The new page titled mathematical assumption is a mess. Michael Hardy ( talk) 06:20, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
It now redirects to axiom, but a hypothesis in the statement of a theorem is a "mathematical assumption" but not generally an axiom. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
Is there any reason to add categories to redirect articles? I wouldn't care except they're causing these articles, e.g. Subnormal series, so show up in current activity and List of mathematics articles when they shouldn't be there.-- RDBury ( talk) 17:02, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, sorry, my statement oversimplified it somewhat. WP:RCAT says that in general redirects should not be categorised, with a few exceptions. None I think applied to the redirect that started this discussion, which simply caused the article to be listed twice in the same category. But there are exceptions, in particular where the redirect is to something in the article that should be categorised differently to the article as in the above example.-- JohnBlackburne words deeds 20:16, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
In case anyone cares, there is (or was) a rather silly edit war going on at Euclid ( talk).-- RDBury ( talk) 00:19, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Multiplicity-one theorem is a new article written by someone clearly unfamiliar with Wikipedia usage conventions. It seems to be about group representation theory. Could someone who knows the topic and also knows Wikipedia usages help? Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:48, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
We have no article titled advanced calculus. We never have. (We admins get to see deleted versions if they exist, and in this case they don't.) Should we? Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:26, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't see the lack of a standard definition as an objection to the existence of the article. (Is there a standard definition of " justice"?) But it should be mentioned in the article. Michael Hardy ( talk) 06:39, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
There are plenty of textbooks titled "advanced calculus" [1]. Whether there's any consistent subject that they all cover is a different question that's harder for Google to answer quickly. — David Eppstein ( talk) 07:56, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Kmhkmh: Your list of topics looks to me like that of what I think of as "sophomore (i.e. 2nd-year) calculus", whereas what I think of as "advanced calculus" comes after that. Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:01, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
There are two different meanings to "advanced calculus" that I have seen. The first is what some schools call "calculus 4", which covers about what RDBury listed: Taylor series, the implicit function theorem and its uses, Fourier series, etc. The other is a course that covers Calculus I but with proofs. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 18:52, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
The article titled George Kayatta has a bit more of the element of honesty than it did recently, but could still use some work. For example, it reported that he had been recognized as a "Renaisance Man" (two capital letters). When asked who had recognized him thus (Oxford University? The Pope? His sixth-grade teacher?) someone added a source: a magazine article. Did the magazine bestow that recognition? In fact, the magazine reported that he refused to appear on TV unless introduced in that way. Then it linked to a talk by a mathematician saying, allegedly, that his discoveries would revolutionize mathematics. If you look at that talk, it's about crackpots, one of whom says pi is 25/8, another of whom says the sun is made of ice, and what it says about Kayatta is that someone else (identity unspecified!) said Kayatta's work would revolutionize mathematics. The article could use some more work....... Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
2010 Wolf Prizes in Mathematics for Dennis Sullivan and Shing-Tung Yau, according to a news agency link on the Sullivan page. Articles to watch and improve, therefore. Charles Matthews ( talk) 14:22, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
Table of costs of operations in elliptic curves has been prodded. It was written by someone pretty much wholly unaware of Wikipedia usage conventions. I suspect it can be cleaned up. Michael Hardy ( talk) 07:46, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
There's a survey of the field from a few years ago at http://eprint.iacr.org/2007/441.pdf. What is posted in the table may be from someone's unpublishable dissertation, or compiled from this and other things on the "Explicit-Formulas Database" at http://www.hyperelliptic.org/EFD/. That is the real issue. I've just left a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cryptography about it. The "Database" carries no license or copyright information, and one concern should be that some of the related curves articles borrow too much from it. Charles Matthews ( talk) 19:13, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
Can any expert check out all the following:
I would like to note the disagreement about the origin of the word quintuple in the 2 articles. Georgia guy ( talk) 21:47, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
The article theorem says:
I've the feeling there is subtle a mistake: the typical example is not in the form if A, then B, it's in the form for any x if A(x) then B(x), and this is true for the majority of the theorems. It would be rather strange to find a theorem which says if A, then B where A and B are closed formulas. What do you think?-- Pokipsy76 ( talk) 17:14, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
If there's no rule against project redirects, I think Wikiproject:Mathematics and Wikiproject:Math should be created as redirects to this project. I doubt there would be any controversy over those names being taken for aliases. LokiClock ( talk) 14:07, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Maybe what the original poster meant was Wikipedia:Wikiproject Mathematics and Wikipedia:Wikiproject Math? Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:04, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I have some thoughts how to improve rendering of mathematical formulae in Wikipedia.
