FYI, {{Mathematics portal}}
has been nominated for deletion.
70.29.210.155 (
talk)
05:20, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
{{
portal|Mathematics}}
. Thanks!
Plastikspork
―Œ(talk)
03:51, 2 June 2010 (UTC)There are many people in this world who are ready, willing and able to learn about mathematics. Wikipedia should be a great place to do this. It isn't. Math articles in Wikipedia are like a walled fortress: if you aren't already on the inside, there's no way in. Other highly-technical areas of study (like genetics, for example) are easy to navigate. Unfamiliar terms link to other articles that either clear up the mystery or at least set the reader on a path to understanding the material. Disambiguation pages don't slow you down too much because the context of your inquiry is usually pretty clear. With math, the problem is the symbols. They are often left undefined, which may be fine if you are aware of certain chalk-saving conventions used in math classes, but this is Wikipedia, the place where people go, who DON'T already know. I'm not asking anyone to start dumming down all the math articles. It would just be nice if when a symbol is used that the non-mathematician doesn't know how to read (let alone understand) if it could be linked to an article specifically related to how it's being used, as opposed to a hopelessly ambiguous disambiguation page, or worse, no link at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.20.9.33 ( talk) 03:38, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nine-dimensional space. Don't just say Keep or Delete; give arguments. Michael Hardy ( talk) 13:35, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
There is a question about whether or not the current article structure, of presenting Euclidean space as a detailed example of a Hilbert space before the definition as motivation, is a worthwhile structure, or whether to move it until after the definition. Comments are appreciated. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 10:42, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Rubin and Ichbin disagree on the application of WP:ELNO rule #13 to external links to web calculators. The rule states "the link should be directly related to the subject of the article." Rubin contends that this rule requires that Wikipedia articles link only to web calculators where that page of the calculator's web site has functionality limited essentially to the scope of the linking Wikipedia article. Ichbin contends that the rule does not impose this requirement, and that imposing such a requirement would rule out links to many useful web calculators which implement multiple functions. The links which spawned this disagreement were to a general special functions calculator from specific special function articles and to a general measures of association calculator from the articles on specific measures of association.
I agree with JohnBlackburne that the calculator http://www.meta-numerics.net/Samples/FunctionCalculator.aspx under discussion is simply not good enough to link to. Any web calculator we link to should be at least as good as the wolfram functions site, which provides 2d and 3d plotting as well as evaluation, and has a separate page for each function. r.e.b. ( talk) 00:57, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Go to http://functions.wolfram.com/webMathematica/FunctionEvaluation.jsp?name=AiryAi r.e.b. ( talk) 01:26, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
It might be slightly better to add links to Wolfram's main page for each function, such as http://functions.wolfram.com/Bessel-TypeFunctions/AiryAi/, as these have links to the evaluation and plotting pages. r.e.b. ( talk) 01:44, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
For some weird reason, you can evaluate orthogonal polynomials if you look them up as hypergeometric functions, but not if you look them up as polynomials. r.e.b. ( talk) 02:47, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
The page http://dlmf.nist.gov/software/ might be useful for tracing down software for special function. r.e.b. ( talk) 02:54, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
I've noticed that many animated GIFs are displayed as static GIFs in articles. For many of the math related images the first frame isn't representative and doesn't illustrate the subject. For example, in the Cardioid article the lead image is supposed to show the curve being generated as a roulette. I just get a static picture of two circles which is useless. But the animated GIF in the roulette article appears correct. I assume this change to static is keep bandwidth under control, can anyone verify this? Also, can the image parameters be adjusted (e.g. make size smaller) to ensure that the image will be animated? I'd rather have a small image that makes sense rather than a large one that doesn't. Finally, it might be a good idea to keep an eye out for images that are obviously broken; maybe these can be fixed somehow.-- RDBury ( talk) 02:42, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Over at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gallery of curves, the suggestion has been made that List of curves could be enhanced dramatically by making it a table that includes images of the curves (and, my own suggestion, maybe some notable properties of the curve). I think that List of surfaces, an article in much poorer shape, would also benefit from a similar treatment. I figured I would post here for comment. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 11:14, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
FYI, Hyperbolic coordinates has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.193.224 ( talk) 03:55, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
A former article on Lambert's trinomial equation was deleted last December, apparently due to copyright problems. Previous "See also" links to this article at Johann Heinrich Lambert and Lambert W function now link to Trinomial, which is not useful, as it does not define Lambert's trinomial. I can't see anything useful in Google or Google Books. Does anyone know what Lambert's trinomial is ? Or should I simply remove those "See also" links ? Gandalf61 ( talk) 11:52, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Template:JFM appears to be broken (it is not well documented, but the usual syntax for MR and a couple of variations didn't work). Does anyone know how to fix it? Unlike Zbl and MR databases, JFM is freely available. It also contains reviews of older articles (now cross-referenced from Zbl, modulo the caveat above). Arcfrk ( talk) 12:07, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
FYI: The knights tour animation File:Knight's tour anim 2.gif was promoted to featured picture.-- RDBury ( talk) 05:02, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Lattice theory currently redirects to lattice (mathematics) which is a disambiguation page. A fairly large number of pages link to lattice theory, and therefore need disambiguation. Lattice (group) and lattice (order) seem to be the two most important items.
