Even today there are poor benighted souls who don't know Wikipedia math notation style conventions.
I sometimes find things like xn, with the subscript not italicized. Here's a guess: some people see things like x1, where the subscript should not be italicized, and leap to the conclusion that that applies to subscripts generally, rather than being about the difference between literal variables and digits.
At any rate, I've always assumed the idea is that non-TeX notation should match TeX style as closely as possible. Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:27, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
Since we are nitpicking, this is a good time for me to ask this question: In TeX, I always write the time complexity of a linear time algorithm as . This is the same as in the Big O notation article, and CS papers in general. However, I've noticed that while using HTML, most people just write O(n). (The difference is that the "O" is not italicized.) What is the correct way? Is the big O italicized? (Same question for Omega, Theta, etc.) -- Robin ( talk) 19:45, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
Can someone address the issues I raise at Talk:Don Rees? Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:57, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Should articles called List of topology topics etc be changed to Outline of topology etc. User The Transhumanist is changing them all. A particularly ridiculous example is when List of triangle topics was changed to Outline of triangles. Charvest ( talk) 13:02, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
There's a WikiProject devoted to this: Wikipedia:WPOOK. Michael Hardy ( talk) 13:23, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Dbachman, this has been discussed with you before, I need not tell you to see WP:OUTLINE Highfields ( talk, contribs) 15:05, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't think the name is very important. Yes, User:The Transhumanist should not be doing these sorts of massive page moves, and someone has already given him or her a warning to stop. But I don't think it's worth wasting too much time discussing the matter, when we could be achieving more useful things than discussing whether "Outline" or "List" is a better word for the title. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 15:26, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Oh God, is he still at this nonsense? Someone block him and be done with it. → ROUX ₪ 16:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
I have encountered a strange situation at the Kurt Gödel article with someone removing content. I don't think anyone else needs to do anything at the moment, but having that page on more watchlists would help. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 19:32, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
etc. My guess is Edmund. Can someone who knows the answer edit the article accordingly? Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:19, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
We have no article titled Landau's algorithm. I've added some red links to that article from nested radical and from Susan Landau. If anyone knows anything about it, could they write something? Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:20, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
...OK, now I've created the article, but it says nothing specific about the algorithm. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:30, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
In connection with the deletion nomination for the article on Michael Somos, I started a new article Somos sequence. It's very bare bones right now, just including the basic definitions and a few references, and it's missing a lot of material e.g. on the connections between these sequences and theta-series of elliptic curves. If anyone else wants to take some time to improve it, I'd appreciate it. — David Eppstein ( talk) 23:31, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
There are currently eight links from articles to Robin Thomas (mathematician), so if somebody knows something, could they put something there? Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:48, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
There's an interesting rationale at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ascending power numbers. Uncle G ( talk) 07:32, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michael Somos. Do not simply say Keep or Delete (or Merge into... or whatever); rather, give your arguments. Currently Somos sequence and Somos' quadratic recurrence constant are mentioned at Michael Somos. Are those enough for "notability"? Are there other things that should be mentioned? Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:18, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
If interested, please comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cyclic permutation of integer. Note that just saying delete or keep is not constructive — reasons need to be given. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:52, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
I just came across the article Division by two, which is unfortunately completely unsourced, and has been so since its creation in 2002. First I thought that this is just an unnotable simple special case, but then it occurred to me that there might be some historical interest in this algorithm (cf. Peasant multiplication which incidentally requires a division-by-two algorithm); does anyone know any sources or background? — Miym ( talk) 17:51, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
Now we have
Two quite different things.
Great.
All perfectly clear to the newbie or casual reader.
Right?
Michael Hardy ( talk) 06:11, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
Interesting.