First, to allow a link from a mathematical symbol inside a formula, something like that
<math>\link{smooth function}{C^\infty}(\link{sphere}{S^2},\link{real numbers}{\mathbb R})</math>
will produce:
C∞(
S2,
ℝ) .
I know, it is extremely difficult for rasterized output, but it would be helpful even if this will work with HTML and MathML output.
It would be also useful if any <math>-formula had internal link to Mathematical notation article by default, unless this formula contains an internal link, the link turned off by special tag parameter or in user preferences. Such link is similar to {{ IPA}} for phonetic transcription. The style of the link on (or inside) a formula must be not underlined, bordered or so, indeed. The article “mathematical notation” in this case should contain much more explanations, like a corresponding article in ru.wiki which is currently far from completeness, though.
Incnis Mrsi ( talk) 22:00, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
There is another possibility, alternative to linking to “mathematical notation” directly. When clicking to a formula, run a popup (JavaScript or so) trying to grammatically parse the formula and give to a user some DHTML output with necessary links. Incnis Mrsi ( talk) 22:22, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
I think it is better to avoid links within formulas, and just explain the symbols in the surrounding text. On one hand, English is very flexible for explaining exactly what is happening in each article. And we have a lot of experience explaining formulas in print, where there are no hyperlinks.
On the other hand, I am afraid of people going around adding "missing" links that are of little value or are even misleading. For example, I might see this in the context of Hindman's theorem:
It would be tempting, but very wrong, to link that infinity sign to an article on infinity. (What the symbolism means is to color every finite sequence of 0s and 1s). — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:00, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/George Kayatta.
I'm not really sure this concerns the mathematics WikiProject. Until recently the article said that this alleged genius has contributed to mathematics (among many other things). Now it says he claims to have contributed to mathematics. Underwood Dudley wrote a book about mathematical crackpots in which he devoted a whole chapter to this guy—hence some asertiosn of notability. The discussion looks as if it may be heading for a "no consensus" outcome, the immediate result of which is that it is kept rather than deleted. (I'm not even sure whether it should be kept, but if it is, I might try to improve it—in particular see if one can document some of the claims.) Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:37, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
The names in Template:Polytopes, and the general expansion of higher-dimensionality articles, needs some help. (Is there a WikiProject Geometry? That might be a better place to put that.)
In regard Template:Polytopes, I suggest removing the 1-polytope entry, and writing the rest something like:
My proposal for much of the dimensionality articles:
Most of the articles are now at "en-dimensional space". (For example, when n=5, by "en-dimensional space" I mean five-dimensional space.
There may be other "obvious" changes which should be made, but I don't want to revert the prolific editor 4, without some consensus. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:23, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
This has come up here, but I've noticed it on other pages. Should Matlab code be used in maths articles? Few people have access to the program because of its price, and judging by the sample code in simplex it's of little help to those who don't use Matlab, as the syntax is unlike other programming languages but also unlike symbolic maths. It obviously is used by some people otherwise it would not have been added, but I suspect it's only used by a minority of editors and an even smaller fraction of readers.
Should Matlab code be used at all? Is there anything it can be replaced with, such as a less proprietary language, that more people are familiar with or have access to? I think the answer may be different in different cases, i.e. if Matlab has been used because of it's mathematical strengths it might be difficult to replace. But if as in simplex it is just being used to manipulate numbers and vectors then any modern programming language could be used, or the article could just give a clear explanation which any technically minded reader could implement.-- JohnBlackburne words deeds 10:35, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
That's the great thing about pseudocode: It's formal enough to be like a programming language, and yet informal enough that no one has to study its syntax or construction. Just knowing English and any other programming language allows you to understand pseudocode. -- Robin ( talk) 20:20, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Could an interested and knowledgeable editor please take a look at Superslow process and Vladimir Miklyukov? The creator of both is User:SobakaKachalova, who happens to be Miklyukov's daughter.
She doesn't like the tags currently on Miklyukov's article, so she asked for
and received a
3rd opinion. She didn't like that either (
she said "it did not work since the editors do not have interests in mathematics"). She currently has a {{
helpme}}
tag on her
talk page, and I think she could use a hand.
Just an FYI, and probably irrelevant, but it all smells fishy to me... WorldCat has no records of the cited ISBNs; Miklyukov's last book (self-published in 2008 through Xlibris) is in no libraries (per OCLC 290444522 and OCLC 290444525); and the biographical references are to sources like Marquis Who's Who (which is not a reliable source).
