Rychlik ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), no doubt an otherwise well-intentioned editor, does appear to be adding material that is unduly self-promotional. He has already been warned of a potential COI, but perhaps further action is needed? Specifically of concern are the articles Marek Rychlik, Rychlik's theorem, and Chordal problem, all of which appear to assign undue significance to the editor's own research. I thought I should post here to solicit input on the best way to handle this constellation of articles. One possibility that seems reasonable to me is to delete Marek Rychlik and Rychlik's theorem, possibly merging some content from Rychlik's theorem to Chordal problem. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 14:47, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
Situation does look manageable. Would anyone inclined to intervene please note the key distinction: "potential COI" may be a hypothesis or it may be something that can be confirmed. But WP:COI relates fundamentally only to putting the encyclopedia's interests second, rather than first. Something like the discussion of whether equichordal point problem is a better title can actually be carried out compatibly with AGF. Charles Matthews ( talk) 13:26, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
I am not convinced that redirecting Marek Rychlik to Rychlik's theorem was a good solution. We do have notability guidelines, and in this regard Marek Rychlik clearly fulfilled the criteria. Sure, the article was poor, but if anything I'd expected Rychlik's theorem to be renamed to equichordal point problem. Nageh ( talk) 20:05, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
The other problem is that equichordal point problem is now a redirect to Rychlik's theorem. As I pointed out previously, I can find only a single source on Google that refers to this problem by "Rychlik's theorem". If anything, Rychlik's theorem should be redirected to the equichordal point problem article. Nageh ( talk) 12:38, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
I just found a paper on ZBMATH database (Wojtkowski, M.P., Two applications of Jacobi fields to the billiard ball problem, J. Differ. Geom. 40, No.1, 155-164 (1994)) which mentions Bialy's theorem and also Rychlik's theorem in the abstract. Now, two major questions arise: 1) is the user Sławomir Biały related to Rychlik in any way, if yes, did the relationship induce this discussion? 2) Independent of the first question, is one mentioning by another polish mathematician a proof for notability? I highly doubt that. DrPhosphorus ( talk) 19:39, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
I have requested a renaming of Rychlik's theorem to equichordal point problem, followed by deletion of the article name Rychlik's theorem. Discussion here. Cheers, and a happy new year! Nageh ( talk) 10:32, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to solicit input on the recent breakage of Template:Su in the Firefox 2.0 compatible browsers (there is a thread at Template talk:Su). I've just been told off that the ~20,000 current users of this line of browsers is not enough market share to consider fixing the template. The template is totally broken for users of this line of browsers (see the image on that discussion page for details), and a solution is very desirable. Potentially the template should be retired from use in favor of using <math> instead. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 16:07, 1 January 2011 (UTC):
Hi, I was hoping to get some expert help. Operator (disambiguation) currently has over 100 incoming links, and we're having a tough time figuring out how to fix them. I'm suspicious that the disambig is missing a mathematics article or two. Could someone take a look at the mathematics articles in this list and give their opinion? Thanks, -- JaGa talk 19:06, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
Why does this project not use a project banner to identify articles that are within its purview? I put the banner on a somewhat new article's talk page while I was putting a value in |listas=
and when I previewed the page I got the message that all the mathematics articles are in a List.
Lists have to be maintained manually. Categories populate themselves. The article I was attempting to tag is not on your list even though it has been around since October, 2010.
I am not doing drive-by tagging. I am working strictly by hand because of the low level of the quality of the sort values. I merely wanted call your attention to an article you seem to have ignored.
Happy editing! JimCubb ( talk) 01:16, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
There is a project banner on the talk pages of most math articles, I think.
Perhaps Movable singularity is what he's talking about. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:05, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Bezdek is the one I meant. I did not see him on the list and I apologize for missing him. The talk page of his article gives no indication that this project knows the article exists. JimCubb ( talk) 02:21, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
I've created a List of topics named after Karl Weierstrass.
Tasks:
So get busy and have fun with it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:55, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Movable singularity has been prodded.
Do what you can with it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:05, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
The article Movable singularity has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:
While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.
You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}}
notice, but please explain why in your
edit summary or on
the article's talk page.
Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}}
will stop the
proposed deletion process, but other
deletion processes exist. The
speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and
articles for deletion allows discussion to reach
consensus for deletion.
JeepdaySock (AKA,
Jeepday) 17:50, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
I see from their edit histories that Jeepday and JimCubb have been prodding any article that they cannot find references for. I have started a discussion about this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles#Appropriateness of PRODding articles. Ozob ( talk) 11:57, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
WP:OWN Jeepday ( talk) 01:00, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
Should one of the math categories be added to the article titled Möbius resistor? Which one(s)?
(BTW, Oleg's mathbot has stopped adding new items every day to the list of mathematics articles. Jitse's bot still seems to be working, so it's Oleg's bot's fault we're not seeing anything new on the current activities page.) Michael Hardy ( talk) 07:51, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
IPs 70.51.177.249 ( talk · contribs) and 70.54.228.146 ( talk · contribs) have been adding material which appears to me to be hoaxes, using actual (but absurd) papers by Patrick St-Amant as references. JRSpriggs ( talk) 11:55, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Has anyone heard of this impressively named publication? I can't find any article about it in WP, nor about its publisher, Hikari Ltd.
I ask mainly because a certain Pierre St Anant seems to have published in it, and the work is referenced in the hyperoperation article. A couple of Canadian IPs have been adding references to St Anant's ideas (largely sourced to arXiv publications) to various articles, including continuum hypothesis and fundamental theorem of arithmetic. My strong suspicion is that these are not appropriate for inclusion, but I have not read them carefully enough to be sure. -- Trovatore ( talk) 02:40, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
So no one's heard of the journal, then? --
Trovatore (
talk) 20:05, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
I can see that this group is motivated, and I would like to offer a couple of suggestions that may decrease the loss of articles to prod, no mater how you feel about them, you need take them into account.
Cheers JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 12:00, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
I've created a new article called Weierstrass substitution.
Tasks ahead:
So get busy. Have fun. Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:48, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
I just patrolled a new article Highest Weight Category and verified all that I could. I've confirmed the reference and updated it with a link to an online version, but this is far beyond my expertise. Could somebody familiar with representation theory review the article and confirm it is valid? Thanks. - Hydroxonium ( talk) 22:48, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
The article is still an orphan: no other articles link to it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:13, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm not a mathematician, although I have a science background. I sometimes do proof-reading of some scientific Wikipedia articles, but mainly from the perspectives of English and readability rather than for technical content.
Various articles have brought me to a few pages such as " Bred vectors" and " Lyapunov vectors". It seems slightly strange that their titles use the plural form "vectors" rather than the singular "vector". By contrast, the title of (for instance) " Eigenvector", being in the singular form, seems much more natural.
Does the Mathematics wikiproject have a preferred convention on plural vs. singular in such titles? Shouldn't the title usually be singular unless there is good over-riding reason to use the plural?
(In all the above, my use of the word "singular" is in the English language "opposite of plural" sense, rather than any mathematical sense "singular vectors" sense!)
Would there be any objection to renaming, in particular, "Bred vectors" to "Bred vector" and "Lyapunov vectors" to "Lyapunov vector"?
