Is anyone interested in trying to salvage something from the fairly new article self-referential function ? At present, the first sentence of the article "Cantor's diagonalisation produces a function that makes reference to itself" is simply wrong; the definition "A self-referential function is a function that applies to itself" is hopelessly vague; and the references are not actually related to the contents of the article. See Talk:Self-referential function for further discussion.
We already have fine articles on self-reference, recursion and functional equation. There may be a useful article to be written on self-referential functions, but the current article is not close to it, in my opinion. Gandalf61 ( talk) 09:24, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi. I made an edit to the section of Residue (complex analysis) on calculating residues, and I'm posting here requesting a few more pairs of eyes look at it and make sure I didn't introduce any errors or anything. - GTBacchus( talk) 18:24, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
I would be grateful for some expert opinions on the example I propose to add to Minimal subtraction scheme. Comments at the article talk page would be welcome. A.K.Nole ( talk) 20:08, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Family of successors to Tetration are being created....
Any assistance in keeping this in order would be appreciated. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:29, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I'm posting this on the Maths Wikiproject talk as we need editors who are knowledgeable about Mathematics to evaluate the following discussion and check out the editors and articles affected. Please follow the link below and comment if you can help.
Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Block_review_-_uninvolved_admin_request.
Thankyou. Exxolon ( talk) 18:30, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
We don't have an article about Aise Johan de Jong (notable for resolution of singularities in characteristic p; a Cole prize winner). I'm not so much into biography articles, but if somebody is, he's certainly deserving an article. Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 12:59, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/missing mathematicians. Charvest ( talk) 13:59, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Bow and arrow curve has been proposed for deletion. Opinions? Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:57, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
What are the appropriate terms in Latin and German? I'd search for those in Google Books, with "Euler" as the author's name.
In German:
"Bow and arrow" has some plausibility, since the line y = x is part of the graph, and a curve crossing that line is as well. It's not implausible that Euler wrote about these curves and someone later called them by that name. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:22, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
It's now an AfD rather than a proposed deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bow and arrow curve. As Michael Hardy often writes, please contribute with a reason for your decision rather than a simple keep or delete vote. — David Eppstein ( talk) 23:02, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
A persistent anon keeps editing Kepler conjecture to add a supposed counterexample attributed to Archimedes Plutonium. I have reverted twice today already, but anon has just inserted their nonsense for a third time. Please can someone keep an eye on the article and revert and/or semi-protect as you see fit. Gandalf61 ( talk) 16:41, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
I have been trying for some time to add some material to Wavelength quoted below:
Spatial and temporal relationships
The mathematical form for the wave involves the argument of the cosine, say θ, given by:
Using θ, the amplitude of the wave is:
which shows a particular value of y corresponds to a particular value of θ. As time advances, the term (−vt) in θ continuously reduces θ, so the position x corresponding to a chosen value of θ must increase according to:
in order that the value of θ stay the same. In other words, the position x where the amplitude y has the value Acos(θ) moves in time with the wave speed v. Thus, the particular mathematical form x − vt expresses the traveling nature of the wave.
In the case of the cosine, the periodicity of the cosine function in θ shows that a snapshot of the wave at a given time finds the wave undulating in space, while an observation of the wave at a fixed location finds the wave undulating in time. For example, a repetition in time occurs when θ increases by 2π; that is, when time increases by an amount T such that: [1]
- or
Likewise, a repetition in space occurs when x increases an amount Δx enough to cause an increase in θ by 2π:
- or
Thus, the temporal variation in y with period T at a fixed location is related via the wave speed v to the corresponding spatial variation with wavelength λ at a fixed time.
Using the same reasoning, it may be noted that any function f(x − vt) propagates as a wave of fixed shape moving through space with velocity v. [2] However, to obtain a wavelength and a period, the function f must be a periodic function of its argument. [3] As noted, the cosine is a periodic function and that is why a wave based upon the cosine has a wavelength and a period. [4]
The sinusoidal wave solution describes a wave of a particular wavelength. This might seem to make it a specific solution, not applicable to more complicated propagating waves. In particular, the sinusoid is defined for all times and distances, whereas in physical situations we deal with waves that exist for a limited span in space and duration in time. Fortunately, an arbitrary wave shape f(x − vt) can be decomposed into a set of sinusoidal waves using Fourier analysis. As a result, solutions describing the simple case of a single sinusoidal wave can be applied to more general cases. [1]
This well-sourced material has been reverted by Srleffler on grounds found at Talk:Wavelength#Spatial_and_temporal_relationships, along with my response.
I would not take too much notice of this event were it not simply one more instance of reversion of my efforts based upon rather weak premises.
Can someone take a look at this example, and possibly look over the talk page itself to see what might be done here? Brews ohare ( talk) 12:12, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
Some quick observations on the new article titled Rannow's Theorem:
As to actual content:
So I am somewhat suspicious.
I'll say more after I've read it more closely. Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:16, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
There's a discussion in Talk:Matroid re citation formatting that probably applies more broadly to mathematics articles on Wikipedia in general. — David Eppstein ( talk) 06:22, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
Recently, I have attempted to improve some algebra-related articles to a reasonable standard. I feel that there are far too many stubs in this field, as well as many articles which deserve more content. Mainly, I think that we need to improve the somewhat less well-known articles on algebra so that people who read algebra articles, other than laymen, may benefit. I understand, however, that User:Jakob.scholbach has done significant work on the well-known concepts and hence my motivation.