Thanks! Dori ❦ ( Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 00:16, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
I've just done some editing on Riemann–Stieltjes integral. I've tried to state the definition in a way that does not mention "meshes" of partitions, since I take the Riemann–Stieltjes integral to be a limit of a net. Here's how the "Definition" section now reads:
So improve it if you can. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:34, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Gaussian minus exponential distribution needs work. In particular, it's an orphan: other pages should link to it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:14, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
This article by Carr & Madan from the Journal of Computational Finance, using the term Gauss minus exponential, and appears to be the main source. This item, apparently a master's thesis at Imperial College in London, uses the term Gaussian minus Exponential and cites the paper by Carr & Madan. "Normal plus exponential" appears more frequently and may be mathematically the same thing; apparently it's applied in biochemistry and in psychology. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:19, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Zeno.27s_paradoxes, which is entirely a contents issue as far as I can tell. Pcap ping 16:30, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
This article has been proposed for deletion. If you have knowledge of the subject kindly take a look to see if it is worth salvaging. -Arb. ( talk) 23:34, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
I had marked Positive definiteness as a disambiguation page, but it was reverted. Could someone else look at that? — Carl ( CBM · talk) 19:30, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
As Michael Hardy would say, this article is a mess. But before asking people to get to work on it I would note that notability is marginal. I did not turn up any secondary sources for the subject but I did turn up a plethora of primary sources from a variety of disciplines so maybe the notability criteria could be stretched to include this. The article itself seems to be the brainchild of a something called "MCA lab", presumably pictured at the bottom of the article. There is a huge amount of material in the article but with no references given so impossible to say how much of the material is original research. At the least, there are huge COI issues with the authors writing about their own work. If there is salvageable material here then it should probably be saved and turned to the kernel for a better article, but if a complete rewrite is needed then I'd say it would be better to delete for now and recreate it if/when secondary sources appear.-- RDBury ( talk) 03:31, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Note: The article seems to have been developed concurrently in both English and Russian, click the link next to the article to see the Russian version.-- RDBury ( talk) 03:41, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Help:Displaying a formula seems to have a lot of focus on how WP works technically and doesn't seem to be too clear. These details are probably unecessary ( or could be put in a technical paragraph at the end ) and seem to be a left oer of a design spec rather than a help page. I have no idea how much of the information is relevant or useful, so could do with some pointers on what to do with this page, many thanks -- Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 15:32, 10 February 2010 (UTC) ( Wikipedia:Help Project)
Dear Wikimathematicians, the above article is being considered for deletion. 131.211.113.1 ( talk) 22:46, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Can someone please have a look at these articles and the discussion here. I removed some changes which seemed totally out of place but User:MathFacts has just reinstated them with slight adjustments in position. It's not particularly my area of expertise so I don't recognise the formulae he's trying to insert, but they certainly don't belong in those articles in their current forms.-- JohnBlackburne words deeds 18:58, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi all, I was wondering if we could get some (more) help from this project. I'm working on the Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links project, and one of the most-linked dabs is Direct sum. This used to be a redirect to Direct sum of modules, but in December it was converted into a disambig, and now it has over 100 links that need fixing. I'm sure most of these should be pointing to Direct sum of modules, but I don't feel qualified to make that call. Could someone give us some guidance? The list of links can be found here. Thanks! -- JaGa talk 09:30, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Looking at some of the articles that link to Direct sum, it looks to me like "Direct sum" should be an article, not a dab. For example, the first five articles listed here are all referring to general notions of the direct sum, not any specific direct sum (e.g. the article Limit (category theory) mentions that colimits generalize constructions such as coproducts and direct sums). I'd suggest turning "Direct sum" back into an article (there would of course still be many links to change). Thoughts? RobHar ( talk) 17:54, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Alright, I got through all the links and disambiguated them. The article direct sum still needs some work though. RobHar ( talk) 04:06, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
In Baker's map, I found this:
I changed it to this:
The first uses \mathrm{baker-folded}; the second uses \text{baker-folded}. When \mathrm is used, the hyphen becomes a minus sign; when \text is used, it remains a hyphen. The first uses \mbox{for }; the second uses \text{for }. In some contexts, those look much more different from each other than in the example above. For example, contrast \min_\mbox{abcd} with \min_\text{abcd}:
The purpose of \mbox is to prevent line-breaks when TeX is used in the usual way as opposed to the way it's used within Wikipedia. It shouldn't be used as a substitute for \text. Michael Hardy ( talk) 15:57, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Some sort of group sanctions are requested. See Wikipedia:ANI#Harassment. Pcap ping 01:37, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
I've presented the whole intro to the homogeneous differential equation article using a more general formulation that makes the link to homogeneous functions clearer, rather than just taking the special case of f(x,y) = F(y/x), which only covers the case of homogeneous differential equations of degree 0.
I hope that this is both more elegant and more general than the previous text, and provides a better lead-in to the second example lower down the article; in particular it makes clear in advance what "degree" means in this context, which is otherwise just thrown in without explanation.
