http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_logic
Due to the description: "Synthetic logic is based on the law of non-identity (A is not A) and the law of contradiction (A is −A).", "synthetic logic" is no difference from classic logic but redefine the words "is" and "is not". With mapping "is" in "synthetic logic" to "is not" in classic logic, mapping "is not" in "synthetic logic" to "is" in classic logic, "synthetic logic" is identical with classic logic.
My suggestion is, either refine the misleading description or declare that "synthetic logic" is just a trivial dialect of classic logic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.96.65.22 ( talk) 07:44, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
I prodded these two articles, but the prods were declined. I have taken them to AfD now. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephen Palmquist and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Synthetic logic. Ozob ( talk) 01:35, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
I was wondering if it would be useful to make a "Articles desperately in need of attention" or "Articles in appalling condition" or "Sadface articles" category to draw more attention to such articles as
and other such top-priority start-class articles for which the dreariness of sheer lack of material (relative to the subject's importance) weighs heavily upon even a nonspecialist as me. Leonxlin ( talk) 03:55, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
Identification of such articles is one of the aims of the large article assessment effort.
Mathematics article ratings | ||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Priority | Quality | |||||||||||
FA | FL | A | GA | B | C | Start | Stub | List | Other | Unassessed | Total | |
Top | 9 | 17 | 196 | 11 | 6 | 239 | ||||||
High | 2 | 6 | 258 | 562 | 21 | 13 | 862 | |||||
Mid | 12 | 2 | 1 | 29 | 503 | 732 | 2,295 | 93 | 69 | 3,736 | ||
Low | 2 | 31 | 377 | 958 | 5,609 | 5,097 | 213 | 3 | 21 | 12,311 | ||
NA | 66 | 66 | ||||||||||
Other | 4 | 14 | 21 | 1 | 41 | 81 | ||||||
None | 5 | 32 | 239 | 136 | 9 | 55 | 476 | |||||
Total | 25 | 2 | 1 | 83 | 1,339 | 2,299 | 8,178 | 5,347 | 311 | 3 | 183 | 17,771 |
WikiWork factors ( ?) | ω = 114,278 | Ω = 4.96 |
We know there are 61 Start class top priority articles and 69 Stub class high priority articles. Which are probably those articles most in need of attention. I'm not convinced we need another mechanism to to almost the same job.
For mathematics article the best way to draw attention to them is to mention them on this talk page, we have already seem some improvement to Linear algebra, but nothing yet on Equation or Real analysis.-- Salix ( talk): 01:03, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
I've created a quite imperfect new article titled Tikhonov's theorem (dynamical systems). Do what you can for it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:53, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
The proposed renaming being discussed at Talk:Copula (statistics)#Requested move may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Favonian ( talk) 08:20, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
Does anyone have a nice example of a non-metrizable topological vector space in mind? I suspect there must be an elementary example. I had an idea to reference it in Normed vector space to show that not all vector spaces can be equipped with a norm. If you have an example by all means carry this out, no need to go through me. Rschwieb ( talk) 01:09, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
I was looking at the derivation section of the incompressible flow article. One of the equations wants a double contour integral symbol; like <math>\oint</math>, but with a larger circle and two integral signs. I couldn't find such a symbol in any of the LaTeX guides. The article uses a hack
but it just doesn't line up at all well using MathJax; although it does line up in plane TeX ( see here). Does anyone if there is a command for the required symbol? If not, should we use <math>\oint\oint</math> or just <math>\iint</math>? — Fly by Night ( talk) 16:27, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
I have added code to mathJax for detecting those hacks. I was going to automatically replace instances of them by \oiint and \oiiint, but after adding support for these symbols I realized that they are not available in the TeX fonts. I need to ask the main developers for adding them. In the mean time I am duplicating the same kind of ugly hack though the results may still look a bit more off. Nageh ( talk) 20:08, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
Just a remark that when you can't find a LaTeX symbol, you should try Detexify: http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html It's able to easily identify the symbol you want and tells you what package it comes from (in this case, esint). -- Joel B. Lewis ( talk) 00:30, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
A user has renewed his editing and suggested changes to Mathematical optimization. You may wish to examine his edits and welcome him! Kiefer. Wolfowitz 11:29, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
The COPYVIO issues at Blaise Pascal have been resolved thanks mostly to User:NortyNort and User:Moonriddengirl. The article is still under FA review however; even though the original problem is gone the review brought up new issues. It's probably not too late to fix these issues and/or leave comments at the FAR.-- RDBury ( talk) 18:22, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
An editor is lobbying to include the misleading formula at Riemann curvature tensor, claiming that this is the Bianchi identity. (Under most typical interpretations of the notation, this is true iff the manifold is locally symmetric.). In addition, the same editor is adding irrelevant content about vector bundles and torsion, although the article clearly focuses only on the Levi-Civita case (whether or not this focus is appropriate. Someone please look into it. 166.137.141.212 ( talk) 20:24, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
The journal claims to be covered by Zentralblatt MATH and Mathematical Reviews. Is this true, or just another BS claim from these crackpots (Smarandache et al.)? Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:58, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
