The first paragraph of mathematical proof sounds a bit strange to me. It says:
I don't think that this has ever been a standard definition of "mathematical proof". For example Euclids' proof that there are infinitely many primes couldn't be expressed in the "axiom->theorem" form until Peano axiomatized arithmetic, and have been called "a proof" for centuries (and we can find many other proofs that didn't have the "axiom->theorem" form until Zermelo&C. axiomatized set theory or Robinson axiomatized Non-Standard Analysis).
Moreover: Why a proof of the irrationality of e should be "a demonstration that assuming certain axioms and rules of inference e is necessarily irrational" and not just "a demonstration that e is irrational"? If there is no problem with using vague expressions like "demonstration" we can assert directly the second one. The first seems to express a formalistic point of view.
This seems arbitrary:
What do you think?
-- Pokipsy76 ( talk) 08:04, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Tacit extension is a stub article on mathematical logic which, if legitimate, certainly does not say enough; it doesn't really make clear what the concept is. So:
Ampheck (on AfD), Boolean domain, Boolean-valued function, Comprehension (logic), Continuous predicate, Descriptive science, Hypostatic abstraction, Hypostatic object, Inquiry, Inverse relation, Logic of information, Logic of relatives, Logic of Relatives (1870), Logic of Relatives (1883), Logical graph, Logical matrix, Minimal negation operator, Multigrade operator, Normative science, Parametric operator, Pragmatic maxim, Prescisive abstraction, Relation composition, Relation construction, Relation reduction, Relative term, Semeiotic, Semiotic information theory, Sign relation, Sign relational complex, Sole sufficient operator, Tacit extension, Theory of relations, Triadic relation, Types of relations, Zeroth order logic. Most articles seem to be protected as of now. -- Salix alba ( talk) 10:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Boolean logic in computer science has been moved back to Boolean logic. It has been zigzagging a bit lately: [2]. -- Lambiam 15:34, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Oleg, do articles in Category:Population genetics show up on the "current activity" page? One could say that this is not mathematics per se and that maybe the fact that an article belongs in that category doesn't always mean that it's mathematical. But nearly all of the articles in that category are on something in mathematics that is known almost only to those who apply mathematics to biology. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:45, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
Looking at occurrences of the search term "tacit extension" I was led to our Relation composition article. What a complete and total mess! This is a phenomenal example of "mathematics made difficult". Is there something salvageable in there? Any reason not to change this into a redirect to Composition of relations? -- Lambiam 09:32, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi all I am currently working on an Article Process Management (Computing) and I am having trouble with an equation that I want to put in as I cant get the format correct is there a tag or something that you use for such equations thanks in advance. BigDunc ( talk) 08:46, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Stevan Pilipović has been nominated for deletion - after originally being CSD'd as non-notable. I have no idea about the notability of this mathematician; comments are welcome here. Mostlyharmless ( talk) 23:12, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Various ways are in use for denoting the round symbol for composition using HTML markup:
None of these looks particularly good to me. The degree-sign solution is really ugly on the Mac OS X platform, as the little circle is kissing the f and shying away from the g, leaving a huge gap. I tend to prefer the small roman o, but recently, in an article where I used that, another editor changed it to degree signs. Is there any reason why I should not use small o's? Which is preferable in general? -- Lambiam 15:26, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
It was recommended that I ask my question here. If I have an idea for a mathematics project where can I purpose it? The Isiah ( talk) 13:42, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
My idea was this what if we create an index of theorems and their proofs. In such a way as that a mathematician can place a alphanumeric code on a paper that would refer to a proof found on wikipedia. An example: lets say that we have a proof of Pythagoreans theorem call it PP112 and I am a mathematician and I need that theorem to prove something else I could write "based on PP112 we can say....". The benefit of this system is that we can have a complete listing of every theorem in existence in an easily referenced way. An index of theorems with their proofs. The alphanumerics code could also give a hint about how what type of proof strategy was used like direct, by induction etc. as well as what type of theorem it is geometry, number theory, etc. Hope this seems like a good idea. The Isiah ( talk) 11:44, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I made a remak in the talk page about the intro but nobody considered the issue, so now I'm coming here.
In the intro of mathematical induction I read:
what is it referring to? We have a section "proof or reformulation of mathematical induction" where it is shown that MI can be proven assuming WOP and some other axioms, but this is something different from "logical equivalence". Shouldn't this be fixed in some way?-- Pokipsy76 ( talk) 17:35, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
(organized by Bill Casselman and David Austin)
Penrose tiling: overview of the article's development - article created with figure, additional figure violating parallelogram rule added, later fix of caption explaining figure violates parallelogram rule, eventual fix of the complete condition for Penrose tiling, removal of Richert claim. Casselman [David A, not me: Bill C] then attempted to demonstrate how to edit Wikipedia by editing a statement (which he disputed) that "Penrose tiling" usually refers to two special Penrose tilings with extra symmetry. But he ran into an edit conflict, so moved on. [Again from Bill C: I thought he recovered very well; it must have been one of the audience who made the change! after all.]
Floer homology: issues regarding readability of technical articles, made some quick comments about talk page discussion
Division by zero: briefly explained how this article had clearly been significantly improved upon, "don't know if Wikipedia needs an article like this" but said the article indicates quality on Wikipedia gets significantly better over time
Archimedes (and FAs in general): horrible article, not professionally written, many inaccuracies (explained how the historians of mathematics at the JMM had expressed their dissatisfaction with history of mathematics articles on Wikipedia), not enough about mathematical contributions
1) Casselman had clearly prepared some material on who edits Wikipedia. One slide, for example, (briefly flashed), showed a list of contributors, probably ranked by contributions. But he chose to skip this, and early on, he made some comment like "it's interesting to see who the primary contributors are but I won't talk about that" or something to that effect. I wonder if Arcfrk's comments had an effect here. At the end, he expressed the opinion that real name usage was the way to go, "...it raises the level of discourse much more quickly to a mature level."