I would suggest just redirecting List of topics in mathematics to Lists of mathematics topics, and focusing on making the latter as useful as possible. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 18:12, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
The proposal to change lists of mathematics topics to a category is lunacy! This was once a "featured" list, representing Wikipedia's best work. It lost that status only because of a lack of references. Categories are vastly inferior to lists. This list is a good example of HOW categories are inferior to lists. Doesn't Wikipedia have a policy that these two formats are complementary—that one should not eschew one of them because the other exists? Michael Hardy ( talk) 21:40, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
This is a useful source of external links. But when an anonymous user adds a good link to one of its pages to an article, User:XLinkBot automatically deletes it without any human supervision. If the user also adds content to the article, all such content is deleted along with the link. I think this WikiProject should endorse this particular site. Michael Hardy ( talk) 21:51, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
Hi all, I have updated the article Near sets based on some feedback I received from this page a few months back. I invite any who are interested to check out the updated article to offer some suggestions to help improve it further. Thanks in advance. NearSetAccount ( talk) 15:37, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
I am not sure if this is the right place to ask but could somebody have a look at the Gyrovector space article. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 22:26, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
Article needs a fair amount of chat removed. There is a nonassociative structure in there to document. Articles in the area of linear algebra in mathematical physics do tend to lead off with claims that this is an entirely new way to look at things; that is almost always going to be POV, and such claims are not what make a topic notable. Charles Matthews ( talk) 07:30, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
A bit off-topic -- but -- virtually all of the edits I do at WP are on math articles, with some spill-over to physics and comp-sci. I've not been active for the last few years, because I got tired of the editorial nonsense that goes on. Despite being inactive, I recently was attacked, more or less unprovoked, by a new-age editor who had vandalized an obscure math article I wrote, and someone else reverted. When I told him off, I was promptly piled-on by five admins who blocked me for several weeks. I'm kind of shocked that the power structure here has changed so much that we've got these kinds of nasty, abusive people in admin roles. I complained to the Arb, but they ignored the case. I don't know what to do, other than to complain here, and ask everyone to try to band together, and to figure out how to get the ugly admins and the (incompetent?) leadership out of power, redo Wikipedia leadership, and restore some sanity. linas ( talk) 16:42, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
This has been forum-shopped to Mediation, to the Arbitration Committee, and now to the talk pages of several WikiProjects. Editors coming to this situation with no prior knowledge should read Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive564#Nuclear meltdown at User talk:Linas, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive567#User:Linas again, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/User:Linas, and this declined ArbCom request to get up to speed. Please place all further discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Linas, soapboxing on wikiprojects (and userpage), rather than having lots of little disjoint discussions everywhere that this has been shopped around to. Uncle G ( talk) 02:05, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Charles and others, it would seem to me that on this point, the goals of increasing civility on Wikipedia and actually building a good encyclopedia are somewhat in conflict. Wikipedia is not so rich that it can afford to run off everybody who's capable of being provoked, no matter how great their energy or extensive their contributions. Frankly, the whole incident looks like it could've been avoided if people had been allowed, you know, to blow off steam. Standards of admin action developed amidst our most ferocious disputes and hardened by arbcom remedies on bitter cases of protracted conflict do not need to be applied injudiciously across the rest of Wikipedia. Ray Talk 15:30, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
People! Please! This has nothing to do with mathematics articles. Please take it to the WP:AN/I section linked-to above. Uncle G ( talk) 23:56, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
With all due respect, the members of the project can discuss what they like here; and the status of a long-term, valued contributor to the project is hardly off-topic. It is relevant to getting articles written in a specialist area, where there is a shortage of specialists, if that has to be spelled out for anybody. I've made it clear above that I have interacted in the past with Linas. So that would be enough heckling, really. Charles Matthews ( talk) 11:33, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
I'd be grateful if someone could comment on talk:sinc function. — Emil J. 16:22, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
Mathematical article assessments on article talk pages (the {{ maths rating}} templates at the top of mathematical article talk pages) are often backed up by comments. These comments provide, at the very least, a signed date for the assessment (which has in the past been regarded as an essential part of our assessments); ideally they also provide basic suggestions for improvement. This project has found such pages useful.
A recent Village pump discussion suggests that editors elsewhere may not be fully aware of the value of /Comments pages to WikiProjects. A greater awareness may result in a better conclusion. Geometry guy 23:08, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm cross posting this from WikiProject CS since there are many editors here who are interested in these topics. If interested, please take a look at my request on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Computer_science#Can_someone_take_a_look_at_this.3F, and reply there to keep discussions unfragmented. In short, I've translated a German image which shows the relationship between these three fields. It might make a good addition to some of our articles on these topics. Thanks. -- Robin ( talk) 17:17, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
I was looking over the list of geometry stubs and noticed there were over 100 articles on hyperdimensional regular polytopes. From the sample I looked at, most of them are marginal OR and of doubtful notability. For example there is a separate article for each hypercube from dimensions 5-10 but the references cited just give formulas for the n-cube. So someone plugged six different values of n into the formulas and used a lot of copy and paste to generate six articles. I realize that this is to be expected to a certain amount for stubs, but it's hard to imagine that any significant material will be found to expand these articles any further. List of regular polytopes already includes any notable information and they stop being interesting after dimension 5 anyway because they fall into a few simple families. So, anyone second the motion to PROD them or at least replace them with redirects?-- RDBury ( talk) 04:32, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Why are Category:Arithmetic and Category:Elementary arithmetic two separate categories?