Feline Hymnic ( talk) 01:01, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
Great. Many thanks. (As I typed my request, I was trying to think of an example from Maths where the plural would be the best; I was sure there would be some but they eluded me. So thanks, too, for jogging my mind with "Maxwell's equations".) Feline Hymnic ( talk) 09:38, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
The articles linked to in {{ irrational numbers}} differ in the number of decimal places they show in the lead. Euler–Mascheroni constant shows 50 digit after the decimal point, Apéry's constant shows 45, Square root of 2 shows 65, Square root of 3 and Square root of 5 show 60 each, Golden ratio shows 10, Plastic number shows 17, etc. Should they be made consistent? I'd propose a not-too-large number of digits, e.g. 30. What do you guys think? -- A. di M. ( talk) 13:45, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
There is some confusion at these logic pages concerning the meaning of the term "first-order logic". There is a narrow sense of the term and a larger sense of the term. Thus, the page second-order logic adheres to the narrow sense, so that we find that "First-order logic uses only variables that range over individuals (elements of the domain of discourse); second-order logic has these variables as well as additional variables that range over sets of individuals." Meanwhile, the page first-order logic currently works with the larger sense, and moreover there is a bit of a back-and-forth going on, to which I have unfortunately contributed before realizing what the problem was. Tkuvho ( talk) 12:36, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
The redirect Frenet-Serret frame → Frenet-Serret formulas was recently replaced with a new article that consists of content that is crudely copy-pasted from the articles Frenet-Serret formulas and differential geometry of curves. As far as I can tell, apart from the brief lead, no new content was added in the process (and all of the content still remains at Frenet-Serret formulas and differential geometry of curves). Should we have this separate article or should this content forking be reverted? It seems to me that the already existing article Frenet-Serret formulas is intended to cover both the formulas and the frame. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 14:16, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
If you have an opinion, please comment here: Talk:Operator#Requested move. Paul August ☎ 21:14, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
Today, someone removed a large number of items from List of scientific journals in mathematics. I undid that edit. More eyes on the article and opinions on the talk page would be nice. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 20:49, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
Mathbot doesn't seem to have added any new mathematics articles since January 2. I assume that the articles showing up lately in the current activity have been added manually somehow. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 15:01, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
I was able to run Mathbot myself, and it seems to have worked fine. For those who don't know, there is a "multi-maintainer project" named wpmath on the toolserver, which has the mathbot code. I am hoping to eventually get Jitse's bot there as well. The goal of this is to put us in a position that someone else can take over the code smoothly if the current maintainers leave. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 21:47, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
It seems that maybe some people involved in this project do not regularly look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity and see the daily update on new articles. Because of the recent bot problems we have ten days of new articles simultaneously. Here are those new articles:
Happy editing! Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:37, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
Tricomplex number has been prodded. Is it worth keeping? Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:48, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
I've added some references to the article and a link from hypercomplex number saying " Tricomplex numbers - a 3d vector space over the reals, one of a family of systems of commutative hypercomplex numbers in n-dimensions over the reals.". Still not very notable, but neither are multicomplex numbers. 89.241.233.7 ( talk) 23:52, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
An anonymous editor at transfinite induction is under the remarkable impression that there is no successor step in transfinite induction. Please help out. -- Trovatore ( talk) 22:13, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
Is this reliable? A certain editor is adding "facts" sourced to it, and in cube root, what was attributed to it about the history of the cube root of two was totally wrong. I'm asking here, before going to WP:RSN, as I'd like to see what other mathematicians have to say about it. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:19, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Entailment#Duplication of content. - dcljr ( talk) 19:55, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
Editor User:NewtonEin (as well as some anon ips) has been inserting material on Lapierre-Roy vectors and the Lapierre-Roy Law (such as in recent edits to Riemann zeta function). These two articles and related edits seem to be non-notable and OR. I'd be tempted to prod them, but I've never actually done this so I don't really know what it means. The first article appears to be renaming the concept of "infinite-dimensional vectors" while the second appears to be elementary estimates on values of the zeta function. Could anyone look at this? RobHar ( talk) 03:18, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
Is this a common misconception? You can comment at Talk:List of common misconceptions#0.999.... Tkuvho ( talk) 03:41, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
I've created a new article titled Advances in Applied Mathematics. As it stands, it needs work. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:35, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
After weeks of nothing there are now three nominations at once. Follow the links to see the discussions:
-- RDBury ( talk) 14:41, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
post away. perhaps some day i'll find a better place to gather such a list.
also, another idea might be sort of a prize for clear and accessible articles. Kevin Baas talk 02:51, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Personally i've grown tired of this. there is way to much adversity to change making itself plainly obvious, despite what some people say. i just posted one suggestion here and see all the resistance that resulted. WhatAmIDoing was right: it's pointless; all it's good for is raising one's blood pressure. and i'm not really in to that sort of thing. it's sad, really (unfortunate), but what are you going to do? i can certainly find more productive uses for my time than dealing with this kind of blood-boiling resistance, utter lack of sympathy, or even listening, and worst of all condenscion, and getting nowhere. Kevin Baas talk 19:45, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Tkuvho really gets credit for that link. I did copyedit the lede some. I think that the main questions that the lede needs to answer are the following, along with their answers from the lede of Riemannian geometry
It is not always feasible to give a full answer in the lede, in which case we should still try to say something non-trivial (and at least nearly correct). For example, here are the answers from Kleene's T predicate:
The answer to #1 there is intentionally vague, but it's still explanatory. Especially in longer article, the lede also serves as a summary of the main points of the article. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 14:01, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Just to note that is at least one attack at WQA basically at all the editors here (by Gregbard). Dougweller ( talk) 12:51, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Some encyclopedic editors are reverting my addition of a sentence in the lead at exterior algebra providing a link to more elementary pages that should be read first. Are they being too encyclopedic? Tkuvho ( talk) 19:50, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
...for that I go to wolfram mathematica or planetmath or essentially anywhere else.
and it seems this state has been getting progressively worse throughout the years. as if there are a number of people who are actively making it worse.
something really needs to be done about making the articles coherent and accessible. badly.
Kevin Baas talk 17:36, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
The truth is that enWP's mathematics coverage is the go-to reference for those seriously studying the subject, i.e. graduate students. This is clear from the attitude on the MathOverflow site: search WP first, then ask us. In other words the articles this project curates are doing the work of a mathematical encyclopedia. It may be that we should look at criticisms that we are not performing other functions; but I for one am not prepared to accept such criticisms from User:Kevin Baas, whom I don't consider a reliable witness. Charles Matthews ( talk) 19:27, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
[22]. Bully yourself. You have been making assertions about the treatment of mathematics here for seven years, and I have yet to see you do any actual work towards improving it; you have certainly scrambled up the tensor topics, but forgive me if I don't count that as a plus. Charles Matthews ( talk) 20:27, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
(ec)
Maybe we should start collecting these discussions, in a FAQ-type listing. It might be a much more efficient method of communicating this group's apparent disinterest in addressing this ongoing problem.
Someone complains that the math-related articles are needlessly opaque several times a year, and as far as I can tell, every single complaint gets blown off. Typically, the closest we come to a solution is someone inviting the complainants to magically know enough about the subjects to fix basic problems (e.g., the absence of a paragraph about "why anyone cares about this concept"). In my experience, identifying specific, concrete problems in specific, named sentences in individual, linked articles earns you exactly the same kind of dismissive response that vaguer complaints produce. I've personally seen a complaint about a basic grammar problem get dismissed, as if editors who work on math articles shouldn't have to use the level of English that one expects from a typical 12 year old.