Our article titled Euclid–Mullin sequence doesn't say a word about who either Euclid or Mullin is. Euclid is easy. Is it Albert A. Mullin, or R. C. Mullin, or someone else? Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:39, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
Numerical weather prediction is today's featured article. Just in case you're not checking the main page everyday.-- RDBury ( talk) 10:14, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
I have opened an RFC at Talk:Annals_of_Mathematics#RFC:_should_both_abbreviations_be_mentioned_in_the_lede about whether two abbreviations for the journal (the one used by Zentralblatt MATH, and the one used by Mathematical Reviews) should be mentioned in the lede. The other option proposed is to not include the Mathematical Reviews abbreviation. Please comment on that talk page if you're interested. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 11:08, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
From two coastline maps I want to know a value for their similarity. Problem are this maps. The one of 1531 is the dominant Antarctica shape of the 16th century. I know a long dispute whether it is by chance or not. But it always goes along very subjective identifications of similar points. Is there some mathematical theory or algorithm that can applied to this over 50 year old problem? Where should I ask? -- Portolanero ( talk) 15:37, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Semiotics of the structure has been PRODed and dePRODed. It seems to be the work of a single editor and I'm having trouble finding any meaningful mathematics in the article; the references mostly link to a website in Estonian. Can someone with some graph theory expertise have a look and determine if this is a notable subject?-- RDBury ( talk) 17:24, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
New editor BenHeideveld ( talk · contribs) has requested that a mathematician give their opinion on the article he created, Infinite Numbers, currently proposed for deletion. -- 88.104.39.209 ( talk) 05:35, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
I notice that Infinite number and Infinite Numbers now redirect to different articles, which doesn't make much sense. I was going to change Infinite number to point to Transfinite number, but I'm not sure whether that's a good idea - the problem is that Transfinite number only deals with infinite cardinals and ordinals, whereas "infinite number" could also refer to other things (e.g., in hyperreal fields). Maybe a disambiguation page would be appropriate. -- Zundark ( talk) 10:55, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks to those who were useful in their response. I don't know why anyone would think a peer review was being requested; the point was to get one or more recognised mathematics editors to say, "No, this isn't a known concept."
If someone does decide to create a disambiguation page out of "infinite number(s)", do give me a call. In my experience, expert editors tend to bugger up the formatting. TTFN, 88.104.39.209 ( talk) 17:58, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
There is a need of more mathmatical judgement on the situation to bring it to a resolution. Anyone interested in joining the discusion is welcome to join it at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#Merge of Super-logarithm and Super-root to Tetration. Robo37 ( talk) 20:23, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
Following a thread above, I noticed that this page does not seem to be updated. Is it possible to do so automatically? (The page says it already is, but the history of the page shows it is actually not, for ages). Even better, is it possible to have an automatically updated list (Carl?) which groups the articles with problems according to the topics (Algebra, Geometry, etc.). I think a more structured list would be quite some improvement, for example I have zero to epsilon knowledge in statistics, so I am unlikely to supply requested sources / deal with the "expert needed" tag in those articles. Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 20:07, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
There is an RFC on the addition of identifier links to citations by bots. Please comment. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:52, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
User:A. Pichler, who has a very long history of adding original research to special functions articles, is trying to include a piece of original research in the confluent hypergeometric function article. When pressed for a citation, the one he gave completely failed to support the added content. The situation may need to be monitored by someone. 166.205.11.236 ( talk) 23:34, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Equidistant. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:56, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
Jowa fan informed me of this discussion on my talk page as I converted the redirect into a soft-redirect in accordance with the outcome of the unanimous discussion at redirects for discussion (in which I proposed the soft-redirect). Having looked again at the
distance article after reading the above, I am still of the opinion that the soft-redirect is the best option. This is primarily because the word "equidistant" does not appear in the article and so readers (the majority of whom will, like me, not be mathematicians - indeed most of the article is way above my head) will not be any the wiser about what "equidistant" means, either in a mathematical sense or in common usage.
If the topic of being equally distant from two or more points can sustain an encyclopaedia article (my guess would that this would be more likely at a title like
equidistance) then write one, although as a lay person I can't comprehend how it can - the definitions at
wikt:equidistant seem to cover everything, both commonly and at least two mathematical uses (one labeled though as "cartography"). If there are more meanings in mathematics then add them to the Wiktionary article, tagging them with {{mathematics}} if that definition is not in general usage. Wiktionary's goal is to include all definitions in all languages, but it is currently even less complete than Wikipedia is - the good news though is that you can help!