2) Casselman and Austin both seemed very knowledgable about how Wikipedia functioned, for example, comments on !votes as "the participants don't vote...it ends up being determined by committee somehow. I wish I knew more of how it worked." Interestingly, some very pragmatic advice on how to start editing Wikipedia was given. The first step, according to them, is to avoid editing popular topics. Pick a little worked-upon topic and work on it extensively before moving on to more major topics.
3) They expressed a desire to set up something where the AMS could help mathematicians learn to contribute to Wikipedia, possibly utilizing WikiProject Mathematics.
4) One criticism I heard of the presentation (and one that occurred to me also) is that the abstract suggested the issue of disputes over mathematics articles would be investigated in some depth, but this did not occur, only some brief comments on "too many cooks". There are a variety of interesting ways disputes arise over math articles (usually because of the "cooks" issue) but none of this was shown. I know a number of people were disappointed by this. [Bill C sez: we ran out of time, sorry about that. Why didn't you ask questions at the end? In my talk I raised the topic that someone had brougt to my attention, a Computer Science guy who was investigating how consensus was formed on Wikipdia. Does anybody know about this?]
1) Casselman commented upon how Sanger advocated an "expert" approach while Wales advocated "anarchy". It didn't seem to me he was aware of Jimbo's somewhat nuanced position on authority and credentials, per the whole Essjay controversy and his subsequent proposal to authenticate people's credentials.
2) WikiProject Mathematics and the Math MoS was discussed at several points. The MoS was commented upon favorably, but the Project got a bit of a black eye. Namely, Casselman (or was it Austin?) showed the ratings table and started discussing the math FAs. His general conclusion (as mentioned above) is they had a lot of problems and were certainly far from the standard he expected from the FA criteria. For example, he commented upon the many footnotes which do not actually act to make the article more reliable. He did not mention (probably because he was unaware) [Bill C: yes, unaware. Not mentioned in the ratings themselves, where FA lies on top of A class.] any of the controversy about math FAs and the friction between FAC/FAR editors and Project members (particularly about this whole footnote issue). He also did not mention the A class articles, which was set up to avoid FAC and some here may consider more representative of the best math articles on Wikipedia than the FAs.
[I left a message on Casselman and Austin's talk pages linking this discussion.] -- C S ( talk) 19:57, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I see, á propos, that nobody commented on the FAR of Gauss, except me, briefly. There's a case for ignoring FA completely; but if we do, we should cease to note it in the project statistics, and we should probably lobby for another way to pick front page articles. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:10, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
(independent comment: ec) Many many thanks for reporting so carefully on this here, C S. I am particularly interested in the comments about ratings. One thing I would emphasise is that these are primarily a tool for editors not for readers, which is why they are placed on talk pages.
However, FA is a bit of an exception, because of the high profile and the little star these articles get. In this regard, we all know that it is quite difficult to get maths articles listed as FA, because of all the WP:MoS and inline citation hoops, but I have also found it surprising that it takes quite a bit of work to delist an FA whose content quality is poor. My main experience was with Galileo, an article that utterly failed to address his mathematical contribution. To list this as FAR, I was expected to make a serious attempt to fix the problems, which I am not qualified to do, so I ignored it. Eventually, after some weeks and disagreements, it was delisted. I suspect it would be a lot of work to delist (say) Archimedes for inadequate coverage of his huge contribution to mathematics. I don't have any conclusion to make here. Does anyone else? Geometry guy 23:20, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, thank you very much for reporting on the WikiMath section. A few follow-up questions:
Arcfrk ( talk) 00:40, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I think it's a good time of year to reflect on the status of the project. What articles did you feel were success stories in 2007? Are there any articles or processes that should be given more emphasis in 2008? What's the status of mathematics on Wikipedia at the end of 2007? — Carl ( CBM · talk) 14:09, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
According to the section of the WikiProject page, "some issues to think about":
“ | Probably the hardest part of writing a mathematical article (actually, any article) is the difficulty of addressing the level of mathematical knowledge on the part of the reader. For example, when writing about a field, do we assume that the reader already knows group theory? A general approach is to start simple, then move toward more abstract and general statements as the article proceeds. The suggestions below are intended to help us achieve this.
When describing a concept in terms of some other concept (for example, explaining rational numbers in terms of integers), be sure to:
|
” |
I find there are many incomprehensible Wikipedia articles on mathematics, physics and related subjects, which is unfortunate, given the importance of mathematical thinking in being able to gain a deeper understanding of many useful subjects, ranging from economics to technology. Bear in mind that those who are able to understand the technical concepts are those who have the least need to look them up in a general encyclopædia!
However, adding a prominent link to relevant articles is not enough, as it may lead readers on a wild-hyperlink-chase, if you will: they find a concept they don't understand, so they click on it, only to be sent to another article that assumes a level of mathematical knowedge they don't have. Rather, the default should be to:
By the way, I oppose the use of " trampoline" articles for any but the broadest of topics, such as, perhaps calculus. As far as I know, most print encyclopædias don't use them, unless you count the articles in Micropædia, which aren't really trampoline articles anyway.
Finally I wish to suggest that WikiProject general audience be revived. 69.140.159.215 ( talk) 03:42, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
On a related subject, the Joint Math Meetings in San Diego will feature the AMS Special Presentation Wiki Math, organized by Bill Casselman, Tuesday January 8, 2008, 2:15 p.m.–4:15 p.m. The abstract sounds very intriguing, and I think that the Math Project should send its deputies (incognito?) to check it out. Arcfrk ( talk) 15:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi all, finally some data for page view of Wikipedia articles is available [3]. So I thought I'd use that to see what the most popular mathematics articles are. For the first twelve hour of December 10 2007 the most view articles were:
you can see a more extensive listing at User:Salix alba/One day of mathematics page views, and more detail day by day listings of individual articles at [4]. -- Salix alba ( talk) 14:00, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
One thing I did note was that Portal:Mathematics gets a quite a high number of page views, more than the Mathematics page. I guess this is because it is linked from the Main page. As such it serves as an important route into the mathematics articles, yet does not seem to get much attention. -- Salix alba ( talk) 12:20, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
List of scientific theories and laws. AfD? Mct mht ( talk) 11:56, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Would some mathematicians give their opinion at Wikipedia:Peer review/Force? Thanks a 10^6. ScienceApologist ( talk) 18:20, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I would appreciate some help in this discussion (as well as the two sections below it). There's a dispute over whether three parameters can be mapped to a geometric solid. SharkD ( talk) 03:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Please take a look to the edits by an unregistered user who cutted a lot of things, I don't understand them quite well and I am a little skeptic.-- Pokipsy76 ( talk) 17:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
User:Deego seems to have decided that most or all of the articles about mathematical software read like advertising and is flinging around frivolous advert & notability tags. I have reverted some, but he is restoring tags when I (and others) revert. Can an admin familiar with this general class of article please have a look at his recent contributions? -- Pleasantville ( talk) 16:59, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Dear all,
Uninterested third party here. I have looked at User:Pleasantville, and overall she seems to be a constructive Wikipedia editor. I also see on User:Pleasantville that she does work for Wolfram, and so hopefully I think it's best to be mindful of WP:COI and the guidelines on external links and promotional material (see, e.g., [5], [6], [7], [8]).