So Kevin, let me assure you that far from the first person to complain about this problem, but unfortunately the people who appear to be primarily responsible for creating the problem are perfectly satisfied with the status quo, so complaining here will accomplish nothing except raising your blood pressure. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 22:05, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: I, for one, have on many occasions addressed issues raised by users concerning the accessibility of math articles. Typically, these occur on talk pages of the corresponding articles, in which case they are much easier to address. I'd venture to say that most accessibility issues raised on this discussion page are rather vague and hence much harder to address appropriately. It is true that it would difficult for the one person raising the issue to fix everything him/herself, but with a complaint like "almost all math articles on wiki are incoherent and inaccessible", it's not like the ~20 regulars who hang out in this forum can fix everything either. Other times I've disregarded a request to improve accessibility are along the lines of "I have a college degree in engineering, and even I don't understand what the article Class formation is saying", and while that article could be improved and made more accessible, knowing college level math is by no means sufficient to have any idea what that article is about.
As for the discussion at hand, the OP's original comment was certainly not the best way to approach this issue. In fact, the only phrase the people in this forum are likely to somewhat agree with is that accessibility needs to be improved. I, for one, am pretty sure most of our articles are "coherent", and I'm only on wikipedia because I find planetmath and mathworld mostly unhelpful. I'm also fairly certain our articles have not been getting worse. (You could argue that maybe the number of good ones as a percentage of the whole is going down, but only because there's an increasing amount of articles, so that's not a very good measure). Finally, while there are people making articles actively worse, they are presumably not the people from whom the OP is asking for help, so there's no need to leave a lingering potential insult lying around. So, as I said, there is at most one thing out of six that the OP said initially that participants here could identify with. That's not a good score if you're trying to get people to help you. RobHar ( talk) 22:39, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I agree with the OP that the maths articles do let WP down. I've a maths-physics background, and the maths articles fall below the physics articles in clarity, IMO. Some are good, but a lot are really bad in that they don't communicate the concepts to all audiences. They look like they are written by PhDs for PhDs. A good article can communicate on many levels, explaining the concepts at an elementary level and more advanced levels. -- cheers, Michael C. Price talk 10:52, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
I can understand why people think it makes sense to compare physics and mathematics, but in reality it can only lead to false comparisons. The basic language of physics involves electrons, atoms, forces, time, energy, etc. In other words, (for the most part) it involves concepts that are taught to high school students. Other than that, the term "quantum" is an element of pop culture, and the concepts of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian are a step away from energy. Hell, kids even use the term "force field"; not totally accurately mind you, but still. The basic language of mathematics involves functions, topological spaces, groups, invariants, manifolds, graphs, rings, vector spaces, R-modules, categories, etc. While some of these are introduced at a high school or undergraduate, many of them are graduate topics. This makes it inherently more difficult to provide down-to-earth explanations on many wiki math articles. Take for example one of the biggest mathematical proofs of the recent past: Wiles' proof of Fermat. Luckily, you can fairly easily say a bunch of things about Fermat's Last Theorem; however, you'd be hard pressed to give a down-to-earth explanation of what the modularity theorem even says. Anyway, that's a bit of my rant. RobHar ( talk) 16:02, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Greetings Kevin, You have made an excellent observation and contribution to the discussion for this group. I have read your user page, and I am impressed by the time and thought you have put into NPOV. Please take a look at User:Gregbard/Mathematosis which is content that members of this group actively suppressed, and was moved from Wikipedia:MMSS to user space. It is no surprise to me that you have appropriately brought this important issue to the attention of the proper community, and have gotten a negative response from several of them. The prevailing attitude is represented by CBM (who is a wonderful and reasonable editor to discuss things with, however is still guilty of having this attitude that it isn't important at all for non-mathematicians to be able to understand mathematics articles in Wikipedia --a position he has stated in this discussion). Most of the active members couldn't care less if articles are only intelligible by themselves and their mathematician buddies. They are territorial and hostile to any interdisciplinary treatment of topics which might lend a great deal of clarity to non-mathematicians. As a note to the group, this poster Kevin has made a good faith report to this group for a need for improvement which the group has heretofore failed to achieve. His observation is valuable, as criticism is how we improve. Do not take this opportunity to dismiss him. Put away your arrogance, and adopt the humble position that he is speaking to an valid issue on behalf of the reading audience. Show some respect. Greg Bard ( talk) 21:17, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm still awaiting outside input at exterior algebra. In light of some of the comments made here, I have completely rewritten the lead of the article. However, since the issues were never clearly identified (beyond a general lack of understanding), it is difficult to determine if I have hit the right mark. It does seem at the very least that those complaining loudly about its original inaccessibility should offer there feedback on the revision. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 15:30, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I have been inspired by the above discussion to start an FAQ. It's currently visible at the top of this page. Anyone who wants to edit it is free to do so; it's at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/FAQ. Ozob ( talk) 01:35, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
The first answer in the FAQ likened the difficult of mathematics articles to those in "law and medicine".
User:WhatamIdoing has recently visited
WP:MED and
WP:LAW attempting to get them to say that their concepts can be made accessible; see
WT:MED#Advanced topics and
WT:LAW#On making technical articles accessible. By and large the folks at WP:MED were of the opinion that most of their material could be explained to the layman, though to me they didn't sound particularly enthusiastic. WhatamIdoing Anthonyhcole has used this as justification for removing "and medicine" from the FAQ answer, and I am sure he hopes to do the same for "law". I've replaced "medicine" with "medical science" since that seems to me to be closer to the actual consensus in that thread.
I'm starting this thread in the interest of centralizing discussion. I'll shortly be posting to the Law and Medicine WikiProjects directing them here. Ozob ( talk) 12:37, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I am totally impressed with the huge improvements to the lead at Exterior algebra. I finally understand what the subject is, and why anyone should care about it. (It's the biggest tool for certain purposes! It provides complete, precise, unambiguous definitions instead of just vague descriptions! It's sometimes convenient! It has desirable properties! It's useful! It's compatible with some other things!)
In terms of practical feedback:
The subject is advanced so the material is naturally dense, and I read the lead slowly, trying to reactivate some rather rusty neurons. The occasional parenthetical comment (e.g., the degrees add (like multiplication of polynomials)) helped me connect the current subject to some basic but apparently rusty concepts (going from "The degrees add?!" to "Oh, he means the degrees add! How could I have forgotten!"). It's still not going to be accessible to someone at the pre-algebra level and that's okay. I think it's going to be accessible to someone who has studied vectors past the introduction-to-physics level.
The lead makes judicious use of occasional "needless verbosity" as a way of introducing unfamiliar terms. For example, it says The exterior product of two vectors u and v, denoted by u ∧ v, lives in a space called the exterior square, rather than The exterior product of two vectors u and v, denoted by u ∧ v, lives in the exterior square. The difference from the perspective of the non-expert is that the chosen construction says "Now you know what we call this bit, and that's all you need to know about that for now" rather than "Here's another bit of jargon to prove that you don't know what we're talking about!" I found this so effective that I plan to adopt this strategy for other technical subjects.
The newly added image helped me check my understanding of the first paragraph.
In the end, I felt like I understood the main point of every single sentence, at least to a first approximation—well enough, in fact, to confidently identify and fix a minor typo that the spilling chucker missed, without wondering if perhaps this was some strange new mathematical concept.
I'm enormously happy about the new third paragraph, which contains most of the "What's it useful for" and "What field is it studied in" answers. (The short answers to those two questions are "Lots of things" and "Several", and as a result, I know why this article is a high priority on this project's WP:1.0 assessments.)
