S and can't say what they are used for. The symbol from the article is "∽", which is not \sim "". Does anyone else know what a lazy S is good for, apart from cattle branding? — Carl ( CBM · talk) 18:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
The above issue and some of the other recent threads have convinced me that is is high time to turn the seemingly endless discussion about proofs in Wikipedia into an actual guideline. To further that end, I've drafted an outline of what that proposal should be and put it on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs with the intent that, after due discussion and editing, it will be put on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs and fleshed out. If you are interested in this issue, please go over the outline and add appropriate comments.
On a related topic, I've also been going through the list of articles named 'X/Proofs' with an eye toward renaming them or merging them with other articles as a result of an earlier thread. See User:RDBury/Proofs articles for cleanup for the current status. The article most recently tagged for a merge was Ellipse which is a top 500 article.-- RDBury ( talk) 11:37, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
In addition to the "/Proofs" articles discussed above, we also have a few "Examples" articles. One particularly bad one is Examples of boundary value problems. I redirected it to Boundary value problem in November, but some IP undid that today. I don't want to have anything else to do with it. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 22:57, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Just like the proofs articles discussed above, we have an article Turing machine gallery which cannot stand alone, due to lack of context. However, the article clearly states at the top that "The following article is a supplement to the article Turing machine." Is this sort of article fine? -- Robin ( talk) 23:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
The person who did this edit is unwilling to explain to me in what respect the article looked like a "personal reflection". It seems to me I've seen that tag added to the tops of articles a fairly large number of times and I've never understood any of them. Is it possible that there are some people to whom any writing on the subject of mathematics looks like "personal reflection"? I don't know why that would happen, but it might explain some of what I've seen. Michael Hardy ( talk) 15:27, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Jezhotwells: Your only answer on your talk page was your statement that it looked like a personal reflection or essay, so you tagged it accordingly. Then I asked in what respect it looked like a personal reflection or essay, since I saw not even the faintest resemblance to anything like that. You never answered, nor did you respond to my email. I don't see how the version that you tagged could appear to anyone to look like a personal reflection or essay. I thought maybe you could explain that. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:53, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Et tu, Brute? From one of our own senior editors. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 14:32, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Here is a list of math articles tagged with {{ Essay-like}}. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 15:56, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
essay-like
parameter, or just {{essay-like}}
itself?
Algebraist 18:30, 18 December 2009 (UTC)Re Algebraist: the original list was just {{ essay}}. I did another query using the relevant category, then thinned that down to just "essay" complaints. That leaves the following articles. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 19:16, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Another thought: Part of the problem may be the template itself could be worded better. If you follow the link you find the statement "[P]lease do not use Wikipedia for ... [p]ersonal essays that state your particular feelings about a topic." It wasn't clear to me (at least) that that's what the template is supposed to point out until I actually followed the link. It's a bit more serious an issue the stylistic one I thought the tag was about, which is it seems to be used for. And if this is actually the correct interpretation then it's hard to see when it would ever be properly applied to a math article. OR I can see, but are people going to write an article on what they think of the Leibniz and Newton calculus controversy?-- RDBury ( talk) 19:31, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Here's another guess: People see the phrase "Let X be a bounded linear operator...." and think that phrasing something with an imperative verb form is an expression of personal feelings. Or they see the phrase "thus we conclude that..." in the middle of a proof and think that's an argument for one's personal take on something. Once I actually did see a math article tagged as a "personal reflection or essay" with an edit summary saying it was because the word "we" was used in that way in the middle of the somewhat long article. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:18, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm being told at
user talk:jezhotwells that the following sorts of things are what justifies labeling an article as like as essay or personal reflection:
Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:21, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Maybe there should be a more specific tag, for inappropriate use of first person? It really is proscribed by our manual of style, most of our mathematics articles already successfully avoid it, and in most cases it's easy to avoid. Of course, the issue would be not so much creating the tag as persuading the drive-by taggers to use the right tag. — David Eppstein ( talk) 16:00, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Conventions on first-person pronouns should not apply to figures of speech that no one would take literally. In a google search for the phrase "we assume", restricted to en.wikipedia.org, I find several thousand hits, and 19 of the first 20 are for mathematics-related articles. Maybe non-mathematicians are not so familiar with this conventional usage. Still, it seems irresponsible to treat it as if it's intended literally. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:17, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