If you still think that a redirect to
distance is the best option, then start a new RfD (which is the correct venue for discussions about soft redirects) with a link to the one just closed, giving your reasons why the previous consensus was wrong, along with the evidence for why "equidistant" should redirect to "distance" (and that "non-mathematicians wont understand everything distance can mean" isn't a reason that will likely sway many people without an explanation of what other things "equidistant" can mean that are not definitions that can be covered at Wiktionary). Alternatively,
DRV is always an option.
Thryduulf (
talk)
01:58, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
What is the standard English term for the line formed by the points that are equidistant to two objects. (For example the locus of points that are equidistant to a line and a point form a parabola.) In Dutch such a line is called a "conflictlijn", my best guess in English would be "equidistant" of "equidistant line". For now, I can't even an article on the English wikipedia that discusses this subject. (I would be really surprised if it doesn't exist since this is standard high school geometry.) Whatever this article is called, equidistant should probably redirect there. T R 09:43, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
If a single soft-redirect to wiktionary seems unsatisfactory to some maybe a disambiguation page would help? Nageh ( talk) 11:23, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
I've sketched out a draft stub article at Talk:Equidistant#Draft_outline, there definately seem to enough material for an article an I've not even looked at other notions of distance.-- Salix ( talk): 22:49, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Thryduulf's comment that it is "primarily because the word 'equidistant' does not appear in the article" makes his position seem silly. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:48, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
If someone can contribute a citation to this section I think the unreferenced tag can finally be cleared. Please drop in and see if you can do something. Rschwieb ( talk) 13:41, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
Fermat's 410th birthday is currently being commemorated by Google. Could someone keep an eye on the (anonymous) edits at Fermat's Last Theorem and Pierre de Fermat? Cheers, — Ruud 21:19, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
A lot of new content has recently been added to the page iterated function, under the subheading Iterated_function#Formulae_for_fractional_iteration. Someone might like to review this. Jowa fan ( talk) 01:21, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
In 2006, the articles Integer partition and Partition function (number theory) were merged to create the article Partition (number theory). Most of the article as currently written is about the partition function, with a few sections (e.g. on Ferrers diagrams) that are about partitions themselves. It seems to me that the original separation into two articles was more sensible, as (e.g.) the discussion of Ramanujan's congruences is really completely distinct from a discussion of Young diagrams or Young's lattice (the latter of which is currently not mentioned in the body of the article, unfortunately). Splitting the article as currently written would, I think, be not too hard -- most of it would go into Partition function (number theory), the rest into integer partition, and the latter article would have a short section with a link to the former and a brief summary of the most important points. (The latter article would need to be expanded.) What do you think?
On a not-totally-unrelated note, it seems to me that the content of the article is much more about combinatorics than it is about number theory. This is less egregious than for Composition (number theory) (an article with no number-theoretic content whatsoever, as far as I can tell) -- is there some good reason this is classed as number theory and not combinatorics?
Thanks! -- Joel B. Lewis ( talk) 03:13, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
I just reviewed and copy-edited the Riemann invariant article for WP:AFC. I didn't see any red flag, and I shaped it up as best I could, so I gave it the thumbs up, but it definitely could use more eyes. Especially about the categories, and also there is a reference to an article by Riemann which I haven't been able to find. Help would be appreciated. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:13, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, again. If I'm not mistaken the consensus following the last deletion review was that the subject may be notable if written about in a neutral way by someone other than User:Mmbmmmbm and his socks. Well, now we have an AfC submission from an IP with no other contributions. If someone with expertise could look it over and decide whether the article is sufficiently POV-free to be accepted it would be appreciated. joe•roe t• c 15:45, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
The very first citation, that most of the article seems to be based on, is published by Nova Publishers, which seems to be a dubious enterprise. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 02:39, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Note also the spelling: "Boubaker Polynomıals" rather than "Boubaker Polynomials", presumably to avoid being detected as the same article that's been repeatedly pushed. CRGreathouse ( t | c) 04:47, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Hey, could someone give a hand with writing the formula in IBM Award in formula style Purpleback pack 89≈≈≈≈ 22:16, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
I claim benefits to math articles in a proposal I posted at the pump: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Redirects containing topics when possible. ᛭ LokiClock ( talk) 02:35, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Opinions of this edit?
My view is that the title should sufficiently disambiguate and tell the reader something about the nature of the topic. "Analysis" is a word that has many different meanings in many different fields. It fails to tell the lay reader that mathematics is what the article is about. Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:12, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
First, I was unaware of Hardy's previous edit. I don't even recall why I made that move. But a general principle I follow is "mathematics" is usually superfluous in disambiguating an article title since the point is to resolve name conflicts. It's like, often xyz (lawer) is good enough. If not, you use xyz (Iowa lawer) or something. -- Taku ( talk) 12:42, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Operator of proper-time-derivative looks as if it was written by someone who's better at Russian than at English. Maybe I'll do some editing on it tomorrow if someone doesn't make it flawless before I get to it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:27, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Orthogonal polynomials was recently split with much of the material now in Classical orthogonal polynomials. The split is probably a good idea, there is certainly a dichotomy between the general theory and the study of important specific examples, but I couldn't find much discussion on the split so I thought it would be a good idea to mention it in case people want to review.-- RDBury ( talk) 16:44, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
Following a clean-up tag, I started tidying continuous function. Maybe someone is interested in the topic, too? (Not only w.r.t. to tidying up!) Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 22:15, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
Please make your comments here: Talk:Sieve_of_Eratosthenes#Symbolic_formulas:_a_recap.