This is such a wonderful bit of work. Thank you to all who helped, directly and indirectly. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 18:24, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
Ono et. al. have recently published a paper which is getting a lot of hype. If someone can work on Partition (number theory) in preparation for that would probably be good. The paper deals with congruences and a new closed-form formula (I've only skimmed it so far); we should, in particular, work on Partition (number theory)#Congruences if at all possible. At the moment that section directly contradicts itself.
CRGreathouse ( t | c) 00:15, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Although I did Maths up to it being a subsidiary subject at first-year university level, I've forgotten most of it, although I do like to try to get a vague grasp of concepts as I come across them (see, for example, the above discussion about Lyapunov vectors). So I can heartily commend and congratulate that article for including a diagram which, more than thousands of words could do, gives the outside reader a rough idea of what's going on. Excellent. Any chance of a few more articles doing likewise? If diagrams are tricky, then use a real world example if possible: "Imagine this scene 'X' ... aspect 'Y' is described by mathematical concept 'Z'." (I realise this really may not be possible in various cases, but I'm sure it must be in some, as per Lyapunov vectors.) In short, could articles, where possible, attempt to teach a non-mathematician? Thanks. Feline Hymnic ( talk) 09:52, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
There are places where diagrams would help. But even when you can sketch a diagram in a few seconds on the back of an envelope, it may take two hours, or eight hours, to create something that can be uploaded. Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:57, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
Although I've tended to emphasise pictures, diagrams, etc. to help the outsider get a finger-hold on a concept, another really valuable way to do this is a "motivating example". For instance, many years ago I couldn't see any point to the vector cross product. "Why bother?", I thought. "Completely perpendicular to the usual vector plane? Crazy!", I thought. But in another isolated compartment of my poor little brain was already squirrelled away the right-hand rule for electro-magnetic induction. Then in one physics lesson about electromagnetism, the lecturer said, almost as a throw-away, "...and we can express this mathematically as a vector-cross product." And the light went on: "Yes, at last, I get it!". So, if reasonably possible, could articles have some sort of "motivating example" near the top? Feline Hymnic ( talk) 12:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Midy's theorem is being enriched by unsourced material. Tkuvho ( talk) 04:05, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Hadamard's maximal determinant problem is a quasi-orphan (in the article space, one "article" and one list link to it (and I shouldn't have to tell you which list)). Try to figure out which other articles should link to it, and add the links. Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:14, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Tangent half-angle formula has long been a deficient article. It's not as bad as it was 30 minutes ago, but more work is needed.
The illustration would accompany a geometric proof fairly well, but it's badly titled, and also see my commented-out comment on it within the article.
I'm not sure the Weierstrass substitution should be mentioned other than very tersely. There's a main-article link for that. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:45, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
In the last 3 days, User:David Eppstein created articles on the mathematical economists Andreu Mas-Colell and Graciela Chichilnisky (yesterday).
Chichilnisky's continuous social choice theory may interest topologists, especially; her work on international trade, development, and environmental economics has received international attention; further, she has received national attention in the USA because of a (now settled) sex-discrimination law-suit.
Also, another article started by David, the Shapley-Folkman lemma, received "Good Article" status today, thanks to the reviewing of User:Jakob.scholbach, who guided the needed revisions. Further editing, especially copy-editing, would be appreciated.
Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( talk) 22:54, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
There is a new article on the algebraic/additive number theorist Henry Mann, who was also a statistician.
I nominated the 3 mathematical articles for DYK, and so I encourage mathematical-project editors to review the DYK facts. Thanks, Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( talk) 02:18, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
A user at Talk:Exterior algebra asked me to define what I mean by "Bourbakism". As this is an important issue I am starting a thread here. As pertaining to the style of the pages here, particularly the ledes, what I am referring to is the idea that the latest fad in the foundations of mathematics is also the foundation of human thought and therefore should be the foundation of education. In the sixties, set theory was fashionable as a foundation. This foundationalist mentality therefore led to the New Math debacle in education. Concepts such as "naturality", "universal constructions", "equivalence of categories" are certainly appropriate on some math pages, but not most. Thus, understanding the naturality and universality of the exterior algebra is important in its applications in de Rham theory and building the exterior differential complex, etc. However, such concepts are basically a Bourbakist infestation when it comes to explaining basic concepts such as exterior algebra, and should be relegated to the last section of the page. I appreciate the effort that went into the upgrading of the page exterior algebra recently, but at the same time misguided educational principles should be checked. The elaboration of the "categorical" material has been accompanied by the deletion of material on simple-minded topics such as rank, minor, and cross product which can serve to connect the topic to the reader's previous experience. However, if you are Bourbakist, connecting to previous experience counts little when one is dealing with alleged foundations of human thought. Tkuvho ( talk) 10:00, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
The discussion at Talk:Exterior algebra is quickly becoming tiresome and unproductive. A nutshell version is that Tkuvho feels that the lead of a mathematics article should not even attempt to summarize the more advanced parts of the article, because of accessibility concerns. Some outside comment is obviously needed. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 14:07, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
Considering that Bourbaki was founded in the 1930s, calling it a recent fad is a bit odd. And trying to tie in Bourbaki's stated wish to write an encyclopedic reference for contemporary mathematicians with the New Math is something of a slur; if you wish for more context read the introduction to Dieudonné's Infinitesimal Calculus; it was much more of a question of getting the French university examiners to consider whether undergraduate teaching should have some relevance to research topics. The excesses of American educators, post-Sputnik, are really only vaguely related. It is obviously the case that our treatments of graduate-level topics should reflect graduate-level textbooks. Those are a mixed bunch, but the "formalist" treatments will be in evidence in certain areas of higher algebraic content, and it is perfectly fine that our articles should reflect that to some extent. My impression is that the anti-algorithmic and "no pictures" prejudices of Bourbaki are now pretty much obsolete, so that heuristics on how you compute with the exterior algebra (say), and some geometrical interpretations, are appropriate. Also some history gives a chance to speak to why ideas were introduced in the first place, which usually helps. Charles Matthews ( talk) 15:47, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
Certainly the basic principle is that the choice of content should not be anyone's personal taste, but a reflection of a mainstream view. Charles Matthews ( talk) 17:34, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
I agree with posts I have seen elsewhere. I think the lead for Exterior algebra generally looks great. Thank you to all the editors who have worked on that text! --- My Core Competency is Competency ( talk) 18:30, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
User:Gauravmisra del mentioned on his userpage last month that he was having trouble with the wiki-syntax necessary to add his Remarkable Discovery to the article on subtraction without borrowing. He subsequently went ahead and added it (I guess he figured it out?), so that's fine, I guess.