In particular, if you happen to come across an algebra article which I have edited, and notice something incorrect by Wikipedia standards, please comment/criticize if possible for I am not particularly experienced in WP when it comes to expanding articles. Thus far, I have improved Jacobson radical and created Quasiregular element. I am mainly focusing on related concepts at the moment, such as Nakayama's lemma, Nilradical and Simple module. Any comments would be most appreciated.
With respect to citations, I am mainly citing the book by Isaacs. Although I am aware that there are other excellent books in algebra, I think that other books can easily be cited if necessary. I have chosen Isaacs because in my view, this is one of the better books in the field. You might notice, however, that Jacobson radical and Quasiregular element have more citations than necessary. -- PS T 06:36, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
I should point out that there are books out there other than the one by Isaacs. I don't have this book, but it seems to make rather a wreck of Nakayama's lemma. It is better to stick with more standard sources, like Matsumura, Atiyah-MacDonald, Zariski-Samuel, or Eisenbud. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 04:46, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Is anyone still working on Blahtex and mediawiki's support for blahtex? The blahtex's site doesn't work (well, actually works only main page), so doesn't blatex wiki. There is project called blatexml (the only source I know where it is now possible to download blahtex). In preferences there is option to show MathML if possible (experimental), but doesn't work anywhere. So does anyone know what with progress of the project? Or is it dead? Anyone could post any informations about it? Maybe someone informed could create article blatex on Wikipedia?
Also, if blahtex isn't "mature" enough to handle Wikipedia's math formulas, maybe should Wikipedia consider other tools like itex2mml (used, for example, with instiki)? ;) Silmethule ( talk) 20:08, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Could someone please have a look at Talk:Dirac delta function#too many directions? Sławomir Biały ( talk) 20:42, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
The site exampleproblems.com is linked to from several articles [2]. As the site is a wiki and not as such a reliable reference per our usual standards I was going to delete these per WP:EL. However, on closer inspection I noticed that these links have been added by established user Tbsmith ( talk · contribs) who doesn't seem to be active here on a regular basis. I asked on the reliable sources noticeboard and was (wisely) told to ask for input from this project before removing them [3]. I'd like to know if these links are normally considered acceptable by this project or not. If not, I'll remove them from mainspace. I know this may sound like I'm being overly cautious but I'm trying to avoid a conflict by not ignoring some consensus I may not be aware of. Thanks, Vyvyan Basterd ( talk) 15:30, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
I do see some merit to relevant links to the site: deep links to a particular article hosted by ExampleProblems.com. However, many of these are links to the main ExampleProblems.com page. To me this crosses the line from providing a useful resource to outright promotion of the site. I would suggest replacing these main page links with more targeted links if possible. Perhaps deletion should be entertained as a last resort. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 15:28, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
After a recent request, I added WikiProject Mathematics to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Popular pages.
The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr. Z-man 20:31, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
There are a few important changes to the popular pages system. A quick summary:
-- Mr. Z-man 00:10, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
In spring 2007, after long discussions and painstaking consensus forming, the article Function (mathematics) reached a decent state. After a long period of relative calm, a new editor restarted a discussion about the rigorous mathematical definition of the function. This opened some of the old splits between "formalists" (those who pay most attention to the definition and syntax) and "encyclopaedists" (those who try to convey the meaning and illustrate uses). As a result, Rick Norwood wrote a new lead to the article. Several people objected to his changes, and I tried to reach a compromise by restoring part of the old lead and improving upon it. Sadly, this was followed up by a wholesale revert and chest-pumping at the talk page. I request that members of the project try to help form a consensus. This is one of the most important and frequently viewed mathematics articles here, and we cannot be too careful in making it as broadly appealing as possible. Thanks, Arcfrk ( talk) 14:19, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
I emptied it, rather than leaving it set for a merge back to Category:Mathematical relations, because the creator of the category mangled other categories some of the articles were in, such as Category:Closure operators. I had hoped that the cfm I created would have been sufficient, but then I noticed removal of other appropriate categories. If this was improper, please let me know. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:17, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
We could use some help to resolve a controversy about the correct formulae for the matrix differential and the matrix derivative at the article Matrix calculus. See the talk page, especially the section Disputed information: Matrix derivative. Cs32en 22:52, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
In the second case above, I'd prefer "2-dimensional subspaces". But it would never have occurred to me that those could be mistaken for minus signs. But user:r.e.b. wrote on my talk page:
This discussion is complicated by the fact that the traditional use of hyphens is a slightly endangered species, still used by book publishers, magazines, and newspapers, often no longer used in package labeling and advertising. It is a splendidly efficient disambiguating or clarifying tool in some cases. "The correlation between maternal alcohol use and small for birth weight" is a phrase I had to look at several times to parse it. Why was someone concerned with correlations between "small", on the one hand, and on the other hand, maternal alcohol use, and why just for birth weight? "The correlation between maternal alcohol use and small-for-birth-weight" would not have caused any mental hesitation. "The German occupied town of Caen" and "the German-occupied town of Caen" is an example of very efficient disambiguation. "A man-eating shark" scares people away from beaches, whereas "a man eating shark" is a customer in a seafood restaurant.