Only two editors had so far participated in the discussion. Need more opinions to put the matter at rest.
Your help will be greatly appreciated. WillNess ( talk) 13:07, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
Hi everyone,
Reading the article Radius of convergence, I had some troubles to understand the following lines :
When the behavior of the coefficients is one of constant sign or alternating sign, Domb and Sykes proposed plotting against and then fitting a straight line extrapolation to estimates the reciprocal of the radius of convergence.
I have no idea whether it is fully understandable for a native speaker, but I, poor Frenchman, don't understand it :-) These lines were written altogether, and I can't ask the author what he means (he's away from WP). My question is : what does it mean, a straight line extrapolation to ? Sorry if this is a common way to say it ; otherwise it should be rewritten properly. Thanks by advance. Mutatis mutandis ( talk) 13:21, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
I have to agree with Mutatis mutandis that the sentence is quite unclearly written. Michael Hardy ( talk) 00:47, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Regarding this edit, can someone please point me to the applicable policy or guideline regarding the appropriateness of using iff or if and only if in definitions? I would appreciate to be pointed to the passage of text explicitly justifying this reversion by User:Rschwieb. Toshio Yamaguchi ( talk) 15:45, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
As for the edit in question, I'd say that the first "if and only if" is inappropriate, since it's a definition. The second "if and only if" seems more appropriate to me, since it's not obvious that the sentence is a characterization of the W primes without it. (Maybe the section title should be "Equivalent characterization..." rather than "Definition...", or the first sentence should be rewritten do it's clearly a definition.) Sławomir Biały ( talk) 16:04, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Right: definitions are a different sort of object from propositions. Usually they're not even part of the formal system, making them pretty clearly different; systems like DZFC and proofless text/LPT/PST. CRGreathouse ( t | c) 14:18, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
Should something be done with Given (mathematics)? It's essentially a dictionary definition now. That Euclid wrote a book with this title (Data) causes me to hesitate before agreeing with the deletion proposal. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:22, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
I have just learned that the following article does not exist:
We have zillions (maybe dozens or hundreds?) of articles about particular dualities. Michael Hardy ( talk) 00:50, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Is mirror symmetry a duality? Since I'm not a physicist, wikipedia artciles on this topic are almost unintelligible. -- Taku ( talk) 12:58, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
I was looking at the page for chi distribution. Like a great many pages on statistics here, the definition is techincal and it is likely correct, but unhelpful to people--like me--looking up the article to gain insight from a introductory level. I assume that would be the goal? Or am I mistaken (of course it needs to be technically correct, too...).
Indeed, the stats articles overall seem to discourage undertanding for general readers by assuming a level of sophistication that is too high. For example, if you don't know what the chi-distribution is, you likely don't know what it means to say that "a k-dimensional vector's orthogonal components are independent." I would argue that a more "instructional" and less "technical dictionary" approach needs to be taken to the style of such articles. Sorry I cannot help provide such editing, as I don't have the stats background to do so. However, as a college teacher as well as frequent wikipedia reader, I would argue for such a switch in style. Or am I misunderstanding the goal? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.239.82.231 ( talk) 13:56, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
I believe the fundamental problem is that we don't motivate by example first (unlike other parts of WP, where at the very least an introductory section giving a specific concrete way into the topic is standard). I think the maths article style guide should be modified to strongly encourage presentation of a motivating example up-front, before the topic is set out in full generality.
At the moment the pattern for probably the majority of our articles is to give a general definition first, and then (almost as a tacked on addition) to have a paragraph where a number of examples are given (usually in fairly abstract terms). That may be considered good style in lecture notes, and may be interpreted by many as what is being advocated by the maths article style guide as currently written; but it is not appropriate if our intention is to try to make at least the first few sections of our articles as broadly accessible as possible. So I think the advice in this area needs a rewrite. Jheald ( talk) 20:32, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
The pages linked to from {{ Lists of integrals}} currently differ a bit in their display of formulae. Some add the integration constant C at the end, whereas some leave it out. What is the current convention on this? You know, I find it pretty confusing having it on some pages, but leaving it out on others. -- The Evil IP address ( talk) 12:53, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
At Annihilator (ring theory) this phrase appears: "determined by the adjunct map of the identity M→M along the Hom-tensor adjunction." I wanted to fix the redlink caused by "adjunct map" but I'm having a hard time getting hits for "adjunct map" on the web and thought perhaps the author meant "adjoint map" instead. The whole sentence is outside of my expertise: can anyone help? Rschwieb ( talk) 14:22, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_logic
Due to the description: "Synthetic logic is based on the law of non-identity (A is not A) and the law of contradiction (A is −A).", "synthetic logic" is no difference from classic logic but redefine the words "is" and "is not". With mapping "is" in "synthetic logic" to "is not" in classic logic, mapping "is not" in "synthetic logic" to "is" in classic logic, "synthetic logic" is identical with classic logic.
