Is it really that necessary to put those "This article assumes knowledge of yada yada yada and blah" notices at the top of pages? If the aim is to help educate the potential reader, it's rather inefficient, unhelpful and redundant in my opinion. Education material should go to Wikibooks. Reference material should stay here. Thanks Dysprosia 09:05, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Top-down organization is a good idea... perhaps we can instead say "This article is part of the subtopic series/topic/whatever of topic", instead of the "assumes knowledge of"? Dysprosia 22:37, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I would like to reorganize some ring-theory-related pages a little bit, specifically these pages:
I would like to redo them as follows:
A week or so back User:Fuelbottle created the MediaWiki pages Template:quantity, Template:change, Template:space and Template:structure, containing side-tables of links, and used the msg: function to display the relevant side-table on each of the pages listed underneath each of these categories on the main mathematics page. More recently User:TakuyaMurata has removed the side-tables from all of the articles in the quantity and space categories. Net result is that some articles have side-tables, but others do not. Can we discuss, and maybe reach a consensus, on whether these side-tables should be (a) removed across the board; or (b) re-instated; or (c) maybe retained in some modified form ? Gandalf61 13:03, Mar 28, 2004 (UTC)
Really (frankly) WikiProject Mathematics should have addressed navigation needs and issues quite some time ago. It seems that picky discussions always are going to take priority over crude needs for the general reader to find things. Well, such is wiki life: much easier to complain that sheaf theory is hard to understand, than to do something for the calculus student. More fun to lay down the law about the perfect article, too.
From where we are, though. There is a subtopic structure now fairly much in place. Footers are definitely better. They would be worth adding systematically, in areas where (i) the existing article coverage is already fairly complete, and (ii) there are likely to be readers needing hints on where to go, rather than just a typical List of X topics. So, which areas are those?
Charles Matthews 07:51, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I have now changed Template:quantity, Template:change, Template:space and Template:structure into footers. They look better now, and I think they are a good way to navigate the main topics. The last few days someone have created Template:Linear_algebra and Template:Calculus, I think these work ok for navigating subtopics, but if they were footers they could include more topics. Fuelbottle 20:25, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
My 2 cents (I know no one asked...):
I don't just think the sidebars (or footers) are possible to work, I think they're necessary in some form. I think the people who are saying, "well, all these people have to do is go to the main topic page, read it, and find a bunch of list pages" haven't really thought the issue through completely. Pretend for a moment that you are learning calculus or linear algebra for the first time (I know...for many of us, this was a long time ago, but pretend). You have essentially no context in which to place articles, aside from the discussion given at the main page. But the most important point is something that I think Charles already pointed out, and that is that math is a cumulative subject with highly complex logical dependencies among topics. One cannot possibly understand the article on Fourier analysis without first knowing what a vector space or Lebesgue integration is. It's true that links are very helpful within an article (click the link if you don't know the term), but this can be very confusing after a while to the reader. For one thing, the reader has no idea the distance between his or her own knowledge and the knowledge needed to read the article; links can't provide this. For another, even with links, the reader may end up kind of blindly wandering around, not knowing the best order of topics that has proven pedagogically sound in the past. Yes, it's true, wikipedia is not a textbook, but the way I see it, in the "ideal wikipedia", it should be theoretically possible for a reader to understand any article by reading simple articles leading up to more complex, in a logically depending fashion. Providing sidebars/footers or organisation of this type isn't writing a textbook at all -- it's just making a tool available so that the existing information is more usable for everyone. After all, I'm thinking there could be sidebars/footers for category theory, homological algebra, or relatively obscure fields, in time. The longer one stays in math, the more one realises how little one knows, and trying to learn a new field without some kind of guidance to the topics and their logical interdependence is difficult for pros, so it certainly won't be easy for most calc students, say.
By the way, it doesn't seem to me there's any reason that an article can't be in more than one series -- e.g. manifolds was mentioned, why can't this be in differential geometry, differential topology, and so on? This would make it difficult to have sidebars, though, and even with footers it could get cluttered if it's used too often.
Revolver 09:26, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Reminds me of a quote in Lang's algebra book, I think -- "Unfortunately, it's impossible to present a body of mathematical topics while maintaining a total order", or something equivalent. Really, the whole logical dependence thing seems to me to be something like a directed graph...just throwing out ideas, maybe a single footer, showing (a) the major topics (rarely more than 3 or 4) that are good idea to be familiar with to understand this, (b) similar articles on the same level/topic, and (c) major topics that lead from this. In the hypothetical manifold case, it would seem to me both diff geom and diff top could be part of (c), at least each of these in the modern formulation. If readers want to go "up" or "down" a level, fine, but they only need a handful of places to go. Up close, they may want to be pointed to trees, but at a distance, directions to forest make sense. Revolver 10:02, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the best place to raise this, but our coverage of dynamical systems and chaos theory is pretty inadequate compared to the treatment of subjects like algebra and graph theory. Even the main article at "Chaos theory" suffers from some vagueness - it defines a chaotic orbit, but doesn't really define the terms it uses (dense orbit, sensitive dependence, etc). There are a lot of holes even in relatively basic topics ( Poincaré map, box-counting dimension, and James A. Yorke, for example) and there are some other key articles ( bifurcation diagram) that have very brief descriptions.
I've filled in a couple holes (the dynamics definition of orbit, for example) and I'll try to fill in some others, but there's a lot of work that needs doing and some of it will definitely require more background than I have.
Isomorphic 00:20, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)
There must be bits of nonlinear dynamics that are not about chaos, though. What about all that 'qualitative theory of differential equations'? Well, big in the 1950s, I guess. The usual thing would be, yes, nonlinear dynamics as top-level (most inclusive) article, section in that talking about chaos theory to set it in its context (cf. singularity theory → catastrophe theory for the big-in-the-1960s analogue); and then 'please see main article chaos theory' from there.
The point about gaps is of course a good one. Sign of the times when WP starts looking less like a Cantor-set encyclopedia, mostly gaps. I don't believe we have the basic Frobenius theorem on matrix powers, which is linear dynamics, yet.
Charles Matthews 14:50, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Kevin Baas 17:20, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
In putting up the bios for Lefschetz and Pontryagin, I noticed they both moved into that area at about the same time, after the work in topology for which they are also known. I guess at the time the theory started out asking for periodic orbits, which is like a conventional topological question, in that you might be able to prove existence theorems. Then, I guess, you get the Poincaré return map near to a periodic orbit, as a cross-section near a fixed point; and it is the mapping that induces that is typically the source for the discrete-time iterations that also are studied. Also J. E. Littlewood worked on the Van der Pol equation at that time. Smale went into Anosov flows and suchlike shortly after his topological work on the Poincaré conjecture. That's about global structure of flow on manifolds, and builds on Morse theory. When computing became more of commodity, things (it seemed) changed in the direction of being able to look much more closely at given examples; rather than having to be guided by mathematical analysis; there were more things that came up that were clearly true, but not provable. I never went into this field much; so post-1970 I have just heard the jargon that everyone else has. Charles Matthews 15:41, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I have posted a discussion document at User:Charles Matthews/WikiProjectMathematics thoughts; and invite people to comment (maybe there).
Charles Matthews 15:21, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Hi, Charles. You seem to be the cult leader for the mathematicians (!) around the Wikiland. So I will post my questions here, and hopefully I can get a feel on the consensus, if any.
1. Wikipedia's recommended style goes against the mainstream tradition in the mathematics community. Which one should we use?
versus
2. Wikipedia requests references from authors. And I did try to stick with their guidelines. But somewhere along the line I must ask myself: why bother with all the details if they are not going to help the target audience, which are mostly internet surfers who have no interest in digging up the real sources? Why shouldn't we just give them a general reference (some textbook) and be done with it? I fully understand that no one ever forced me or anyone to provide any references. But I still think it would nice if we can agree on a guideline here and get it out of the way.
What are your thoughts?