Doesn't the term lattice theory usually refer to the theory of certain kinds of posets? If so then that should redirect to lattice (order)? Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:02, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
The Lattice disambiguation page lists lattice (group) and lattice (discrete subgroup) as separate independent items. The latter is a a generalization (not a special case as the name seems to suggest). So it seems we need to look at
Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:58, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
A new editor created this article about a textbook. I added a notability tag and the editor has asked for help in establishing it. We don't seem to have many articles on textbooks and the criteria in the academics section of Wikipedia:Notability (books) seems rather vague to me, so some clarification of the notability criteria for math books and some additional input on this particular article would be appreciated.-- RDBury ( talk) 05:40, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
The new page six cross-ratios has been prodded for deletion. Tkuvho ( talk) 14:56, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Please comment at Talk:Six_cross-ratios. Tkuvho ( talk) 15:38, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Several sections of this article consist entirely of quotations from other sources. Though referenced, these are not labeled as quotations so there are possible copyright issues here. In any case, a list of quotations does not constitute an encyclopedia article so much of the article needs to be rewritten. One option may be to remove the problematic material and merge the rest into Infinity.-- RDBury ( talk) 02:10, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
FYI Decimal superbase has been sent for deletion. 70.29.212.131 ( talk) 03:58, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
I noticed that a good number of articles on mathematicians include Erdős numbers. This seems questionable trivia to me. Perhaps a more encyclopedic way of including this information is to change it to a "List of notable collaborators". Including the Erdős number in articles seems like an invitation for OR and using unreliable sources and the articles I've looked at confirm this.-- RDBury ( talk) 00:44, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
I think "X has an Erdős number of 2" is trivia, but "At some date, X collaborated with Y, while researching this-or-that, producing some interesting result and giving X an Erdős number of 2" is just detail - and there's nothing wrong with detail. -- Paul Carpenter ( talk) 14:20, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
There is an edit war over the inclusion of the image File:012OrderTensorFields.svg in the articles Scalar field and Vector field. I, for one, find the image to be quite unsuitable for these articles. Why should one be worried about second order tensors in an article on scalar fields or vector fields? Not to mention the fact that, as an illustration of scalar fields per se, it is a poor illustration (arrows pointing up and down? does anyone visualize scalar fields this way?) Also, the image geometry is poor for a lead image, since it is very long and pushes much more germane images further down the page. At any rate, rather than revert the addition a second time, I thought I should post here to gauge what the consensus is. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 19:57, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Motomuku ( talk · contribs) seems quite similar; adding minor unsourced incorrect changes to Perfect number, although WAREL was mostly dealing with odd perfect numbers, and Motomuku with even perfect numbers. He apparently also is emphasizing the (disputed) importance of Japanese people. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:32, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
For anyone who does not monitor the help desk, an issue has come up on the Collatz conjecture that I thought deserved a cross-post here. See Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics#Could someone please look at this supposed solution to Collatz conjecture.-- RDBury ( talk) 12:44, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Hi everyone, I don't usually edit so apologies if I'm breaking any conventions here.
