The article on Bell's theorem has been hijacked by crackpot Joy Christian and his cronies. Any attempt to remove references to Christian's discredited work (not published in any peer-reviewed journa, and shown o be fundamentally flawed by a long list of authorities in the fieldl) is immediately "undone" by Christian himself or his supporter Fred Diether. Conflict of Interest!
But if nobody cares about this article better to leave it to the crackpots. Richard Gill ( talk) 18:31, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Richard Gill called me “crackpot Joy Christian.” I wonder what his criterion of crackpot is. I let the readers judge for themselves. Here are my credentials: Dr. Joy Christian obtained his Ph.D. from Boston University in Foundations of Quantum Theory in 1991 under the supervision of the renowned philosopher and physicist Professor Abner Shimony (the “S” in Bell-CHSH-inequality). He then received a Research Fellowship from the Wolfson College of the University of Oxford, where he has remained affiliated both with the college and a number of departments of the university. He is an invited member of the prestigious Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi), and has been a Long Term Visitor of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada. He is well known for his contributions to the foundations of quantum and gravitational physics, including quantization of Newton-Cartan theory of gravity, generalization of Special Theory of Relativity to incorporate the objective passage of time, and elimination of non-locality from the foundations of quantum physics. A partial list of his publications can be found here: http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/au:+Christian_Joy/0/1/0/all/0/1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.148.6.36 ( talk) 22:03, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
As for the paper in question, "Disproof of Bell's Theorem", http://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.1879v1.pdf , is published in my peer-reviewed book, http://www.brownwalker.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1599425645, and is widely discussed on the Internet. My work has also been cited in several *published* articles, at least two of them in the Physical Review (not to mention its citations in some lesser known journals). I have given invited talks about my work on several occasions during the past five years. The book itself is only just published, and citations to it will undoubtedly follow in due course. On the other hand ALL of Richard Gill’s misguided, erroneous, and unpublished arguments against my work have been comprehensively debunked, many times over, not only by me but also by several other knowledgeable people on the FQXi blogs. I myself have given a systematic refutation of his misguided arguments in the following two papers: http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.2529 and http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.5876 -- Joy Christian — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.148.6.36 ( talk) 22:13, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
@Arthur Rubin: My book IS peer-reviewed. My work IS cited and discussed in Physical Review and other journals, and NOT as negatively as you are trying to suggest. You have no proof of what you are claiming. You are clearly biased.
On a different note, I urge the Wikipedia community to remove Richard Gill’s slanderous name claiming from his post above. As you can judge from my qualifications I listed above, his name calling has no justification whatsoever. -- Joy Christian — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.148.6.36 ( talk • contribs)
@Arthur Rubin: My book *IS* peer-reviewed. There are also people who call me a genius; so perhaps you should refer me as a “so-called genius.” -- Joy Christian — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.148.6.36 ( talk) 08:38, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Boris, I respectfully disagree (if I understand you correctly). Bell claimed that no functions of the form A(a, L) = +/-1 and B(b, L) = +/-1 can reproduce correlations of the form E(a, b) = -a.b. “This is the theorem” (his exact words). What Bell did not realize is that this claim is true if and only if the co-domain of the functions A(a, L) and B(b, L) is NOT a unit parallelized 3-sphere, S^3. My one-page paper shows an explicit construction of the fact that when the co-domain of A(a, L) and B(b, L) is taken to be S^3, the correlations are inevitably E(a, b) = -a.b. I urge you to have a look at this longer paper to see my compete argument: http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.0775 . Thanks. -- Joy Christian — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.148.6.36 ( talk) 12:10, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Whatever the outcome of this discussion, it is clear that we should not cite Joy Christian's self-published work ( WP:SELFPUB). There has been a long tradition of criticism of Bell's theorem from the fringes of physics. If mention of this is to be included in the article, it should be sourced to a reliable secondary source documenting such criticism and the replies of the scientific mainstream ( WP:NPOV, WP:PSTS). Otherwise, including criticisms sourced to the primary literature is considered to be original research, and is forbidden by Wikipedia policy. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 13:51, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Comments on Talk:Bell's_theorem#Seeking_consensus_to_exclude_the_disproof_of_Bell.27s_theorem will be appreciated. Thanks. History2007 ( talk) 00:42, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
I urge the Wikipedia community to remove Richard Gill’s slanderous name claiming from his post above. As you can judge from my qualifications I listed above, his name calling has no justification whatsoever. -- Joy Christian — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.148.6.36 ( talk) 06:13, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't recall http://betterexplained.com/archives/ being discussed in this space so I would like to raise the issue of whether this is a reliable source. Also, would it be appropriate to cite it in a footnote in the lede of an article. Tkuvho ( talk) 07:29, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this is a known issue, but there seem to be some inconsistencies in the way the Wikimedia parser processes TeX and MathJax. Consider <math>a<b</math>:
versus <math>a\lt b</math>
If MathJax is enabled, the first equation does not display correctly but the second one does. If "Render as PNG" is enabled the first equation displays correctly, and the second generates a parse error "Failed to parse (unknown function\lt)". This seems to be quite bad, since half of users will see one or the other of the two errors! Sławomir Biały ( talk) 14:19, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
In light of the fact that MathJax is "still experimental", I don't think the preferences page should also say that it is "recommended for most browsers". These two directives seem to be incongruous. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 16:39, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shouryya Ray.