[bow] Peter Kwok 02:44, 2004 May 27 (UTC)
Ummm ... well, this is just on my own behalf. The use of references to original papers should be fairly limited; it helps to cite the paper with the first proof of a theorem, not least because it makes clear that 'proved in 1935' is saying something about the publication date, rather than when a proof was first found. I don't think we have a standardised citation style. As mav said, other references are probably there to help with background reading — rather than try to give a full bibliography of a subject. There is some general pressure on WP to be ever more academic and scholarly; but footnoting and supporting everything with sources goes against the normal, good survey style. Charles Matthews 08:20, 27 May 2004 (UTC)
Okay, I think that settles the issue of using general references-- at least for basic results that should be included in most textbooks.
As for the style issue, I don't see any consensus yet. Not that it is an urgent issue now. But the longer it is put off, the harder to convert the references later-- especially when the servers are soo-oo sloo-ooo-oow. For now, I will go with Wikipedia's recommended style, but I will keep an open mind in case things change in the future. Thank you all.
Peter Kwok 18:24, 2004 May 27 (UTC)
I was updating some information for Chern and encountered a typical problem in writing Chinese suranames. In most regions that use traditional Chinesee people put the last name last, just like the western names. However, in most regions that use simplified Chinese (except Singapore) people put the last name first. When the two styles are mixed, like Dan Sun and Zheng Sining in the Chern article, it becomes confusing. (In this case, Sun and Zheng are surnames. But sometimes Dan Sun is written Sun Dan; and Zheng Sining, Sining Zeng!)
This has been a well-known problem for identifying Chinese on passports. So what people sometimes do is to capitalize or put a red underline under the surname in passports. I propose that we do the same here and
You can see whether capitalization is useful in the Chern article.
Thanks,
Peter Kwok 20:20, 2004 May 28 (UTC)
P.S. I mistakenly added an entry for " Dan SUN". Later I created another entry for " Dan Sun". So the former should be deleted now.
Thanks, Derrick.
Peter Kwok 22:02, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
I think, speaking only about usage in mathematics, that it is standard to have surname last. (When it comes to weiqi, this would be wrong, in my view! But the point would be to use here the name commonly expected.) Charles Matthews 05:40, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I mean, yeah, it is a good style, but not the good style, right?
How about a little tolerence for people who sometimes want to put the "in" part at the end of the first sentence (or not using it at all)?
Peter Kwok 19:01, 2004 Jun 29 (UTC)
Yes, it becomes dull. There are a few other ways. But in general: the first sentence is important to define the area; the first paragraph should be able to stand on its own as a summary. Charles Matthews 19:06, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I concur with Charles that we should keep this policy. Although it is banal, it has substantial benefits, not the least of which are consistency and contextualization. Kevin Baas 22:49, 2004 Jun 29 (UTC)
I have no problem with providing a summary in the first paragraph.
But I also think that some kind of varieties can't be bad, especially when the first sentence already specifies the context.
Right now people just go around and "fix" the first sentences of almost all mathematical articles so that they all begin with the word "In".
This kind of practice only creates frustration and doesn't add value to the articles or to the readers.
Since there is no ownership in Wikipedia, I think it is more important for all of us to be more tolerant of other people's style and focus more on the content instead.
Peter Kwok 15:12, 2004 Jun 30 (UTC)
> Not every article has to start that way
Thank you. That's all that I am saying. No one is going to tell a story about Little Red Riding Hood before he gets to the point. And everybody (including myself) agrees that the first sentence should put everything in context. The only problem is: do we have to all write exactly the same way? For God's sake, this is supposed to be an encylopaedia, not a piece of application form. Yes, there will be random readers who have no prior knowledge of the subject and may not immediately recognize the context. But all they need to do is to read through the first— I am not asking for even the second, just the first— sentence. Is that too much to ask for?
Readers are only one side of the equation.
There are users (i.e. editors), too.
Wikipedia allows users to freely edit articles.
Everybody's work may be overwritten over time unless he wrote something that nobody ever reads.
We all know that before we contribute.
But isn't it exactly why it is more important to nourish mutual respect among users?
Right now I find it hard to work in an environment where style police who have nothing new to add just run around to make other people write like them.
(No, Charles, Kevin, and Revolver, I am not talking about you.
But I suspect that veterans like you guys are already aware of what's going on.)
What IF I do the same to those style police?
Wouldn't they be pissed off as much as I am?
Peter Kwok 15:43, 2004 Jul 1 (UTC)
So, for instance, a change in style that allows an argument to read more clearly or an example to be better understood is good "style change"; making a notational change that (the editor believes, at least) makes an equation read easier on the eyes or be more transparent, is good; reorganising sections so they follow a more natural order is good; changing tex or math expressions to conform to what's usually used is okay;, but...making cosmetic changes, rewriting a paragraph without making it much different or better, or constantly changing "generalisation/generalization", "neighbourhood/neighborhood" is prob not necc. Revolver 20:27, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I agree with your statement that mutual respect is important. I have always been polite and respectful to you, and moreover, when I noticed your existence I was glad to see another person contributing articles on mathematics, and that remains my evaluation of your work on Wikipedia.
You seem to think that I have targeted you some how. I have not. I do not edit articles without intending some identifiable improvement.
You wrote: "Right now I find it hard to work in an environment where style police who have nothing new to add just run around to make other people write like them."
Would you tell me who those people are? You seem to think I am one such person. I have contributed a far larger number of new articles on mathematics than you and most others, and a far greater amount of substantive mathematical content to article initiated by others.
I also do minor edits such as a small spelling or punctuation correction in a long article. I did several of those in the article you created on the LYM inequality. You stated on the discussion page that those edits contribute nothing. I disagree. But if you don't agree that they contribute anything, that is not a reason to infer that I was personally targeting you. After I created uses of trigonometry, jengod made some small changes for which I saw no need. It is possible that that person knows some reason of which I am unaware why the changes were improvements, and it is also possible that they are not. Even if I disagreed with those edits, I would still conclude only that another person disagrees, and not that I am being targeted or attacked.
As for moving "In mathematics..." to the beginning, there is a reason for that that I tried to explain to you earlier; I did it because I think the article is in several respects better that way, and I would be specific about that if you appeared to be interested.
You wrote: "I don't deny that some style changes are good, or even necessary, and I don't mind people overwriting articles with richer and better content. It is the ones that added no substance got me. I regard the "In mathematics" changes as cosmetic and think that we should give people more leeway on that issue. If you disagree, fine; but let's draw a line somewhere."
Do you regard "cosmetic" as meaning unnecessary or bad? Making an article esthetically better makes it easier to understand and to remember.
You wrote: "Now some people even begin to change journals' standard abbreviations to long names, which is not even recommended by Wikipedia!" ... because some readers may otherwise not understand the abbreviation. If you disagree with that, you could say so, rather than acting as if there is something personal about it.
You wrote: "I believe some of the later changes were made just to get me after I expressed my disagreement." On this point I have good news that will reassure you. You suggested that I may be among those doing this. But I have not done this. When I disagree with the way someone edits or with their opinions about how others should edit, I address the actual content of the disagreement, saying why I think what I think. I do not personally attack them.
You wrote, "Do those cosmetic changes really do the readers any good?". I would say that if they do no good then they are _not_ cosmetic. "Cosmetic" by definition means they make an esthetic improvement in the article, and therefore they do some good.
You wrote "If this place really believes in the "everything goes" philosophy, then do let things go. However, if this place believes in maintaining a house style, then maybe we need some kind of guidelines or governing body to give users some protection."
_Some_ guidelines are in the style manual: usually the title word or title phrase is highlighted at its first appearance, one eschew's superfluously capitalized letters in section headings, etc.
You wrote: "I could have even mass reverted articles." Did the things you object to happen in more than one article? You have mentioned only one to me. What were the others, if any? - Michael Hardy
I fear one of Charles Matthews' comments may be construed by some to mean I am one of the founders of Wikipedia. In fact, Wikipedia was founded early in 2001 by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales; the latter has put about $500,000 of his own money into the project. I first edited articles here in October of 2002, if I recall correctly. Axel Boldt was for some time the only person extensively editing mathematics articles here, and I surmise that he is the original creator of the list of mathematical topics. Michael Hardy 01:50, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I know it doesn't really matter, but I am always confused by how to write sentences with math in them and saying things like "where m is the mass, b is the buoyancy, and c is the charge") etc. Some people stick commas inside the tex markup and treat the whole thing as a continuous sentence:
If an equation, such as
is encountered, then c is the sum of a and b.
some people treat the equation like a graphic, with lots of extra words necessary to keep it in complete sentences:
Summing two numbers is represented by the following equation:
In this equation, a and b are the summands, and c is the sum.