My suggestion is, either refine the misleading description or declare that "synthetic logic" is just a trivial dialect of classic logic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.96.65.22 ( talk) 07:44, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
I prodded these two articles, but the prods were declined. I have taken them to AfD now. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephen Palmquist and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Synthetic logic. Ozob ( talk) 01:35, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
I was wondering if it would be useful to make a "Articles desperately in need of attention" or "Articles in appalling condition" or "Sadface articles" category to draw more attention to such articles as
and other such top-priority start-class articles for which the dreariness of sheer lack of material (relative to the subject's importance) weighs heavily upon even a nonspecialist as me. Leonxlin ( talk) 03:55, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
Identification of such articles is one of the aims of the large article assessment effort.
Mathematics article ratings | ||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Priority | Quality | |||||||||||
FA | FL | A | GA | B | C | Start | Stub | List | Other | Unassessed | Total | |
Top | 9 | 17 | 196 | 11 | 6 | 239 | ||||||
High | 2 | 6 | 258 | 562 | 21 | 13 | 862 | |||||
Mid | 12 | 2 | 1 | 29 | 503 | 732 | 2,295 | 93 | 69 | 3,736 | ||
Low | 2 | 31 | 377 | 958 | 5,609 | 5,097 | 213 | 3 | 21 | 12,311 | ||
NA | 66 | 66 | ||||||||||
Other | 4 | 14 | 21 | 1 | 41 | 81 | ||||||
None | 5 | 32 | 239 | 136 | 9 | 55 | 476 | |||||
Total | 25 | 2 | 1 | 83 | 1,339 | 2,299 | 8,178 | 5,347 | 311 | 3 | 183 | 17,771 |
WikiWork factors ( ?) | ω = 114,278 | Ω = 4.96 |
We know there are 61 Start class top priority articles and 69 Stub class high priority articles. Which are probably those articles most in need of attention. I'm not convinced we need another mechanism to to almost the same job.
For mathematics article the best way to draw attention to them is to mention them on this talk page, we have already seem some improvement to Linear algebra, but nothing yet on Equation or Real analysis.-- Salix ( talk): 01:03, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
I've created a quite imperfect new article titled Tikhonov's theorem (dynamical systems). Do what you can for it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:53, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
The proposed renaming being discussed at Talk:Copula (statistics)#Requested move may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Favonian ( talk) 08:20, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
Does anyone have a nice example of a non-metrizable topological vector space in mind? I suspect there must be an elementary example. I had an idea to reference it in Normed vector space to show that not all vector spaces can be equipped with a norm. If you have an example by all means carry this out, no need to go through me. Rschwieb ( talk) 01:09, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
I was looking at the derivation section of the incompressible flow article. One of the equations wants a double contour integral symbol; like <math>\oint</math>, but with a larger circle and two integral signs. I couldn't find such a symbol in any of the LaTeX guides. The article uses a hack
but it just doesn't line up at all well using MathJax; although it does line up in plane TeX ( see here). Does anyone if there is a command for the required symbol? If not, should we use <math>\oint\oint</math> or just <math>\iint</math>? — Fly by Night ( talk) 16:27, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
I have added code to mathJax for detecting those hacks. I was going to automatically replace instances of them by \oiint and \oiiint, but after adding support for these symbols I realized that they are not available in the TeX fonts. I need to ask the main developers for adding them. In the mean time I am duplicating the same kind of ugly hack though the results may still look a bit more off. Nageh ( talk) 20:08, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
Just a remark that when you can't find a LaTeX symbol, you should try Detexify: http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html It's able to easily identify the symbol you want and tells you what package it comes from (in this case, esint). -- Joel B. Lewis ( talk) 00:30, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
A user has renewed his editing and suggested changes to Mathematical optimization. You may wish to examine his edits and welcome him! Kiefer. Wolfowitz 11:29, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
The COPYVIO issues at Blaise Pascal have been resolved thanks mostly to User:NortyNort and User:Moonriddengirl. The article is still under FA review however; even though the original problem is gone the review brought up new issues. It's probably not too late to fix these issues and/or leave comments at the FAR.-- RDBury ( talk) 18:22, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
An editor is lobbying to include the misleading formula at Riemann curvature tensor, claiming that this is the Bianchi identity. (Under most typical interpretations of the notation, this is true iff the manifold is locally symmetric.). In addition, the same editor is adding irrelevant content about vector bundles and torsion, although the article clearly focuses only on the Levi-Civita case (whether or not this focus is appropriate. Someone please look into it. 166.137.141.212 ( talk) 20:24, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
The journal claims to be covered by Zentralblatt MATH and Mathematical Reviews. Is this true, or just another BS claim from these crackpots (Smarandache et al.)? Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:58, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
Our article titled Euclid–Mullin sequence doesn't say a word about who either Euclid or Mullin is. Euclid is easy. Is it Albert A. Mullin, or R. C. Mullin, or someone else? Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:39, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
Numerical weather prediction is today's featured article. Just in case you're not checking the main page everyday.-- RDBury ( talk) 10:14, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