I use parts of the Mathematics project fairly regularly and as useful as I find it, there is a major problem; one which I am not the only one to experience. I think it is best to show an example of a potential route though Wikipedias maths sections, using the particular strategy of clicking on the link after "is a":
Great! I've learnt that (the number) 5 is something (probably). OK, obviously if I click on the link after "is a" I get a more general set of things. Indeed, it is the behaviour that one would hope for. However, this induces a problem in the maths articles (more so than others). It is used as a crutch to avoid actually describing what things are, which is a problem for the uninitiated. Instead of getting an understanding of something, I find myself falling into a spiral of abstraction and being just as confused as I was to start with. Admittedly, the problem is worst when I do not know when to stop, as I am unfamiliar with the topic and is unsure about what is and isn't important (my guess is that being unfamiliar with a topic is the main reason for someone to visit the page). Other people have mentioned this to me, "yeah, I never use wikipedia for maths because they make it too hard to understand"
My suggestion is to make one of those sidebar things for each section of maths: show the reader what other things are important to their understanding of a particular thing, not just an abstraction. It should have 3 sections, one for concepts which a specific examples of that thing, one for generalisation(s) and one for things that are related on the same `conceptual level', including (highlighted) those immediate things that must be understood. For example
Vector Space:
Important concepts:
Generalisations:
Examples:
Anyway, Just a thought, perhaps it can be near-automatically generated from the links (I have a fairly good idea how to do this).
Any thoughts/blunt criticism would be welcome
Lucaswilkins ( talk) 23:47, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
The Randomness article has been added to the trial of the new Pending changes system. The best explanation I have seen of this system is in this image.
Any user in good standing is eligible to be added to the "reviewer" group, but it is not automatic. You only need to ask an admin to add you to the group.
Apart from that, if you would like access to the "rollback" feature to quickly undo vandalism, is can also be granted by admins on request. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 14:12, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Please try out the following template "Inprod" for displaying inner products and comment on its appearance. It's meant to be used for inline text. Feel free to experiment with different inline text situations. Thanks.
--
Bob K31416 (
talk)
23:27, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Comments:
There was recent thread about this at Talk:Pythagorean theorem#Angle brackets and an overview of some options at Talk:Pythagorean theorem#Putting it together. There was little attention, so perhaps it would be a good idea to take over the table and have some more input here. DVdm ( talk) 11:16, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Option1 | Option2 | Option3 | Option4 | Option5 | Option6 | Option7 | Option8 | User (~~~) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
HTML | HTML | Math+HTML+ Math+HTML |
HTML | Math | Math | Math+HTML+ Math+HTML |
HTML (math symbols) | |
inline ⟨v,v⟩1/2 test | inline 〈v,v〉1/2 test | inline v,v1/2 test | inline <v,v>1/2 test | inline test | inline test | inline v,v1/2 test | inline ⟨v, v⟩1/2 test | |
unreadable (boxes) | very ugly | ugly | OK | very ugly | OK | OK | unreadable (boxes) | DVdm ( talk) |
unreadable (boxes) | poor | fair | fair | poor | fair | good | unreadable (boxes) | Bob K31416 Mac |
good | poor | fair | fair | poor | fair | good | unreadable (boxes) | Bob K31416 Windows |
poor (can't read) | poor (extra space) | fair (looks fine, but Math/HTML mix) | poor (wrong use of character) | fair (too big for inline) | good | fair (looks fine, but Math/HTML mix) | Blue Moonlet Mac | |
too wide | too wide | ugly | ugly | ugly | ugly | ugly | OK | JohnBlackburne OS X 10.6 |
good | fair (too wide) | fair (OK, but doesn't scale) | poor (wrong character) | fair (OK, but too large, inline) | good | poor (a little worse than 3, and doesn't scale | good (renders a little heavier than #1 in some resolutions) | Arthur Rubin Windows XP, Opera |
good | fair (extra space) | fair (mixes Latex and html: poor in more complex formulas) | poor (wrong character) | fair (too large inline) | good | fair (looks worse than 3 at normal size, scales better) | good | Sławomir Biały ( talk) 11:21, 11 June 2010 (UTC) Debian Etch, Iceweasel |
unreadable | unreadable | OK | too wide | too big | OK | best | unreadable | JRSpriggs |
poor (too wide) | poor (too wide) | poor (brackets too big) | fair (not true angle brackets but understandable and portable) | fair (too big but whole formula has a consistent size) | ok | fair (appearance not bad but doesn't scale) | good | David Eppstein ( talk), OS-X, Chrome and Safari produced the identical appearance. |
good, but very faint / boxes | good, but coarse pixels | ugly (grotesquely high brackets) | fair | very ugly | very ugly | fair | best / boxes | Hans Adler, Firefox / Internet Explorer, on Windows with many fonts installed |
This might help compare the various options of the above table:
-- Bob K31416 ( talk) 02:43, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
I've added my variant to the above table as it's clear it's different to what was there already. The wrong brackets may have come from the Edittools, which are now fixed, so that may have accounted for why they were not displaying properly for some people.-- JohnBlackburne words deeds 12:44, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure how much worth the table has in this form, since people may disagree on what looks ugly, poor, fair, ok - by looking at the same version, that is. If you have different authors testing different versions (on different Browsers or OS), we have no idea whether it looks really bad (=all agree it looks bad) or whether it just looks bad from the perspective of that particular tester.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 03:04, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
(The following is based on the current state of the table where Hans Adler's entry was the last.)