Some people put variable descriptions in a bulleted list below the equation, etc. Can we have a little blurb about a nice method of formatting sentences? I just want some advice for a clean style for myself. - Omegatron 16:05, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)
Just as the untutored lay person knows who is being referred to when one mentions Shakespeare or Einstein by surname only, so mathematicians know who is being referred to when one mentions Abel by surname in the context of a math article. But a link to Abel is (of course) a link to the son of Adam and Eve who was killed by his brother in the book of Genesis. And how could anyone expect a link to Study to be a link to an article about the mathematician Eduard Study? Sometimes a math article, or substantial parts of one, are intended to be read by people who know little about mathematics, and in such cases linking to "Euler" does not inform the reader as well as if one links to Leonhard Euler. Consequently I think in most cases first and last names should be used. Michael Hardy 02:04, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The main reasons that it became standard to use only surnames for references in published text, have been for considerations of space, and the tediousness of typesetting. That is, they were publisher-centric. However, since, Wikipedia is (essentially) free from such constraints, we can afford to be more reader-centric. Thus, more use of full names is a good thing. The presence of a link lessens but does not eliminate the benefit to the reader of fuller names. Of course, judgment is required to know when more information is too much information. Paul August 15:48, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)
In recent days, I have been adding <math>...</math> to every inline math expression I have encountered, starting with articles in Category:Curves and category:Bundles (mathematics). At the time, I thought that the HTML wikitext markup for equations was provisional, and that by TeXifying expressions, I was improving the articles. I didn't know about the existence of the Wikiproject Mathematics page. I'd like to offer my apologies for breaking convention.
That said, I'm perfectly astonished that HTML wikitext markup for inline equations and variables is an official recommendation (not truly "official," but you know what I mean.) I think it's a bad idea, so allow me to flesh out my case here. My proposal is that we should use <math>...</math> markup for any and every expression related to math, including formulae, single-letter variable names, and all inline expressions. Here's why:
But it is true that mixing inline PNGs with ordinary article text can have a somewhat jarring effect; this is unavoidable, and I happen to not mind it at all (I have seen textbooks that have odd line spacing due to inline math expressions; they still sell well.) One possible compromise is to avoid forced PNG rendering unless absolutely necessary (that is, do not use "\!\," or other "artificial" spaces if you can possibly help it), so the user will see the maximum amount of inline HTML. They can still use their preferences to turn PNG rendering on, so we should expect that PNG versions of all of our expressions, equations, and variable names will exist.
I admit that such a proposal will require us to avoid the more traditional style; renders as "squashed" inline HTML, and would require parentheses if we did not allow artificial spaces: or or , etc. It's easier to simply allow PNG rendering for unsatisfactory expressions, but nevertheless, this proposal does address the inline objection.
I'm not surprised that my sentiments have been expressed before: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive1#Moved_from_Village_Pump (see comments by User:Pascalromon.) I echo his/her sentiments, but I don't think we need changes as drastic as those that he/she proposed. So how about it, everyone?
Ardonik 19:26, 2004 Aug 3 (UTC)
The beauty of TeX is that we can avoid inline PNGs (which I am not opposed to avoiding) and still reap the other benefits of TeX mentioned above by keeping inline expressions in <math> tags. As for not knowing TeX, you don't have to! You add a lot of useful math content to the Wikipedia, Charles, and I figure that the job of less math-literate people like me is to follow in your footsteps, tweaking things here and there. TeXifying equations is one way to do that.
Perhaps it would be to everyone's benefit to mark the "old style" as provisional, so as to encourage intrepid Wikipedians to update it at their convenience to the "new format" without shunning the old style completely? --
Ardonik 22:28, 2004 Aug 3 (UTC)
We can use \mbox{ } to force spaces without inducing PNG conversion. Compare:
Appearance | Markup | |
---|---|---|
HTML | a2b cos x | ''a''<sup>2</sup>''b'' cos ''x'' |
TeX (PNG rendered) | <math>{a^2} b \cos x\,\!</math> | |
TeX (without \mbox) | <math>{a^2} b \cos x</math> | |
TeX (with \mbox) | <math>{a^2} b \mbox{ } \cos \mbox{ } x</math> |
Can anyone think of any other HTML syntax that TeX can't handle without PNGs?
Ardonik 11:21, 2004 Aug 5 (UTC)
On line bundle, I attempted to view the article using all possible choices of user preferences, and none of them were able to convert things like the "Z/2Z", "RP2", "CP2", etc. (blackboard bold, fractions, etc.) to inline HTML. When strict HTML was selected, of course it returned tex code. The point is that there is no way to use inline math mode while avoiding PNGs. TeX and HTML simply "evolved" from different origins and haven't quite become compatible. I expect this problem will be solved in time. In any case, there's no telling that the solution won't require detailed combing over and editing in the future, anyway. So, I agree completely with you in principle, but think it's too early to work in practice. And I don't think it's that big a deal...it will be a lot of work to make the switch when HTML and TeX become compatible, but with enough people working on it, shouldn't be a problem. Revolver 21:02, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If the community consensus is to avoid inline PNGs, then the next step is to discuss strategies for keeping TeX from PNG conversion....That rules out convincing the developers to change program parameters; I think we'll just have to come up with a list of TeX features to avoid or replace in order to ensure inline HTML generation. But now is the right time to discuss such things, and this is the right place to do it.
Well, the ideal solution would be to just have any and all articles that use mathematical expression to jettison HTML entirely and have the whole thing be a LaTeX file. This would eliminate all the problems. (I'm being facetious, of course...but also trying to indirectly point out what the problems are short of doing this.)
From what I can gather, TeX's chief weakness is its inability to guarantee the generation of inline HTML.
The guidelines sound alright. I still believe that for relatively simple things, it's best to leave in HTML as we've always done. I'm talking about the greek letter "π", for instance. Or, single variables, like "x" or "y". Nothing gets me more than seeing a variables that stands out nearly TWICE AS TALL as the text size I'm reading. For more complicated inline expressions, I have a lot more tolerance and understanding. But, even something like Z/2Z, doesn't seem to need texifying. Of course, I'm sure I draw the line much farther than most other people.
Revolver 19:50, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This may seem like a crazy idea, but it would be something I would be willing to contribute time toward. There is a company which makes a semantic interface onto LaTeX (Scientific Works), which you can enter into directly (not WYSIWYG, but logical interface). It takes very little time to enter stuff, about as fast as using a word processor. Then, there is a viewer that comes with it which is free for anyone to download on the internet. So, once you make a file, you just direct someone to download the viewer and view the file with the viewer. There is absolutely no TeX code involved at all.
While this is clearly not workable for the wiki pages that people work on, it might be possible to do periodically for some of the more important math and technical pages, I'm thinking of Wikipedia 1.0 in particular and its updates. The number of articles here wouldn't be too much, it would be much better visually, and both the wiki-HTML-PNG version as well as the Works version could be available for people to choose.
Otherwise, I'm just starting to think, while the CD-ROM viewers of 1.0 will have the option of which way to see it, the people reading the paper version will not.
Revolver 20:10, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
<object data="proof.tex" type="text/plain" width="400" height="200"> alternative text (i.e. inline HTML for the proof) </object>
My own two cents: In principal, I completely agree with the idea of writing all math code in TeX. That being said, I must object to actually doing this at present. I personally think that all inline TeX—whether rendered as HTML or PNG's—looks terrible. More than once I've avoiding reading a math article (let alone bothering to edit it) simply because I don't want to get a headache trying to wade through the changes in font sizes. In principal, the TeX->HTML shouldn't look bad, but it does. Yes, I know this can be fixed by a simple change to the wiki CSS file, but no one seems to be doing this. In the meantime, I'd much rather have a article that I can read rather than one which is semantically "correct".