However, my maths education was a very long time ago: can people here please check my changes? -- The Anome ( talk) 03:52, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi. Plenty of missing articles to start! See Italian wikipedia biography equivalent... ‡ Himalayan ‡ ΨMonastery 18:04, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Is Napierian logarithm accurate? Is it a joke? Based on the current content, I would believe either one. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 04:12, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
FWIW, the base 10 log is sometimes called Briggsian logarithm for contrast. Pcap ping 08:40, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
If you have a look at Prosthaphaeresis you'll wonder why someone didn't try inventing Napierian logs earlier. Or for something even wierder wikt:logarithmancy which used Napierian logarithms for divination though no-one now know knows how. Dmcq ( talk) 13:33, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
In its present form, it is very difficult to see how Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Mathematosis is constructive. It is substantially a recreation of the deleted essay Wikipedia:Mathematosis. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 12:28, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
As I say, the page should be fixed up: it's a good exercise in writing for the opponent. Charles Matthews ( talk) 08:01, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
A newly created account User:Basemaze has been engaged in vandalizing displayed math equations with mischievous edit summaries ("fixed an error", etc). Arcfrk ( talk) 18:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
It has been suggested to inform this WikiProject of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Texvc. I am the nominator for that AfD, by the way. Pcap ping 16:10, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
See WP:ANI#User:Likebox deceptively sourced infraparticle. It's about some physics articles but raises issues for math as well and some of the concerned parties have also edited math articles. As near as I can tell the short story is: someone tagged [citation needed] on some physics articles, Likebox ( talk · contribs) and Count Iblis ( talk · contribs) felt that the tag was unwarranted as the facts in question were simple calculations, and in response these two users went on a spree of replacing fact tags by deliberately fake references and boasted about it on Jimbo's talk page. But there's a lot of chatter in the thread so it's hard to tell for sure whether that's an accurate description of both sides of the story, it's not clear whether "deliberately fake" means that it doesn't source the calculation at all or merely that it is off-topic for the primary subject of the article in question, and I have not formulated an opinion over whether the citation needed tags really were appropriate.
Anyway, the reason I'm bringing this to the project's attention is that a lot of our articles contain things that really are simple calculations that should not need a source according to WP:OR#Routine calculations and WP:Scientific citation guidelines#Examples, derivations and restatements. It would be a shame if someone's misbehavior led to an overreaction in the other direction. — David Eppstein ( talk) 02:25, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
As a side note: the discussion about infraparticles somehow led to Methods of contour integration being tagged as POV. Probably more people should watch that article for a little while. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 02:50, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Continuing from the earlier, archived discussion, the thread Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (mathematics)#Source code and pseudocode has been discussed, and a consensus needs to be reached. LokiClock ( talk) 00:02, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Not to disparage the original author, but I've just come across this article which in my most humble opinion, is a little suspicious. I am nowhere near competent enough in pure mathematics to be able to tell whether or not it's a load of hooey or otherwise lacking in rigor, but something stands out about it. One thing that drew my attention but which I'm trying not to be prejudiced by is the personal promotion in the introduction. At the very least, it's quite hard to follow. Could this be checked out by an expert? Sojourner001 ( talk) 18:24, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
FWIW, the references cited at paravector are all Physics, not Math books. Pcap ping 21:22, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
The Movable cellular automaton article I brought up previously was PRODed. The article has issues as I mentioned above but I didn't think they were clear cut enough for the article to be deleted without a discussion, so I changed the Prod to an AfD. The deletion discussion is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Movable cellular automaton.-- RDBury ( talk) 05:17, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Bocardo Prison suffers from poor notation, caused by a traditional example being put together with an existing Venn diagram. Help would be appreciated. Charles Matthews ( talk) 12:50, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Sorry if this has been discussed earlier, but should WikipRoject Math perhaps introduce a C-class article rating for math articles? Quite a few other projects seem to have introduces a C-class rating. It does seem that there is a fairly substantial difference between start and B classes, so having something in between might not be a bad thing. Nsk92 ( talk) 14:02, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of numerical analysis software. Pcap ping 22:30, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
There are currently two math related pictures being discussed for featured pictures: File:Pythagoras-2a.gif and File:Penrose Tiling (Rhombi).svg. See Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/File:Penrose Tiling (Rhombi).svg and Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/File:Pythagoras-2a.gif for discussions.-- RDBury ( talk) 08:22, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Zbacnik conjecture was prodded as a hoax by someone else and I just prodded the related article Luce number. There seems to be a bump in the number of questionable new articles recently so perhaps some extra eyes on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity would be helpful.-- RDBury ( talk) 06:37, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