Opinions? Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:33, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
This also (implicitly?) has something on the use of hyphens in mathematics:
(But maybe not bearing directly on the present question.) Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:11, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Valentina Harizanov. Don't just vote Keep or Delete; give your arguments. Michael Hardy ( talk) 05:30, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
I have just added the Wikiproject Mathematics template to the talk page of Equation solving. The article seems to have been pretty much ignored until now and it needs a lot of work. I have filled in the bits on ratings etc.. If someone wants to do a more official assessment then please do. Yaris678 ( talk) 18:03, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Pseudo-edge needs attention. In particular, there is no definition. Michael Hardy ( talk) 05:43, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
Well-behaved is currently all about mathematics. However, in my opinion, it is very poorly written. I am not a mathematician, and a lot of mathematical content pages link to it - but the page does not tell me what all those pages actually mean when they write that a function needs to be 'well-behaved', and instead claims the meaning of the word is up to "fashion", and gives a bunch of examples of which functions are "better behaved" than others, according to "someone" (there are no citations, and the talk page seems to indicate people disagree on these matters). I've left a comment on the article's talk page to this effect, then checked the history and noticed it seems not to really ever have gotten a lot of attention. I was wondering if there were people here who would be able to fix this. I would do it myself, but don't know enough about the subject to write anything that would actually be usable (that's why I wanted to read up on it!). Thank you! :-) Gijs Kruitbosch ( talk) 20:01, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
I am conducting a Good Article review of this article. Have just scraped a pass at Maths A Level over forty years ago, I am unable to comment on matters pertaining to the accuracy of the article. I have concerns over whether the article is accessible to the general reader, whether it uses too much un-explained jargon, some unreferenced statements and I cannot determine whther the article is broad in scope, focussed and contains no original research. Please comment at Talk:Obstacle problem/GA1. Thanks. Jezhotwells ( talk) 09:34, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
The ancient article titled List of mathematical examples is still in a somewhat neglected and stagnant condition. (I just added another item to it.) Does it deserve our attention? Michael Hardy ( talk) 00:04, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
Hello all,
I would like to add the page on Near Sets to the "See Also" section on the page Set (mathematics) and I was told this is the place to start a discussion on the matter.
To borrow from the Wikipedia set page:
In near set theory, the elements of a near set are distinct objects that are elements of our perception. A set is considered a near set relative to a set in the case where the feature values of one or more of the objects in the set are almost the same (within some epsilon) as the feature values of one or more of objects in a set . In effect, any traditional Cantor set is called a near set whenever the nearness requirement is satisfied. I would be more than happy to send a copy (or post a link) of an article giving the underlying theory on near sets.
Thanks,
Christopher Henry NearSetAccount ( talk) 19:07, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
To go back to the original question, it seems clear that this belongs to the same niche as fuzzy sets, rough sets, and dynamically varying sets, all of which seems closer in spirit to concept analysis than what logicians mean by set theory. Is there any way that we could have an article on this, that we could link to in place of such specific articles in see also sections? I can't think how best one would give such an article coherence, but ther is some sort of common thread. — Charles Stewart (talk) 22:44, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Hello,
Is James Stirling's date of birth right on
James Stirling (mathematician) ? Many sources give "may" instead of 22 april. Is it a
Old Style and New Style dates problem ? --
El Caro (
talk)
06:56, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
The section of outline of combinatorics titled Branches of combinatorics lists only the following two items:
Does combinatorial chemistry really constitute a "branch" of combinatorics? And the section omits virtually everything. Would someone with competence in that area clean this up? Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:43, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi
Would like to invite comment on the above article ie Diophantus_II.VIII. Readership stats do not appear to justify a stand-alone item and I am wondering if it should not rather be moved to be a subsection of another article - eg Arithmetica or Diophantus. An alternative might be to put links in from these pages and any others to which it is relevant.
Neil Parker ( talk) 05:48, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
Erdős–Bacon number was shrunk a fair bit: Before After ( diff). As I'm not too attached to the article, I don't have an opinion, but perhaps someone else, with different ideas of what's OR and what's obvious, may be interested. :-) Shreevatsa ( talk) 18:15, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Extensive discussion at WP:OR/N#Erdős–Bacon number. Hans Adler 13:28, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
This diff and this one identify a circle-squarer posting " original research" among us. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:00, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Their web site looks like an attempt to score high on John Baez's " crackpot index" by conforming to stereotypes of a certain flavor of crackpot. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:22, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Can someone address the issues I raised at talk:Jensen's formula? Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:08, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
MathWorld's page about this states two separate results. The first of them might be called a generalization of Ceva's theorem, and the second is an equivalent generalization of Menelaus' theorem. But all the other web sources I've looked at, and the WP page, only give the first equation. Does the second equation have a name? Is it due to Routh? Should we have it, either on the Routh's theorem page or elsewhere? — Blotwell 19:45, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
The addendum that was added last year (!) seems questionable to me. Can anyone verify this?