Greatest common divisor was listed in the latter category but not the former. (I added the former a couple of minutes ago.) How does that make sense? How would one know that something should be in one of those categories and not the other? Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:30, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Despite there being no support outside of the small, disputed, WP:OUTLINE project for the "outline of" naming, and despite agreemnet here against using this naming in maths articles, and an agreement by the prime mover (if you'll pardon the pun) of the outline project not to rename lists to outlines, List of logic topics has recently been renamed to Outline of logic. The move was made after TT asked an admin after a small pile on from outline project members, who clearly do not represent the wider communities views on outlines, at the talk page. This is despite agreeing to form a general community consensus. I oppose this rename for several reasons. Firstly, it is non standard and with many maths articles (such as outline of circles) gives silly names, secondly lists are standard and supported by policy and guidlines, thirdly lists are not forced to follow the WP:OUTLINE layout which is restrictive, goes against WP:MOS, and controlled by a few members of the outline project. Lastly (for now) the article is a list, and would be easier to find and the content less ambiguous if it remained named as a list. I'd like more input on this in general, and this one example in particular. Thanks, Verbal chat 07:21, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Dear Mathematics WikiProject members,
Please see the discussion at Talk:Outline of logic. I'm very interested in feedback on my presentation of the pros (vs. cons) there. Do they lack substance?
I've stopped moving lists to outlines, except for seeking the reversion of outlines that were recently moved by Verbal over and above his reversion of the move of about 50 articles that I made. The outlines I'm seeking to revert back to outlines have been called outlines for a long time, or were renamed to outlines by others based on work they did on the articles, and the articles either share the format of the set of outline articles or have a strong hierarchical structure in their own right.
Concerning the 50, I figured that moves (including mass moves) that did not receive opposition were OK. I misjudged the response that I'd get to that group move. (Oops). :) It won't happen again - I'll stick to creating outlines from scratch or proposing a rename on the talk pages of articles that have a strong hierarchical structure.
Verbal's entire argument seems to be that the name "Outline of" is bad, because it doesn't have consensus. I think I've countered this argument pretty well at Talk:Outline of logic, and have asked there that the opposition explain how "List of" is semantically better than the title "Outline of".
I'm confident that the ambiguity problem can be solved for those outlines with titles that are puns. Think about the inevitable "Outline of the Bible", for instance. :) "Outline of Bible-related topics" is a possible solution, and is grammatically and semantically sound. That format works for geometric shapes too.
One rationale for the recent group move was that I assumed I would be able to develop the weakly-structured pages amongst them into well-structured outlines quickly. But I immediately got bogged down with complaints and warnings over the move, so there was no opportunity (or support) to work on them. And I forgot to place {{ construction}} tags on them to indicate that they weren't intended to stay in the current state for long. The result was misnomers, which were strongly criticized. I'm sorry about the confusion.
I agree that consensus should be established for or against the "Outline of" name. In my opinion, since arguing over naming conventions and procedures has produced a standstill for many months, only a proposal to rename outlines to something else (at WP:VPR) will determine with certainty what these pages should be called. Most of these articles have been called "outlines" for over a year now, and blatantly reverting them at this late date would be disruptive (and efforts so far to revert them have proven to be just that).
I also agree that the structuring and standard design of outlines can be improved, but my philosophy here is that if the data is parseable, why manually configure it? Isn't that why we have computers in the first place? Manually altering the format for the whole set of outlines has proven to be ever more time consuming and tedious as it grows in size. So I have shied away from tweaking the format, and I am currently in the process of exploring programming options for providing users with interactive control over how they view and navigate outlines - and through those, Wikipedia as a whole. As long as an outline's hierarchical structure can be discerned (identified and parsed) by the software (whether the software is a script, browser add-on, or new MediaWiki features), a great deal of control can be provided to the user, in how he sees it on the screen and in how he navigates it.
And that's just for starters. This is the tip of the iceberg.
More to come (eventually)...
Sincerely,
The Transhumanist 02:02, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
See: Wikipedia talk:Outlines#Should articles named "Outline of x" be renamed to "List of x topics"?