I cannot say anything about User:Deego.
Sincerely,
Loisel ( talk) 22:55, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I was going to stay out of this, but I did just notice while browsing Wikipedia that Deego has been insistent on tagging the The Geometry Center article with a notability tag. This seems highly misguided, especially after a link to a Science article about the Center was added. The original WP article perhaps didn't do such a good job of establishing "notability", although certainly anybody that read the article carefully would not have tagged it. But the Science article gives good context, e.g. Center was first NSF Science and Technology Center, involvement of several Fields Medalists, early Web involvement (one of first 100 websites). I expect Deego mistakenly tagged some other articles too. -- C S ( talk) 04:59, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I have learned that the ability to rollback edits, which is used to revert vandalism more easily, can now be granted to non-admin users. Unlike the undo operation, rollback does not require entering an edit summary and can be done from the user contributions page. It should be used only to revert edits that are clearly vandalism, but does make this more convenient. At the moment, any admin can enable the rollback ability for any user (I don't understand the process by which this was determined). If you are interested, please ask me or another admin on this list. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 21:27, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Is this similar or based on anything real, or is it basically just a one-off joke limited to Futurama: Bender's Big Score? A google search reveals 23 hits and a google news and books search gets zilch, so it doesn't appear to be a "real" theorem. I'm sorry if it's a stupid question, but I never was any good at math... -- Scorpion 0422 01:20, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Category:Abel Prize laureates has been nominated for deletion. 132.205.44.5 ( talk) 23:13, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Is it possible to jump to a random math article (just like Special:Random, but restricted to math articles)? Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 18:35, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
There is a discussion going on whether the newly split-off Category:Metalogic should be merged back into Category:Logic. -- Lambiam 10:25, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
The article Grounded relation has been proposed for deletion. -- Lambiam 05:38, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
New user Ultra.Power has recently created three almost identical articles: Ultra power, Ultra Exponential Function and Infra Logarithm Function, and added links to them to other mathematics articles and lists. These articles appear to be describing a non-standard, non-notable, single sourced version of the tetration operation. I first saw Infra Logarithm Function on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity (other articles were not categorised) and added a prod tag. User:Utcursch quickly removed the prod tag with an edit comment "notable for mathematicians". Are these functions notable under these names and notation ? I haven't come across them in this guise before - I would say that the "ultra power" function is called hyperpower or tetration - and the articles do not seem to be saying anything that is not already covered by the tetration article. Views ? Gandalf61 ( talk) 10:58, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
What this article calls the "infra logarithm function" is common in algorithm analysis, with the notation (pronounced log-star). I agree that the nomenclature in that article appears to be a neologism, though. — David Eppstein ( talk) 20:50, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
It would be a shame to outright delete these articles, destroying this misplaced but interesting contribution from a talented user. A merge would be better, given the nice explanations and examples given in the articles. Is there a deletion discussion ongoing? Tparameter ( talk) 02:58, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
In irrational number, someone has added this:
They've cited an item published in that year. But it seems likely that the proposition is far far older than that. Perhaps what was published was a new proof of an old theorem. Does someone here know the facts? Michael Hardy ( talk) 06:17, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
The article titled Euler's formula says:
If it had said " complex number" rather than " real number", the identity would of course still be correct. The question is whether that statement ought to be called "Euler's formula"? Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:07, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
(outdent, edit conflict) I don't think the question asked was what people ought to say, but what the encyclopedia ought to claim as truth. FWIW I think we can safely describe the complex-z version as "Euler's formula", irrespective of whether Euler himself considered complex z's. (One source for this usage is Ian Stewart and David Tall: Complex Analysis, Cambridge University Press 1983, p. 85). It seems to be generally accepted that named theorems may be restated in newer terminology, or even generalized to new settings, without losing their name. For example, you can use Euclid's algorithm in domains that Euclid had never heard of (and would have considered grievous fallacies of concept if he had); or pick up a selection of algebra texts and marvel at the variety of propositions billed as the Nullstellensatz. – Henning Makholm 01:42, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Why doesn't Category:List-Class mathematics articles exist? Nousernamesleft talk and matrix? 02:10, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
This seems to be part of a pattern of categories of prize winners nominated for deletion [16]
Does anyone know what is going on here? It seems someone called
User:Lquilter has some kind of mass deletion of categories campaign using some spurious criterion called "over categorization by award". Is there such a concept? Has it been agreed somewhere as a principle? I think we need to look at what is happening here and nip it in the bud before we everything including
Category:Fields Medalists.
Billlion (
talk)
09:01, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
See also User_talk:Billlion#categories vs. lists where I reply to a query by User:Lquilter. It be interested in people's opinion over the value of categories in database searches. Billlion ( talk) 01:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
In the Spherical coordinate system, there are three quantities that define a coordinate: distance from the origin, azimuth, and zenith (collatitude).
The symbols used for these quantities has historically been inconsistent, and worse, in Wikipedia it is internally inconsistent. Compare:
Main problem is azimuth and zenith. Some use and , others and . This catches my attention because I have a homework assignment that I'm working on now, and I was terribly confused. The literature in general is confusing because different sources follow different conventions, but Wikipedia is especially tragic because it's self inconsistent.