Problem is, I'm concerned about his description of this as a Discovery, which evokes Original Research. But this really isn't my field. I'm sure I could follow his step-by-step instructions if I tried, but I wouldn't be able to recognize whether this is something new and original or old and familiar (and his mention of the psychological side effects of ordinary subtraction seem... unusual, to say the least). Anyone care to have a look? DS ( talk) 15:12, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
IMO the sentence about the connection almost complex structure has two errors:
I'm writing here because I don't think many people are watching that page :) — Kallikanzarid talk 18:49, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
Anyone willing to join me in making this article Good? I think prime numbers [c,sh]ould be a showpiece maths article, ranging from most elementary math's to jungles of unsolved conjectures and recent top-notch work. Everybody, please inscribe yourself here! Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 23:17, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Is the Australian Mathematical Society ranking of mathematics journals a reliable source for list of mathematics journals? Opinions on that question are welcome at Talk:List_of_mathematics_journals#AustMS_journal_rankings. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 04:49, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
Rychlik ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), no doubt an otherwise well-intentioned editor, does appear to be adding material that is unduly self-promotional. He has already been warned of a potential COI, but perhaps further action is needed? Specifically of concern are the articles Marek Rychlik, Rychlik's theorem, and Chordal problem, all of which appear to assign undue significance to the editor's own research. I thought I should post here to solicit input on the best way to handle this constellation of articles. One possibility that seems reasonable to me is to delete Marek Rychlik and Rychlik's theorem, possibly merging some content from Rychlik's theorem to Chordal problem. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 14:47, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
Situation does look manageable. Would anyone inclined to intervene please note the key distinction: "potential COI" may be a hypothesis or it may be something that can be confirmed. But WP:COI relates fundamentally only to putting the encyclopedia's interests second, rather than first. Something like the discussion of whether equichordal point problem is a better title can actually be carried out compatibly with AGF. Charles Matthews ( talk) 13:26, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
I am not convinced that redirecting Marek Rychlik to Rychlik's theorem was a good solution. We do have notability guidelines, and in this regard Marek Rychlik clearly fulfilled the criteria. Sure, the article was poor, but if anything I'd expected Rychlik's theorem to be renamed to equichordal point problem. Nageh ( talk) 20:05, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
The other problem is that equichordal point problem is now a redirect to Rychlik's theorem. As I pointed out previously, I can find only a single source on Google that refers to this problem by "Rychlik's theorem". If anything, Rychlik's theorem should be redirected to the equichordal point problem article. Nageh ( talk) 12:38, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
I just found a paper on ZBMATH database (Wojtkowski, M.P., Two applications of Jacobi fields to the billiard ball problem, J. Differ. Geom. 40, No.1, 155-164 (1994)) which mentions Bialy's theorem and also Rychlik's theorem in the abstract. Now, two major questions arise: 1) is the user Sławomir Biały related to Rychlik in any way, if yes, did the relationship induce this discussion? 2) Independent of the first question, is one mentioning by another polish mathematician a proof for notability? I highly doubt that. DrPhosphorus ( talk) 19:39, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
I have requested a renaming of Rychlik's theorem to equichordal point problem, followed by deletion of the article name Rychlik's theorem. Discussion here. Cheers, and a happy new year! Nageh ( talk) 10:32, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to solicit input on the recent breakage of Template:Su in the Firefox 2.0 compatible browsers (there is a thread at Template talk:Su). I've just been told off that the ~20,000 current users of this line of browsers is not enough market share to consider fixing the template. The template is totally broken for users of this line of browsers (see the image on that discussion page for details), and a solution is very desirable. Potentially the template should be retired from use in favor of using <math> instead. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 16:07, 1 January 2011 (UTC):
Hi, I was hoping to get some expert help. Operator (disambiguation) currently has over 100 incoming links, and we're having a tough time figuring out how to fix them. I'm suspicious that the disambig is missing a mathematics article or two. Could someone take a look at the mathematics articles in this list and give their opinion? Thanks, -- JaGa talk 19:06, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
Why does this project not use a project banner to identify articles that are within its purview? I put the banner on a somewhat new article's talk page while I was putting a value in |listas=
and when I previewed the page I got the message that all the mathematics articles are in a List.
Lists have to be maintained manually. Categories populate themselves. The article I was attempting to tag is not on your list even though it has been around since October, 2010.
I am not doing drive-by tagging. I am working strictly by hand because of the low level of the quality of the sort values. I merely wanted call your attention to an article you seem to have ignored.
Happy editing! JimCubb ( talk) 01:16, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
There is a project banner on the talk pages of most math articles, I think.
Perhaps Movable singularity is what he's talking about. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:05, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Bezdek is the one I meant. I did not see him on the list and I apologize for missing him. The talk page of his article gives no indication that this project knows the article exists. JimCubb ( talk) 02:21, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
I've created a List of topics named after Karl Weierstrass.
Tasks:
So get busy and have fun with it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 01:55, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Movable singularity has been prodded.
Do what you can with it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:05, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
The article Movable singularity has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:
While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.
You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}}
notice, but please explain why in your
edit summary or on
the article's talk page.
Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}}
will stop the
proposed deletion process, but other
deletion processes exist. The
speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and
articles for deletion allows discussion to reach
consensus for deletion.
JeepdaySock (AKA,
Jeepday) 17:50, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
I see from their edit histories that Jeepday and JimCubb have been prodding any article that they cannot find references for. I have started a discussion about this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles#Appropriateness of PRODding articles. Ozob ( talk) 11:57, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
WP:OWN Jeepday ( talk) 01:00, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
Should one of the math categories be added to the article titled Möbius resistor? Which one(s)?
(BTW, Oleg's mathbot has stopped adding new items every day to the list of mathematics articles. Jitse's bot still seems to be working, so it's Oleg's bot's fault we're not seeing anything new on the current activities page.) Michael Hardy ( talk) 07:51, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
IPs 70.51.177.249 ( talk · contribs) and 70.54.228.146 ( talk · contribs) have been adding material which appears to me to be hoaxes, using actual (but absurd) papers by Patrick St-Amant as references. JRSpriggs ( talk) 11:55, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Has anyone heard of this impressively named publication? I can't find any article about it in WP, nor about its publisher, Hikari Ltd.
I ask mainly because a certain Pierre St Anant seems to have published in it, and the work is referenced in the hyperoperation article. A couple of Canadian IPs have been adding references to St Anant's ideas (largely sourced to arXiv publications) to various articles, including continuum hypothesis and fundamental theorem of arithmetic. My strong suspicion is that these are not appropriate for inclusion, but I have not read them carefully enough to be sure. -- Trovatore ( talk) 02:40, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
So no one's heard of the journal, then? --
Trovatore (
talk) 20:05, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
I can see that this group is motivated, and I would like to offer a couple of suggestions that may decrease the loss of articles to prod, no mater how you feel about them, you need take them into account.
Cheers JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 12:00, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
I've created a new article called Weierstrass substitution.
Tasks ahead:
So get busy. Have fun. Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:48, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
I just patrolled a new article Highest Weight Category and verified all that I could. I've confirmed the reference and updated it with a link to an online version, but this is far beyond my expertise. Could somebody familiar with representation theory review the article and confirm it is valid? Thanks. - Hydroxonium ( talk) 22:48, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
The article is still an orphan: no other articles link to it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:13, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm not a mathematician, although I have a science background. I sometimes do proof-reading of some scientific Wikipedia articles, but mainly from the perspectives of English and readability rather than for technical content.
Various articles have brought me to a few pages such as " Bred vectors" and " Lyapunov vectors". It seems slightly strange that their titles use the plural form "vectors" rather than the singular "vector". By contrast, the title of (for instance) " Eigenvector", being in the singular form, seems much more natural.
Does the Mathematics wikiproject have a preferred convention on plural vs. singular in such titles? Shouldn't the title usually be singular unless there is good over-riding reason to use the plural?
(In all the above, my use of the word "singular" is in the English language "opposite of plural" sense, rather than any mathematical sense "singular vectors" sense!)
Would there be any objection to renaming, in particular, "Bred vectors" to "Bred vector" and "Lyapunov vectors" to "Lyapunov vector"?