Also, the article could use some work, if anyone's wiling to lend a hand.
CRGreathouse ( t | c) 02:27, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Contiguity space is opaquely written. There's enough there that I think I can probably figure out just what it's about, but I shouldn't have to decipher the first paragraph the way I need to. Michael Hardy ( talk) 13:22, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Here's one of the weirder sentences I've found in Wikipedia (as you can see, I've fixed it). (It's not a pseudonym, unless "Tom Xmith" is a pseudonym for "Thomas Xmith".)
It seems the article on Chandler Davis was initially written by people who know him as a science-fiction writer; they didn't even mention in the first sentence that he's a mathematician. I've re-written it so that it mentions that first.
One of his theorems is mentioned in eigengap. That's an orphaned article—can someone help with that?
Davis–Kahan theorem is now a redirect to eigengap. Maybe someone here can make it into an article. (If that is done, then Davis-Kahan theorem (with a hyphen instead of an endash) should then get redirected to Davis–Kahan theorem. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:12, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Content from the archive. The issue is still unresolved. Cs32en 18:18, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
We could use some help to resolve a controversy about the correct formulae for the matrix differential and the matrix derivative at the article Matrix calculus. See the talk page, especially the section Disputed information: Matrix derivative. Cs32en 22:52, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Turns out the vast majority of the content of W. W. Rouse Ball has been a copyright violation since Aug. 10, 2006 (see this diff). It was ripped straight out of the Mac-Tutor bio. I reverted back to the pre-Aug 10, 2006 version. If anyone has time, it would be good to rewrite the article, and readd anything newer than three years ago. RobHar ( talk) 03:21, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Jamie.D.Mac ( talk · contribs) has created an article Base 69 which purports to be a description of base-69 arithmetic but in fact is a corrupted version of the article Octal, with all the 8s replaced with 69s, and some extra garbling. Mercurywoodrose ( talk · contribs) PRODed it, but this was declined without comment by the author. I have proposed it for speedy deletion under CSD G3. -- Uncia ( talk) 03:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
In the article Proofs involving the totient function, the single-purpose account Prmishra1 ( talk · contribs) and several IP addresses ( 59.180.44.246 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 59.180.127.247 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 59.180.127.247 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 59.180.7.238 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS)) have been engaged in the past few days in an attempt to replace one proof of for another one. I was asked for a 3rd opinion via WP:3O and sided with what had been in the article, but Prmishra1 is persisting, without any dialog. Two things:
Thanks. Eubulides ( talk) 17:27, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
These proofs are not particularly remarkable, it has to be said. If there is anything distinctive here, it could be merged into totient function. There is nothing really encyclopedic in manipulation of Sigma-notation. Charles Matthews ( talk) 20:42, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi all, I see three possibilities to resolve this: first, revert it to the version that made the slashdot listing, second, give up on it and leave it as is, third, scrap the inductive proof. And after that, LOCK the page to keep it from constantly being reverted. It seems to me that Charles Matthews would be a good mediator. What do you think? Best regards, - Zahlentheorie ( talk) 16:21, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
My preference, in general, for mathematical proofs on Wikipedia, is:
So in this particular case, I agree with Charles Matthews that the content belongs in average order of an arithmetic function, if anywhere. I am not yet convinced that the proof details would be helpful or important to include there, though. — David Eppstein ( talk) 21:27, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Could someone please take a look at the Livermore loops article. There's a lot of red links there that either need articles to be created for them, or need redirecting to appropriate articles, if they exist. There may also be more terms that could use linking. Raul654 ( talk) 16:15, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Do the SVG images at Method_of_analytic_tableaux look OK to anyone? To me the fonts are placed too low and too right, overlapping the lines. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 22:44, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
The text-curve alignment in the images looks ok to me, but I'm seeing a different problem: the mathematical formulas in some of the image captions are wider than the images themselves are displayed, and are cut off by the box around the caption rather than being fully visible. — David Eppstein ( talk) 05:53, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
I've done a bit of work on the Cusp (singularity) article. Could someone take a look at it and make any suggestions as to improvement. The classification of cusps comes down to Arnold's Ak-series (which wan't mentioned in the original article). I've tried to give examples and explanations. Is there anything that I haven't explained properly? ~~ Dr Dec ( Talk) ~~ 11:49, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
As these discussions have tended to suffer from a lack of participation, I respectfully request advice and constructive criticism on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/A-class rating/Maximum spacing estimation. Thank you. -- Avi ( talk) 15:40, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi there, here's an FYI. If you delete all content from {{ WikiProject Mathematics}}, and place the following code in it's stead...
#REDIRECT [[Template:Maths rating]]
...you will successfully redirect any use of {{ WikiProject Mathematics}} to your correct template. See for example {{ WPLISTS}}. The old pageforces use of the correct template. One could use either {{ WPLISTS}} or {{ WikiProject Lists}} on talk pages and get the correct template. If you knew all this, nevermind. But if not, give it a try if you feel it is helpful at all. Prapsnot ( talk) 06:56, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
… a periodic wave is any function f(x) whose value varies in a repetitive and perfectly predictable manner over discrete intervals of some variable x.