Is this person notable?
Are the news media's claims about him true or merely sensationalist exaggerations that help sell newspapers?
Opine at the page linked to above. Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:45, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
I was surprised that we had no article on Lester Dubins. I've just created one. It needs further work, both within the article itself and in other articles that ought to link to it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:31, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
The pi article has been nominated for Featured Article status. If successful, this will be the ninth Top-priority FA article for the Mathematics project. Editors familiar with the FA criteria are welcome to provide input at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Pi/archive1. -- Noleander ( talk) 12:33, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Hello everyone! I would appreciate if a few people could lend their expertise over at the nomination page, even if it is just to confirm that one little section is not a piece of nonsense. I am just concerned about the little things, the off emphasis here, the obscure odd fact inserted there, that have a way of getting into even (or especially?) meticulously-researched articles, and that bespeak inexpertness. For example, detailed discussions of π's relationship to the Mandelbrot set fractal and the sinuosity of a meandering river (which are above my head) appear in the middle of other content, like a discussion of Euler's identity (the importance of which even I can understand) or the Fourier transform (which I have at least heard of). It just strikes me as a little fishy, though for all I know the article is perfectly well balanced. Which is why I'm asking for some help. Thanks! Leonxlin ( talk) 19:33, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
Pi has passed its nomination! Leonxlin ( talk) 01:27, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
Hello
Did I do something wrong/incomplete? I use Firefox 12.0 (enabled Java & Javascript) on Linux as my browser but sometimes/often mathematical formulae are not or are wrongly displayed. E. g. in the page [2] in the table-style of all these matrices there appears a literal "amp;" for the column separator, or in section "Classification", subsection "Elliptic transforms" the formula "0 \le \mbox{tr}^2\mathfrak{H} < 4.\," is not interpreted at all - it is displayed rawly! (This is the first formula in this article , several follow, but the formulae before seem to be displayed correctly). Thanks in advance for any useful help. Achim1999 ( talk) 14:22, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
I added Poincare's original definition of a differentiable manifold at Manifold#Poincar.C3.A9.27s_original_definition. Poincare defined a manifold as a subset of euclidean space which is locally a graph (see details there). This definition is arguably more accessible to a general reader than the more abstract definition involving atlases, charts, and transition functions. The lede could profit from focusing on the subset-of-R^n definition instead of the abstract definition. However, another editor feels that the reader does not need the crutch of Euclidean space to understand the concept of a manifold, and my changes to the lede were repeatedly reverted. Which definition should the lede be based on? Tkuvho ( talk) 11:37, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
I do not like the definition through graphs of functions, because it is less intuitive (at least for me) and it uses implicitly the implicit function theorem, which is far of being trivial (it is needed to show that a circle, defined as usual by its implicit equation, is a manifold). On the other hand, I do not like either the use of "scale" in the first sentence of the graph, because it appears in neither formal definition. Thus, I propose for the first sentence: "In mathematics (specifically in geometry and topology), a manifold is a mathematical object that, near each point of it, looks like Euclidean space". This has the advantage to be very close to the definition by charts (except that nothing is said on the transition maps, which are needed only for technical reasons). In fact the definition by charts and atlas is simply a formalization of this informal definition. D.Lazard ( talk) 16:12, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't really think the lead is perfect at present. In fact, it seems to be worse than the version from three years ago. I'd like to discuss possibly bringing back this earlier revision of the lead. In any event, I don't think it is a good idea to emphasize Poincare's original definition of manifold. Not many sources do this, and at least the motivational examples section of the article would need to be rewritten from this point of view. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 16:37, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
May I point out that this whole discussion should be taking place at talk:manifold, not here. T R 12:28, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
The List of scientific constants named after people may not be notable, according to a recent tag put at the top of the article. Apparently what is needed is a literature citation showing that the topic of scientific concepts named after people has received attention from the authors of refereed publications. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:49, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
I've cited a scholarly source and deleted the "notability" tag. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:08, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