Point 2: I think the real push should not be towards getting everyone to TeXify everything, but rather towards getting the wiki developers to implement MathML output. I believe that MathML is a viable solution now! Not some distant future. MathML looks reasonable in Mozilla browsers and plugins are available for other 'less competent browsers'. If you ask yourself why there isn't better browser support for MathML, the answer is pretty obvious: there just isn't much demand for it. What's needed is a site like Wikipedia, with its large quantity and quality of math content, to start outputing things in MathML to increase demand. Who should we be talking to, to push this matter?
In the meantime, I will continue to use pure HTML for everything inline simply so I can read it. I will starting inputing TeX as soon as wiki starts outputing MathML. As to having to rewrite all the articles when this happens, I don't think it's such a big deal. It's not like it has to be done all at once. Articles are getting edited all the time, they can be converted piece by piece. And until they are, it's not like they're going to be unreadable.
Fropuff 04:08, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)
I honestly think the old version of the determinant article looks far better. If there isn't a whole lot of inline TeX, the effect isn't too bad, but take a different example with a higher density: compare the current version of Representable functor to the last unTeXified version [2]. Again, I think the old version is far more readable.
"Honestly, is it the serif font on your browser that's ugly?" No, I actually approve of the serif font. It's the size that bothers me. PNG's are too large, the text of the TeX/HTML is too small (hard to read in fact). When the two are used side by side its just a mess. I know this may sound nitpicky, but I honestly get a headache trying to read that stuff.
Fropuff 14:26, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)
Is it just me, or do the HTML sup constructs show up really low? Compare x2 to . This makes articles that contain many superscripts very hard to read because the superscripts are hard to distinguish from regular text. TeX/HTML renders the superscripts much better in my opinion. Gadykozma 14:14, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
A Clarification -- one more reason I prefer HTML. Besides lots of things not being able to render in HTML, there is another big problem. Many people urge me to change my preferences. But then a lot of expressions I wish were KEPT in TeX get changed to HTML when I don't want them to!! This happens for example at the article pi. Long, single-line expressions get chopped up and rendered often in a silly manner. Besides, for single-line, I WANT TeX. Why should I be force to give it up?? Revolver 09:04, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Its strange nobody seems to have mentioned the project for a paper version of wikipedia, meta:Paper Wikipedia. This seems very relevant to the question whether LaTeX or html markup is to be preferred. Gadykozma 18:23, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Although I've been editing for about a month, I've just discovered this page.
I've been doing more and more edits to the articles on set theory, and I'm contemplating rewriting the article Set. I posted some discussion concerning my proposed changes at Talk:set and Talk:naive set theory but so far no one has responded. Perhaps no one is watching these pages, or has nothing to say regarding my posts ;-) However, at the risk of being accused of not being bold, I'm reposting them here, just in case anyone cares. If not I will go on blissfully editing to my hearts content - until someone objects.
I think there is too much overlap between the articles Set and Naive set theory.
In reviewing the change history for Set, I find that the earliest versions of this article (can anyone tell me how to find the original version, the earliest I can find is as of 08:46, Sep 30, 2001) contained the following language prominently placed in the opening paragraph:
"For a discussion of the properties and axioms concerning the construction of sets, see Basic Set Theory and Set theory. Here we give only a brief overview of the concept." (The articles referred to have since been renamed as Naive set theory and Axiomatic set theory resp.)
As subsequent editors, added new information to the beginning of the article, the placement of this "brief overview" language, gradually moved further into the article, until now it is "buried" as the last sentence of the "Definitions of sets" section. Consequently I suspect that some new editors are unaware that some of the material being added to this article is already in, or should be added to Naive set theory or even Axiomatic set theory (e.g. Well foundedness? Hypersets?).
If it is agreed that, Set is supposed to be a "brief overview" of the idea of a set, while Naive set theory and Axiomatic set theory give more detail, I propose two things:
Comments?
Paul August 20:23, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)
I have moved the sections on "Well-foundedness" and "Hypersets" to Axiomatic set theory, which I think is a more appropriate place for them - based on the idea expressed above that the Set article shold be a "brief overview". Paul August 07:34, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)
I should have added a third item to my proposal:
3. Rewrite the remaining parts of Set in a more elementary style. (The idea being that Set would be at the elementary/high school level, Naive set theory would be at a high school/college level and Axiomatic set theory at a college/graduate school level)
If you want to look at a first draft of a rewrite of
Set, see:
Paul August/Set.
lastly, a couple of questions about notation. Why is "{}" preferred over ∅ for the empty set? "{}" looks kinda ugly to my jaundiced eye. Also is A\B preferred over A - B for set theoretic difference?
Actually I've got lots more questions, (especially about markup - are there any standards?) but that's enough for now. If this is not really the right place for all this, then my apologies. Paul August 03:47, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)
(Note: I've taken the liberty of moving the disccussion on "{}" versus ∅ which used follow here to the following new section below. Hope that's koser ;-) Paul August 18:14, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC))
A friend of mine recently pointed out to me another article that should be considered in a revision of our set theory coverage: Language of set theory. It's a poor article currently, but you might be able to take it somewhere. I was thinking perhaps that it should highlight how other mathematics can be built using set theoretic language (for example, how relations, functions, and ordered pairs are expressed as sets.) Isomorphic 18:05, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
(Note: I've taken the liberty of moving the disccussion on "{}" versus ∅ from the previous section to here. Paul August 18:14, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC))
Why is "{}" preferred over ∅ for the empty set? "{}" looks kinda ugly to my jaundiced eye. Paul August 03:47, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)
Based on the above It looks like there might be an emerging consensus that &empty is better than {}. any objections? I wouldn't mind going around and changing {} to &empty. But it's a little work, and I don't want to do it if anyone is just going to change them all back. Paul August 20:17, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)
I make a very strong vote against ∅. Why? Almost all our readers use IE, which doesn't support it! I like <math>\varnothing</math>, because the software can render it according to user preferences and HTTP browser information, which is the best solution for everyone (if it doesn't do this now, at least the potential is there). Derrick Coetzee 01:39, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
\def\emptyset{\varnothing}
, and then use \emptyset later on.
BACbKA 23:25, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)I think the notation {} is too confusing. We should use some variation on the slashed O sign, even if it doesn't render properly everywhere. Gadykozma 05:03, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
In my opinion {} or { } is better because it still has a connection to the set notation due to the braces. whereas is a completely new symbol and the connection with emtpy set has to learned and cannot be inferred. MathMartin 22:28, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I would say that {} is the empty set, while is a symbol for it. Which notation to use should depend on the context. — Miguel 18:01, 2004 Nov 26 (UTC)
Out of curiousity could you provide an example where it is better to use than {} ? MathMartin 22:00, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Avoid notational conventions! Sometimes "{}" works better, sometimes "∅" works better; sometimes TeXvc works better, sometimes it doesn't. There are special circumstances; if a common browser cannot render a version, then it's justified to warn writers against that version. Still, the only basis for debate in that case is to determine whether the special circumstance obtains, and the only conclusion to draw is that the number of options is lowered by one. Of course, people that are interested in æsthetics are free to discuss their personal preferences as much as they like; I have my own opinion on this matter, which I'd be happy to chat about on my talk page or even by email. But Wikipedia does not need a standard for every notational debate. -- Toby Bartels 23:55, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Someone edited the set article, changing each set union symbol "∪" (i.e &cup) to an uppercase U, because they were displaying as boxes. Is there a problem with rendering ∪? It looks ok for me (Safari, IE, OmniWeb on MAC OSX). Does anybody else have problems with this? Paul August 19:48, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)
At User_talk:ShaunMacPherson, I have invited that person to discuss on this page his implicit decision to move hundreds of articles titled ABCD's theorem to ABCD's Theorem with a capital T, and similarly for conjectures, lemmas, axioms, etc. In case anyone can be more effective in persuading him that I can, I mention that here. (If you are Schaun MacPherson and do not wish to pursue the matter, please feel free to delete this section.) Michael Hardy 20:40, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Is it really that necessary to put those "This article assumes knowledge of yada yada yada and blah" notices at the top of pages? If the aim is to help educate the potential reader, it's rather inefficient, unhelpful and redundant in my opinion. Education material should go to Wikibooks. Reference material should stay here. Thanks Dysprosia 09:05, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Top-down organization is a good idea... perhaps we can instead say "This article is part of the subtopic series/topic/whatever of topic", instead of the "assumes knowledge of"? Dysprosia 22:37, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I would like to reorganize some ring-theory-related pages a little bit, specifically these pages:
I would like to redo them as follows:
A week or so back User:Fuelbottle created the MediaWiki pages Template:quantity, Template:change, Template:space and Template:structure, containing side-tables of links, and used the msg: function to display the relevant side-table on each of the pages listed underneath each of these categories on the main mathematics page. More recently User:TakuyaMurata has removed the side-tables from all of the articles in the quantity and space categories. Net result is that some articles have side-tables, but others do not. Can we discuss, and maybe reach a consensus, on whether these side-tables should be (a) removed across the board; or (b) re-instated; or (c) maybe retained in some modified form ? Gandalf61 13:03, Mar 28, 2004 (UTC)
Really (frankly) WikiProject Mathematics should have addressed navigation needs and issues quite some time ago. It seems that picky discussions always are going to take priority over crude needs for the general reader to find things. Well, such is wiki life: much easier to complain that sheaf theory is hard to understand, than to do something for the calculus student. More fun to lay down the law about the perfect article, too.