Feline Hymnic ( talk) 01:01, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
Great. Many thanks. (As I typed my request, I was trying to think of an example from Maths where the plural would be the best; I was sure there would be some but they eluded me. So thanks, too, for jogging my mind with "Maxwell's equations".) Feline Hymnic ( talk) 09:38, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
The articles linked to in {{ irrational numbers}} differ in the number of decimal places they show in the lead. Euler–Mascheroni constant shows 50 digit after the decimal point, Apéry's constant shows 45, Square root of 2 shows 65, Square root of 3 and Square root of 5 show 60 each, Golden ratio shows 10, Plastic number shows 17, etc. Should they be made consistent? I'd propose a not-too-large number of digits, e.g. 30. What do you guys think? -- A. di M. ( talk) 13:45, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
There is some confusion at these logic pages concerning the meaning of the term "first-order logic". There is a narrow sense of the term and a larger sense of the term. Thus, the page second-order logic adheres to the narrow sense, so that we find that "First-order logic uses only variables that range over individuals (elements of the domain of discourse); second-order logic has these variables as well as additional variables that range over sets of individuals." Meanwhile, the page first-order logic currently works with the larger sense, and moreover there is a bit of a back-and-forth going on, to which I have unfortunately contributed before realizing what the problem was. Tkuvho ( talk) 12:36, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
The redirect Frenet-Serret frame → Frenet-Serret formulas was recently replaced with a new article that consists of content that is crudely copy-pasted from the articles Frenet-Serret formulas and differential geometry of curves. As far as I can tell, apart from the brief lead, no new content was added in the process (and all of the content still remains at Frenet-Serret formulas and differential geometry of curves). Should we have this separate article or should this content forking be reverted? It seems to me that the already existing article Frenet-Serret formulas is intended to cover both the formulas and the frame. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 14:16, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
If you have an opinion, please comment here: Talk:Operator#Requested move. Paul August ☎ 21:14, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
Today, someone removed a large number of items from List of scientific journals in mathematics. I undid that edit. More eyes on the article and opinions on the talk page would be nice. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 20:49, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
Mathbot doesn't seem to have added any new mathematics articles since January 2. I assume that the articles showing up lately in the current activity have been added manually somehow. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 15:01, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
I was able to run Mathbot myself, and it seems to have worked fine. For those who don't know, there is a "multi-maintainer project" named wpmath on the toolserver, which has the mathbot code. I am hoping to eventually get Jitse's bot there as well. The goal of this is to put us in a position that someone else can take over the code smoothly if the current maintainers leave. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 21:47, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
It seems that maybe some people involved in this project do not regularly look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity and see the daily update on new articles. Because of the recent bot problems we have ten days of new articles simultaneously. Here are those new articles:
Happy editing! Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:37, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
Tricomplex number has been prodded. Is it worth keeping? Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:48, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
I've added some references to the article and a link from hypercomplex number saying " Tricomplex numbers - a 3d vector space over the reals, one of a family of systems of commutative hypercomplex numbers in n-dimensions over the reals.". Still not very notable, but neither are multicomplex numbers. 89.241.233.7 ( talk) 23:52, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
An anonymous editor at transfinite induction is under the remarkable impression that there is no successor step in transfinite induction. Please help out. -- Trovatore ( talk) 22:13, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
Is this reliable? A certain editor is adding "facts" sourced to it, and in cube root, what was attributed to it about the history of the cube root of two was totally wrong. I'm asking here, before going to WP:RSN, as I'd like to see what other mathematicians have to say about it. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:19, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Entailment#Duplication of content. - dcljr ( talk) 19:55, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
Editor User:NewtonEin (as well as some anon ips) has been inserting material on Lapierre-Roy vectors and the Lapierre-Roy Law (such as in recent edits to Riemann zeta function). These two articles and related edits seem to be non-notable and OR. I'd be tempted to prod them, but I've never actually done this so I don't really know what it means. The first article appears to be renaming the concept of "infinite-dimensional vectors" while the second appears to be elementary estimates on values of the zeta function. Could anyone look at this? RobHar ( talk) 03:18, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
Is this a common misconception? You can comment at Talk:List of common misconceptions#0.999.... Tkuvho ( talk) 03:41, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
I've created a new article titled Advances in Applied Mathematics. As it stands, it needs work. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:35, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
After weeks of nothing there are now three nominations at once. Follow the links to see the discussions:
-- RDBury ( talk) 14:41, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
post away. perhaps some day i'll find a better place to gather such a list.
also, another idea might be sort of a prize for clear and accessible articles. Kevin Baas talk 02:51, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Personally i've grown tired of this. there is way to much adversity to change making itself plainly obvious, despite what some people say. i just posted one suggestion here and see all the resistance that resulted. WhatAmIDoing was right: it's pointless; all it's good for is raising one's blood pressure. and i'm not really in to that sort of thing. it's sad, really (unfortunate), but what are you going to do? i can certainly find more productive uses for my time than dealing with this kind of blood-boiling resistance, utter lack of sympathy, or even listening, and worst of all condenscion, and getting nowhere. Kevin Baas talk 19:45, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Tkuvho really gets credit for that link. I did copyedit the lede some. I think that the main questions that the lede needs to answer are the following, along with their answers from the lede of Riemannian geometry
It is not always feasible to give a full answer in the lede, in which case we should still try to say something non-trivial (and at least nearly correct). For example, here are the answers from Kleene's T predicate:
The answer to #1 there is intentionally vague, but it's still explanatory. Especially in longer article, the lede also serves as a summary of the main points of the article. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 14:01, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Just to note that is at least one attack at WQA basically at all the editors here (by Gregbard). Dougweller ( talk) 12:51, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Some encyclopedic editors are reverting my addition of a sentence in the lead at exterior algebra providing a link to more elementary pages that should be read first. Are they being too encyclopedic? Tkuvho ( talk) 19:50, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
...for that I go to wolfram mathematica or planetmath or essentially anywhere else.
and it seems this state has been getting progressively worse throughout the years. as if there are a number of people who are actively making it worse.
something really needs to be done about making the articles coherent and accessible. badly.
Kevin Baas talk 17:36, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
The truth is that enWP's mathematics coverage is the go-to reference for those seriously studying the subject, i.e. graduate students. This is clear from the attitude on the MathOverflow site: search WP first, then ask us. In other words the articles this project curates are doing the work of a mathematical encyclopedia. It may be that we should look at criticisms that we are not performing other functions; but I for one am not prepared to accept such criticisms from User:Kevin Baas, whom I don't consider a reliable witness. Charles Matthews ( talk) 19:27, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
[22]. Bully yourself. You have been making assertions about the treatment of mathematics here for seven years, and I have yet to see you do any actual work towards improving it; you have certainly scrambled up the tensor topics, but forgive me if I don't count that as a plus. Charles Matthews ( talk) 20:27, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
(ec)
Maybe we should start collecting these discussions, in a FAQ-type listing. It might be a much more efficient method of communicating this group's apparent disinterest in addressing this ongoing problem.
Someone complains that the math-related articles are needlessly opaque several times a year, and as far as I can tell, every single complaint gets blown off. Typically, the closest we come to a solution is someone inviting the complainants to magically know enough about the subjects to fix basic problems (e.g., the absence of a paragraph about "why anyone cares about this concept"). In my experience, identifying specific, concrete problems in specific, named sentences in individual, linked articles earns you exactly the same kind of dismissive response that vaguer complaints produce. I've personally seen a complaint about a basic grammar problem get dismissed, as if editors who work on math articles shouldn't have to use the level of English that one expects from a typical 12 year old.