I have opened an RFC at Talk:Annals_of_Mathematics#RFC:_should_both_abbreviations_be_mentioned_in_the_lede about whether two abbreviations for the journal (the one used by Zentralblatt MATH, and the one used by Mathematical Reviews) should be mentioned in the lede. The other option proposed is to not include the Mathematical Reviews abbreviation. Please comment on that talk page if you're interested. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 11:08, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
From two coastline maps I want to know a value for their similarity. Problem are this maps. The one of 1531 is the dominant Antarctica shape of the 16th century. I know a long dispute whether it is by chance or not. But it always goes along very subjective identifications of similar points. Is there some mathematical theory or algorithm that can applied to this over 50 year old problem? Where should I ask? -- Portolanero ( talk) 15:37, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Semiotics of the structure has been PRODed and dePRODed. It seems to be the work of a single editor and I'm having trouble finding any meaningful mathematics in the article; the references mostly link to a website in Estonian. Can someone with some graph theory expertise have a look and determine if this is a notable subject?-- RDBury ( talk) 17:24, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
New editor BenHeideveld ( talk · contribs) has requested that a mathematician give their opinion on the article he created, Infinite Numbers, currently proposed for deletion. -- 88.104.39.209 ( talk) 05:35, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
I notice that Infinite number and Infinite Numbers now redirect to different articles, which doesn't make much sense. I was going to change Infinite number to point to Transfinite number, but I'm not sure whether that's a good idea - the problem is that Transfinite number only deals with infinite cardinals and ordinals, whereas "infinite number" could also refer to other things (e.g., in hyperreal fields). Maybe a disambiguation page would be appropriate. -- Zundark ( talk) 10:55, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks to those who were useful in their response. I don't know why anyone would think a peer review was being requested; the point was to get one or more recognised mathematics editors to say, "No, this isn't a known concept."
If someone does decide to create a disambiguation page out of "infinite number(s)", do give me a call. In my experience, expert editors tend to bugger up the formatting. TTFN, 88.104.39.209 ( talk) 17:58, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
There is a need of more mathmatical judgement on the situation to bring it to a resolution. Anyone interested in joining the discusion is welcome to join it at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#Merge of Super-logarithm and Super-root to Tetration. Robo37 ( talk) 20:23, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
Following a thread above, I noticed that this page does not seem to be updated. Is it possible to do so automatically? (The page says it already is, but the history of the page shows it is actually not, for ages). Even better, is it possible to have an automatically updated list (Carl?) which groups the articles with problems according to the topics (Algebra, Geometry, etc.). I think a more structured list would be quite some improvement, for example I have zero to epsilon knowledge in statistics, so I am unlikely to supply requested sources / deal with the "expert needed" tag in those articles. Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 20:07, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
There is an RFC on the addition of identifier links to citations by bots. Please comment. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:52, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
User:A. Pichler, who has a very long history of adding original research to special functions articles, is trying to include a piece of original research in the confluent hypergeometric function article. When pressed for a citation, the one he gave completely failed to support the added content. The situation may need to be monitored by someone. 166.205.11.236 ( talk) 23:34, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Equidistant. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:56, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
Jowa fan informed me of this discussion on my talk page as I converted the redirect into a soft-redirect in accordance with the outcome of the unanimous discussion at redirects for discussion (in which I proposed the soft-redirect). Having looked again at the
distance article after reading the above, I am still of the opinion that the soft-redirect is the best option. This is primarily because the word "equidistant" does not appear in the article and so readers (the majority of whom will, like me, not be mathematicians - indeed most of the article is way above my head) will not be any the wiser about what "equidistant" means, either in a mathematical sense or in common usage.
If the topic of being equally distant from two or more points can sustain an encyclopaedia article (my guess would that this would be more likely at a title like
equidistance) then write one, although as a lay person I can't comprehend how it can - the definitions at
wikt:equidistant seem to cover everything, both commonly and at least two mathematical uses (one labeled though as "cartography"). If there are more meanings in mathematics then add them to the Wiktionary article, tagging them with {{mathematics}} if that definition is not in general usage. Wiktionary's goal is to include all definitions in all languages, but it is currently even less complete than Wikipedia is - the good news though is that you can help!
If you still think that a redirect to
distance is the best option, then start a new RfD (which is the correct venue for discussions about soft redirects) with a link to the one just closed, giving your reasons why the previous consensus was wrong, along with the evidence for why "equidistant" should redirect to "distance" (and that "non-mathematicians wont understand everything distance can mean" isn't a reason that will likely sway many people without an explanation of what other things "equidistant" can mean that are not definitions that can be covered at Wiktionary). Alternatively,
DRV is always an option.