The Transhumanist 04:27, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Can someone take a look at Synergetics coordinates? I'm not much sure what they are, but the page gets changed from time to time. They seem to be related or unrelated to Synergetics (Fuller), and/or a Clifford J. Nelson, and the latest edits are by a User:Cjnelson9. Shreevatsa ( talk) 04:20, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Just now saw this discussion. The article was "prodded" on Oct 10, and I "de-prodded" on Oct 15, since I think that the article ought to go through AFD before being deleted. Paul August ☎ 20:15, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
In my opinion, he's at it again. I can't find any restrictions he may be under, but he's reformulating the halting problem to remove the input, claiming it's the "modern" approach; and then adding a "modern proof", replacing the diagonalization by quining. I'm at 3RR, but I believe he is, also. Any input as to whether any of his assertions are correct (whether or not "input" is "modern", the proof uses inputs) would be appreciated. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:17, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
I disagree with Likebox's opinion that Wikipedia should promote pedagogical innovations not present in standard textbooks like stating the Halting Problem the way he likes it. Pcap ping 07:41, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
The same issue at Gödel's incompleteness theorems, where Likebox has previously added "modern" proof that was removed. It helps to have more eyes on these pages. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 02:05, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Note: I have posted about this to [1]. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 02:26, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Because Likebox has added the proofs again after the discussion here and at WP:NORB was clearly against them, I have raised the matter here. Comments from all users are welcome there, despite the name of the page. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 00:48, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
I am not keen on having the computer type proof in the Godel article, but I think the approach is I believe notable because a number of people have used it and it does convey the underlying ideas nicely. Can't say either I like the 'it is obvious that' in the text Likebox put in but there may be a way to show the status of things like that.
-- Perhaps it should be called an advanced proof in the tradition of 'Advanced algebra' and 'Elements of number theory'. ;-) Dmcq ( talk) 13:53, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
The article says:
I was expecting next to see the most important part:
My guess was that ƒ was to be a polynomial function and that justified the word "algebraic". Or maybe ƒ is a function defined implicitly by polynomial relations. Or something. (?) Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:04, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
But if that's what it means, then what would be an example of a differential equation that is not of the kind this is about? Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:09, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Articles that link to it are not citable evidence of notability, but maybe they give clues about where to look for such evidence. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:08, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
See talk:celebrity name game. I find the assertion that it's a Markov chain questionable. Apparently it was put there in June 2008 by user:Rdbrady. A few days ago, someone added Category:Markov models and that made the article appear in this WikiProject's new articles list. That's how it came to my attention. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:14, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
OK, I've deleted the Markov chain claim. I'd have done that earlier if I hadn't been somewhat rushed. Michael Hardy ( talk) 21:28, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
The diagram File:Heptominoes.svg in Heptominoes contains two identical forms. Since the symmetry discussion in the article relies on the diagram, there might be additional errors.
The diagram File:All 369 free octominoes.svg, along with the symmetry discussion, was removed from Octomino since the diagram contains two heptominoes.
Both errors are described on the respective image pages. Does anyone know enough about polyominoes to fix this? Thanks -- ἀνυπόδητος ( talk) 10:38, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
X X X X X X X
I am trying to clean-up our article on flexagons, as it is mostly a how-to. As part of this, I am trying to include a formal definition and I hope that in the future the article can include a full mathematical formalization of flexagons. Unfortunately, I am having a little trouble understanding the various definitions (I feel like I understand them, but when I try to explain them in my own words, I am at a loss.) So I would appreciate it if someone could help me understand and word this correctly. I am rewriting it at User:Jkasd/Misc_draft, feel free to edit that page directly. J kasd 00:13, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
For anyone who is interested, there is a discussion Category talk:Positional numeral systems as whether certain articles, such as Quinary meet notability guidelines.-- RDBury ( talk) 17:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
There is an RFC discussion to discuss moving E (mathematical constant) to E (number). Johnuniq ( talk) 07:04, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
"e (number)" seems somewhat preferable because it's simpler.
(And notice that lower case should be used. This is one of those articles whose titles have a lower-case initial letter; an exception to usual Wikipedia usages.) Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:57, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
This article seems to be an odd juxtaposition of occultism and mathematics. The article seems to have been split and re-merged without much discussion either way. Any thoughts on whether "Pentagram (geometry)" should be a separate article?-- RDBury ( talk) 14:53, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Hi: Is there some sort of automated tool to convert data into citations? MathSciNet will output the data as our choice of EndNote, BibTeX, and AMSRefs, but I'm still having to do a lot of copy/pasting, which is annoying. Thanks, Ray Talk 01:57, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
Even today there are poor benighted souls who don't know Wikipedia math notation style conventions.