So Kevin, let me assure you that far from the first person to complain about this problem, but unfortunately the people who appear to be primarily responsible for creating the problem are perfectly satisfied with the status quo, so complaining here will accomplish nothing except raising your blood pressure. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 22:05, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: I, for one, have on many occasions addressed issues raised by users concerning the accessibility of math articles. Typically, these occur on talk pages of the corresponding articles, in which case they are much easier to address. I'd venture to say that most accessibility issues raised on this discussion page are rather vague and hence much harder to address appropriately. It is true that it would difficult for the one person raising the issue to fix everything him/herself, but with a complaint like "almost all math articles on wiki are incoherent and inaccessible", it's not like the ~20 regulars who hang out in this forum can fix everything either. Other times I've disregarded a request to improve accessibility are along the lines of "I have a college degree in engineering, and even I don't understand what the article Class formation is saying", and while that article could be improved and made more accessible, knowing college level math is by no means sufficient to have any idea what that article is about.
As for the discussion at hand, the OP's original comment was certainly not the best way to approach this issue. In fact, the only phrase the people in this forum are likely to somewhat agree with is that accessibility needs to be improved. I, for one, am pretty sure most of our articles are "coherent", and I'm only on wikipedia because I find planetmath and mathworld mostly unhelpful. I'm also fairly certain our articles have not been getting worse. (You could argue that maybe the number of good ones as a percentage of the whole is going down, but only because there's an increasing amount of articles, so that's not a very good measure). Finally, while there are people making articles actively worse, they are presumably not the people from whom the OP is asking for help, so there's no need to leave a lingering potential insult lying around. So, as I said, there is at most one thing out of six that the OP said initially that participants here could identify with. That's not a good score if you're trying to get people to help you. RobHar ( talk) 22:39, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I agree with the OP that the maths articles do let WP down. I've a maths-physics background, and the maths articles fall below the physics articles in clarity, IMO. Some are good, but a lot are really bad in that they don't communicate the concepts to all audiences. They look like they are written by PhDs for PhDs. A good article can communicate on many levels, explaining the concepts at an elementary level and more advanced levels. -- cheers, Michael C. Price talk 10:52, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
I can understand why people think it makes sense to compare physics and mathematics, but in reality it can only lead to false comparisons. The basic language of physics involves electrons, atoms, forces, time, energy, etc. In other words, (for the most part) it involves concepts that are taught to high school students. Other than that, the term "quantum" is an element of pop culture, and the concepts of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian are a step away from energy. Hell, kids even use the term "force field"; not totally accurately mind you, but still. The basic language of mathematics involves functions, topological spaces, groups, invariants, manifolds, graphs, rings, vector spaces, R-modules, categories, etc. While some of these are introduced at a high school or undergraduate, many of them are graduate topics. This makes it inherently more difficult to provide down-to-earth explanations on many wiki math articles. Take for example one of the biggest mathematical proofs of the recent past: Wiles' proof of Fermat. Luckily, you can fairly easily say a bunch of things about Fermat's Last Theorem; however, you'd be hard pressed to give a down-to-earth explanation of what the modularity theorem even says. Anyway, that's a bit of my rant. RobHar ( talk) 16:02, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Greetings Kevin, You have made an excellent observation and contribution to the discussion for this group. I have read your user page, and I am impressed by the time and thought you have put into NPOV. Please take a look at User:Gregbard/Mathematosis which is content that members of this group actively suppressed, and was moved from Wikipedia:MMSS to user space. It is no surprise to me that you have appropriately brought this important issue to the attention of the proper community, and have gotten a negative response from several of them. The prevailing attitude is represented by CBM (who is a wonderful and reasonable editor to discuss things with, however is still guilty of having this attitude that it isn't important at all for non-mathematicians to be able to understand mathematics articles in Wikipedia --a position he has stated in this discussion). Most of the active members couldn't care less if articles are only intelligible by themselves and their mathematician buddies. They are territorial and hostile to any interdisciplinary treatment of topics which might lend a great deal of clarity to non-mathematicians. As a note to the group, this poster Kevin has made a good faith report to this group for a need for improvement which the group has heretofore failed to achieve. His observation is valuable, as criticism is how we improve. Do not take this opportunity to dismiss him. Put away your arrogance, and adopt the humble position that he is speaking to an valid issue on behalf of the reading audience. Show some respect. Greg Bard ( talk) 21:17, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm still awaiting outside input at exterior algebra. In light of some of the comments made here, I have completely rewritten the lead of the article. However, since the issues were never clearly identified (beyond a general lack of understanding), it is difficult to determine if I have hit the right mark. It does seem at the very least that those complaining loudly about its original inaccessibility should offer there feedback on the revision. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 15:30, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I have been inspired by the above discussion to start an FAQ. It's currently visible at the top of this page. Anyone who wants to edit it is free to do so; it's at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/FAQ. Ozob ( talk) 01:35, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
The first answer in the FAQ likened the difficult of mathematics articles to those in "law and medicine".
User:WhatamIdoing has recently visited
WP:MED and
WP:LAW attempting to get them to say that their concepts can be made accessible; see
WT:MED#Advanced topics and
WT:LAW#On making technical articles accessible. By and large the folks at WP:MED were of the opinion that most of their material could be explained to the layman, though to me they didn't sound particularly enthusiastic. WhatamIdoing Anthonyhcole has used this as justification for removing "and medicine" from the FAQ answer, and I am sure he hopes to do the same for "law". I've replaced "medicine" with "medical science" since that seems to me to be closer to the actual consensus in that thread.
I'm starting this thread in the interest of centralizing discussion. I'll shortly be posting to the Law and Medicine WikiProjects directing them here. Ozob ( talk) 12:37, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I am totally impressed with the huge improvements to the lead at Exterior algebra. I finally understand what the subject is, and why anyone should care about it. (It's the biggest tool for certain purposes! It provides complete, precise, unambiguous definitions instead of just vague descriptions! It's sometimes convenient! It has desirable properties! It's useful! It's compatible with some other things!)
In terms of practical feedback:
The subject is advanced so the material is naturally dense, and I read the lead slowly, trying to reactivate some rather rusty neurons. The occasional parenthetical comment (e.g., the degrees add (like multiplication of polynomials)) helped me connect the current subject to some basic but apparently rusty concepts (going from "The degrees add?!" to "Oh, he means the degrees add! How could I have forgotten!"). It's still not going to be accessible to someone at the pre-algebra level and that's okay. I think it's going to be accessible to someone who has studied vectors past the introduction-to-physics level.
The lead makes judicious use of occasional "needless verbosity" as a way of introducing unfamiliar terms. For example, it says The exterior product of two vectors u and v, denoted by u ∧ v, lives in a space called the exterior square, rather than The exterior product of two vectors u and v, denoted by u ∧ v, lives in the exterior square. The difference from the perspective of the non-expert is that the chosen construction says "Now you know what we call this bit, and that's all you need to know about that for now" rather than "Here's another bit of jargon to prove that you don't know what we're talking about!" I found this so effective that I plan to adopt this strategy for other technical subjects.
The newly added image helped me check my understanding of the first paragraph.
In the end, I felt like I understood the main point of every single sentence, at least to a first approximation—well enough, in fact, to confidently identify and fix a minor typo that the spilling chucker missed, without wondering if perhaps this was some strange new mathematical concept.
I'm enormously happy about the new third paragraph, which contains most of the "What's it useful for" and "What field is it studied in" answers. (The short answers to those two questions are "Lots of things" and "Several", and as a result, I know why this article is a high priority on this project's WP:1.0 assessments.)