Is anyone interested in trying to salvage something from the fairly new article self-referential function ? At present, the first sentence of the article "Cantor's diagonalisation produces a function that makes reference to itself" is simply wrong; the definition "A self-referential function is a function that applies to itself" is hopelessly vague; and the references are not actually related to the contents of the article. See Talk:Self-referential function for further discussion.
We already have fine articles on self-reference, recursion and functional equation. There may be a useful article to be written on self-referential functions, but the current article is not close to it, in my opinion. Gandalf61 ( talk) 09:24, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi. I made an edit to the section of Residue (complex analysis) on calculating residues, and I'm posting here requesting a few more pairs of eyes look at it and make sure I didn't introduce any errors or anything. - GTBacchus( talk) 18:24, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
I would be grateful for some expert opinions on the example I propose to add to Minimal subtraction scheme. Comments at the article talk page would be welcome. A.K.Nole ( talk) 20:08, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Family of successors to Tetration are being created....
Any assistance in keeping this in order would be appreciated. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:29, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I'm posting this on the Maths Wikiproject talk as we need editors who are knowledgeable about Mathematics to evaluate the following discussion and check out the editors and articles affected. Please follow the link below and comment if you can help.
Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Block_review_-_uninvolved_admin_request.
Thankyou. Exxolon ( talk) 18:30, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
We don't have an article about Aise Johan de Jong (notable for resolution of singularities in characteristic p; a Cole prize winner). I'm not so much into biography articles, but if somebody is, he's certainly deserving an article. Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 12:59, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/missing mathematicians. Charvest ( talk) 13:59, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Bow and arrow curve has been proposed for deletion. Opinions? Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:57, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
What are the appropriate terms in Latin and German? I'd search for those in Google Books, with "Euler" as the author's name.
In German:
"Bow and arrow" has some plausibility, since the line y = x is part of the graph, and a curve crossing that line is as well. It's not implausible that Euler wrote about these curves and someone later called them by that name. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:22, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
It's now an AfD rather than a proposed deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bow and arrow curve. As Michael Hardy often writes, please contribute with a reason for your decision rather than a simple keep or delete vote. — David Eppstein ( talk) 23:02, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
A persistent anon keeps editing Kepler conjecture to add a supposed counterexample attributed to Archimedes Plutonium. I have reverted twice today already, but anon has just inserted their nonsense for a third time. Please can someone keep an eye on the article and revert and/or semi-protect as you see fit. Gandalf61 ( talk) 16:41, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
I have been trying for some time to add some material to Wavelength quoted below:
Spatial and temporal relationships
The mathematical form for the wave involves the argument of the cosine, say θ, given by:
Using θ, the amplitude of the wave is:
which shows a particular value of y corresponds to a particular value of θ. As time advances, the term (−vt) in θ continuously reduces θ, so the position x corresponding to a chosen value of θ must increase according to:
in order that the value of θ stay the same. In other words, the position x where the amplitude y has the value Acos(θ) moves in time with the wave speed v. Thus, the particular mathematical form x − vt expresses the traveling nature of the wave.
In the case of the cosine, the periodicity of the cosine function in θ shows that a snapshot of the wave at a given time finds the wave undulating in space, while an observation of the wave at a fixed location finds the wave undulating in time. For example, a repetition in time occurs when θ increases by 2π; that is, when time increases by an amount T such that: [1]
- or
Likewise, a repetition in space occurs when x increases an amount Δx enough to cause an increase in θ by 2π:
- or
Thus, the temporal variation in y with period T at a fixed location is related via the wave speed v to the corresponding spatial variation with wavelength λ at a fixed time.
Using the same reasoning, it may be noted that any function f(x − vt) propagates as a wave of fixed shape moving through space with velocity v. [2] However, to obtain a wavelength and a period, the function f must be a periodic function of its argument. [3] As noted, the cosine is a periodic function and that is why a wave based upon the cosine has a wavelength and a period. [4]
The sinusoidal wave solution describes a wave of a particular wavelength. This might seem to make it a specific solution, not applicable to more complicated propagating waves. In particular, the sinusoid is defined for all times and distances, whereas in physical situations we deal with waves that exist for a limited span in space and duration in time. Fortunately, an arbitrary wave shape f(x − vt) can be decomposed into a set of sinusoidal waves using Fourier analysis. As a result, solutions describing the simple case of a single sinusoidal wave can be applied to more general cases. [1]
This well-sourced material has been reverted by Srleffler on grounds found at Talk:Wavelength#Spatial_and_temporal_relationships, along with my response.
I would not take too much notice of this event were it not simply one more instance of reversion of my efforts based upon rather weak premises.
Can someone take a look at this example, and possibly look over the talk page itself to see what might be done here? Brews ohare ( talk) 12:12, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
Some quick observations on the new article titled Rannow's Theorem:
As to actual content:
So I am somewhat suspicious.
I'll say more after I've read it more closely. Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:16, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
There's a discussion in Talk:Matroid re citation formatting that probably applies more broadly to mathematics articles on Wikipedia in general. — David Eppstein ( talk) 06:22, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
Recently, I have attempted to improve some algebra-related articles to a reasonable standard. I feel that there are far too many stubs in this field, as well as many articles which deserve more content. Mainly, I think that we need to improve the somewhat less well-known articles on algebra so that people who read algebra articles, other than laymen, may benefit. I understand, however, that User:Jakob.scholbach has done significant work on the well-known concepts and hence my motivation.