I sometimes find things like xn, with the subscript not italicized. Here's a guess: some people see things like x1, where the subscript should not be italicized, and leap to the conclusion that that applies to subscripts generally, rather than being about the difference between literal variables and digits.
At any rate, I've always assumed the idea is that non-TeX notation should match TeX style as closely as possible. Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:27, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
Since we are nitpicking, this is a good time for me to ask this question: In TeX, I always write the time complexity of a linear time algorithm as . This is the same as in the Big O notation article, and CS papers in general. However, I've noticed that while using HTML, most people just write O(n). (The difference is that the "O" is not italicized.) What is the correct way? Is the big O italicized? (Same question for Omega, Theta, etc.) -- Robin ( talk) 19:45, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
Can someone address the issues I raise at Talk:Don Rees? Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:57, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Should articles called List of topology topics etc be changed to Outline of topology etc. User The Transhumanist is changing them all. A particularly ridiculous example is when List of triangle topics was changed to Outline of triangles. Charvest ( talk) 13:02, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
There's a WikiProject devoted to this: Wikipedia:WPOOK. Michael Hardy ( talk) 13:23, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Dbachman, this has been discussed with you before, I need not tell you to see WP:OUTLINE Highfields ( talk, contribs) 15:05, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't think the name is very important. Yes, User:The Transhumanist should not be doing these sorts of massive page moves, and someone has already given him or her a warning to stop. But I don't think it's worth wasting too much time discussing the matter, when we could be achieving more useful things than discussing whether "Outline" or "List" is a better word for the title. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 15:26, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Oh God, is he still at this nonsense? Someone block him and be done with it. → ROUX ₪ 16:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
I have encountered a strange situation at the Kurt Gödel article with someone removing content. I don't think anyone else needs to do anything at the moment, but having that page on more watchlists would help. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 19:32, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
etc. My guess is Edmund. Can someone who knows the answer edit the article accordingly? Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:19, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
We have no article titled Landau's algorithm. I've added some red links to that article from nested radical and from Susan Landau. If anyone knows anything about it, could they write something? Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:20, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
...OK, now I've created the article, but it says nothing specific about the algorithm. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:30, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
In connection with the deletion nomination for the article on Michael Somos, I started a new article Somos sequence. It's very bare bones right now, just including the basic definitions and a few references, and it's missing a lot of material e.g. on the connections between these sequences and theta-series of elliptic curves. If anyone else wants to take some time to improve it, I'd appreciate it. — David Eppstein ( talk) 23:31, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
There are currently eight links from articles to Robin Thomas (mathematician), so if somebody knows something, could they put something there? Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:48, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
There's an interesting rationale at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ascending power numbers. Uncle G ( talk) 07:32, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michael Somos. Do not simply say Keep or Delete (or Merge into... or whatever); rather, give your arguments. Currently Somos sequence and Somos' quadratic recurrence constant are mentioned at Michael Somos. Are those enough for "notability"? Are there other things that should be mentioned? Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:18, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
If interested, please comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cyclic permutation of integer. Note that just saying delete or keep is not constructive — reasons need to be given. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:52, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
I just came across the article Division by two, which is unfortunately completely unsourced, and has been so since its creation in 2002. First I thought that this is just an unnotable simple special case, but then it occurred to me that there might be some historical interest in this algorithm (cf. Peasant multiplication which incidentally requires a division-by-two algorithm); does anyone know any sources or background? — Miym ( talk) 17:51, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
Now we have
Two quite different things.
Great.
All perfectly clear to the newbie or casual reader.
Right?
Michael Hardy ( talk) 06:11, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
Interesting.