The new page titled mathematical assumption is a mess. Michael Hardy ( talk) 06:20, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
It now redirects to axiom, but a hypothesis in the statement of a theorem is a "mathematical assumption" but not generally an axiom. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
Is there any reason to add categories to redirect articles? I wouldn't care except they're causing these articles, e.g. Subnormal series, so show up in current activity and List of mathematics articles when they shouldn't be there.-- RDBury ( talk) 17:02, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, sorry, my statement oversimplified it somewhat. WP:RCAT says that in general redirects should not be categorised, with a few exceptions. None I think applied to the redirect that started this discussion, which simply caused the article to be listed twice in the same category. But there are exceptions, in particular where the redirect is to something in the article that should be categorised differently to the article as in the above example.-- JohnBlackburne words deeds 20:16, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
In case anyone cares, there is (or was) a rather silly edit war going on at Euclid ( talk).-- RDBury ( talk) 00:19, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Multiplicity-one theorem is a new article written by someone clearly unfamiliar with Wikipedia usage conventions. It seems to be about group representation theory. Could someone who knows the topic and also knows Wikipedia usages help? Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:48, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
We have no article titled advanced calculus. We never have. (We admins get to see deleted versions if they exist, and in this case they don't.) Should we? Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:26, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't see the lack of a standard definition as an objection to the existence of the article. (Is there a standard definition of " justice"?) But it should be mentioned in the article. Michael Hardy ( talk) 06:39, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
There are plenty of textbooks titled "advanced calculus" [1]. Whether there's any consistent subject that they all cover is a different question that's harder for Google to answer quickly. — David Eppstein ( talk) 07:56, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Kmhkmh: Your list of topics looks to me like that of what I think of as "sophomore (i.e. 2nd-year) calculus", whereas what I think of as "advanced calculus" comes after that. Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:01, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
There are two different meanings to "advanced calculus" that I have seen. The first is what some schools call "calculus 4", which covers about what RDBury listed: Taylor series, the implicit function theorem and its uses, Fourier series, etc. The other is a course that covers Calculus I but with proofs. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 18:52, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
The article titled George Kayatta has a bit more of the element of honesty than it did recently, but could still use some work. For example, it reported that he had been recognized as a "Renaisance Man" (two capital letters). When asked who had recognized him thus (Oxford University? The Pope? His sixth-grade teacher?) someone added a source: a magazine article. Did the magazine bestow that recognition? In fact, the magazine reported that he refused to appear on TV unless introduced in that way. Then it linked to a talk by a mathematician saying, allegedly, that his discoveries would revolutionize mathematics. If you look at that talk, it's about crackpots, one of whom says pi is 25/8, another of whom says the sun is made of ice, and what it says about Kayatta is that someone else (identity unspecified!) said Kayatta's work would revolutionize mathematics. The article could use some more work....... Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
2010 Wolf Prizes in Mathematics for Dennis Sullivan and Shing-Tung Yau, according to a news agency link on the Sullivan page. Articles to watch and improve, therefore. Charles Matthews ( talk) 14:22, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
Table of costs of operations in elliptic curves has been prodded. It was written by someone pretty much wholly unaware of Wikipedia usage conventions. I suspect it can be cleaned up. Michael Hardy ( talk) 07:46, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
There's a survey of the field from a few years ago at http://eprint.iacr.org/2007/441.pdf. What is posted in the table may be from someone's unpublishable dissertation, or compiled from this and other things on the "Explicit-Formulas Database" at http://www.hyperelliptic.org/EFD/. That is the real issue. I've just left a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cryptography about it. The "Database" carries no license or copyright information, and one concern should be that some of the related curves articles borrow too much from it. Charles Matthews ( talk) 19:13, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
Can any expert check out all the following:
I would like to note the disagreement about the origin of the word quintuple in the 2 articles. Georgia guy ( talk) 21:47, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
The article theorem says:
I've the feeling there is subtle a mistake: the typical example is not in the form if A, then B, it's in the form for any x if A(x) then B(x), and this is true for the majority of the theorems. It would be rather strange to find a theorem which says if A, then B where A and B are closed formulas. What do you think?-- Pokipsy76 ( talk) 17:14, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
If there's no rule against project redirects, I think Wikiproject:Mathematics and Wikiproject:Math should be created as redirects to this project. I doubt there would be any controversy over those names being taken for aliases. LokiClock ( talk) 14:07, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Maybe what the original poster meant was Wikipedia:Wikiproject Mathematics and Wikipedia:Wikiproject Math? Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:04, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I have some thoughts how to improve rendering of mathematical formulae in Wikipedia.