In particular, if you happen to come across an algebra article which I have edited, and notice something incorrect by Wikipedia standards, please comment/criticize if possible for I am not particularly experienced in WP when it comes to expanding articles. Thus far, I have improved Jacobson radical and created Quasiregular element. I am mainly focusing on related concepts at the moment, such as Nakayama's lemma, Nilradical and Simple module. Any comments would be most appreciated.
With respect to citations, I am mainly citing the book by Isaacs. Although I am aware that there are other excellent books in algebra, I think that other books can easily be cited if necessary. I have chosen Isaacs because in my view, this is one of the better books in the field. You might notice, however, that Jacobson radical and Quasiregular element have more citations than necessary. -- PS T 06:36, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
I should point out that there are books out there other than the one by Isaacs. I don't have this book, but it seems to make rather a wreck of Nakayama's lemma. It is better to stick with more standard sources, like Matsumura, Atiyah-MacDonald, Zariski-Samuel, or Eisenbud. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 04:46, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Is anyone still working on Blahtex and mediawiki's support for blahtex? The blahtex's site doesn't work (well, actually works only main page), so doesn't blatex wiki. There is project called blatexml (the only source I know where it is now possible to download blahtex). In preferences there is option to show MathML if possible (experimental), but doesn't work anywhere. So does anyone know what with progress of the project? Or is it dead? Anyone could post any informations about it? Maybe someone informed could create article blatex on Wikipedia?
Also, if blahtex isn't "mature" enough to handle Wikipedia's math formulas, maybe should Wikipedia consider other tools like itex2mml (used, for example, with instiki)? ;) Silmethule ( talk) 20:08, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Could someone please have a look at Talk:Dirac delta function#too many directions? Sławomir Biały ( talk) 20:42, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
The site exampleproblems.com is linked to from several articles [2]. As the site is a wiki and not as such a reliable reference per our usual standards I was going to delete these per WP:EL. However, on closer inspection I noticed that these links have been added by established user Tbsmith ( talk · contribs) who doesn't seem to be active here on a regular basis. I asked on the reliable sources noticeboard and was (wisely) told to ask for input from this project before removing them [3]. I'd like to know if these links are normally considered acceptable by this project or not. If not, I'll remove them from mainspace. I know this may sound like I'm being overly cautious but I'm trying to avoid a conflict by not ignoring some consensus I may not be aware of. Thanks, Vyvyan Basterd ( talk) 15:30, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
I do see some merit to relevant links to the site: deep links to a particular article hosted by ExampleProblems.com. However, many of these are links to the main ExampleProblems.com page. To me this crosses the line from providing a useful resource to outright promotion of the site. I would suggest replacing these main page links with more targeted links if possible. Perhaps deletion should be entertained as a last resort. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 15:28, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
After a recent request, I added WikiProject Mathematics to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Popular pages.
The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr. Z-man 20:31, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
There are a few important changes to the popular pages system. A quick summary:
-- Mr. Z-man 00:10, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
In spring 2007, after long discussions and painstaking consensus forming, the article Function (mathematics) reached a decent state. After a long period of relative calm, a new editor restarted a discussion about the rigorous mathematical definition of the function. This opened some of the old splits between "formalists" (those who pay most attention to the definition and syntax) and "encyclopaedists" (those who try to convey the meaning and illustrate uses). As a result, Rick Norwood wrote a new lead to the article. Several people objected to his changes, and I tried to reach a compromise by restoring part of the old lead and improving upon it. Sadly, this was followed up by a wholesale revert and chest-pumping at the talk page. I request that members of the project try to help form a consensus. This is one of the most important and frequently viewed mathematics articles here, and we cannot be too careful in making it as broadly appealing as possible. Thanks, Arcfrk ( talk) 14:19, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
I emptied it, rather than leaving it set for a merge back to Category:Mathematical relations, because the creator of the category mangled other categories some of the articles were in, such as Category:Closure operators. I had hoped that the cfm I created would have been sufficient, but then I noticed removal of other appropriate categories. If this was improper, please let me know. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:17, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
We could use some help to resolve a controversy about the correct formulae for the matrix differential and the matrix derivative at the article Matrix calculus. See the talk page, especially the section Disputed information: Matrix derivative. Cs32en 22:52, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
In the second case above, I'd prefer "2-dimensional subspaces". But it would never have occurred to me that those could be mistaken for minus signs. But user:r.e.b. wrote on my talk page:
This discussion is complicated by the fact that the traditional use of hyphens is a slightly endangered species, still used by book publishers, magazines, and newspapers, often no longer used in package labeling and advertising. It is a splendidly efficient disambiguating or clarifying tool in some cases. "The correlation between maternal alcohol use and small for birth weight" is a phrase I had to look at several times to parse it. Why was someone concerned with correlations between "small", on the one hand, and on the other hand, maternal alcohol use, and why just for birth weight? "The correlation between maternal alcohol use and small-for-birth-weight" would not have caused any mental hesitation. "The German occupied town of Caen" and "the German-occupied town of Caen" is an example of very efficient disambiguation. "A man-eating shark" scares people away from beaches, whereas "a man eating shark" is a customer in a seafood restaurant.