I would suggest just redirecting List of topics in mathematics to Lists of mathematics topics, and focusing on making the latter as useful as possible. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 18:12, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
The proposal to change lists of mathematics topics to a category is lunacy! This was once a "featured" list, representing Wikipedia's best work. It lost that status only because of a lack of references. Categories are vastly inferior to lists. This list is a good example of HOW categories are inferior to lists. Doesn't Wikipedia have a policy that these two formats are complementary—that one should not eschew one of them because the other exists? Michael Hardy ( talk) 21:40, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
This is a useful source of external links. But when an anonymous user adds a good link to one of its pages to an article, User:XLinkBot automatically deletes it without any human supervision. If the user also adds content to the article, all such content is deleted along with the link. I think this WikiProject should endorse this particular site. Michael Hardy ( talk) 21:51, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
Hi all, I have updated the article Near sets based on some feedback I received from this page a few months back. I invite any who are interested to check out the updated article to offer some suggestions to help improve it further. Thanks in advance. NearSetAccount ( talk) 15:37, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
I am not sure if this is the right place to ask but could somebody have a look at the Gyrovector space article. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 22:26, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
Article needs a fair amount of chat removed. There is a nonassociative structure in there to document. Articles in the area of linear algebra in mathematical physics do tend to lead off with claims that this is an entirely new way to look at things; that is almost always going to be POV, and such claims are not what make a topic notable. Charles Matthews ( talk) 07:30, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
A bit off-topic -- but -- virtually all of the edits I do at WP are on math articles, with some spill-over to physics and comp-sci. I've not been active for the last few years, because I got tired of the editorial nonsense that goes on. Despite being inactive, I recently was attacked, more or less unprovoked, by a new-age editor who had vandalized an obscure math article I wrote, and someone else reverted. When I told him off, I was promptly piled-on by five admins who blocked me for several weeks. I'm kind of shocked that the power structure here has changed so much that we've got these kinds of nasty, abusive people in admin roles. I complained to the Arb, but they ignored the case. I don't know what to do, other than to complain here, and ask everyone to try to band together, and to figure out how to get the ugly admins and the (incompetent?) leadership out of power, redo Wikipedia leadership, and restore some sanity. linas ( talk) 16:42, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
This has been forum-shopped to Mediation, to the Arbitration Committee, and now to the talk pages of several WikiProjects. Editors coming to this situation with no prior knowledge should read Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive564#Nuclear meltdown at User talk:Linas, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive567#User:Linas again, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/User:Linas, and this declined ArbCom request to get up to speed. Please place all further discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Linas, soapboxing on wikiprojects (and userpage), rather than having lots of little disjoint discussions everywhere that this has been shopped around to. Uncle G ( talk) 02:05, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Charles and others, it would seem to me that on this point, the goals of increasing civility on Wikipedia and actually building a good encyclopedia are somewhat in conflict. Wikipedia is not so rich that it can afford to run off everybody who's capable of being provoked, no matter how great their energy or extensive their contributions. Frankly, the whole incident looks like it could've been avoided if people had been allowed, you know, to blow off steam. Standards of admin action developed amidst our most ferocious disputes and hardened by arbcom remedies on bitter cases of protracted conflict do not need to be applied injudiciously across the rest of Wikipedia. Ray Talk 15:30, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
People! Please! This has nothing to do with mathematics articles. Please take it to the WP:AN/I section linked-to above. Uncle G ( talk) 23:56, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
With all due respect, the members of the project can discuss what they like here; and the status of a long-term, valued contributor to the project is hardly off-topic. It is relevant to getting articles written in a specialist area, where there is a shortage of specialists, if that has to be spelled out for anybody. I've made it clear above that I have interacted in the past with Linas. So that would be enough heckling, really. Charles Matthews ( talk) 11:33, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
I'd be grateful if someone could comment on talk:sinc function. — Emil J. 16:22, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
Mathematical article assessments on article talk pages (the {{ maths rating}} templates at the top of mathematical article talk pages) are often backed up by comments. These comments provide, at the very least, a signed date for the assessment (which has in the past been regarded as an essential part of our assessments); ideally they also provide basic suggestions for improvement. This project has found such pages useful.
A recent Village pump discussion suggests that editors elsewhere may not be fully aware of the value of /Comments pages to WikiProjects. A greater awareness may result in a better conclusion. Geometry guy 23:08, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm cross posting this from WikiProject CS since there are many editors here who are interested in these topics. If interested, please take a look at my request on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Computer_science#Can_someone_take_a_look_at_this.3F, and reply there to keep discussions unfragmented. In short, I've translated a German image which shows the relationship between these three fields. It might make a good addition to some of our articles on these topics. Thanks. -- Robin ( talk) 17:17, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
I was looking over the list of geometry stubs and noticed there were over 100 articles on hyperdimensional regular polytopes. From the sample I looked at, most of them are marginal OR and of doubtful notability. For example there is a separate article for each hypercube from dimensions 5-10 but the references cited just give formulas for the n-cube. So someone plugged six different values of n into the formulas and used a lot of copy and paste to generate six articles. I realize that this is to be expected to a certain amount for stubs, but it's hard to imagine that any significant material will be found to expand these articles any further. List of regular polytopes already includes any notable information and they stop being interesting after dimension 5 anyway because they fall into a few simple families. So, anyone second the motion to PROD them or at least replace them with redirects?-- RDBury ( talk) 04:32, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Why are Category:Arithmetic and Category:Elementary arithmetic two separate categories?