Thryduulf (
talk)
01:58, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
What is the standard English term for the line formed by the points that are equidistant to two objects. (For example the locus of points that are equidistant to a line and a point form a parabola.) In Dutch such a line is called a "conflictlijn", my best guess in English would be "equidistant" of "equidistant line". For now, I can't even an article on the English wikipedia that discusses this subject. (I would be really surprised if it doesn't exist since this is standard high school geometry.) Whatever this article is called, equidistant should probably redirect there. T R 09:43, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
If a single soft-redirect to wiktionary seems unsatisfactory to some maybe a disambiguation page would help? Nageh ( talk) 11:23, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
I've sketched out a draft stub article at Talk:Equidistant#Draft_outline, there definately seem to enough material for an article an I've not even looked at other notions of distance.-- Salix ( talk): 22:49, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Thryduulf's comment that it is "primarily because the word 'equidistant' does not appear in the article" makes his position seem silly. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:48, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
If someone can contribute a citation to this section I think the unreferenced tag can finally be cleared. Please drop in and see if you can do something. Rschwieb ( talk) 13:41, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
Fermat's 410th birthday is currently being commemorated by Google. Could someone keep an eye on the (anonymous) edits at Fermat's Last Theorem and Pierre de Fermat? Cheers, — Ruud 21:19, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
A lot of new content has recently been added to the page iterated function, under the subheading Iterated_function#Formulae_for_fractional_iteration. Someone might like to review this. Jowa fan ( talk) 01:21, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
In 2006, the articles Integer partition and Partition function (number theory) were merged to create the article Partition (number theory). Most of the article as currently written is about the partition function, with a few sections (e.g. on Ferrers diagrams) that are about partitions themselves. It seems to me that the original separation into two articles was more sensible, as (e.g.) the discussion of Ramanujan's congruences is really completely distinct from a discussion of Young diagrams or Young's lattice (the latter of which is currently not mentioned in the body of the article, unfortunately). Splitting the article as currently written would, I think, be not too hard -- most of it would go into Partition function (number theory), the rest into integer partition, and the latter article would have a short section with a link to the former and a brief summary of the most important points. (The latter article would need to be expanded.) What do you think?
On a not-totally-unrelated note, it seems to me that the content of the article is much more about combinatorics than it is about number theory. This is less egregious than for Composition (number theory) (an article with no number-theoretic content whatsoever, as far as I can tell) -- is there some good reason this is classed as number theory and not combinatorics?
Thanks! -- Joel B. Lewis ( talk) 03:13, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
I just reviewed and copy-edited the Riemann invariant article for WP:AFC. I didn't see any red flag, and I shaped it up as best I could, so I gave it the thumbs up, but it definitely could use more eyes. Especially about the categories, and also there is a reference to an article by Riemann which I haven't been able to find. Help would be appreciated. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:13, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, again. If I'm not mistaken the consensus following the last deletion review was that the subject may be notable if written about in a neutral way by someone other than User:Mmbmmmbm and his socks. Well, now we have an AfC submission from an IP with no other contributions. If someone with expertise could look it over and decide whether the article is sufficiently POV-free to be accepted it would be appreciated. joe•roe t• c 15:45, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
The very first citation, that most of the article seems to be based on, is published by Nova Publishers, which seems to be a dubious enterprise. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 02:39, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Note also the spelling: "Boubaker Polynomıals" rather than "Boubaker Polynomials", presumably to avoid being detected as the same article that's been repeatedly pushed. CRGreathouse ( t | c) 04:47, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Hey, could someone give a hand with writing the formula in IBM Award in formula style Purpleback pack 89≈≈≈≈ 22:16, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
I claim benefits to math articles in a proposal I posted at the pump: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Redirects containing topics when possible. ᛭ LokiClock ( talk) 02:35, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Opinions of this edit?
My view is that the title should sufficiently disambiguate and tell the reader something about the nature of the topic. "Analysis" is a word that has many different meanings in many different fields. It fails to tell the lay reader that mathematics is what the article is about. Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:12, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
First, I was unaware of Hardy's previous edit. I don't even recall why I made that move. But a general principle I follow is "mathematics" is usually superfluous in disambiguating an article title since the point is to resolve name conflicts. It's like, often xyz (lawer) is good enough. If not, you use xyz (Iowa lawer) or something. -- Taku ( talk) 12:42, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Operator of proper-time-derivative looks as if it was written by someone who's better at Russian than at English. Maybe I'll do some editing on it tomorrow if someone doesn't make it flawless before I get to it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:27, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Orthogonal polynomials was recently split with much of the material now in Classical orthogonal polynomials. The split is probably a good idea, there is certainly a dichotomy between the general theory and the study of important specific examples, but I couldn't find much discussion on the split so I thought it would be a good idea to mention it in case people want to review.-- RDBury ( talk) 16:44, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
Following a clean-up tag, I started tidying continuous function. Maybe someone is interested in the topic, too? (Not only w.r.t. to tidying up!) Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 22:15, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
Please make your comments here: Talk:Sieve_of_Eratosthenes#Symbolic_formulas:_a_recap.