After barely glancing at the new article titled Probabilistic-Complexity Theory, I'm already getting suspicious of it. Wikipedia-newbieisms are not a reason for suspicion of anything but Wikipedia-newbieism, but what is the state of mind of someone who writes a paragraph that starts like this?:
Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:22, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
In the context in which I read the sentence, "As of now, research is still being done on this theory" seemed to mean that when research is no longer being done, it's perfect. As if the writer were unaware of the fact that fields in which research is being done are considered to be of greater interest than those in which it's not. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:03, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Can anyone confirm Polynomiography is a valid, notable topic? The question arises after discussions at Talk:Fractal art#Dr. Bahman Kalantari about claims that Kalantari is the inventor of fractals not Benoît Mandelbrot. Input by mathematically minded individuals on the topic would be appreciated. - Shiftchange ( talk) 03:12, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
See here. I have enough understanding to start this article, and did so for reasons in the link, but still no expert (yet) so if anyone who can add extend its scope - please do. You have my many thanks. =)
F =
q(E+v×B)
⇄ ∑ici
15:35, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
These templates are currently in the database as unused: for ⟨ see p.6 no 5579 and for ⟩ see p.9 no 8935. Recently after reworking them (and wasting a silly amount of time messing around with aligning things, which shouldn't have happened), I added them to ⟨|⟩.
Aesthetically they look ok (sort of), but the concern is they may cause spacing irritations, due to the glyphs in the template (but these are the closest ones matching angular brackets).
What do others think? Any objections to usage? WikiProject Physics has been notified. F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑ici 12:27, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Parity of zero explains why zero is even in an easy-to-read format that I just don't see in other articles, namely Riemann hypothesis. 68.173.113.106 ( talk) 21:08, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
The featured article has become subject to an (almost) edit war and imho some at partially questionable edits. Hence some 3rd opinions and watchful eyes are needed and appreciated.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 22:05, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
While we are at it, Diophantine approximation may also need a watchful eye. Achim has added a lot of interesting content, but it could do with some copy editing.— Emil J. 12:59, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
What do we think of http://www.jdabbs.com/brubeck/? The author is currently asking for feedback here: http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/v3y40/introducing_brubeck_an_open_searchable_database/
As a dedicated database, it supports capabilities that a general-purpose wiki like Wikipedia doesn't, including a kind of automated theorem proving. I'm thinking that our articles should link to matching Brubeck entries in the External links section. For example, Knaster–Kuratowski fan should link to http://www.jdabbs.com/brubeck/spaces/cantors-teepee/. But before I create a template in Category:Mathematics source templates and start adding it to articles, I wanted to ask: does anyone object? Melchoir ( talk) 03:25, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
I have come across {{ Infobox conic section}}, and thought perhaps you folks might like it. The infobox is currently not used on any articles. If you don't want it, it can probably be deleted. — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:53, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
I noticed there are very few references to literature in mathematics articles. Is this because mathematics can be easily checked for correctness without consulting literature? When should I consider adding references when adding new content? Lennartack ( talk) 15:23, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
I looked at the article Fermat's little theorem and saw an example of a pet peeve of mine: In the "generalizations" section is the formula
A lot of people who know what is intended by "divisible" have never been exposed to logical or set theory notation, much less have any idea what is supposed to mean. It is, IMO, much better to say "for any integer a ...." or even "for any integer a (positive, negative, or zero) ..."
Virginia-American ( talk) 12:33, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
If you have access to the book Prime Curios!: The Dictionary of Prime Number Trivia based on the prime curios website could you check it actually includes the coincidences mentioned in Talk:Mathematical coincidence#Prime curios please in the diff putting in 999779999159200499899 and some business about changing from bases 2 and 3 to base 10. Thanks. Dmcq ( talk) 16:15, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Some doubt has been cast over the validity of the redirect Zinbiel algebra. Views from experts would be welcome. South Jutland County ( talk) 21:30, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I suspect that I will need help in a project I am about to undertake. Several articles use the term "evenly divisible" to mean "divisible" which is okay in a non-technical article but not okay in mathematics (it would be like calling 1 a prime number for instance). What bothers me isn't that editors would use this word but that they react with hostility when I attempt to change it - some people feel like they "own the article".