So I suggest we unify things. I'd be happy to scavenge every trace of inconsistency and fix it myself. But I thought I'd discuss first. I suggest that we go with Wolfram's convention [17]. It's nice because:
Main problem is confusing and . Yesterday was the first time I worked in spherical coordinates. In cylindrical coordinates, is azimuth, and I found it really confusing that some sources use this for zenith in spherical coordinates. Why in the world would it be the opposite of cylindrical coordinates? Makes about as much sense as an extremely poisonous frog driving a motorboat. I'm mentioning this so that you see the point of view of someone who's just stumbled on the topic...
Let's get a consensus so I'll get to work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ben pcc ( talk • contribs) 21:32, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Coincidentally, just today I've seen a remark in an undergraduate level textbook on differential geometry to the effect that the use of phi and theta for spherical coordinates in this book is the opposite of the convention adapted by many authors of calculus textbooks. Arcfrk ( talk) 04:55, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't think you'll ever achieve consistency here. Different people feel too strongly about one convention or another. Personally, I would vote for using θ for the zenith angle and φ for the azimuthal; for two reasons:
I realize that others will (strongly) disagree. I think the most we can hope for is consistency within an article. -- Fropuff ( talk) 17:28, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Since I am very unlikely to contribute any deep insights myself, here are the most relevant links I have found so far.
From reading these sources I have learned that things are much more complicated than I thought. Apparently, whether someone writes (ρ,φ,θ) or (ρ,θ,φ) is related to the exact definition of φ and θ including handedness. Both the symbols and the order in which they are written vary. -- Hans Adler ( talk) 19:03, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Looking at the flurry of different opinions, I think that this sucks. Mathworld's convention makes more sense and is supported by some people who are easily confused (eg me), but rest of world uses something else. I'm not sure what to do or what can be done.
But one note: it's supposed to be ok as long as things are "clearly defined". In the spherical coordinates it's clearly defined, not usually so anywhere else around here. Usually I have to recognize something like and go from there. Put a picture of spheric coordinates in each article? A link to latitude? An explicit statement that "we're going for [or against] the convention in [some source]"? It. Sucks. Terribly. Math isn't supposed to suck like this. That's what metric vs customary is for. This is even worse than . - Ben pcc ( talk) 21:22, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
The word zenith for an angular coordinate is incorrect. Zenith means upwards. This must be corrected. The words "Azimuth" and "Zenith Distance" are specific for horizontal coordinate system and not for general spherical coordinates. Bo Jacoby ( talk) 23:37, 23 January 2008 (UTC).
There's a discussion at Talk:Integral regarding whether we should make the multiplication (if we believe there to actually be one) in an integral explicit. That is, should we write
or
At first blush this seemed straightforward to me: the latter is diverging from standard usage, and even assuming there actually is a multiplication (rather than an anachronistic notational juxtaposition) seemed to be tacitly accepting infinitesimals (and thus going outside the range of definitions of integral discussed on Integral; Riemann, Lebesgue, etc.). Discussion of these points didn't help resolve the issue, and the discussion has now waded into deeper waters than I have the desire or time to get involved in. Perhaps I'm just wrong, or coming at the problem from too narrow a perspective; analysis isn't my field anyway. I would appreciate any input people can provide. -- Leland McInnes ( talk) 14:44, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
WARNING: Bo Jacoby ahead. -- C S ( talk) 17:47, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
If one does a change of variables (uses the chain rule), then
which justifies to me the idea that the integrand is multiplied by the differential. JRSpriggs ( talk) 01:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I just spent a half-hour doing some edits on Gershgorin circle theorem that would normally take a minute or two. Five minutes after saving it, I still can't see the article after the edits. TeX seems not to be working today. All I see in the article is the TeX code. I tried previewing it repeatedly while editing, and it never worked. Is this happening to everyone else? Michael Hardy ( talk) 14:54, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Can someone look at logical graphs and tell me if its real or not? It's essentially incomprehensible to me, and is written in such a style as to make me not want to even try to comprehend it. For a while, I confused it with G. Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form, for which I have a personal distaste for, as its shallow, clothed with un-needed cryptic drivel, and is just barely on this side of the distinction of real-vs.-crank math. So, with that prejudice, I was taken aback to find the article on logical graphs, which I can't make heads or tails out of. linas ( talk) 04:58, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Hello,
The French Wikipedia article Arithmétique modulaire is (in my opinion) an extremely good article, that I would like to translate into English. The article is much more technical than modular arithmetic on the English Wikipedia. What they did in the French Wikipedia was to have two articles: congruences on the integers (non-technical) and modular arithmetic (technical). I suggest we do something similar here. I just wanted your opinion on this before starting this (rather big) work.
Randomblue ( talk) 12:03, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
There is a way to move an article from French Wikipedia to English Wikipedia with the edit history intact and translate it and have the translated version's edit history show all edits both before and after the translation. I don't know how it is done. A number of articles I originated got translated into German and appear on German Wikipedia with me as the original author, and if you go back in the edit history you see the article on which I worked is in English. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:32, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I am looking for other editors to participate in a broad task force to organize Wikipedia's articles on Boolean algebra, propositional logic, and related topics. The current organization is quite idiosyncratic, and has been the subject of discussion before. The initial goal of the task force would be to outline the current structure of these articles (the topics covered by each and how they interconnect) and discuss improvements to this organization. If we are successful we will come out with a proposal that can be announced more widely.
Participating in the task force would not require a large time commitment. If you are interested, please look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Logic/Boolean algebra task force and add yourself to the list of editors. The page was created under WikiProject Logic only for convenience. I hope that I will be able to gather editors with a wide range of backgrounds to participate. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:59, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I amended the assessment from Stub to Start-Class now that someone has added a decent amount of bio. Hope that's ok. Secret Squïrrel, approx 12:00, 29 January 2008 (Earth Standard Time)
Hi. You may be familiar with the Philip Greenspun Illustration Project. $20,000 has been donated to pay for the creation of high quality diagrams for Wikipedia and its sister projects.