Greatest common divisor was listed in the latter category but not the former. (I added the former a couple of minutes ago.) How does that make sense? How would one know that something should be in one of those categories and not the other? Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:30, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Despite there being no support outside of the small, disputed, WP:OUTLINE project for the "outline of" naming, and despite agreemnet here against using this naming in maths articles, and an agreement by the prime mover (if you'll pardon the pun) of the outline project not to rename lists to outlines, List of logic topics has recently been renamed to Outline of logic. The move was made after TT asked an admin after a small pile on from outline project members, who clearly do not represent the wider communities views on outlines, at the talk page. This is despite agreeing to form a general community consensus. I oppose this rename for several reasons. Firstly, it is non standard and with many maths articles (such as outline of circles) gives silly names, secondly lists are standard and supported by policy and guidlines, thirdly lists are not forced to follow the WP:OUTLINE layout which is restrictive, goes against WP:MOS, and controlled by a few members of the outline project. Lastly (for now) the article is a list, and would be easier to find and the content less ambiguous if it remained named as a list. I'd like more input on this in general, and this one example in particular. Thanks, Verbal chat 07:21, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Dear Mathematics WikiProject members,
Please see the discussion at Talk:Outline of logic. I'm very interested in feedback on my presentation of the pros (vs. cons) there. Do they lack substance?
I've stopped moving lists to outlines, except for seeking the reversion of outlines that were recently moved by Verbal over and above his reversion of the move of about 50 articles that I made. The outlines I'm seeking to revert back to outlines have been called outlines for a long time, or were renamed to outlines by others based on work they did on the articles, and the articles either share the format of the set of outline articles or have a strong hierarchical structure in their own right.
Concerning the 50, I figured that moves (including mass moves) that did not receive opposition were OK. I misjudged the response that I'd get to that group move. (Oops). :) It won't happen again - I'll stick to creating outlines from scratch or proposing a rename on the talk pages of articles that have a strong hierarchical structure.
Verbal's entire argument seems to be that the name "Outline of" is bad, because it doesn't have consensus. I think I've countered this argument pretty well at Talk:Outline of logic, and have asked there that the opposition explain how "List of" is semantically better than the title "Outline of".
I'm confident that the ambiguity problem can be solved for those outlines with titles that are puns. Think about the inevitable "Outline of the Bible", for instance. :) "Outline of Bible-related topics" is a possible solution, and is grammatically and semantically sound. That format works for geometric shapes too.
One rationale for the recent group move was that I assumed I would be able to develop the weakly-structured pages amongst them into well-structured outlines quickly. But I immediately got bogged down with complaints and warnings over the move, so there was no opportunity (or support) to work on them. And I forgot to place {{ construction}} tags on them to indicate that they weren't intended to stay in the current state for long. The result was misnomers, which were strongly criticized. I'm sorry about the confusion.
I agree that consensus should be established for or against the "Outline of" name. In my opinion, since arguing over naming conventions and procedures has produced a standstill for many months, only a proposal to rename outlines to something else (at WP:VPR) will determine with certainty what these pages should be called. Most of these articles have been called "outlines" for over a year now, and blatantly reverting them at this late date would be disruptive (and efforts so far to revert them have proven to be just that).
I also agree that the structuring and standard design of outlines can be improved, but my philosophy here is that if the data is parseable, why manually configure it? Isn't that why we have computers in the first place? Manually altering the format for the whole set of outlines has proven to be ever more time consuming and tedious as it grows in size. So I have shied away from tweaking the format, and I am currently in the process of exploring programming options for providing users with interactive control over how they view and navigate outlines - and through those, Wikipedia as a whole. As long as an outline's hierarchical structure can be discerned (identified and parsed) by the software (whether the software is a script, browser add-on, or new MediaWiki features), a great deal of control can be provided to the user, in how he sees it on the screen and in how he navigates it.
And that's just for starters. This is the tip of the iceberg.
More to come (eventually)...
Sincerely,
The Transhumanist 02:02, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
See: Wikipedia talk:Outlines#Should articles named "Outline of x" be renamed to "List of x topics"?