From where we are, though. There is a subtopic structure now fairly much in place. Footers are definitely better. They would be worth adding systematically, in areas where (i) the existing article coverage is already fairly complete, and (ii) there are likely to be readers needing hints on where to go, rather than just a typical List of X topics. So, which areas are those?
Charles Matthews 07:51, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I have now changed Template:quantity, Template:change, Template:space and Template:structure into footers. They look better now, and I think they are a good way to navigate the main topics. The last few days someone have created Template:Linear_algebra and Template:Calculus, I think these work ok for navigating subtopics, but if they were footers they could include more topics. Fuelbottle 20:25, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
My 2 cents (I know no one asked...):
I don't just think the sidebars (or footers) are possible to work, I think they're necessary in some form. I think the people who are saying, "well, all these people have to do is go to the main topic page, read it, and find a bunch of list pages" haven't really thought the issue through completely. Pretend for a moment that you are learning calculus or linear algebra for the first time (I know...for many of us, this was a long time ago, but pretend). You have essentially no context in which to place articles, aside from the discussion given at the main page. But the most important point is something that I think Charles already pointed out, and that is that math is a cumulative subject with highly complex logical dependencies among topics. One cannot possibly understand the article on Fourier analysis without first knowing what a vector space or Lebesgue integration is. It's true that links are very helpful within an article (click the link if you don't know the term), but this can be very confusing after a while to the reader. For one thing, the reader has no idea the distance between his or her own knowledge and the knowledge needed to read the article; links can't provide this. For another, even with links, the reader may end up kind of blindly wandering around, not knowing the best order of topics that has proven pedagogically sound in the past. Yes, it's true, wikipedia is not a textbook, but the way I see it, in the "ideal wikipedia", it should be theoretically possible for a reader to understand any article by reading simple articles leading up to more complex, in a logically depending fashion. Providing sidebars/footers or organisation of this type isn't writing a textbook at all -- it's just making a tool available so that the existing information is more usable for everyone. After all, I'm thinking there could be sidebars/footers for category theory, homological algebra, or relatively obscure fields, in time. The longer one stays in math, the more one realises how little one knows, and trying to learn a new field without some kind of guidance to the topics and their logical interdependence is difficult for pros, so it certainly won't be easy for most calc students, say.
By the way, it doesn't seem to me there's any reason that an article can't be in more than one series -- e.g. manifolds was mentioned, why can't this be in differential geometry, differential topology, and so on? This would make it difficult to have sidebars, though, and even with footers it could get cluttered if it's used too often.
Revolver 09:26, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Reminds me of a quote in Lang's algebra book, I think -- "Unfortunately, it's impossible to present a body of mathematical topics while maintaining a total order", or something equivalent. Really, the whole logical dependence thing seems to me to be something like a directed graph...just throwing out ideas, maybe a single footer, showing (a) the major topics (rarely more than 3 or 4) that are good idea to be familiar with to understand this, (b) similar articles on the same level/topic, and (c) major topics that lead from this. In the hypothetical manifold case, it would seem to me both diff geom and diff top could be part of (c), at least each of these in the modern formulation. If readers want to go "up" or "down" a level, fine, but they only need a handful of places to go. Up close, they may want to be pointed to trees, but at a distance, directions to forest make sense. Revolver 10:02, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the best place to raise this, but our coverage of dynamical systems and chaos theory is pretty inadequate compared to the treatment of subjects like algebra and graph theory. Even the main article at "Chaos theory" suffers from some vagueness - it defines a chaotic orbit, but doesn't really define the terms it uses (dense orbit, sensitive dependence, etc). There are a lot of holes even in relatively basic topics ( Poincaré map, box-counting dimension, and James A. Yorke, for example) and there are some other key articles ( bifurcation diagram) that have very brief descriptions.
I've filled in a couple holes (the dynamics definition of orbit, for example) and I'll try to fill in some others, but there's a lot of work that needs doing and some of it will definitely require more background than I have.
Isomorphic 00:20, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)
There must be bits of nonlinear dynamics that are not about chaos, though. What about all that 'qualitative theory of differential equations'? Well, big in the 1950s, I guess. The usual thing would be, yes, nonlinear dynamics as top-level (most inclusive) article, section in that talking about chaos theory to set it in its context (cf. singularity theory → catastrophe theory for the big-in-the-1960s analogue); and then 'please see main article chaos theory' from there.
The point about gaps is of course a good one. Sign of the times when WP starts looking less like a Cantor-set encyclopedia, mostly gaps. I don't believe we have the basic Frobenius theorem on matrix powers, which is linear dynamics, yet.
Charles Matthews 14:50, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Kevin Baas 17:20, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
In putting up the bios for Lefschetz and Pontryagin, I noticed they both moved into that area at about the same time, after the work in topology for which they are also known. I guess at the time the theory started out asking for periodic orbits, which is like a conventional topological question, in that you might be able to prove existence theorems. Then, I guess, you get the Poincaré return map near to a periodic orbit, as a cross-section near a fixed point; and it is the mapping that induces that is typically the source for the discrete-time iterations that also are studied. Also J. E. Littlewood worked on the Van der Pol equation at that time. Smale went into Anosov flows and suchlike shortly after his topological work on the Poincaré conjecture. That's about global structure of flow on manifolds, and builds on Morse theory. When computing became more of commodity, things (it seemed) changed in the direction of being able to look much more closely at given examples; rather than having to be guided by mathematical analysis; there were more things that came up that were clearly true, but not provable. I never went into this field much; so post-1970 I have just heard the jargon that everyone else has. Charles Matthews 15:41, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I have posted a discussion document at User:Charles Matthews/WikiProjectMathematics thoughts; and invite people to comment (maybe there).
Charles Matthews 15:21, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Hi, Charles. You seem to be the cult leader for the mathematicians (!) around the Wikiland. So I will post my questions here, and hopefully I can get a feel on the consensus, if any.
1. Wikipedia's recommended style goes against the mainstream tradition in the mathematics community. Which one should we use?
versus
2. Wikipedia requests references from authors. And I did try to stick with their guidelines. But somewhere along the line I must ask myself: why bother with all the details if they are not going to help the target audience, which are mostly internet surfers who have no interest in digging up the real sources? Why shouldn't we just give them a general reference (some textbook) and be done with it? I fully understand that no one ever forced me or anyone to provide any references. But I still think it would nice if we can agree on a guideline here and get it out of the way.
What are your thoughts?