First, to allow a link from a mathematical symbol inside a formula, something like that
<math>\link{smooth function}{C^\infty}(\link{sphere}{S^2},\link{real numbers}{\mathbb R})</math>
will produce:
C∞(
S2,
ℝ) .
I know, it is extremely difficult for rasterized output, but it would be helpful even if this will work with HTML and MathML output.
It would be also useful if any <math>-formula had internal link to Mathematical notation article by default, unless this formula contains an internal link, the link turned off by special tag parameter or in user preferences. Such link is similar to {{ IPA}} for phonetic transcription. The style of the link on (or inside) a formula must be not underlined, bordered or so, indeed. The article “mathematical notation” in this case should contain much more explanations, like a corresponding article in ru.wiki which is currently far from completeness, though.
Incnis Mrsi ( talk) 22:00, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
There is another possibility, alternative to linking to “mathematical notation” directly. When clicking to a formula, run a popup (JavaScript or so) trying to grammatically parse the formula and give to a user some DHTML output with necessary links. Incnis Mrsi ( talk) 22:22, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
I think it is better to avoid links within formulas, and just explain the symbols in the surrounding text. On one hand, English is very flexible for explaining exactly what is happening in each article. And we have a lot of experience explaining formulas in print, where there are no hyperlinks.
On the other hand, I am afraid of people going around adding "missing" links that are of little value or are even misleading. For example, I might see this in the context of Hindman's theorem:
It would be tempting, but very wrong, to link that infinity sign to an article on infinity. (What the symbolism means is to color every finite sequence of 0s and 1s). — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:00, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/George Kayatta.
I'm not really sure this concerns the mathematics WikiProject. Until recently the article said that this alleged genius has contributed to mathematics (among many other things). Now it says he claims to have contributed to mathematics. Underwood Dudley wrote a book about mathematical crackpots in which he devoted a whole chapter to this guy—hence some asertiosn of notability. The discussion looks as if it may be heading for a "no consensus" outcome, the immediate result of which is that it is kept rather than deleted. (I'm not even sure whether it should be kept, but if it is, I might try to improve it—in particular see if one can document some of the claims.) Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:37, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
The names in Template:Polytopes, and the general expansion of higher-dimensionality articles, needs some help. (Is there a WikiProject Geometry? That might be a better place to put that.)
In regard Template:Polytopes, I suggest removing the 1-polytope entry, and writing the rest something like:
My proposal for much of the dimensionality articles:
Most of the articles are now at "en-dimensional space". (For example, when n=5, by "en-dimensional space" I mean five-dimensional space.
There may be other "obvious" changes which should be made, but I don't want to revert the prolific editor 4, without some consensus. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:23, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
This has come up here, but I've noticed it on other pages. Should Matlab code be used in maths articles? Few people have access to the program because of its price, and judging by the sample code in simplex it's of little help to those who don't use Matlab, as the syntax is unlike other programming languages but also unlike symbolic maths. It obviously is used by some people otherwise it would not have been added, but I suspect it's only used by a minority of editors and an even smaller fraction of readers.
Should Matlab code be used at all? Is there anything it can be replaced with, such as a less proprietary language, that more people are familiar with or have access to? I think the answer may be different in different cases, i.e. if Matlab has been used because of it's mathematical strengths it might be difficult to replace. But if as in simplex it is just being used to manipulate numbers and vectors then any modern programming language could be used, or the article could just give a clear explanation which any technically minded reader could implement.-- JohnBlackburne words deeds 10:35, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
That's the great thing about pseudocode: It's formal enough to be like a programming language, and yet informal enough that no one has to study its syntax or construction. Just knowing English and any other programming language allows you to understand pseudocode. -- Robin ( talk) 20:20, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Could an interested and knowledgeable editor please take a look at Superslow process and Vladimir Miklyukov? The creator of both is User:SobakaKachalova, who happens to be Miklyukov's daughter.
She doesn't like the tags currently on Miklyukov's article, so she asked for
and received a
3rd opinion. She didn't like that either (
she said "it did not work since the editors do not have interests in mathematics"). She currently has a {{
helpme}}
tag on her
talk page, and I think she could use a hand.
Just an FYI, and probably irrelevant, but it all smells fishy to me... WorldCat has no records of the cited ISBNs; Miklyukov's last book (self-published in 2008 through Xlibris) is in no libraries (per OCLC 290444522 and OCLC 290444525); and the biographical references are to sources like Marquis Who's Who (which is not a reliable source).