Summary of short parts of comments for the options 1–8:
In my opinion, these comments suggest the following order of best (option 6) to worst (option 8):
Since options 5 and 6 are not amenable to being used in a template (see a previous message), here's the above option order without 5 and 6, i.e. the ordered sequence of options that can be used in a template from best (option7) to worst (option 8):
-- Bob K31416 ( talk) 18:44, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Please note that option 7 was the one that was used in the template {{ Inprod}}, which was the subject that started this discussion Inner product display template. -- Bob K31416 ( talk) 10:35, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
Note: Not all !voters expressed an opinion about the acceptability of mixing HTML with LaTeX. Most merely commented about the looks. So, based on the looks we have indeed 7, 3, 4, 2, 1, 8, whereas when we exclude 7 and 3, we have:
- DVdm ( talk) 12:53, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
Greg is vandalizing the template, in the guise of "following redirects"; even if "following redirects" were appropriate in templates, he's also removing redirects such as Model (logic) from the model theory section. I don't know how many other templates he's vandalizing. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:32, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
So basically you made all this drama because you want a link to "model." What a baby. I have no problem with that --baby. Greg Bard 03:01, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
Actually, Arthur, I think you should step back from this: there are others in the project quite competent to assess the template, and with less baggage. A string of personal attacks is simply not likely to resolve such a dispute. Charles Matthews ( talk) 10:14, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
FYI, {{Mathematics portal}}
has been nominated for deletion.
70.29.210.155 (
talk)
05:20, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
{{
portal|Mathematics}}
. Thanks!
Plastikspork
―Œ(talk)
03:51, 2 June 2010 (UTC)There are many people in this world who are ready, willing and able to learn about mathematics. Wikipedia should be a great place to do this. It isn't. Math articles in Wikipedia are like a walled fortress: if you aren't already on the inside, there's no way in. Other highly-technical areas of study (like genetics, for example) are easy to navigate. Unfamiliar terms link to other articles that either clear up the mystery or at least set the reader on a path to understanding the material. Disambiguation pages don't slow you down too much because the context of your inquiry is usually pretty clear. With math, the problem is the symbols. They are often left undefined, which may be fine if you are aware of certain chalk-saving conventions used in math classes, but this is Wikipedia, the place where people go, who DON'T already know. I'm not asking anyone to start dumming down all the math articles. It would just be nice if when a symbol is used that the non-mathematician doesn't know how to read (let alone understand) if it could be linked to an article specifically related to how it's being used, as opposed to a hopelessly ambiguous disambiguation page, or worse, no link at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.20.9.33 ( talk) 03:38, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nine-dimensional space. Don't just say Keep or Delete; give arguments. Michael Hardy ( talk) 13:35, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
There is a question about whether or not the current article structure, of presenting Euclidean space as a detailed example of a Hilbert space before the definition as motivation, is a worthwhile structure, or whether to move it until after the definition. Comments are appreciated. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 10:42, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Rubin and Ichbin disagree on the application of WP:ELNO rule #13 to external links to web calculators. The rule states "the link should be directly related to the subject of the article." Rubin contends that this rule requires that Wikipedia articles link only to web calculators where that page of the calculator's web site has functionality limited essentially to the scope of the linking Wikipedia article. Ichbin contends that the rule does not impose this requirement, and that imposing such a requirement would rule out links to many useful web calculators which implement multiple functions. The links which spawned this disagreement were to a general special functions calculator from specific special function articles and to a general measures of association calculator from the articles on specific measures of association.