[bow] Peter Kwok 02:44, 2004 May 27 (UTC)
Ummm ... well, this is just on my own behalf. The use of references to original papers should be fairly limited; it helps to cite the paper with the first proof of a theorem, not least because it makes clear that 'proved in 1935' is saying something about the publication date, rather than when a proof was first found. I don't think we have a standardised citation style. As mav said, other references are probably there to help with background reading — rather than try to give a full bibliography of a subject. There is some general pressure on WP to be ever more academic and scholarly; but footnoting and supporting everything with sources goes against the normal, good survey style. Charles Matthews 08:20, 27 May 2004 (UTC)
Okay, I think that settles the issue of using general references-- at least for basic results that should be included in most textbooks.
As for the style issue, I don't see any consensus yet. Not that it is an urgent issue now. But the longer it is put off, the harder to convert the references later-- especially when the servers are soo-oo sloo-ooo-oow. For now, I will go with Wikipedia's recommended style, but I will keep an open mind in case things change in the future. Thank you all.
Peter Kwok 18:24, 2004 May 27 (UTC)
I was updating some information for Chern and encountered a typical problem in writing Chinese suranames. In most regions that use traditional Chinesee people put the last name last, just like the western names. However, in most regions that use simplified Chinese (except Singapore) people put the last name first. When the two styles are mixed, like Dan Sun and Zheng Sining in the Chern article, it becomes confusing. (In this case, Sun and Zheng are surnames. But sometimes Dan Sun is written Sun Dan; and Zheng Sining, Sining Zeng!)
This has been a well-known problem for identifying Chinese on passports. So what people sometimes do is to capitalize or put a red underline under the surname in passports. I propose that we do the same here and
You can see whether capitalization is useful in the Chern article.
Thanks,
Peter Kwok 20:20, 2004 May 28 (UTC)
P.S. I mistakenly added an entry for " Dan SUN". Later I created another entry for " Dan Sun". So the former should be deleted now.
Thanks, Derrick.
Peter Kwok 22:02, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
I think, speaking only about usage in mathematics, that it is standard to have surname last. (When it comes to weiqi, this would be wrong, in my view! But the point would be to use here the name commonly expected.) Charles Matthews 05:40, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I mean, yeah, it is a good style, but not the good style, right?
How about a little tolerence for people who sometimes want to put the "in" part at the end of the first sentence (or not using it at all)?
Peter Kwok 19:01, 2004 Jun 29 (UTC)
Yes, it becomes dull. There are a few other ways. But in general: the first sentence is important to define the area; the first paragraph should be able to stand on its own as a summary. Charles Matthews 19:06, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I concur with Charles that we should keep this policy. Although it is banal, it has substantial benefits, not the least of which are consistency and contextualization. Kevin Baas 22:49, 2004 Jun 29 (UTC)
I have no problem with providing a summary in the first paragraph.
But I also think that some kind of varieties can't be bad, especially when the first sentence already specifies the context.
Right now people just go around and "fix" the first sentences of almost all mathematical articles so that they all begin with the word "In".
This kind of practice only creates frustration and doesn't add value to the articles or to the readers.
Since there is no ownership in Wikipedia, I think it is more important for all of us to be more tolerant of other people's style and focus more on the content instead.
Peter Kwok 15:12, 2004 Jun 30 (UTC)
> Not every article has to start that way
Thank you. That's all that I am saying. No one is going to tell a story about Little Red Riding Hood before he gets to the point. And everybody (including myself) agrees that the first sentence should put everything in context. The only problem is: do we have to all write exactly the same way? For God's sake, this is supposed to be an encylopaedia, not a piece of application form. Yes, there will be random readers who have no prior knowledge of the subject and may not immediately recognize the context. But all they need to do is to read through the first— I am not asking for even the second, just the first— sentence. Is that too much to ask for?
Readers are only one side of the equation.
There are users (i.e. editors), too.
Wikipedia allows users to freely edit articles.
Everybody's work may be overwritten over time unless he wrote something that nobody ever reads.
We all know that before we contribute.
But isn't it exactly why it is more important to nourish mutual respect among users?
Right now I find it hard to work in an environment where style police who have nothing new to add just run around to make other people write like them.
(No, Charles, Kevin, and Revolver, I am not talking about you.
But I suspect that veterans like you guys are already aware of what's going on.)
What IF I do the same to those style police?
Wouldn't they be pissed off as much as I am?
Peter Kwok 15:43, 2004 Jul 1 (UTC)
So, for instance, a change in style that allows an argument to read more clearly or an example to be better understood is good "style change"; making a notational change that (the editor believes, at least) makes an equation read easier on the eyes or be more transparent, is good; reorganising sections so they follow a more natural order is good; changing tex or math expressions to conform to what's usually used is okay;, but...making cosmetic changes, rewriting a paragraph without making it much different or better, or constantly changing "generalisation/generalization", "neighbourhood/neighborhood" is prob not necc. Revolver 20:27, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I agree with your statement that mutual respect is important. I have always been polite and respectful to you, and moreover, when I noticed your existence I was glad to see another person contributing articles on mathematics, and that remains my evaluation of your work on Wikipedia.
You seem to think that I have targeted you some how. I have not. I do not edit articles without intending some identifiable improvement.
You wrote: "Right now I find it hard to work in an environment where style police who have nothing new to add just run around to make other people write like them."
Would you tell me who those people are? You seem to think I am one such person. I have contributed a far larger number of new articles on mathematics than you and most others, and a far greater amount of substantive mathematical content to article initiated by others.
I also do minor edits such as a small spelling or punctuation correction in a long article. I did several of those in the article you created on the LYM inequality. You stated on the discussion page that those edits contribute nothing. I disagree. But if you don't agree that they contribute anything, that is not a reason to infer that I was personally targeting you. After I created uses of trigonometry, jengod made some small changes for which I saw no need. It is possible that that person knows some reason of which I am unaware why the changes were improvements, and it is also possible that they are not. Even if I disagreed with those edits, I would still conclude only that another person disagrees, and not that I am being targeted or attacked.
As for moving "In mathematics..." to the beginning, there is a reason for that that I tried to explain to you earlier; I did it because I think the article is in several respects better that way, and I would be specific about that if you appeared to be interested.
You wrote: "I don't deny that some style changes are good, or even necessary, and I don't mind people overwriting articles with richer and better content. It is the ones that added no substance got me. I regard the "In mathematics" changes as cosmetic and think that we should give people more leeway on that issue. If you disagree, fine; but let's draw a line somewhere."
Do you regard "cosmetic" as meaning unnecessary or bad? Making an article esthetically better makes it easier to understand and to remember.
You wrote: "Now some people even begin to change journals' standard abbreviations to long names, which is not even recommended by Wikipedia!" ... because some readers may otherwise not understand the abbreviation. If you disagree with that, you could say so, rather than acting as if there is something personal about it.
You wrote: "I believe some of the later changes were made just to get me after I expressed my disagreement." On this point I have good news that will reassure you. You suggested that I may be among those doing this. But I have not done this. When I disagree with the way someone edits or with their opinions about how others should edit, I address the actual content of the disagreement, saying why I think what I think. I do not personally attack them.
You wrote, "Do those cosmetic changes really do the readers any good?". I would say that if they do no good then they are _not_ cosmetic. "Cosmetic" by definition means they make an esthetic improvement in the article, and therefore they do some good.
You wrote "If this place really believes in the "everything goes" philosophy, then do let things go. However, if this place believes in maintaining a house style, then maybe we need some kind of guidelines or governing body to give users some protection."
_Some_ guidelines are in the style manual: usually the title word or title phrase is highlighted at its first appearance, one eschew's superfluously capitalized letters in section headings, etc.
You wrote: "I could have even mass reverted articles." Did the things you object to happen in more than one article? You have mentioned only one to me. What were the others, if any? - Michael Hardy
I fear one of Charles Matthews' comments may be construed by some to mean I am one of the founders of Wikipedia. In fact, Wikipedia was founded early in 2001 by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales; the latter has put about $500,000 of his own money into the project. I first edited articles here in October of 2002, if I recall correctly. Axel Boldt was for some time the only person extensively editing mathematics articles here, and I surmise that he is the original creator of the list of mathematical topics. Michael Hardy 01:50, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I know it doesn't really matter, but I am always confused by how to write sentences with math in them and saying things like "where m is the mass, b is the buoyancy, and c is the charge") etc. Some people stick commas inside the tex markup and treat the whole thing as a continuous sentence:
If an equation, such as
is encountered, then c is the sum of a and b.
some people treat the equation like a graphic, with lots of extra words necessary to keep it in complete sentences:
Summing two numbers is represented by the following equation:
In this equation, a and b are the summands, and c is the sum.