The first resistance I met was in the Y2K article: [4]. One of them suggested that I use "exactly divisible" which is not preferred but I am prepared to compromise this way. I also got reverted on Fermat's Little Theorem [5]. This article relates to number theory so I will not compromise here. Since I am talking to other mathematicians (I hope), maybe some of you could weigh in on the edit wars I post here. Connor Behan ( talk) 03:47, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
IMHO, a good way to avoid any ambiguity could be to replace "be divisible by" by "be a multiple of". Personally, I find that "year multiple of 100" sounds better than "year divisible by 100", together with avoiding any ambiguity. D.Lazard ( talk) 09:30, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
"Multiple of" has the same problem as "divisible"; a non-mathematician might think it could be a non-integer multiple. This could be a particular problem in calendar-related articles, because there are a lot of cranks running around in that subject area who are pushing some version of calendar reform, or pushing some calendar on religious grounds. Such cranks like to seize on ambiguities, both by making arguments within Wikipedia, and basing arguments in other fora on Wikipedia articles. Jc3s5h ( talk) 12:08, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I think D. Lazard's suggestion to use (integer) multiple is good. Another possiblity is a footnote that says *here, and generally in number theory, "divisible" means "divisible without a remainder".
I don't have a source in front of me, but IIRC Richard Feynmann said (paraphrasing) "of course, 5 is divisible by 2." If someone is unfamilar with number theory and its conventions, restricting numbers to be integers may take a bit of getting used to.
In the original post, Connor Behan said
... Several articles use the term "evenly divisible" to mean "divisible" which is okay in a non-technical article but not okay in mathematics (it would be like calling 1 a prime number for instance).
I disagree. Calling 1 prime is unambiguously wrong (even though Gauss did so sometimes). Saying "exactly" or "evenly divisible", or "divisible without a remainder", or "an (integer) multiple" of is at worst a bit wordy, and may be clearer to Wikipedia's intended audience. Saying "exactly divisible" the first time or two in an article, and then quietly dropping the abverb, seems clearest to me.
Virginia-American ( talk) 12:12, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't think "exactly divisible" is an improvement over "evenly divisible". A person who hasn't been trained to think that "divisible" applies the quotient of two integers is an integer may think "exactly divisible" means the result is a rational number as opposed to an irrational number.
Every year is (exactly, evenly) divisible by four into four quarters, but year 2001 is not divisible by four.
Input from editors who describe themselves as able to contribute to Wikipedia with an intermediate level of proficiency in English, like D.Lazard, is quite helpful. I hope there will be comments from editors who are native speakers of a few different varieties of English, and who attended elementary schools during different decades. Most of us learned such basic words in elementary schools, but those schools have a nasty habit of introducing new terminology to new generations. (I never heard of cursive writing while I was in school, even though I learned to do it. Now the converse is becoming true; they're taught the word "cursive" but not how to do it.)
As for the example "Every year is (exactly, evenly) divisible by four into four quarters, but year 2001 is not divisible by four", neither Julian nor Gregorian calendar years, whether common or leap, can be divided into four quarters each of which contains the same number of whole days. So I don't understand the purpose of the example. Jc3s5h ( talk) 18:46, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I've started to organize the List of permutation topics into sections.
So far,
Michael Hardy ( talk) 21:55, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Here's how the table of contents looks so far:
126 items are currently in the list, by my quick count. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:07, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
I remember hearing that somewhere in the number that a whole bunch of 8s show up either together or in a pattern. If this is not a myth would it be worth adding to the Chronology of computation of π page?-- Canoe1967 ( talk) 19:14, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
Some more eyes on the current goings-on at Bell's theorem would be appreciated. An editor there is insistent on rewriting the nutshell version of the theorem in the lead to one that is, in my mind, much less clear than what used to be there. An attempt has been made to engage the editor on the discussion page, but it has failed to attract sufficient interest. The editor in question is (apparently) convinced that, since there are two editors on the discussion page defending the old (consensus) revision, and one editor (himself) defending the new edit, that gives him the mandate to implement his edit. I've reverted him several times already, with edit summaries indicating WP:CONSENSUS and WP:BRD, as well as menitioning these on the discussion page. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 21:26, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
There is a discussion for the category: Abstraction that could do with your input. Brad7777 ( talk) 16:10, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Our Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process article currently begins like this:
Does "friction" make sense? The Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process is supposed to tend to return to its mean. Friction doesn't do that; it only retards motion. Michael Hardy ( talk) 21:14, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
People may think of " tensor calculus" as the content of tensors in curvilinear coordinates, but this is a redirect to the main article on tensors. I would prefer to redirect to tensors in curvilinear coordinates, but including both in a disambiguation page would also be ok (maybe better?). Opinions? F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑ici 10:19, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
I've made the List of partition topics into a somewhat more organized article than it was. More work could be done. Possibly the section on set partitions could be further subdivided. Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:52, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
The article on Bell's theorem has been hijacked by crackpot Joy Christian and his cronies. Any attempt to remove references to Christian's discredited work (not published in any peer-reviewed journa, and shown o be fundamentally flawed by a long list of authorities in the fieldl) is immediately "undone" by Christian himself or his supporter Fred Diether. Conflict of Interest!