I agree with JohnBlackburne that the calculator http://www.meta-numerics.net/Samples/FunctionCalculator.aspx under discussion is simply not good enough to link to. Any web calculator we link to should be at least as good as the wolfram functions site, which provides 2d and 3d plotting as well as evaluation, and has a separate page for each function. r.e.b. ( talk) 00:57, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Go to http://functions.wolfram.com/webMathematica/FunctionEvaluation.jsp?name=AiryAi r.e.b. ( talk) 01:26, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
It might be slightly better to add links to Wolfram's main page for each function, such as http://functions.wolfram.com/Bessel-TypeFunctions/AiryAi/, as these have links to the evaluation and plotting pages. r.e.b. ( talk) 01:44, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
For some weird reason, you can evaluate orthogonal polynomials if you look them up as hypergeometric functions, but not if you look them up as polynomials. r.e.b. ( talk) 02:47, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
The page http://dlmf.nist.gov/software/ might be useful for tracing down software for special function. r.e.b. ( talk) 02:54, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
I've noticed that many animated GIFs are displayed as static GIFs in articles. For many of the math related images the first frame isn't representative and doesn't illustrate the subject. For example, in the Cardioid article the lead image is supposed to show the curve being generated as a roulette. I just get a static picture of two circles which is useless. But the animated GIF in the roulette article appears correct. I assume this change to static is keep bandwidth under control, can anyone verify this? Also, can the image parameters be adjusted (e.g. make size smaller) to ensure that the image will be animated? I'd rather have a small image that makes sense rather than a large one that doesn't. Finally, it might be a good idea to keep an eye out for images that are obviously broken; maybe these can be fixed somehow.-- RDBury ( talk) 02:42, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Over at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gallery of curves, the suggestion has been made that List of curves could be enhanced dramatically by making it a table that includes images of the curves (and, my own suggestion, maybe some notable properties of the curve). I think that List of surfaces, an article in much poorer shape, would also benefit from a similar treatment. I figured I would post here for comment. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 11:14, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
FYI, Hyperbolic coordinates has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.193.224 ( talk) 03:55, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
A former article on Lambert's trinomial equation was deleted last December, apparently due to copyright problems. Previous "See also" links to this article at Johann Heinrich Lambert and Lambert W function now link to Trinomial, which is not useful, as it does not define Lambert's trinomial. I can't see anything useful in Google or Google Books. Does anyone know what Lambert's trinomial is ? Or should I simply remove those "See also" links ? Gandalf61 ( talk) 11:52, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Template:JFM appears to be broken (it is not well documented, but the usual syntax for MR and a couple of variations didn't work). Does anyone know how to fix it? Unlike Zbl and MR databases, JFM is freely available. It also contains reviews of older articles (now cross-referenced from Zbl, modulo the caveat above). Arcfrk ( talk) 12:07, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
FYI: The knights tour animation File:Knight's tour anim 2.gif was promoted to featured picture.-- RDBury ( talk) 05:02, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Lattice theory currently redirects to lattice (mathematics) which is a disambiguation page. A fairly large number of pages link to lattice theory, and therefore need disambiguation. Lattice (group) and lattice (order) seem to be the two most important items.