Thanks! Dori ❦ ( Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 00:16, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
I've just done some editing on Riemann–Stieltjes integral. I've tried to state the definition in a way that does not mention "meshes" of partitions, since I take the Riemann–Stieltjes integral to be a limit of a net. Here's how the "Definition" section now reads:
So improve it if you can. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:34, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Gaussian minus exponential distribution needs work. In particular, it's an orphan: other pages should link to it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:14, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
This article by Carr & Madan from the Journal of Computational Finance, using the term Gauss minus exponential, and appears to be the main source. This item, apparently a master's thesis at Imperial College in London, uses the term Gaussian minus Exponential and cites the paper by Carr & Madan. "Normal plus exponential" appears more frequently and may be mathematically the same thing; apparently it's applied in biochemistry and in psychology. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:19, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Zeno.27s_paradoxes, which is entirely a contents issue as far as I can tell. Pcap ping 16:30, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
This article has been proposed for deletion. If you have knowledge of the subject kindly take a look to see if it is worth salvaging. -Arb. ( talk) 23:34, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
I had marked Positive definiteness as a disambiguation page, but it was reverted. Could someone else look at that? — Carl ( CBM · talk) 19:30, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
As Michael Hardy would say, this article is a mess. But before asking people to get to work on it I would note that notability is marginal. I did not turn up any secondary sources for the subject but I did turn up a plethora of primary sources from a variety of disciplines so maybe the notability criteria could be stretched to include this. The article itself seems to be the brainchild of a something called "MCA lab", presumably pictured at the bottom of the article. There is a huge amount of material in the article but with no references given so impossible to say how much of the material is original research. At the least, there are huge COI issues with the authors writing about their own work. If there is salvageable material here then it should probably be saved and turned to the kernel for a better article, but if a complete rewrite is needed then I'd say it would be better to delete for now and recreate it if/when secondary sources appear.-- RDBury ( talk) 03:31, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Note: The article seems to have been developed concurrently in both English and Russian, click the link next to the article to see the Russian version.-- RDBury ( talk) 03:41, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Help:Displaying a formula seems to have a lot of focus on how WP works technically and doesn't seem to be too clear. These details are probably unecessary ( or could be put in a technical paragraph at the end ) and seem to be a left oer of a design spec rather than a help page. I have no idea how much of the information is relevant or useful, so could do with some pointers on what to do with this page, many thanks -- Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 15:32, 10 February 2010 (UTC) ( Wikipedia:Help Project)
Dear Wikimathematicians, the above article is being considered for deletion. 131.211.113.1 ( talk) 22:46, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Can someone please have a look at these articles and the discussion here. I removed some changes which seemed totally out of place but User:MathFacts has just reinstated them with slight adjustments in position. It's not particularly my area of expertise so I don't recognise the formulae he's trying to insert, but they certainly don't belong in those articles in their current forms.-- JohnBlackburne words deeds 18:58, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi all, I was wondering if we could get some (more) help from this project. I'm working on the Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links project, and one of the most-linked dabs is Direct sum. This used to be a redirect to Direct sum of modules, but in December it was converted into a disambig, and now it has over 100 links that need fixing. I'm sure most of these should be pointing to Direct sum of modules, but I don't feel qualified to make that call. Could someone give us some guidance? The list of links can be found here. Thanks! -- JaGa talk 09:30, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Looking at some of the articles that link to Direct sum, it looks to me like "Direct sum" should be an article, not a dab. For example, the first five articles listed here are all referring to general notions of the direct sum, not any specific direct sum (e.g. the article Limit (category theory) mentions that colimits generalize constructions such as coproducts and direct sums). I'd suggest turning "Direct sum" back into an article (there would of course still be many links to change). Thoughts? RobHar ( talk) 17:54, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Alright, I got through all the links and disambiguated them. The article direct sum still needs some work though. RobHar ( talk) 04:06, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
In Baker's map, I found this:
I changed it to this:
The first uses \mathrm{baker-folded}; the second uses \text{baker-folded}. When \mathrm is used, the hyphen becomes a minus sign; when \text is used, it remains a hyphen. The first uses \mbox{for }; the second uses \text{for }. In some contexts, those look much more different from each other than in the example above. For example, contrast \min_\mbox{abcd} with \min_\text{abcd}:
The purpose of \mbox is to prevent line-breaks when TeX is used in the usual way as opposed to the way it's used within Wikipedia. It shouldn't be used as a substitute for \text. Michael Hardy ( talk) 15:57, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Some sort of group sanctions are requested. See Wikipedia:ANI#Harassment. Pcap ping 01:37, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
I've presented the whole intro to the homogeneous differential equation article using a more general formulation that makes the link to homogeneous functions clearer, rather than just taking the special case of f(x,y) = F(y/x), which only covers the case of homogeneous differential equations of degree 0.
I hope that this is both more elegant and more general than the previous text, and provides a better lead-in to the second example lower down the article; in particular it makes clear in advance what "degree" means in this context, which is otherwise just thrown in without explanation.