But if nobody cares about this article better to leave it to the crackpots. Richard Gill ( talk) 18:31, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Richard Gill called me “crackpot Joy Christian.” I wonder what his criterion of crackpot is. I let the readers judge for themselves. Here are my credentials: Dr. Joy Christian obtained his Ph.D. from Boston University in Foundations of Quantum Theory in 1991 under the supervision of the renowned philosopher and physicist Professor Abner Shimony (the “S” in Bell-CHSH-inequality). He then received a Research Fellowship from the Wolfson College of the University of Oxford, where he has remained affiliated both with the college and a number of departments of the university. He is an invited member of the prestigious Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi), and has been a Long Term Visitor of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada. He is well known for his contributions to the foundations of quantum and gravitational physics, including quantization of Newton-Cartan theory of gravity, generalization of Special Theory of Relativity to incorporate the objective passage of time, and elimination of non-locality from the foundations of quantum physics. A partial list of his publications can be found here: http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/au:+Christian_Joy/0/1/0/all/0/1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.148.6.36 ( talk) 22:03, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
As for the paper in question, "Disproof of Bell's Theorem", http://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.1879v1.pdf , is published in my peer-reviewed book, http://www.brownwalker.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1599425645, and is widely discussed on the Internet. My work has also been cited in several *published* articles, at least two of them in the Physical Review (not to mention its citations in some lesser known journals). I have given invited talks about my work on several occasions during the past five years. The book itself is only just published, and citations to it will undoubtedly follow in due course. On the other hand ALL of Richard Gill’s misguided, erroneous, and unpublished arguments against my work have been comprehensively debunked, many times over, not only by me but also by several other knowledgeable people on the FQXi blogs. I myself have given a systematic refutation of his misguided arguments in the following two papers: http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.2529 and http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.5876 -- Joy Christian — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.148.6.36 ( talk) 22:13, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
@Arthur Rubin: My book IS peer-reviewed. My work IS cited and discussed in Physical Review and other journals, and NOT as negatively as you are trying to suggest. You have no proof of what you are claiming. You are clearly biased.
On a different note, I urge the Wikipedia community to remove Richard Gill’s slanderous name claiming from his post above. As you can judge from my qualifications I listed above, his name calling has no justification whatsoever. -- Joy Christian — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.148.6.36 ( talk • contribs)
@Arthur Rubin: My book *IS* peer-reviewed. There are also people who call me a genius; so perhaps you should refer me as a “so-called genius.” -- Joy Christian — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.148.6.36 ( talk) 08:38, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Boris, I respectfully disagree (if I understand you correctly). Bell claimed that no functions of the form A(a, L) = +/-1 and B(b, L) = +/-1 can reproduce correlations of the form E(a, b) = -a.b. “This is the theorem” (his exact words). What Bell did not realize is that this claim is true if and only if the co-domain of the functions A(a, L) and B(b, L) is NOT a unit parallelized 3-sphere, S^3. My one-page paper shows an explicit construction of the fact that when the co-domain of A(a, L) and B(b, L) is taken to be S^3, the correlations are inevitably E(a, b) = -a.b. I urge you to have a look at this longer paper to see my compete argument: http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.0775 . Thanks. -- Joy Christian — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.148.6.36 ( talk) 12:10, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Whatever the outcome of this discussion, it is clear that we should not cite Joy Christian's self-published work ( WP:SELFPUB). There has been a long tradition of criticism of Bell's theorem from the fringes of physics. If mention of this is to be included in the article, it should be sourced to a reliable secondary source documenting such criticism and the replies of the scientific mainstream ( WP:NPOV, WP:PSTS). Otherwise, including criticisms sourced to the primary literature is considered to be original research, and is forbidden by Wikipedia policy. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 13:51, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Comments on Talk:Bell's_theorem#Seeking_consensus_to_exclude_the_disproof_of_Bell.27s_theorem will be appreciated. Thanks. History2007 ( talk) 00:42, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
I urge the Wikipedia community to remove Richard Gill’s slanderous name claiming from his post above. As you can judge from my qualifications I listed above, his name calling has no justification whatsoever. -- Joy Christian — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.148.6.36 ( talk) 06:13, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't recall http://betterexplained.com/archives/ being discussed in this space so I would like to raise the issue of whether this is a reliable source. Also, would it be appropriate to cite it in a footnote in the lede of an article. Tkuvho ( talk) 07:29, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this is a known issue, but there seem to be some inconsistencies in the way the Wikimedia parser processes TeX and MathJax. Consider <math>a<b</math>:
versus <math>a\lt b</math>
If MathJax is enabled, the first equation does not display correctly but the second one does. If "Render as PNG" is enabled the first equation displays correctly, and the second generates a parse error "Failed to parse (unknown function\lt)". This seems to be quite bad, since half of users will see one or the other of the two errors! Sławomir Biały ( talk) 14:19, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
In light of the fact that MathJax is "still experimental", I don't think the preferences page should also say that it is "recommended for most browsers". These two directives seem to be incongruous. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 16:39, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shouryya Ray.