Doesn't the term lattice theory usually refer to the theory of certain kinds of posets? If so then that should redirect to lattice (order)? Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:02, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
The Lattice disambiguation page lists lattice (group) and lattice (discrete subgroup) as separate independent items. The latter is a a generalization (not a special case as the name seems to suggest). So it seems we need to look at
Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:58, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
A new editor created this article about a textbook. I added a notability tag and the editor has asked for help in establishing it. We don't seem to have many articles on textbooks and the criteria in the academics section of Wikipedia:Notability (books) seems rather vague to me, so some clarification of the notability criteria for math books and some additional input on this particular article would be appreciated.-- RDBury ( talk) 05:40, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
The new page six cross-ratios has been prodded for deletion. Tkuvho ( talk) 14:56, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Please comment at Talk:Six_cross-ratios. Tkuvho ( talk) 15:38, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Several sections of this article consist entirely of quotations from other sources. Though referenced, these are not labeled as quotations so there are possible copyright issues here. In any case, a list of quotations does not constitute an encyclopedia article so much of the article needs to be rewritten. One option may be to remove the problematic material and merge the rest into Infinity.-- RDBury ( talk) 02:10, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
FYI Decimal superbase has been sent for deletion. 70.29.212.131 ( talk) 03:58, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
I noticed that a good number of articles on mathematicians include Erdős numbers. This seems questionable trivia to me. Perhaps a more encyclopedic way of including this information is to change it to a "List of notable collaborators". Including the Erdős number in articles seems like an invitation for OR and using unreliable sources and the articles I've looked at confirm this.-- RDBury ( talk) 00:44, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
I think "X has an Erdős number of 2" is trivia, but "At some date, X collaborated with Y, while researching this-or-that, producing some interesting result and giving X an Erdős number of 2" is just detail - and there's nothing wrong with detail. -- Paul Carpenter ( talk) 14:20, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
There is an edit war over the inclusion of the image File:012OrderTensorFields.svg in the articles Scalar field and Vector field. I, for one, find the image to be quite unsuitable for these articles. Why should one be worried about second order tensors in an article on scalar fields or vector fields? Not to mention the fact that, as an illustration of scalar fields per se, it is a poor illustration (arrows pointing up and down? does anyone visualize scalar fields this way?) Also, the image geometry is poor for a lead image, since it is very long and pushes much more germane images further down the page. At any rate, rather than revert the addition a second time, I thought I should post here to gauge what the consensus is. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 19:57, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Motomuku ( talk · contribs) seems quite similar; adding minor unsourced incorrect changes to Perfect number, although WAREL was mostly dealing with odd perfect numbers, and Motomuku with even perfect numbers. He apparently also is emphasizing the (disputed) importance of Japanese people. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:32, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
For anyone who does not monitor the help desk, an issue has come up on the Collatz conjecture that I thought deserved a cross-post here. See Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics#Could someone please look at this supposed solution to Collatz conjecture.-- RDBury ( talk) 12:44, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Hi everyone, I don't usually edit so apologies if I'm breaking any conventions here.
I use parts of the Mathematics project fairly regularly and as useful as I find it, there is a major problem; one which I am not the only one to experience. I think it is best to show an example of a potential route though Wikipedias maths sections, using the particular strategy of clicking on the link after "is a":
Great! I've learnt that (the number) 5 is something (probably). OK, obviously if I click on the link after "is a" I get a more general set of things. Indeed, it is the behaviour that one would hope for. However, this induces a problem in the maths articles (more so than others). It is used as a crutch to avoid actually describing what things are, which is a problem for the uninitiated. Instead of getting an understanding of something, I find myself falling into a spiral of abstraction and being just as confused as I was to start with. Admittedly, the problem is worst when I do not know when to stop, as I am unfamiliar with the topic and is unsure about what is and isn't important (my guess is that being unfamiliar with a topic is the main reason for someone to visit the page). Other people have mentioned this to me, "yeah, I never use wikipedia for maths because they make it too hard to understand"
My suggestion is to make one of those sidebar things for each section of maths: show the reader what other things are important to their understanding of a particular thing, not just an abstraction. It should have 3 sections, one for concepts which a specific examples of that thing, one for generalisation(s) and one for things that are related on the same `conceptual level', including (highlighted) those immediate things that must be understood. For example
Vector Space:
Important concepts:
Generalisations:
Examples:
Anyway, Just a thought, perhaps it can be near-automatically generated from the links (I have a fairly good idea how to do this).
Any thoughts/blunt criticism would be welcome
Lucaswilkins ( talk) 23:47, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
The Randomness article has been added to the trial of the new Pending changes system. The best explanation I have seen of this system is in this image.
Any user in good standing is eligible to be added to the "reviewer" group, but it is not automatic. You only need to ask an admin to add you to the group.
Apart from that, if you would like access to the "rollback" feature to quickly undo vandalism, is can also be granted by admins on request. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 14:12, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Please try out the following template "Inprod" for displaying inner products and comment on its appearance. It's meant to be used for inline text. Feel free to experiment with different inline text situations. Thanks.