Only two editors had so far participated in the discussion. Need more opinions to put the matter at rest.
Your help will be greatly appreciated. WillNess ( talk) 13:07, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
Hi everyone,
Reading the article Radius of convergence, I had some troubles to understand the following lines :
When the behavior of the coefficients is one of constant sign or alternating sign, Domb and Sykes proposed plotting against and then fitting a straight line extrapolation to estimates the reciprocal of the radius of convergence.
I have no idea whether it is fully understandable for a native speaker, but I, poor Frenchman, don't understand it :-) These lines were written altogether, and I can't ask the author what he means (he's away from WP). My question is : what does it mean, a straight line extrapolation to ? Sorry if this is a common way to say it ; otherwise it should be rewritten properly. Thanks by advance. Mutatis mutandis ( talk) 13:21, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
I have to agree with Mutatis mutandis that the sentence is quite unclearly written. Michael Hardy ( talk) 00:47, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Regarding this edit, can someone please point me to the applicable policy or guideline regarding the appropriateness of using iff or if and only if in definitions? I would appreciate to be pointed to the passage of text explicitly justifying this reversion by User:Rschwieb. Toshio Yamaguchi ( talk) 15:45, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
As for the edit in question, I'd say that the first "if and only if" is inappropriate, since it's a definition. The second "if and only if" seems more appropriate to me, since it's not obvious that the sentence is a characterization of the W primes without it. (Maybe the section title should be "Equivalent characterization..." rather than "Definition...", or the first sentence should be rewritten do it's clearly a definition.) Sławomir Biały ( talk) 16:04, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Right: definitions are a different sort of object from propositions. Usually they're not even part of the formal system, making them pretty clearly different; systems like DZFC and proofless text/LPT/PST. CRGreathouse ( t | c) 14:18, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
Should something be done with Given (mathematics)? It's essentially a dictionary definition now. That Euclid wrote a book with this title (Data) causes me to hesitate before agreeing with the deletion proposal. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:22, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
I have just learned that the following article does not exist:
We have zillions (maybe dozens or hundreds?) of articles about particular dualities. Michael Hardy ( talk) 00:50, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Is mirror symmetry a duality? Since I'm not a physicist, wikipedia artciles on this topic are almost unintelligible. -- Taku ( talk) 12:58, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
I was looking at the page for chi distribution. Like a great many pages on statistics here, the definition is techincal and it is likely correct, but unhelpful to people--like me--looking up the article to gain insight from a introductory level. I assume that would be the goal? Or am I mistaken (of course it needs to be technically correct, too...).
Indeed, the stats articles overall seem to discourage undertanding for general readers by assuming a level of sophistication that is too high. For example, if you don't know what the chi-distribution is, you likely don't know what it means to say that "a k-dimensional vector's orthogonal components are independent." I would argue that a more "instructional" and less "technical dictionary" approach needs to be taken to the style of such articles. Sorry I cannot help provide such editing, as I don't have the stats background to do so. However, as a college teacher as well as frequent wikipedia reader, I would argue for such a switch in style. Or am I misunderstanding the goal? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.239.82.231 ( talk) 13:56, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
I believe the fundamental problem is that we don't motivate by example first (unlike other parts of WP, where at the very least an introductory section giving a specific concrete way into the topic is standard). I think the maths article style guide should be modified to strongly encourage presentation of a motivating example up-front, before the topic is set out in full generality.
At the moment the pattern for probably the majority of our articles is to give a general definition first, and then (almost as a tacked on addition) to have a paragraph where a number of examples are given (usually in fairly abstract terms). That may be considered good style in lecture notes, and may be interpreted by many as what is being advocated by the maths article style guide as currently written; but it is not appropriate if our intention is to try to make at least the first few sections of our articles as broadly accessible as possible. So I think the advice in this area needs a rewrite. Jheald ( talk) 20:32, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
The pages linked to from {{ Lists of integrals}} currently differ a bit in their display of formulae. Some add the integration constant C at the end, whereas some leave it out. What is the current convention on this? You know, I find it pretty confusing having it on some pages, but leaving it out on others. -- The Evil IP address ( talk) 12:53, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
At Annihilator (ring theory) this phrase appears: "determined by the adjunct map of the identity M→M along the Hom-tensor adjunction." I wanted to fix the redlink caused by "adjunct map" but I'm having a hard time getting hits for "adjunct map" on the web and thought perhaps the author meant "adjoint map" instead. The whole sentence is outside of my expertise: can anyone help? Rschwieb ( talk) 14:22, 31 August 2011 (UTC)