Opinions? Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:33, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
This also (implicitly?) has something on the use of hyphens in mathematics:
(But maybe not bearing directly on the present question.) Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:11, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Valentina Harizanov. Don't just vote Keep or Delete; give your arguments. Michael Hardy ( talk) 05:30, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
I have just added the Wikiproject Mathematics template to the talk page of Equation solving. The article seems to have been pretty much ignored until now and it needs a lot of work. I have filled in the bits on ratings etc.. If someone wants to do a more official assessment then please do. Yaris678 ( talk) 18:03, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Pseudo-edge needs attention. In particular, there is no definition. Michael Hardy ( talk) 05:43, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
Well-behaved is currently all about mathematics. However, in my opinion, it is very poorly written. I am not a mathematician, and a lot of mathematical content pages link to it - but the page does not tell me what all those pages actually mean when they write that a function needs to be 'well-behaved', and instead claims the meaning of the word is up to "fashion", and gives a bunch of examples of which functions are "better behaved" than others, according to "someone" (there are no citations, and the talk page seems to indicate people disagree on these matters). I've left a comment on the article's talk page to this effect, then checked the history and noticed it seems not to really ever have gotten a lot of attention. I was wondering if there were people here who would be able to fix this. I would do it myself, but don't know enough about the subject to write anything that would actually be usable (that's why I wanted to read up on it!). Thank you! :-) Gijs Kruitbosch ( talk) 20:01, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
I am conducting a Good Article review of this article. Have just scraped a pass at Maths A Level over forty years ago, I am unable to comment on matters pertaining to the accuracy of the article. I have concerns over whether the article is accessible to the general reader, whether it uses too much un-explained jargon, some unreferenced statements and I cannot determine whther the article is broad in scope, focussed and contains no original research. Please comment at Talk:Obstacle problem/GA1. Thanks. Jezhotwells ( talk) 09:34, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
The ancient article titled List of mathematical examples is still in a somewhat neglected and stagnant condition. (I just added another item to it.) Does it deserve our attention? Michael Hardy ( talk) 00:04, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
Hello all,
I would like to add the page on Near Sets to the "See Also" section on the page Set (mathematics) and I was told this is the place to start a discussion on the matter.
To borrow from the Wikipedia set page:
In near set theory, the elements of a near set are distinct objects that are elements of our perception. A set is considered a near set relative to a set in the case where the feature values of one or more of the objects in the set are almost the same (within some epsilon) as the feature values of one or more of objects in a set . In effect, any traditional Cantor set is called a near set whenever the nearness requirement is satisfied. I would be more than happy to send a copy (or post a link) of an article giving the underlying theory on near sets.
Thanks,
Christopher Henry NearSetAccount ( talk) 19:07, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
To go back to the original question, it seems clear that this belongs to the same niche as fuzzy sets, rough sets, and dynamically varying sets, all of which seems closer in spirit to concept analysis than what logicians mean by set theory. Is there any way that we could have an article on this, that we could link to in place of such specific articles in see also sections? I can't think how best one would give such an article coherence, but ther is some sort of common thread. — Charles Stewart (talk) 22:44, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Hello,
Is James Stirling's date of birth right on
James Stirling (mathematician) ? Many sources give "may" instead of 22 april. Is it a
Old Style and New Style dates problem ? --
El Caro (
talk)
06:56, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
The section of outline of combinatorics titled Branches of combinatorics lists only the following two items:
Does combinatorial chemistry really constitute a "branch" of combinatorics? And the section omits virtually everything. Would someone with competence in that area clean this up? Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:43, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi
Would like to invite comment on the above article ie Diophantus_II.VIII. Readership stats do not appear to justify a stand-alone item and I am wondering if it should not rather be moved to be a subsection of another article - eg Arithmetica or Diophantus. An alternative might be to put links in from these pages and any others to which it is relevant.
Neil Parker ( talk) 05:48, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
Erdős–Bacon number was shrunk a fair bit: Before After ( diff). As I'm not too attached to the article, I don't have an opinion, but perhaps someone else, with different ideas of what's OR and what's obvious, may be interested. :-) Shreevatsa ( talk) 18:15, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Extensive discussion at WP:OR/N#Erdős–Bacon number. Hans Adler 13:28, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
This diff and this one identify a circle-squarer posting " original research" among us. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:00, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Their web site looks like an attempt to score high on John Baez's " crackpot index" by conforming to stereotypes of a certain flavor of crackpot. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:22, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Can someone address the issues I raised at talk:Jensen's formula? Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:08, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
MathWorld's page about this states two separate results. The first of them might be called a generalization of Ceva's theorem, and the second is an equivalent generalization of Menelaus' theorem. But all the other web sources I've looked at, and the WP page, only give the first equation. Does the second equation have a name? Is it due to Routh? Should we have it, either on the Routh's theorem page or elsewhere? — Blotwell 19:45, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
The addendum that was added last year (!) seems questionable to me. Can anyone verify this?