Some people put variable descriptions in a bulleted list below the equation, etc. Can we have a little blurb about a nice method of formatting sentences? I just want some advice for a clean style for myself. - Omegatron 16:05, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)
Just as the untutored lay person knows who is being referred to when one mentions Shakespeare or Einstein by surname only, so mathematicians know who is being referred to when one mentions Abel by surname in the context of a math article. But a link to Abel is (of course) a link to the son of Adam and Eve who was killed by his brother in the book of Genesis. And how could anyone expect a link to Study to be a link to an article about the mathematician Eduard Study? Sometimes a math article, or substantial parts of one, are intended to be read by people who know little about mathematics, and in such cases linking to "Euler" does not inform the reader as well as if one links to Leonhard Euler. Consequently I think in most cases first and last names should be used. Michael Hardy 02:04, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The main reasons that it became standard to use only surnames for references in published text, have been for considerations of space, and the tediousness of typesetting. That is, they were publisher-centric. However, since, Wikipedia is (essentially) free from such constraints, we can afford to be more reader-centric. Thus, more use of full names is a good thing. The presence of a link lessens but does not eliminate the benefit to the reader of fuller names. Of course, judgment is required to know when more information is too much information. Paul August 15:48, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)
In recent days, I have been adding <math>...</math> to every inline math expression I have encountered, starting with articles in Category:Curves and category:Bundles (mathematics). At the time, I thought that the HTML wikitext markup for equations was provisional, and that by TeXifying expressions, I was improving the articles. I didn't know about the existence of the Wikiproject Mathematics page. I'd like to offer my apologies for breaking convention.
That said, I'm perfectly astonished that HTML wikitext markup for inline equations and variables is an official recommendation (not truly "official," but you know what I mean.) I think it's a bad idea, so allow me to flesh out my case here. My proposal is that we should use <math>...</math> markup for any and every expression related to math, including formulae, single-letter variable names, and all inline expressions. Here's why:
But it is true that mixing inline PNGs with ordinary article text can have a somewhat jarring effect; this is unavoidable, and I happen to not mind it at all (I have seen textbooks that have odd line spacing due to inline math expressions; they still sell well.) One possible compromise is to avoid forced PNG rendering unless absolutely necessary (that is, do not use "\!\," or other "artificial" spaces if you can possibly help it), so the user will see the maximum amount of inline HTML. They can still use their preferences to turn PNG rendering on, so we should expect that PNG versions of all of our expressions, equations, and variable names will exist.
I admit that such a proposal will require us to avoid the more traditional style; renders as "squashed" inline HTML, and would require parentheses if we did not allow artificial spaces: or or , etc. It's easier to simply allow PNG rendering for unsatisfactory expressions, but nevertheless, this proposal does address the inline objection.
I'm not surprised that my sentiments have been expressed before: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive1#Moved_from_Village_Pump (see comments by User:Pascalromon.) I echo his/her sentiments, but I don't think we need changes as drastic as those that he/she proposed. So how about it, everyone?
Ardonik 19:26, 2004 Aug 3 (UTC)
The beauty of TeX is that we can avoid inline PNGs (which I am not opposed to avoiding) and still reap the other benefits of TeX mentioned above by keeping inline expressions in <math> tags. As for not knowing TeX, you don't have to! You add a lot of useful math content to the Wikipedia, Charles, and I figure that the job of less math-literate people like me is to follow in your footsteps, tweaking things here and there. TeXifying equations is one way to do that.
Perhaps it would be to everyone's benefit to mark the "old style" as provisional, so as to encourage intrepid Wikipedians to update it at their convenience to the "new format" without shunning the old style completely? --
Ardonik 22:28, 2004 Aug 3 (UTC)
We can use \mbox{ } to force spaces without inducing PNG conversion. Compare:
Appearance | Markup | |
---|---|---|
HTML | a2b cos x | ''a''<sup>2</sup>''b'' cos ''x'' |
TeX (PNG rendered) | <math>{a^2} b \cos x\,\!</math> | |
TeX (without \mbox) | <math>{a^2} b \cos x</math> | |
TeX (with \mbox) | <math>{a^2} b \mbox{ } \cos \mbox{ } x</math> |
Can anyone think of any other HTML syntax that TeX can't handle without PNGs?
Ardonik 11:21, 2004 Aug 5 (UTC)
On line bundle, I attempted to view the article using all possible choices of user preferences, and none of them were able to convert things like the "Z/2Z", "RP2", "CP2", etc. (blackboard bold, fractions, etc.) to inline HTML. When strict HTML was selected, of course it returned tex code. The point is that there is no way to use inline math mode while avoiding PNGs. TeX and HTML simply "evolved" from different origins and haven't quite become compatible. I expect this problem will be solved in time. In any case, there's no telling that the solution won't require detailed combing over and editing in the future, anyway. So, I agree completely with you in principle, but think it's too early to work in practice. And I don't think it's that big a deal...it will be a lot of work to make the switch when HTML and TeX become compatible, but with enough people working on it, shouldn't be a problem. Revolver 21:02, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If the community consensus is to avoid inline PNGs, then the next step is to discuss strategies for keeping TeX from PNG conversion....That rules out convincing the developers to change program parameters; I think we'll just have to come up with a list of TeX features to avoid or replace in order to ensure inline HTML generation. But now is the right time to discuss such things, and this is the right place to do it.
Well, the ideal solution would be to just have any and all articles that use mathematical expression to jettison HTML entirely and have the whole thing be a LaTeX file. This would eliminate all the problems. (I'm being facetious, of course...but also trying to indirectly point out what the problems are short of doing this.)
From what I can gather, TeX's chief weakness is its inability to guarantee the generation of inline HTML.
The guidelines sound alright. I still believe that for relatively simple things, it's best to leave in HTML as we've always done. I'm talking about the greek letter "π", for instance. Or, single variables, like "x" or "y". Nothing gets me more than seeing a variables that stands out nearly TWICE AS TALL as the text size I'm reading. For more complicated inline expressions, I have a lot more tolerance and understanding. But, even something like Z/2Z, doesn't seem to need texifying. Of course, I'm sure I draw the line much farther than most other people.
Revolver 19:50, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This may seem like a crazy idea, but it would be something I would be willing to contribute time toward. There is a company which makes a semantic interface onto LaTeX (Scientific Works), which you can enter into directly (not WYSIWYG, but logical interface). It takes very little time to enter stuff, about as fast as using a word processor. Then, there is a viewer that comes with it which is free for anyone to download on the internet. So, once you make a file, you just direct someone to download the viewer and view the file with the viewer. There is absolutely no TeX code involved at all.
While this is clearly not workable for the wiki pages that people work on, it might be possible to do periodically for some of the more important math and technical pages, I'm thinking of Wikipedia 1.0 in particular and its updates. The number of articles here wouldn't be too much, it would be much better visually, and both the wiki-HTML-PNG version as well as the Works version could be available for people to choose.
Otherwise, I'm just starting to think, while the CD-ROM viewers of 1.0 will have the option of which way to see it, the people reading the paper version will not.
Revolver 20:10, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
<object data="proof.tex" type="text/plain" width="400" height="200"> alternative text (i.e. inline HTML for the proof) </object>
My own two cents: In principal, I completely agree with the idea of writing all math code in TeX. That being said, I must object to actually doing this at present. I personally think that all inline TeX—whether rendered as HTML or PNG's—looks terrible. More than once I've avoiding reading a math article (let alone bothering to edit it) simply because I don't want to get a headache trying to wade through the changes in font sizes. In principal, the TeX->HTML shouldn't look bad, but it does. Yes, I know this can be fixed by a simple change to the wiki CSS file, but no one seems to be doing this. In the meantime, I'd much rather have a article that I can read rather than one which is semantically "correct".