However, my maths education was a very long time ago: can people here please check my changes? -- The Anome ( talk) 03:52, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi. Plenty of missing articles to start! See Italian wikipedia biography equivalent... ‡ Himalayan ‡ ΨMonastery 18:04, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Is Napierian logarithm accurate? Is it a joke? Based on the current content, I would believe either one. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 04:12, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
FWIW, the base 10 log is sometimes called Briggsian logarithm for contrast. Pcap ping 08:40, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
If you have a look at Prosthaphaeresis you'll wonder why someone didn't try inventing Napierian logs earlier. Or for something even wierder wikt:logarithmancy which used Napierian logarithms for divination though no-one now know knows how. Dmcq ( talk) 13:33, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
In its present form, it is very difficult to see how Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Mathematosis is constructive. It is substantially a recreation of the deleted essay Wikipedia:Mathematosis. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 12:28, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
As I say, the page should be fixed up: it's a good exercise in writing for the opponent. Charles Matthews ( talk) 08:01, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
A newly created account User:Basemaze has been engaged in vandalizing displayed math equations with mischievous edit summaries ("fixed an error", etc). Arcfrk ( talk) 18:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
It has been suggested to inform this WikiProject of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Texvc. I am the nominator for that AfD, by the way. Pcap ping 16:10, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
See WP:ANI#User:Likebox deceptively sourced infraparticle. It's about some physics articles but raises issues for math as well and some of the concerned parties have also edited math articles. As near as I can tell the short story is: someone tagged [citation needed] on some physics articles, Likebox ( talk · contribs) and Count Iblis ( talk · contribs) felt that the tag was unwarranted as the facts in question were simple calculations, and in response these two users went on a spree of replacing fact tags by deliberately fake references and boasted about it on Jimbo's talk page. But there's a lot of chatter in the thread so it's hard to tell for sure whether that's an accurate description of both sides of the story, it's not clear whether "deliberately fake" means that it doesn't source the calculation at all or merely that it is off-topic for the primary subject of the article in question, and I have not formulated an opinion over whether the citation needed tags really were appropriate.
Anyway, the reason I'm bringing this to the project's attention is that a lot of our articles contain things that really are simple calculations that should not need a source according to WP:OR#Routine calculations and WP:Scientific citation guidelines#Examples, derivations and restatements. It would be a shame if someone's misbehavior led to an overreaction in the other direction. — David Eppstein ( talk) 02:25, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
As a side note: the discussion about infraparticles somehow led to Methods of contour integration being tagged as POV. Probably more people should watch that article for a little while. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 02:50, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Continuing from the earlier, archived discussion, the thread Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (mathematics)#Source code and pseudocode has been discussed, and a consensus needs to be reached. LokiClock ( talk) 00:02, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Not to disparage the original author, but I've just come across this article which in my most humble opinion, is a little suspicious. I am nowhere near competent enough in pure mathematics to be able to tell whether or not it's a load of hooey or otherwise lacking in rigor, but something stands out about it. One thing that drew my attention but which I'm trying not to be prejudiced by is the personal promotion in the introduction. At the very least, it's quite hard to follow. Could this be checked out by an expert? Sojourner001 ( talk) 18:24, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
FWIW, the references cited at paravector are all Physics, not Math books. Pcap ping 21:22, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
The Movable cellular automaton article I brought up previously was PRODed. The article has issues as I mentioned above but I didn't think they were clear cut enough for the article to be deleted without a discussion, so I changed the Prod to an AfD. The deletion discussion is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Movable cellular automaton.-- RDBury ( talk) 05:17, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Bocardo Prison suffers from poor notation, caused by a traditional example being put together with an existing Venn diagram. Help would be appreciated. Charles Matthews ( talk) 12:50, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Sorry if this has been discussed earlier, but should WikipRoject Math perhaps introduce a C-class article rating for math articles? Quite a few other projects seem to have introduces a C-class rating. It does seem that there is a fairly substantial difference between start and B classes, so having something in between might not be a bad thing. Nsk92 ( talk) 14:02, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of numerical analysis software. Pcap ping 22:30, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
There are currently two math related pictures being discussed for featured pictures: File:Pythagoras-2a.gif and File:Penrose Tiling (Rhombi).svg. See Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/File:Penrose Tiling (Rhombi).svg and Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/File:Pythagoras-2a.gif for discussions.-- RDBury ( talk) 08:22, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Zbacnik conjecture was prodded as a hoax by someone else and I just prodded the related article Luce number. There seems to be a bump in the number of questionable new articles recently so perhaps some extra eyes on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity would be helpful.-- RDBury ( talk) 06:37, 27 February 2010 (UTC)