This is such a wonderful bit of work. Thank you to all who helped, directly and indirectly. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 18:24, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
Ono et. al. have recently published a paper which is getting a lot of hype. If someone can work on Partition (number theory) in preparation for that would probably be good. The paper deals with congruences and a new closed-form formula (I've only skimmed it so far); we should, in particular, work on Partition (number theory)#Congruences if at all possible. At the moment that section directly contradicts itself.
CRGreathouse ( t | c) 00:15, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Although I did Maths up to it being a subsidiary subject at first-year university level, I've forgotten most of it, although I do like to try to get a vague grasp of concepts as I come across them (see, for example, the above discussion about Lyapunov vectors). So I can heartily commend and congratulate that article for including a diagram which, more than thousands of words could do, gives the outside reader a rough idea of what's going on. Excellent. Any chance of a few more articles doing likewise? If diagrams are tricky, then use a real world example if possible: "Imagine this scene 'X' ... aspect 'Y' is described by mathematical concept 'Z'." (I realise this really may not be possible in various cases, but I'm sure it must be in some, as per Lyapunov vectors.) In short, could articles, where possible, attempt to teach a non-mathematician? Thanks. Feline Hymnic ( talk) 09:52, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
There are places where diagrams would help. But even when you can sketch a diagram in a few seconds on the back of an envelope, it may take two hours, or eight hours, to create something that can be uploaded. Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:57, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
Although I've tended to emphasise pictures, diagrams, etc. to help the outsider get a finger-hold on a concept, another really valuable way to do this is a "motivating example". For instance, many years ago I couldn't see any point to the vector cross product. "Why bother?", I thought. "Completely perpendicular to the usual vector plane? Crazy!", I thought. But in another isolated compartment of my poor little brain was already squirrelled away the right-hand rule for electro-magnetic induction. Then in one physics lesson about electromagnetism, the lecturer said, almost as a throw-away, "...and we can express this mathematically as a vector-cross product." And the light went on: "Yes, at last, I get it!". So, if reasonably possible, could articles have some sort of "motivating example" near the top? Feline Hymnic ( talk) 12:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Midy's theorem is being enriched by unsourced material. Tkuvho ( talk) 04:05, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Hadamard's maximal determinant problem is a quasi-orphan (in the article space, one "article" and one list link to it (and I shouldn't have to tell you which list)). Try to figure out which other articles should link to it, and add the links. Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:14, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Tangent half-angle formula has long been a deficient article. It's not as bad as it was 30 minutes ago, but more work is needed.
The illustration would accompany a geometric proof fairly well, but it's badly titled, and also see my commented-out comment on it within the article.
I'm not sure the Weierstrass substitution should be mentioned other than very tersely. There's a main-article link for that. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:45, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
In the last 3 days, User:David Eppstein created articles on the mathematical economists Andreu Mas-Colell and Graciela Chichilnisky (yesterday).
Chichilnisky's continuous social choice theory may interest topologists, especially; her work on international trade, development, and environmental economics has received international attention; further, she has received national attention in the USA because of a (now settled) sex-discrimination law-suit.
Also, another article started by David, the Shapley-Folkman lemma, received "Good Article" status today, thanks to the reviewing of User:Jakob.scholbach, who guided the needed revisions. Further editing, especially copy-editing, would be appreciated.
Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( talk) 22:54, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
There is a new article on the algebraic/additive number theorist Henry Mann, who was also a statistician.
I nominated the 3 mathematical articles for DYK, and so I encourage mathematical-project editors to review the DYK facts. Thanks, Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( talk) 02:18, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
A user at Talk:Exterior algebra asked me to define what I mean by "Bourbakism". As this is an important issue I am starting a thread here. As pertaining to the style of the pages here, particularly the ledes, what I am referring to is the idea that the latest fad in the foundations of mathematics is also the foundation of human thought and therefore should be the foundation of education. In the sixties, set theory was fashionable as a foundation. This foundationalist mentality therefore led to the New Math debacle in education. Concepts such as "naturality", "universal constructions", "equivalence of categories" are certainly appropriate on some math pages, but not most. Thus, understanding the naturality and universality of the exterior algebra is important in its applications in de Rham theory and building the exterior differential complex, etc. However, such concepts are basically a Bourbakist infestation when it comes to explaining basic concepts such as exterior algebra, and should be relegated to the last section of the page. I appreciate the effort that went into the upgrading of the page exterior algebra recently, but at the same time misguided educational principles should be checked. The elaboration of the "categorical" material has been accompanied by the deletion of material on simple-minded topics such as rank, minor, and cross product which can serve to connect the topic to the reader's previous experience. However, if you are Bourbakist, connecting to previous experience counts little when one is dealing with alleged foundations of human thought. Tkuvho ( talk) 10:00, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
The discussion at Talk:Exterior algebra is quickly becoming tiresome and unproductive. A nutshell version is that Tkuvho feels that the lead of a mathematics article should not even attempt to summarize the more advanced parts of the article, because of accessibility concerns. Some outside comment is obviously needed. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 14:07, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
Considering that Bourbaki was founded in the 1930s, calling it a recent fad is a bit odd. And trying to tie in Bourbaki's stated wish to write an encyclopedic reference for contemporary mathematicians with the New Math is something of a slur; if you wish for more context read the introduction to Dieudonné's Infinitesimal Calculus; it was much more of a question of getting the French university examiners to consider whether undergraduate teaching should have some relevance to research topics. The excesses of American educators, post-Sputnik, are really only vaguely related. It is obviously the case that our treatments of graduate-level topics should reflect graduate-level textbooks. Those are a mixed bunch, but the "formalist" treatments will be in evidence in certain areas of higher algebraic content, and it is perfectly fine that our articles should reflect that to some extent. My impression is that the anti-algorithmic and "no pictures" prejudices of Bourbaki are now pretty much obsolete, so that heuristics on how you compute with the exterior algebra (say), and some geometrical interpretations, are appropriate. Also some history gives a chance to speak to why ideas were introduced in the first place, which usually helps. Charles Matthews ( talk) 15:47, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
Certainly the basic principle is that the choice of content should not be anyone's personal taste, but a reflection of a mainstream view. Charles Matthews ( talk) 17:34, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
I agree with posts I have seen elsewhere. I think the lead for Exterior algebra generally looks great. Thank you to all the editors who have worked on that text! --- My Core Competency is Competency ( talk) 18:30, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
User:Gauravmisra del mentioned on his userpage last month that he was having trouble with the wiki-syntax necessary to add his Remarkable Discovery to the article on subtraction without borrowing. He subsequently went ahead and added it (I guess he figured it out?), so that's fine, I guess.
Problem is, I'm concerned about his description of this as a Discovery, which evokes Original Research. But this really isn't my field. I'm sure I could follow his step-by-step instructions if I tried, but I wouldn't be able to recognize whether this is something new and original or old and familiar (and his mention of the psychological side effects of ordinary subtraction seem... unusual, to say the least). Anyone care to have a look? DS ( talk) 15:12, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
IMO the sentence about the connection almost complex structure has two errors:
I'm writing here because I don't think many people are watching that page :) — Kallikanzarid talk 18:49, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
Anyone willing to join me in making this article Good? I think prime numbers [c,sh]ould be a showpiece maths article, ranging from most elementary math's to jungles of unsolved conjectures and recent top-notch work. Everybody, please inscribe yourself here! Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 23:17, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Is the Australian Mathematical Society ranking of mathematics journals a reliable source for list of mathematics journals? Opinions on that question are welcome at Talk:List_of_mathematics_journals#AustMS_journal_rankings. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 04:49, 28 January 2011 (UTC)