Point 2: I think the real push should not be towards getting everyone to TeXify everything, but rather towards getting the wiki developers to implement MathML output. I believe that MathML is a viable solution now! Not some distant future. MathML looks reasonable in Mozilla browsers and plugins are available for other 'less competent browsers'. If you ask yourself why there isn't better browser support for MathML, the answer is pretty obvious: there just isn't much demand for it. What's needed is a site like Wikipedia, with its large quantity and quality of math content, to start outputing things in MathML to increase demand. Who should we be talking to, to push this matter?
In the meantime, I will continue to use pure HTML for everything inline simply so I can read it. I will starting inputing TeX as soon as wiki starts outputing MathML. As to having to rewrite all the articles when this happens, I don't think it's such a big deal. It's not like it has to be done all at once. Articles are getting edited all the time, they can be converted piece by piece. And until they are, it's not like they're going to be unreadable.
Fropuff 04:08, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)
I honestly think the old version of the determinant article looks far better. If there isn't a whole lot of inline TeX, the effect isn't too bad, but take a different example with a higher density: compare the current version of Representable functor to the last unTeXified version [2]. Again, I think the old version is far more readable.
"Honestly, is it the serif font on your browser that's ugly?" No, I actually approve of the serif font. It's the size that bothers me. PNG's are too large, the text of the TeX/HTML is too small (hard to read in fact). When the two are used side by side its just a mess. I know this may sound nitpicky, but I honestly get a headache trying to read that stuff.
Fropuff 14:26, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)
Is it just me, or do the HTML sup constructs show up really low? Compare x2 to . This makes articles that contain many superscripts very hard to read because the superscripts are hard to distinguish from regular text. TeX/HTML renders the superscripts much better in my opinion. Gadykozma 14:14, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
A Clarification -- one more reason I prefer HTML. Besides lots of things not being able to render in HTML, there is another big problem. Many people urge me to change my preferences. But then a lot of expressions I wish were KEPT in TeX get changed to HTML when I don't want them to!! This happens for example at the article pi. Long, single-line expressions get chopped up and rendered often in a silly manner. Besides, for single-line, I WANT TeX. Why should I be force to give it up?? Revolver 09:04, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Its strange nobody seems to have mentioned the project for a paper version of wikipedia, meta:Paper Wikipedia. This seems very relevant to the question whether LaTeX or html markup is to be preferred. Gadykozma 18:23, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Although I've been editing for about a month, I've just discovered this page.
I've been doing more and more edits to the articles on set theory, and I'm contemplating rewriting the article Set. I posted some discussion concerning my proposed changes at Talk:set and Talk:naive set theory but so far no one has responded. Perhaps no one is watching these pages, or has nothing to say regarding my posts ;-) However, at the risk of being accused of not being bold, I'm reposting them here, just in case anyone cares. If not I will go on blissfully editing to my hearts content - until someone objects.
I think there is too much overlap between the articles Set and Naive set theory.
In reviewing the change history for Set, I find that the earliest versions of this article (can anyone tell me how to find the original version, the earliest I can find is as of 08:46, Sep 30, 2001) contained the following language prominently placed in the opening paragraph:
"For a discussion of the properties and axioms concerning the construction of sets, see Basic Set Theory and Set theory. Here we give only a brief overview of the concept." (The articles referred to have since been renamed as Naive set theory and Axiomatic set theory resp.)
As subsequent editors, added new information to the beginning of the article, the placement of this "brief overview" language, gradually moved further into the article, until now it is "buried" as the last sentence of the "Definitions of sets" section. Consequently I suspect that some new editors are unaware that some of the material being added to this article is already in, or should be added to Naive set theory or even Axiomatic set theory (e.g. Well foundedness? Hypersets?).
If it is agreed that, Set is supposed to be a "brief overview" of the idea of a set, while Naive set theory and Axiomatic set theory give more detail, I propose two things:
Comments?
Paul August 20:23, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)
I have moved the sections on "Well-foundedness" and "Hypersets" to Axiomatic set theory, which I think is a more appropriate place for them - based on the idea expressed above that the Set article shold be a "brief overview". Paul August 07:34, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)
I should have added a third item to my proposal:
3. Rewrite the remaining parts of Set in a more elementary style. (The idea being that Set would be at the elementary/high school level, Naive set theory would be at a high school/college level and Axiomatic set theory at a college/graduate school level)
If you want to look at a first draft of a rewrite of
Set, see:
Paul August/Set.
lastly, a couple of questions about notation. Why is "{}" preferred over ∅ for the empty set? "{}" looks kinda ugly to my jaundiced eye. Also is A\B preferred over A - B for set theoretic difference?
Actually I've got lots more questions, (especially about markup - are there any standards?) but that's enough for now. If this is not really the right place for all this, then my apologies. Paul August 03:47, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)
(Note: I've taken the liberty of moving the disccussion on "{}" versus ∅ which used follow here to the following new section below. Hope that's koser ;-) Paul August 18:14, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC))
A friend of mine recently pointed out to me another article that should be considered in a revision of our set theory coverage: Language of set theory. It's a poor article currently, but you might be able to take it somewhere. I was thinking perhaps that it should highlight how other mathematics can be built using set theoretic language (for example, how relations, functions, and ordered pairs are expressed as sets.) Isomorphic 18:05, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
(Note: I've taken the liberty of moving the disccussion on "{}" versus ∅ from the previous section to here. Paul August 18:14, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC))
Why is "{}" preferred over ∅ for the empty set? "{}" looks kinda ugly to my jaundiced eye. Paul August 03:47, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)
Based on the above It looks like there might be an emerging consensus that &empty is better than {}. any objections? I wouldn't mind going around and changing {} to &empty. But it's a little work, and I don't want to do it if anyone is just going to change them all back. Paul August 20:17, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)
I make a very strong vote against ∅. Why? Almost all our readers use IE, which doesn't support it! I like <math>\varnothing</math>, because the software can render it according to user preferences and HTTP browser information, which is the best solution for everyone (if it doesn't do this now, at least the potential is there). Derrick Coetzee 01:39, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
\def\emptyset{\varnothing}
, and then use \emptyset later on.
BACbKA 23:25, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)I think the notation {} is too confusing. We should use some variation on the slashed O sign, even if it doesn't render properly everywhere. Gadykozma 05:03, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
In my opinion {} or { } is better because it still has a connection to the set notation due to the braces. whereas is a completely new symbol and the connection with emtpy set has to learned and cannot be inferred. MathMartin 22:28, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I would say that {} is the empty set, while is a symbol for it. Which notation to use should depend on the context. — Miguel 18:01, 2004 Nov 26 (UTC)
Out of curiousity could you provide an example where it is better to use than {} ? MathMartin 22:00, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Avoid notational conventions! Sometimes "{}" works better, sometimes "∅" works better; sometimes TeXvc works better, sometimes it doesn't. There are special circumstances; if a common browser cannot render a version, then it's justified to warn writers against that version. Still, the only basis for debate in that case is to determine whether the special circumstance obtains, and the only conclusion to draw is that the number of options is lowered by one. Of course, people that are interested in æsthetics are free to discuss their personal preferences as much as they like; I have my own opinion on this matter, which I'd be happy to chat about on my talk page or even by email. But Wikipedia does not need a standard for every notational debate. -- Toby Bartels 23:55, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Someone edited the set article, changing each set union symbol "∪" (i.e &cup) to an uppercase U, because they were displaying as boxes. Is there a problem with rendering ∪? It looks ok for me (Safari, IE, OmniWeb on MAC OSX). Does anybody else have problems with this? Paul August 19:48, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)
At User_talk:ShaunMacPherson, I have invited that person to discuss on this page his implicit decision to move hundreds of articles titled ABCD's theorem to ABCD's Theorem with a capital T, and similarly for conjectures, lemmas, axioms, etc. In case anyone can be more effective in persuading him that I can, I mention that here. (If you are Schaun MacPherson and do not wish to pursue the matter, please feel free to delete this section.) Michael Hardy 20:40, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)