Is this person notable?
Are the news media's claims about him true or merely sensationalist exaggerations that help sell newspapers?
Opine at the page linked to above. Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:45, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
I was surprised that we had no article on Lester Dubins. I've just created one. It needs further work, both within the article itself and in other articles that ought to link to it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:31, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
The pi article has been nominated for Featured Article status. If successful, this will be the ninth Top-priority FA article for the Mathematics project. Editors familiar with the FA criteria are welcome to provide input at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Pi/archive1. -- Noleander ( talk) 12:33, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Hello everyone! I would appreciate if a few people could lend their expertise over at the nomination page, even if it is just to confirm that one little section is not a piece of nonsense. I am just concerned about the little things, the off emphasis here, the obscure odd fact inserted there, that have a way of getting into even (or especially?) meticulously-researched articles, and that bespeak inexpertness. For example, detailed discussions of π's relationship to the Mandelbrot set fractal and the sinuosity of a meandering river (which are above my head) appear in the middle of other content, like a discussion of Euler's identity (the importance of which even I can understand) or the Fourier transform (which I have at least heard of). It just strikes me as a little fishy, though for all I know the article is perfectly well balanced. Which is why I'm asking for some help. Thanks! Leonxlin ( talk) 19:33, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
Pi has passed its nomination! Leonxlin ( talk) 01:27, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
Hello
Did I do something wrong/incomplete? I use Firefox 12.0 (enabled Java & Javascript) on Linux as my browser but sometimes/often mathematical formulae are not or are wrongly displayed. E. g. in the page [2] in the table-style of all these matrices there appears a literal "amp;" for the column separator, or in section "Classification", subsection "Elliptic transforms" the formula "0 \le \mbox{tr}^2\mathfrak{H} < 4.\," is not interpreted at all - it is displayed rawly! (This is the first formula in this article , several follow, but the formulae before seem to be displayed correctly). Thanks in advance for any useful help. Achim1999 ( talk) 14:22, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
I added Poincare's original definition of a differentiable manifold at Manifold#Poincar.C3.A9.27s_original_definition. Poincare defined a manifold as a subset of euclidean space which is locally a graph (see details there). This definition is arguably more accessible to a general reader than the more abstract definition involving atlases, charts, and transition functions. The lede could profit from focusing on the subset-of-R^n definition instead of the abstract definition. However, another editor feels that the reader does not need the crutch of Euclidean space to understand the concept of a manifold, and my changes to the lede were repeatedly reverted. Which definition should the lede be based on? Tkuvho ( talk) 11:37, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
I do not like the definition through graphs of functions, because it is less intuitive (at least for me) and it uses implicitly the implicit function theorem, which is far of being trivial (it is needed to show that a circle, defined as usual by its implicit equation, is a manifold). On the other hand, I do not like either the use of "scale" in the first sentence of the graph, because it appears in neither formal definition. Thus, I propose for the first sentence: "In mathematics (specifically in geometry and topology), a manifold is a mathematical object that, near each point of it, looks like Euclidean space". This has the advantage to be very close to the definition by charts (except that nothing is said on the transition maps, which are needed only for technical reasons). In fact the definition by charts and atlas is simply a formalization of this informal definition. D.Lazard ( talk) 16:12, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't really think the lead is perfect at present. In fact, it seems to be worse than the version from three years ago. I'd like to discuss possibly bringing back this earlier revision of the lead. In any event, I don't think it is a good idea to emphasize Poincare's original definition of manifold. Not many sources do this, and at least the motivational examples section of the article would need to be rewritten from this point of view. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 16:37, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
May I point out that this whole discussion should be taking place at talk:manifold, not here. T R 12:28, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
The List of scientific constants named after people may not be notable, according to a recent tag put at the top of the article. Apparently what is needed is a literature citation showing that the topic of scientific concepts named after people has received attention from the authors of refereed publications. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:49, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
I've cited a scholarly source and deleted the "notability" tag. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:08, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