The Transhumanist 04:27, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Can someone take a look at Synergetics coordinates? I'm not much sure what they are, but the page gets changed from time to time. They seem to be related or unrelated to Synergetics (Fuller), and/or a Clifford J. Nelson, and the latest edits are by a User:Cjnelson9. Shreevatsa ( talk) 04:20, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Just now saw this discussion. The article was "prodded" on Oct 10, and I "de-prodded" on Oct 15, since I think that the article ought to go through AFD before being deleted. Paul August ☎ 20:15, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
In my opinion, he's at it again. I can't find any restrictions he may be under, but he's reformulating the halting problem to remove the input, claiming it's the "modern" approach; and then adding a "modern proof", replacing the diagonalization by quining. I'm at 3RR, but I believe he is, also. Any input as to whether any of his assertions are correct (whether or not "input" is "modern", the proof uses inputs) would be appreciated. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:17, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
I disagree with Likebox's opinion that Wikipedia should promote pedagogical innovations not present in standard textbooks like stating the Halting Problem the way he likes it. Pcap ping 07:41, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
The same issue at Gödel's incompleteness theorems, where Likebox has previously added "modern" proof that was removed. It helps to have more eyes on these pages. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 02:05, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Note: I have posted about this to [1]. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 02:26, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Because Likebox has added the proofs again after the discussion here and at WP:NORB was clearly against them, I have raised the matter here. Comments from all users are welcome there, despite the name of the page. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 00:48, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
I am not keen on having the computer type proof in the Godel article, but I think the approach is I believe notable because a number of people have used it and it does convey the underlying ideas nicely. Can't say either I like the 'it is obvious that' in the text Likebox put in but there may be a way to show the status of things like that.
-- Perhaps it should be called an advanced proof in the tradition of 'Advanced algebra' and 'Elements of number theory'. ;-) Dmcq ( talk) 13:53, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
The article says:
I was expecting next to see the most important part:
My guess was that ƒ was to be a polynomial function and that justified the word "algebraic". Or maybe ƒ is a function defined implicitly by polynomial relations. Or something. (?) Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:04, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
But if that's what it means, then what would be an example of a differential equation that is not of the kind this is about? Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:09, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Articles that link to it are not citable evidence of notability, but maybe they give clues about where to look for such evidence. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:08, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
See talk:celebrity name game. I find the assertion that it's a Markov chain questionable. Apparently it was put there in June 2008 by user:Rdbrady. A few days ago, someone added Category:Markov models and that made the article appear in this WikiProject's new articles list. That's how it came to my attention. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:14, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
OK, I've deleted the Markov chain claim. I'd have done that earlier if I hadn't been somewhat rushed. Michael Hardy ( talk) 21:28, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
The diagram File:Heptominoes.svg in Heptominoes contains two identical forms. Since the symmetry discussion in the article relies on the diagram, there might be additional errors.
The diagram File:All 369 free octominoes.svg, along with the symmetry discussion, was removed from Octomino since the diagram contains two heptominoes.
Both errors are described on the respective image pages. Does anyone know enough about polyominoes to fix this? Thanks -- ἀνυπόδητος ( talk) 10:38, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
X X X X X X X
I am trying to clean-up our article on flexagons, as it is mostly a how-to. As part of this, I am trying to include a formal definition and I hope that in the future the article can include a full mathematical formalization of flexagons. Unfortunately, I am having a little trouble understanding the various definitions (I feel like I understand them, but when I try to explain them in my own words, I am at a loss.) So I would appreciate it if someone could help me understand and word this correctly. I am rewriting it at User:Jkasd/Misc_draft, feel free to edit that page directly. J kasd 00:13, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
For anyone who is interested, there is a discussion Category talk:Positional numeral systems as whether certain articles, such as Quinary meet notability guidelines.-- RDBury ( talk) 17:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
There is an RFC discussion to discuss moving E (mathematical constant) to E (number). Johnuniq ( talk) 07:04, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
"e (number)" seems somewhat preferable because it's simpler.
(And notice that lower case should be used. This is one of those articles whose titles have a lower-case initial letter; an exception to usual Wikipedia usages.) Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:57, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
This article seems to be an odd juxtaposition of occultism and mathematics. The article seems to have been split and re-merged without much discussion either way. Any thoughts on whether "Pentagram (geometry)" should be a separate article?-- RDBury ( talk) 14:53, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Hi: Is there some sort of automated tool to convert data into citations? MathSciNet will output the data as our choice of EndNote, BibTeX, and AMSRefs, but I'm still having to do a lot of copy/pasting, which is annoying. Thanks, Ray Talk 01:57, 30 October 2009 (UTC)