Requests are currently being taken at m:Philip Greenspun illustration project/Requests and input from members of this project would be very welcome. If you can think of any diagrams (not photos or maps) that would be useful then I encourage you to suggest them at this page. If there is any free content material that would assist in drawing the diagram then it would be great if you could list that, too.
If there are any related (or unrelated) WikiProjects you think might have some suggestions then please pass this request over. Thanks. -- Cherry blossom tree 16:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
The surprisingly new article titled extraneous solution could use some work. Michael Hardy ( talk) 13:50, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Archimedes has made it to the Main Page, there may be some edits to watch for. BTW did we lose the convention for bolding main page articles, they all seem to be bold. -- Salix alba ( talk) 21:10, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
That "supposed quote" by Gauss struck a discordant note with me. With a few mouse clicks, it can be traced to a sentence in E.T.Bell (the actual expression used was "epoch making"), and as the regulars will no doubt remember, his assertions should be taken with a pot load of salt. Incidentally, Gauss famously left deeply emerged in thought after Riemann's inaugurational lecture "On the hypotheses which lie at the foundation of geometry". Thus Riemann's insight was so revolutionary that it left Gauss speechless I don't think that an endorsement from Gauss is either necessary or appropriate for the article about Archimedes, though. Arcfrk ( talk) 00:46, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Shortly after Euclid, compiler of the definitive textbook, came Archimedes of Saracuse (ca. 287-212 B.C.), the most original and profound mathematician of antiquity.That book also states that Gauss restricts to Archimedes along with Newton the term summus. -- Jitse Niesen ( talk) 11:36, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
It is tempting to use this terminology because of the intuition that it conveys (within a certain context), but is such use widely accepted? The article lists no references. Arcfrk ( talk) 09:45, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
I've suggested an idea at Talk:Second-order_logic#Explain formula idea and given an example there. I thought it would be good if there could be an "Explain formula" link next to complicated formula, that would show/hide an explanation. Perhaps a template could be created for this kind of thing. Any comments on this idea? — Egriffin ( talk) 16:29, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
I recall reading somewhere that only one proof of a certain proposition should be in an article, so how does one choose the proof? For example, in the article Simson line. there exists a more elementary proof than the one given. Should I replace it or not? Nousernamesleft copper, not wood 03:07, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Whether there should be only one or more than one within the article depends on the purpose of inclusion of the proof. With Pythagorean theorem or quadratic reciprocity, the fact that so many different proofs exist is notable. With propositions whose proofs are routine, I'd often want to include only one. Michael Hardy ( talk) 15:31, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Foundations of statistics has been nomited for deletion. As we've seen happen before, the arguments for deletion go something like this:
I think maybe I'll try to start a statistics WikiProject. There's no community and Wikipedia work in that field, even by those who know it well, is so uneven because we lack conventions and the like.
Express opinions on that article here. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:23, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Inspired by a post at the village pump, I'm wondering if anyone else thinks there ought to be a link to Jitse's random article tool on Portal:Mathematics, as seen on Portal:Middle Earth for example. (And Jitse: would you mind?) Algebraist 23:20, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Petergans, a retired specialist in least squares (among other things), rewrote the article on linear least squares from a more specialized point of view which is harder to understand. Now he wants do the same thing for Gauss-Newton algorithm (a nonlinear least squares algorithm). See Talk:linear least squares and Talk:Gauss-Newton algorithm .
While experts are welcome on Wikipedia, rewriting articles from their point of view and making them not comprihensible to others is I think not good. Can we have a discussion here on that, to keep the conversation in one place and have it be seen by more folks? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 16:01, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
one place and have it be seen by more folks? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 16:01, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Dear Oleg and Petergans,
If I were an external reviewer, I would say that the new article is not ready for prime time.
Aside from Oleg's criticism, I have the additional criticism that the new article inserts statistics into every possible nook and cranny. This obscures the main idea and should have been segregated to its own subsection.
Petergans, wikipedia needs experts like you, but it's a learning process (or at least it was for me). I must say I'm not familiar with all the articles on Wikipedia, but please compare your linear least squares and numerical analysis, integral or Eigenvalue, eigenvector and eigenspace, I think that's the direction we're going as a whole in the Wikipedia math project.
Sincerely,
Loisel ( talk) 16:53, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for alerting me to the discussion on this page. Let me explain my motivation for proposing the major project. It stems from the fact that I'm an experimentalist (chemistry), not a mathematician. The earlier linear least squares article would be all but incomprehensible to most chemists, if not others like physicists and biologists. So naturally, I have slanted my draft articles towards the experimentalist, that is, towards the application of least squares methods rather than their purely mathematical basis. Here we have a dilemma. The chemist will not be familiar with specialist mathematical notation, and the mathematician will find the applications aspect difficult!
A second motivation was the apalling lack of consistency in notation across related articles. In particular I feel it is important that both least squares and regression analysis be presented in more or less consistent notation. Otherwise it looks as though they are completely separate topics, which they are not.
Thirdly, the current Gauss-Newton algorithm totally misses the point, that it deals with a sum of squared residuals, as is clearly stated in the lead-in of the introductory article, least squares. There's nothing wrong with the maths, but it's not about the Gauss-Newton method as I know it.
For the moment non-linear least squares resides in User:Petergans/b/sandbox. I will revise it in the light of comments, both here and on talk:least squares or talk:Gauss-Newton algorithm. It can then be moved to its own page, where you guys or any else can tweak it further. The question remains, what to do about Gauss-Newton algorithm, re-write it or over-write it?
My draft adresses all four of these issues. Petergans ( talk) 22:06, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
I am puzzled as to what, exactly, you guys find more difficult about my presentation than about the older one. Is it the use of matrix notation? Is it the reference to experimental data? Is it the inclusion of statistics? Is it too generalized? Regarding statistics, from my perspective the optimal values of the least squares parameters are meaningless without estimates of the associated uncertainties, which indicate how many digits of the value are significant - the experimentalist needs to know both the results and how reliable they are. Petergans ( talk) 08:50, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Oleg has moved the article from my sandbox to non-linear least squares and placed a redirect in User:Petergans/b/sandbox so that I can no longer use it. This is premature and out of order. Will an administrator please restore my sandbox, remove the article non-linear least squares and the redirect in User:Petergans/b/sandbox, so that I can work on the draft in the light of the discussion here, before "publishing" it. Petergans ( talk) 00:24, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Jakob.scholbach suggested looking at the German version of least squares. I have also looked at the French version. This is how the problem is stated there.