--
Bob K31416 (
talk)
23:27, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Comments:
There was recent thread about this at Talk:Pythagorean theorem#Angle brackets and an overview of some options at Talk:Pythagorean theorem#Putting it together. There was little attention, so perhaps it would be a good idea to take over the table and have some more input here. DVdm ( talk) 11:16, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Option1 | Option2 | Option3 | Option4 | Option5 | Option6 | Option7 | Option8 | User (~~~) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
HTML | HTML | Math+HTML+ Math+HTML |
HTML | Math | Math | Math+HTML+ Math+HTML |
HTML (math symbols) | |
inline ⟨v,v⟩1/2 test | inline 〈v,v〉1/2 test | inline v,v1/2 test | inline <v,v>1/2 test | inline test | inline test | inline v,v1/2 test | inline ⟨v, v⟩1/2 test | |
unreadable (boxes) | very ugly | ugly | OK | very ugly | OK | OK | unreadable (boxes) | DVdm ( talk) |
unreadable (boxes) | poor | fair | fair | poor | fair | good | unreadable (boxes) | Bob K31416 Mac |
good | poor | fair | fair | poor | fair | good | unreadable (boxes) | Bob K31416 Windows |
poor (can't read) | poor (extra space) | fair (looks fine, but Math/HTML mix) | poor (wrong use of character) | fair (too big for inline) | good | fair (looks fine, but Math/HTML mix) | Blue Moonlet Mac | |
too wide | too wide | ugly | ugly | ugly | ugly | ugly | OK | JohnBlackburne OS X 10.6 |
good | fair (too wide) | fair (OK, but doesn't scale) | poor (wrong character) | fair (OK, but too large, inline) | good | poor (a little worse than 3, and doesn't scale | good (renders a little heavier than #1 in some resolutions) | Arthur Rubin Windows XP, Opera |
good | fair (extra space) | fair (mixes Latex and html: poor in more complex formulas) | poor (wrong character) | fair (too large inline) | good | fair (looks worse than 3 at normal size, scales better) | good | Sławomir Biały ( talk) 11:21, 11 June 2010 (UTC) Debian Etch, Iceweasel |
unreadable | unreadable | OK | too wide | too big | OK | best | unreadable | JRSpriggs |
poor (too wide) | poor (too wide) | poor (brackets too big) | fair (not true angle brackets but understandable and portable) | fair (too big but whole formula has a consistent size) | ok | fair (appearance not bad but doesn't scale) | good | David Eppstein ( talk), OS-X, Chrome and Safari produced the identical appearance. |
good, but very faint / boxes | good, but coarse pixels | ugly (grotesquely high brackets) | fair | very ugly | very ugly | fair | best / boxes | Hans Adler, Firefox / Internet Explorer, on Windows with many fonts installed |
This might help compare the various options of the above table:
-- Bob K31416 ( talk) 02:43, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
I've added my variant to the above table as it's clear it's different to what was there already. The wrong brackets may have come from the Edittools, which are now fixed, so that may have accounted for why they were not displaying properly for some people.-- JohnBlackburne words deeds 12:44, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure how much worth the table has in this form, since people may disagree on what looks ugly, poor, fair, ok - by looking at the same version, that is. If you have different authors testing different versions (on different Browsers or OS), we have no idea whether it looks really bad (=all agree it looks bad) or whether it just looks bad from the perspective of that particular tester.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 03:04, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
(The following is based on the current state of the table where Hans Adler's entry was the last.)
Summary of short parts of comments for the options 1–8:
In my opinion, these comments suggest the following order of best (option 6) to worst (option 8):
Since options 5 and 6 are not amenable to being used in a template (see a previous message), here's the above option order without 5 and 6, i.e. the ordered sequence of options that can be used in a template from best (option7) to worst (option 8):
-- Bob K31416 ( talk) 18:44, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Please note that option 7 was the one that was used in the template {{ Inprod}}, which was the subject that started this discussion Inner product display template. -- Bob K31416 ( talk) 10:35, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
Note: Not all !voters expressed an opinion about the acceptability of mixing HTML with LaTeX. Most merely commented about the looks. So, based on the looks we have indeed 7, 3, 4, 2, 1, 8, whereas when we exclude 7 and 3, we have:
- DVdm ( talk) 12:53, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
Greg is vandalizing the template, in the guise of "following redirects"; even if "following redirects" were appropriate in templates, he's also removing redirects such as Model (logic) from the model theory section. I don't know how many other templates he's vandalizing. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:32, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
So basically you made all this drama because you want a link to "model." What a baby. I have no problem with that --baby. Greg Bard 03:01, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
Actually, Arthur, I think you should step back from this: there are others in the project quite competent to assess the template, and with less baggage. A string of personal attacks is simply not likely to resolve such a dispute. Charles Matthews ( talk) 10:14, 19 June 2010 (UTC)