After barely glancing at the new article titled Probabilistic-Complexity Theory, I'm already getting suspicious of it. Wikipedia-newbieisms are not a reason for suspicion of anything but Wikipedia-newbieism, but what is the state of mind of someone who writes a paragraph that starts like this?:
Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:22, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
In the context in which I read the sentence, "As of now, research is still being done on this theory" seemed to mean that when research is no longer being done, it's perfect. As if the writer were unaware of the fact that fields in which research is being done are considered to be of greater interest than those in which it's not. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:03, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Can anyone confirm Polynomiography is a valid, notable topic? The question arises after discussions at Talk:Fractal art#Dr. Bahman Kalantari about claims that Kalantari is the inventor of fractals not Benoît Mandelbrot. Input by mathematically minded individuals on the topic would be appreciated. - Shiftchange ( talk) 03:12, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
See here. I have enough understanding to start this article, and did so for reasons in the link, but still no expert (yet) so if anyone who can add extend its scope - please do. You have my many thanks. =)
F =
q(E+v×B)
⇄ ∑ici
15:35, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
These templates are currently in the database as unused: for ⟨ see p.6 no 5579 and for ⟩ see p.9 no 8935. Recently after reworking them (and wasting a silly amount of time messing around with aligning things, which shouldn't have happened), I added them to ⟨|⟩.
Aesthetically they look ok (sort of), but the concern is they may cause spacing irritations, due to the glyphs in the template (but these are the closest ones matching angular brackets).
What do others think? Any objections to usage? WikiProject Physics has been notified. F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑ici 12:27, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Parity of zero explains why zero is even in an easy-to-read format that I just don't see in other articles, namely Riemann hypothesis. 68.173.113.106 ( talk) 21:08, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
The featured article has become subject to an (almost) edit war and imho some at partially questionable edits. Hence some 3rd opinions and watchful eyes are needed and appreciated.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 22:05, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
While we are at it, Diophantine approximation may also need a watchful eye. Achim has added a lot of interesting content, but it could do with some copy editing.— Emil J. 12:59, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
What do we think of http://www.jdabbs.com/brubeck/? The author is currently asking for feedback here: http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/v3y40/introducing_brubeck_an_open_searchable_database/
As a dedicated database, it supports capabilities that a general-purpose wiki like Wikipedia doesn't, including a kind of automated theorem proving. I'm thinking that our articles should link to matching Brubeck entries in the External links section. For example, Knaster–Kuratowski fan should link to http://www.jdabbs.com/brubeck/spaces/cantors-teepee/. But before I create a template in Category:Mathematics source templates and start adding it to articles, I wanted to ask: does anyone object? Melchoir ( talk) 03:25, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
I have come across {{ Infobox conic section}}, and thought perhaps you folks might like it. The infobox is currently not used on any articles. If you don't want it, it can probably be deleted. — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:53, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
I noticed there are very few references to literature in mathematics articles. Is this because mathematics can be easily checked for correctness without consulting literature? When should I consider adding references when adding new content? Lennartack ( talk) 15:23, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
I looked at the article Fermat's little theorem and saw an example of a pet peeve of mine: In the "generalizations" section is the formula
A lot of people who know what is intended by "divisible" have never been exposed to logical or set theory notation, much less have any idea what is supposed to mean. It is, IMO, much better to say "for any integer a ...." or even "for any integer a (positive, negative, or zero) ..."
Virginia-American ( talk) 12:33, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
If you have access to the book Prime Curios!: The Dictionary of Prime Number Trivia based on the prime curios website could you check it actually includes the coincidences mentioned in Talk:Mathematical coincidence#Prime curios please in the diff putting in 999779999159200499899 and some business about changing from bases 2 and 3 to base 10. Thanks. Dmcq ( talk) 16:15, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Some doubt has been cast over the validity of the redirect Zinbiel algebra. Views from experts would be welcome. South Jutland County ( talk) 21:30, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I suspect that I will need help in a project I am about to undertake. Several articles use the term "evenly divisible" to mean "divisible" which is okay in a non-technical article but not okay in mathematics (it would be like calling 1 a prime number for instance). What bothers me isn't that editors would use this word but that they react with hostility when I attempt to change it - some people feel like they "own the article".