Les quantités , inverses des variances des mesures sont appelés poids des mesures. (Literal translation) The quantities , the inverses of the variances of the measurements are called the "weights" of the measurements
Both French and German articles are based on the premise that least squares is applied mathematics, and that therefore the physical circumstances of its applications are an integral part of it. Petergans ( talk) 09:48, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I have found that there are two articles on this topic which slightly contradict each other - Newton's method uses the function and 1st derivative. I was taught this at school as the Newton-Raphson method. Then there is Newton's method in optimization which brings in the 2nd derivatives. Is there a generally agreed way to distinguish between the two methods? I would refer to them as first and second order Newton methods. Petergans ( talk) 14:24, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
This question has reared its head again at WP:VPP#Mathematics. Algebraist 01:34, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Do we have a policy or guideline on the use of technical terms? If not, we should.
I was just looking at finite element method, and it uses two technical terms, "Dirichlet condition" and "displacement condition", to refer to the same thing.
I personally think that, as much as possible, a single article should stick to a single notation, and a single technical term per concept. I think listing other terminologies and notations is a good thing, but I don't think that intermixing terminologies and notations within the article, for no good reason, helps in any way.
So do we have such a policy? Where is it?
Loisel ( talk) 04:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
The first paragraph of WP:MOS does provide some guidance on this issue. -- Sturm 11:07, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
I did not find the term "Dirichlet condition" in Finite element method. -- Lambiam 22:25, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Is there a standard format and location for numerical examples in mathematics articles? Examples seem to be scattered or non-existant. See: Expected_value - 2 in intro; Standard_deviation - 1st section, step by step; variance - no example. If there is no standard, should we make one? -- Zojj ( t, c) 01:37, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
This article has had a rough start and could use some help. One important part is to improve the references, but this is a big task. An easy first step is to check the provided references to see if they actually support the claims made, and a second is to format the surviving references in a standard fashion. Silly rabbit and I have made some progress on this, but it would be good to have a few more eyes on the project. The topic may be heavily influenced by physics, so those with a dual background would be particularly helpful. As a warning: the original authors may have a WP:COI and may feel they are not being treated WP:CIVILly since their work has been called non-notable and proposed for deletion really quite a few times now. I think this is just an inherent problem with COI edits, and that there has not really been any incivility, but I felt I should warn you about the probable difficulty in finding consensus on the article as a whole. This should not really affect the refcheck, but when you comment on the references, you might want to double check you aren't accidentally insulting someone or otherwise inadvertently inciting something awful. Thanks for any help. JackSchmidt ( talk) 05:24, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Recently, I noticed that SVD was an article about a sniper rifle, with no reference to any other meanings. When I google search svd, most of the hits on the front page are for Singular value decomposition, a few are for other meanings, and only one (the wikipedia article) is for the rifle.
I moved the rifle article to SVD (rifle) and made SVD a disambiguation page. The creator of the rifle article has since moved SVD (the disambig page) to SVD (disambiguation) and put the rifle article back at SVD with the comment that "google gets enough first page hits to indicate this is a firearm". (Does google tailor your hits based on previous searches?) They did add a link to the disambiguation page at the top, which is good.
Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary_topic indicates that when there is a well-known primary meaning or phrase, that topic may be used for the main article with a link to the disambiguation page. Is the rifle really the primary meaning of SVD? Is this worth arguing about? Where would be a good place to have the "extended discussion" that might indicate that there is no primary meaning, and that SVD should be the disambiguation page? -- KathrynLybarger ( talk) 06:13, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
It seems that Talk:SVD should be moved to Talk:SVD (rifle). But Talk:SVD (rifle) already exists (although it is trivial) so I couldn't move it myself. Some admin should move it, preferably one who has been involved with the other recent moves in this cluster of articles. -- Dominus ( talk) 15:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Today I stubbed out an article about logician Warren Goldfarb of Harvard University. It was later tagged for speedy deletion since it did not sufficiently establish Goldfarb's notability.
I have contested the deletion: I believe Goldfarb is notable, although I agree that I did not establish this in the stub article. But before I put more effort into it, I would like feedback from members of this community: is Warren Goldfarb sufficiently notable to merit a Wikipedia article?
Thanks for any feedback you can provide.
-- Dominus ( talk) 01:14, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks all, and especially to DGG, who removed the speedy tag, and to David Eppstein, because I was completely unaware of Goldfarb's significance as an openly gay professor and his founding of the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus.
Several people mentioned his named chair as being evidence of notability. I was not aware that this was important. Can someone briefly explain its significance?
Thanks again, -- Dominus ( talk) 06:15, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to draw your attention to an issue in the definition of Decidability (logic), namely whether that definition should be based on the imprecise notion of "effective method", or the precise notion of "recursive computability". See Talk:Decidability (logic)#Precise and imprecise definitions. -- Lambiam 16:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
We at WP:1.0 are currently testing a bot for selecting articles for offline release, based on a balance of importance and quality. You are familiar with the quality scale, but we are also trying assess article importance. We want to develop a good algorithm that uses a four-component formula involving WikiProject assessment (Top/High/Mid/Low), no. of hits, no. of links-in and no. of interlanguage (interwiki) links. We now have some test results for Maths (scroll down to reach Maths), and we'd really appreciate feedback on the various algorithms. The first is a simple addition of weighted components, but the other two use a logarithmic function (which is more valid mathematically?!). Which algorithm works best - sort2, sort3 or sort4? We want to see that the listed articles are ordered from the highest importance-quality to the lowest; which list looks to be giving the most sensible ordering? Many thanks, Walkerma ( talk) 22:17, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
As much as I prefer to ignore wikipolitics to the extent possible, there's a question that may interest some here at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Proposal. -- Trovatore ( talk) 03:10, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
(←) I remember a while back there were some issues with the GA process, particularly regarding the formatting and use of inline citations; this was a motivation for the scientific citation guideline. But Geometry guy assures me this has gotten better.