Also, the article could use some work, if anyone's wiling to lend a hand.
CRGreathouse ( t | c) 02:27, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Contiguity space is opaquely written. There's enough there that I think I can probably figure out just what it's about, but I shouldn't have to decipher the first paragraph the way I need to. Michael Hardy ( talk) 13:22, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Here's one of the weirder sentences I've found in Wikipedia (as you can see, I've fixed it). (It's not a pseudonym, unless "Tom Xmith" is a pseudonym for "Thomas Xmith".)
It seems the article on Chandler Davis was initially written by people who know him as a science-fiction writer; they didn't even mention in the first sentence that he's a mathematician. I've re-written it so that it mentions that first.
One of his theorems is mentioned in eigengap. That's an orphaned article—can someone help with that?
Davis–Kahan theorem is now a redirect to eigengap. Maybe someone here can make it into an article. (If that is done, then Davis-Kahan theorem (with a hyphen instead of an endash) should then get redirected to Davis–Kahan theorem. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:12, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Content from the archive. The issue is still unresolved. Cs32en 18:18, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
We could use some help to resolve a controversy about the correct formulae for the matrix differential and the matrix derivative at the article Matrix calculus. See the talk page, especially the section Disputed information: Matrix derivative. Cs32en 22:52, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Turns out the vast majority of the content of W. W. Rouse Ball has been a copyright violation since Aug. 10, 2006 (see this diff). It was ripped straight out of the Mac-Tutor bio. I reverted back to the pre-Aug 10, 2006 version. If anyone has time, it would be good to rewrite the article, and readd anything newer than three years ago. RobHar ( talk) 03:21, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Jamie.D.Mac ( talk · contribs) has created an article Base 69 which purports to be a description of base-69 arithmetic but in fact is a corrupted version of the article Octal, with all the 8s replaced with 69s, and some extra garbling. Mercurywoodrose ( talk · contribs) PRODed it, but this was declined without comment by the author. I have proposed it for speedy deletion under CSD G3. -- Uncia ( talk) 03:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
In the article Proofs involving the totient function, the single-purpose account Prmishra1 ( talk · contribs) and several IP addresses ( 59.180.44.246 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 59.180.127.247 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 59.180.127.247 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 59.180.7.238 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS)) have been engaged in the past few days in an attempt to replace one proof of for another one. I was asked for a 3rd opinion via WP:3O and sided with what had been in the article, but Prmishra1 is persisting, without any dialog. Two things:
Thanks. Eubulides ( talk) 17:27, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
These proofs are not particularly remarkable, it has to be said. If there is anything distinctive here, it could be merged into totient function. There is nothing really encyclopedic in manipulation of Sigma-notation. Charles Matthews ( talk) 20:42, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi all, I see three possibilities to resolve this: first, revert it to the version that made the slashdot listing, second, give up on it and leave it as is, third, scrap the inductive proof. And after that, LOCK the page to keep it from constantly being reverted. It seems to me that Charles Matthews would be a good mediator. What do you think? Best regards, - Zahlentheorie ( talk) 16:21, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
My preference, in general, for mathematical proofs on Wikipedia, is:
So in this particular case, I agree with Charles Matthews that the content belongs in average order of an arithmetic function, if anywhere. I am not yet convinced that the proof details would be helpful or important to include there, though. — David Eppstein ( talk) 21:27, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Could someone please take a look at the Livermore loops article. There's a lot of red links there that either need articles to be created for them, or need redirecting to appropriate articles, if they exist. There may also be more terms that could use linking. Raul654 ( talk) 16:15, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Do the SVG images at Method_of_analytic_tableaux look OK to anyone? To me the fonts are placed too low and too right, overlapping the lines. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 22:44, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
The text-curve alignment in the images looks ok to me, but I'm seeing a different problem: the mathematical formulas in some of the image captions are wider than the images themselves are displayed, and are cut off by the box around the caption rather than being fully visible. — David Eppstein ( talk) 05:53, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
I've done a bit of work on the Cusp (singularity) article. Could someone take a look at it and make any suggestions as to improvement. The classification of cusps comes down to Arnold's Ak-series (which wan't mentioned in the original article). I've tried to give examples and explanations. Is there anything that I haven't explained properly? ~~ Dr Dec ( Talk) ~~ 11:49, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
As these discussions have tended to suffer from a lack of participation, I respectfully request advice and constructive criticism on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/A-class rating/Maximum spacing estimation. Thank you. -- Avi ( talk) 15:40, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi there, here's an FYI. If you delete all content from {{ WikiProject Mathematics}}, and place the following code in it's stead...
#REDIRECT [[Template:Maths rating]]
...you will successfully redirect any use of {{ WikiProject Mathematics}} to your correct template. See for example {{ WPLISTS}}. The old pageforces use of the correct template. One could use either {{ WPLISTS}} or {{ WikiProject Lists}} on talk pages and get the correct template. If you knew all this, nevermind. But if not, give it a try if you feel it is helpful at all. Prapsnot ( talk) 06:56, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
… a periodic wave is any function f(x) whose value varies in a repetitive and perfectly predictable manner over discrete intervals of some variable x.