How would your reasoning apply to the exception stated in the manual: "No intact copies of this ancient work have come down to us", or something like that? Certainly there are cases in which there are better ways to phrase something than the editorial "we". "We assume throughout the proof that the formal system remains fixed" could be said in other ways, but the reasons why your recent edit to pizza theorem is an improvement don't seem to apply to that case. Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:16, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Jezhotwells: Wikipedia is supposed to be collegial. I had to post to your page several times and send you an email before you would even tell me what you found essay-like in certain articles you tagged. This was BEFORE the postings you later characterized as "long-winded rantings". You still haven't answered in regard to one particular article you tagged, that never contained any of the sorts of pronouns that offended you. Why would you simply ignore an inquiry like that? Wikipedians should collaborate. Michael Hardy ( talk) 07:43, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Does anyone have thoughts on Template:SubSup? It's far from standard practice; I am contemplating nominating it for deletion, but maybe there is a use for it. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 01:26, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Trigintaduonion has been nominated for deletion. Gandalf61 ( talk) 16:06, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Hypercube is becoming more infested with bizarre made-up terminology (e.g. "nulleract", a word with a grand total of zero hits in MathSciNet ⋃ Google scholar). More eyes on it and the other edits of Distortiondude ( talk · contribs) would be appreciated. — David Eppstein ( talk) 03:09, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Is anyone able to have a quick look at Fundamental lemma of Langlands and Shelstad please? I don't really know anything about the topic, but the first sentence just doesn't seem to make sense. Cheers, Ben ( talk) 18:13, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Please watch the page Hilbert's second problem; there is a dispute over the statement of the problem.
CRGreathouse ( t | c) 04:00, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
A certain editor who seems to have been following me around for the past few days seems to be convinced that GJMS operator should be merged to Paneitz operator. Comments in the interest of expediting a so-called "consensus" that I am expected to "wait for" are appreciated. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 17:22, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I just wanted to call attention to two articles from the copyvio cleanup effort. There are now a bunch of article that have been tagged and may be deleted in a week or less if they aren't fixed. The two I wanted to mention in particular are:
-- RDBury ( talk) 18:57, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I just looked at the former Measure algebra and at the corresponding paper "THE MEASURE ALGEBRA DOES NOT ALWAYS EMBED" by ALAN DOW AND KLAAS PIETER HART. I did not find any copyvio. The main theorem is formulated shortly in the WP article; is it forbidden? No phrases from the introduction copied, no fragments of proofs, nothing like that. The due credit is given to the source (and some other sources are cited). What should I (we) do with it? Boris Tsirelson ( talk) 16:34, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Hessian form of an elliptic curve is quite obviously in need of some work. Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:13, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
On a completely unrelated note, can I request people to use the "new section" button to start new sections instead of section-editing the last section on the page? This makes it much easier for people reading edit summaries. -- Robin ( talk) 04:19, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
The article titled sixth dimension smells a bit funny. What do we think? (Maybe I'll look more closely tomorrow......) Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
To RDBury's question: I found this simply by looking at the daily list of new articles on the current activities page, and I look at that every day. Michael Hardy ( talk) 05:32, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Anyone up for a short-term collaboration (a week or so) on a basic (undergrad or lower), medium-sized article?
Potential articles I might enjoy improving (in a random order): Gaussian integer; Fundamental theorem of Galois theory, Seifert–van Kampen theorem, some graph theory, some logic, etc.
Would be nice to reach GA but I don't want to put myself any pressure. 92.149.147.129 ( talk) 00:22, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I went ahead and remove collaboration of the month from the project page. It doesn't look like there is moch interest in a revival and it's embarrassing to have the link if it doesn't go anywhere.-- RDBury ( talk) 11:17, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
It has long seemed to me that when "=" or the like follows a piecewise definition like this, a right curly brace of the same size as the left brace should precede it. Is there a way to do that using \cases or does it require manual insertion? Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:39, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
I've edited normal distribution, using \left. and \right\} for this thing. Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:41, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
Just to let everyone know, I have changed the "Mathematics Collaboration of the Month" to Polynomial identity ring. A lot of research has been done on such rings lately; it has proved an extremely useful tool by which one may probe deeply into the structure of both commutative and noncommutative rings. -- PS T 13:50, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
How can I join? Protactinium-231 (talk) 14:55, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
Comments are welcome at Talk:Spherical harmonics. The current revision is sourced to Courant and Hilbert's classic text. An editor wishes to change the treatment from the established one. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 22:28, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
Can someone take a look at this software (nominated for deletion) and see if it's worthy of mention in radial basis functions? Thanks, Pcap ping 01:24, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
Unless I missed it, the article titled two-sided Laplace transform does not mention that that transform is one-to-one. Do we have an article we could link to that either states or proves that result? Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:41, 26 December 2009 (UTC)