I think it's important to remember that the project itself doesn't have a voice; individual editors do. If a large number of editors here all feel strongly about something, they will speak up about it, but I attribute this to their own personalities as much as anything else. Unfortunately, it can come across as "math vs. everyone else", which is a perception I think everyone should be careful not to cultivate. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 22:23, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
I looked at WP:MOSMATH this morning, and I realized that it doesn't actually contain much advice about editorial style. It does contain a small amount, but mostly it gives advice about how to structure and write a WP mathematics article. Compare it to the real manual of style to see the difference. Both have specific purposes. I think it would be reasonable to do some combination of the following:
This would eliminate any confusion about the role of MOSMATH as advice about how to write good math articles on Wikipedia, rather than advice about how to punctuate those articles. Thoughts? — Carl ( CBM · talk) 16:00, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Here are a few things that are sorely lacking from the Mathematics Manual of Style:
It would also be helpful to comment on duplication of material in the "main" article and the corresponding sections elsewhere. This is part of a much wider consistency issue that is very, very challenging, but in some limited contexts, we can try to reign it in. It seems to be quite common practise to edit the section "History of algebraic widgets" of "Algebraic widgetology" to the extent that it becomes much more expansive than the corresponding "main" article, or sometimes, directly conradicts to the corresponding "main" entry. Conversely, some editors dump material from the "main" article into the sections of other articles, without first checking that it's correct. Frequently, it results in lowering the quality of the subsection (which could have been written later and/or by more expert editor). Arcfrk ( talk) 01:55, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Arcfrk's issues probably should not be discussed at WP:MOSMATH unless we have reason to differ from other articles, which we may. (Links to other guidelines make sense.) They should be covered, at least by cross-reference, at WP:MOS; at least #3 (headers and so forth) is covered in some detail. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:04, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
This is a courtesy posting. Please post your particular comments on individual articles on their repective discussion pages. I suggest that comments relating to more than one article be posted on talk: least squares. Please also note request to delete Weighted least squares
which contain more technical details, but it has sufficient detail to stand on its own.
In addition Gauss-Newton algorithm has been revised. The earlier article contained a serious error regarding the validity of setting second derivatives to zero. Points to notice include:
This completes the fist phase of restructuring of the topic of least squares analysis. From now on I envisage only minor revision of related articles. This note is being posted an all four talk pages. Petergans ( talk) 10:23, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Weighted least squares is now on AfD.-- Salix alba ( talk) 19:42, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
I wanted to ask whether people are interested in collaborating on the Riemann surface article, similarly to the collaboration on homotopy groups of spheres initiated by Geometryguy some months ago. The current article is in a decent start-up-shape, but I'm sure there is ample opportunity to improve and enhance it. Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 11:37, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
I nominated Aceromath for deletion; it is an article on a software program, and Oleg correctly recatted as software, but the author of the article has reverted; so our program may miss it. This looks like a newbie, a one-man company looking for free advertising, so we should delete but not bite. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:57, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
A week ago Zadigus ( talk · contribs) produced an article in French called "Lemme de Gauss" which turned out to be about Gauss's lemma (Riemannian geometry), previously a redlink from the DAB page Gauss's Lemma. I have moved it to the English title, and have also done a translation from the French to the best of my ability, which is currently in my user-space here, the main article being (mostly) still the original French for comparison. I would welcome any comments and improvements; in a few days, unless there are objections, I plan to move the translation into the main article, and fix the links from the article Exponential map to point to it. JohnCD ( talk) 22:40, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Currently the Logarithm article has at the very top two shots of pages with alternative definitions for the log. The question is, do they belong there, and are they more important than the log graph picture? Is that useful or pretty? Comments welcome at Talk:Logarithm#New old definition images. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 03:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
The first paragraph of mathematical proof sounds a bit strange to me. It says:
I don't think that this has ever been a standard definition of "mathematical proof". For example Euclids' proof that there are infinitely many primes couldn't be expressed in the "axiom->theorem" form until Peano axiomatized arithmetic, and have been called "a proof" for centuries (and we can find many other proofs that didn't have the "axiom->theorem" form until Zermelo&C. axiomatized set theory or Robinson axiomatized Non-Standard Analysis).
Moreover: Why a proof of the irrationality of e should be "a demonstration that assuming certain axioms and rules of inference e is necessarily irrational" and not just "a demonstration that e is irrational"? If there is no problem with using vague expressions like "demonstration" we can assert directly the second one. The first seems to express a formalistic point of view.
This seems arbitrary:
What do you think?