The first resistance I met was in the Y2K article: [4]. One of them suggested that I use "exactly divisible" which is not preferred but I am prepared to compromise this way. I also got reverted on Fermat's Little Theorem [5]. This article relates to number theory so I will not compromise here. Since I am talking to other mathematicians (I hope), maybe some of you could weigh in on the edit wars I post here. Connor Behan ( talk) 03:47, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
IMHO, a good way to avoid any ambiguity could be to replace "be divisible by" by "be a multiple of". Personally, I find that "year multiple of 100" sounds better than "year divisible by 100", together with avoiding any ambiguity. D.Lazard ( talk) 09:30, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
"Multiple of" has the same problem as "divisible"; a non-mathematician might think it could be a non-integer multiple. This could be a particular problem in calendar-related articles, because there are a lot of cranks running around in that subject area who are pushing some version of calendar reform, or pushing some calendar on religious grounds. Such cranks like to seize on ambiguities, both by making arguments within Wikipedia, and basing arguments in other fora on Wikipedia articles. Jc3s5h ( talk) 12:08, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I think D. Lazard's suggestion to use (integer) multiple is good. Another possiblity is a footnote that says *here, and generally in number theory, "divisible" means "divisible without a remainder".
I don't have a source in front of me, but IIRC Richard Feynmann said (paraphrasing) "of course, 5 is divisible by 2." If someone is unfamilar with number theory and its conventions, restricting numbers to be integers may take a bit of getting used to.
In the original post, Connor Behan said
... Several articles use the term "evenly divisible" to mean "divisible" which is okay in a non-technical article but not okay in mathematics (it would be like calling 1 a prime number for instance).
I disagree. Calling 1 prime is unambiguously wrong (even though Gauss did so sometimes). Saying "exactly" or "evenly divisible", or "divisible without a remainder", or "an (integer) multiple" of is at worst a bit wordy, and may be clearer to Wikipedia's intended audience. Saying "exactly divisible" the first time or two in an article, and then quietly dropping the abverb, seems clearest to me.
Virginia-American ( talk) 12:12, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't think "exactly divisible" is an improvement over "evenly divisible". A person who hasn't been trained to think that "divisible" applies the quotient of two integers is an integer may think "exactly divisible" means the result is a rational number as opposed to an irrational number.
Every year is (exactly, evenly) divisible by four into four quarters, but year 2001 is not divisible by four.
Input from editors who describe themselves as able to contribute to Wikipedia with an intermediate level of proficiency in English, like D.Lazard, is quite helpful. I hope there will be comments from editors who are native speakers of a few different varieties of English, and who attended elementary schools during different decades. Most of us learned such basic words in elementary schools, but those schools have a nasty habit of introducing new terminology to new generations. (I never heard of cursive writing while I was in school, even though I learned to do it. Now the converse is becoming true; they're taught the word "cursive" but not how to do it.)
As for the example "Every year is (exactly, evenly) divisible by four into four quarters, but year 2001 is not divisible by four", neither Julian nor Gregorian calendar years, whether common or leap, can be divided into four quarters each of which contains the same number of whole days. So I don't understand the purpose of the example. Jc3s5h ( talk) 18:46, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I've started to organize the List of permutation topics into sections.
So far,
Michael Hardy ( talk) 21:55, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Here's how the table of contents looks so far:
126 items are currently in the list, by my quick count. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:07, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
I remember hearing that somewhere in the number that a whole bunch of 8s show up either together or in a pattern. If this is not a myth would it be worth adding to the Chronology of computation of π page?-- Canoe1967 ( talk) 19:14, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
Some more eyes on the current goings-on at Bell's theorem would be appreciated. An editor there is insistent on rewriting the nutshell version of the theorem in the lead to one that is, in my mind, much less clear than what used to be there. An attempt has been made to engage the editor on the discussion page, but it has failed to attract sufficient interest. The editor in question is (apparently) convinced that, since there are two editors on the discussion page defending the old (consensus) revision, and one editor (himself) defending the new edit, that gives him the mandate to implement his edit. I've reverted him several times already, with edit summaries indicating WP:CONSENSUS and WP:BRD, as well as menitioning these on the discussion page. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 21:26, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
There is a discussion for the category: Abstraction that could do with your input. Brad7777 ( talk) 16:10, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Our Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process article currently begins like this:
Does "friction" make sense? The Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process is supposed to tend to return to its mean. Friction doesn't do that; it only retards motion. Michael Hardy ( talk) 21:14, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
People may think of " tensor calculus" as the content of tensors in curvilinear coordinates, but this is a redirect to the main article on tensors. I would prefer to redirect to tensors in curvilinear coordinates, but including both in a disambiguation page would also be ok (maybe better?). Opinions? F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑ici 10:19, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
I've made the List of partition topics into a somewhat more organized article than it was. More work could be done. Possibly the section on set partitions could be further subdivided. Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:52, 29 June 2012 (UTC)