-- Pokipsy76 ( talk) 08:04, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Tacit extension is a stub article on mathematical logic which, if legitimate, certainly does not say enough; it doesn't really make clear what the concept is. So:
Ampheck (on AfD), Boolean domain, Boolean-valued function, Comprehension (logic), Continuous predicate, Descriptive science, Hypostatic abstraction, Hypostatic object, Inquiry, Inverse relation, Logic of information, Logic of relatives, Logic of Relatives (1870), Logic of Relatives (1883), Logical graph, Logical matrix, Minimal negation operator, Multigrade operator, Normative science, Parametric operator, Pragmatic maxim, Prescisive abstraction, Relation composition, Relation construction, Relation reduction, Relative term, Semeiotic, Semiotic information theory, Sign relation, Sign relational complex, Sole sufficient operator, Tacit extension, Theory of relations, Triadic relation, Types of relations, Zeroth order logic. Most articles seem to be protected as of now. -- Salix alba ( talk) 10:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Boolean logic in computer science has been moved back to Boolean logic. It has been zigzagging a bit lately: [2]. -- Lambiam 15:34, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Oleg, do articles in Category:Population genetics show up on the "current activity" page? One could say that this is not mathematics per se and that maybe the fact that an article belongs in that category doesn't always mean that it's mathematical. But nearly all of the articles in that category are on something in mathematics that is known almost only to those who apply mathematics to biology. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:45, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
Looking at occurrences of the search term "tacit extension" I was led to our Relation composition article. What a complete and total mess! This is a phenomenal example of "mathematics made difficult". Is there something salvageable in there? Any reason not to change this into a redirect to Composition of relations? -- Lambiam 09:32, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi all I am currently working on an Article Process Management (Computing) and I am having trouble with an equation that I want to put in as I cant get the format correct is there a tag or something that you use for such equations thanks in advance. BigDunc ( talk) 08:46, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Stevan Pilipović has been nominated for deletion - after originally being CSD'd as non-notable. I have no idea about the notability of this mathematician; comments are welcome here. Mostlyharmless ( talk) 23:12, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Various ways are in use for denoting the round symbol for composition using HTML markup:
None of these looks particularly good to me. The degree-sign solution is really ugly on the Mac OS X platform, as the little circle is kissing the f and shying away from the g, leaving a huge gap. I tend to prefer the small roman o, but recently, in an article where I used that, another editor changed it to degree signs. Is there any reason why I should not use small o's? Which is preferable in general? -- Lambiam 15:26, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
It was recommended that I ask my question here. If I have an idea for a mathematics project where can I purpose it? The Isiah ( talk) 13:42, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
My idea was this what if we create an index of theorems and their proofs. In such a way as that a mathematician can place a alphanumeric code on a paper that would refer to a proof found on wikipedia. An example: lets say that we have a proof of Pythagoreans theorem call it PP112 and I am a mathematician and I need that theorem to prove something else I could write "based on PP112 we can say....". The benefit of this system is that we can have a complete listing of every theorem in existence in an easily referenced way. An index of theorems with their proofs. The alphanumerics code could also give a hint about how what type of proof strategy was used like direct, by induction etc. as well as what type of theorem it is geometry, number theory, etc. Hope this seems like a good idea. The Isiah ( talk) 11:44, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I made a remak in the talk page about the intro but nobody considered the issue, so now I'm coming here.
In the intro of mathematical induction I read:
what is it referring to? We have a section "proof or reformulation of mathematical induction" where it is shown that MI can be proven assuming WOP and some other axioms, but this is something different from "logical equivalence". Shouldn't this be fixed in some way?-- Pokipsy76 ( talk) 17:35, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
(organized by Bill Casselman and David Austin)
Penrose tiling: overview of the article's development - article created with figure, additional figure violating parallelogram rule added, later fix of caption explaining figure violates parallelogram rule, eventual fix of the complete condition for Penrose tiling, removal of Richert claim. Casselman [David A, not me: Bill C] then attempted to demonstrate how to edit Wikipedia by editing a statement (which he disputed) that "Penrose tiling" usually refers to two special Penrose tilings with extra symmetry. But he ran into an edit conflict, so moved on. [Again from Bill C: I thought he recovered very well; it must have been one of the audience who made the change! after all.]
Floer homology: issues regarding readability of technical articles, made some quick comments about talk page discussion
Division by zero: briefly explained how this article had clearly been significantly improved upon, "don't know if Wikipedia needs an article like this" but said the article indicates quality on Wikipedia gets significantly better over time
Archimedes (and FAs in general): horrible article, not professionally written, many inaccuracies (explained how the historians of mathematics at the JMM had expressed their dissatisfaction with history of mathematics articles on Wikipedia), not enough about mathematical contributions
1) Casselman had clearly prepared some material on who edits Wikipedia. One slide, for example, (briefly flashed), showed a list of contributors, probably ranked by contributions. But he chose to skip this, and early on, he made some comment like "it's interesting to see who the primary contributors are but I won't talk about that" or something to that effect. I wonder if Arcfrk's comments had an effect here. At the end, he expressed the opinion that real name usage was the way to go, "...it raises the level of discourse much more quickly to a mature level."
2) Casselman and Austin both seemed very knowledgable about how Wikipedia functioned, for example, comments on !votes as "the participants don't vote...it ends up being determined by committee somehow. I wish I knew more of how it worked." Interestingly, some very pragmatic advice on how to start editing Wikipedia was given. The first step, according to them, is to avoid editing popular topics. Pick a little worked-upon topic and work on it extensively before moving on to more major topics.
3) They expressed a desire to set up something where the AMS could help mathematicians learn to contribute to Wikipedia, possibly utilizing WikiProject Mathematics.
4) One criticism I heard of the presentation (and one that occurred to me also) is that the abstract suggested the issue of disputes over mathematics articles would be investigated in some depth, but this did not occur, only some brief comments on "too many cooks". There are a variety of interesting ways disputes arise over math articles (usually because of the "cooks" issue) but none of this was shown. I know a number of people were disappointed by this. [Bill C sez: we ran out of time, sorry about that. Why didn't you ask questions at the end? In my talk I raised the topic that someone had brougt to my attention, a Computer Science guy who was investigating how consensus was formed on Wikipdia. Does anybody know about this?]
1) Casselman commented upon how Sanger advocated an "expert" approach while Wales advocated "anarchy". It didn't seem to me he was aware of Jimbo's somewhat nuanced position on authority and credentials, per the whole Essjay controversy and his subsequent proposal to authenticate people's credentials.
2) WikiProject Mathematics and the Math MoS was discussed at several points. The MoS was commented upon favorably, but the Project got a bit of a black eye. Namely, Casselman (or was it Austin?) showed the ratings table and started discussing the math FAs. His general conclusion (as mentioned above) is they had a lot of problems and were certainly far from the standard he expected from the FA criteria. For example, he commented upon the many footnotes which do not actually act to make the article more reliable. He did not mention (probably because he was unaware) [Bill C: yes, unaware. Not mentioned in the ratings themselves, where FA lies on top of A class.] any of the controversy about math FAs and the friction between FAC/FAR editors and Project members (particularly about this whole footnote issue). He also did not mention the A class articles, which was set up to avoid FAC and some here may consider more representative of the best math articles on Wikipedia than the FAs.
[I left a message on Casselman and Austin's talk pages linking this discussion.] -- C S ( talk) 19:57, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I see, á propos, that nobody commented on the FAR of Gauss, except me, briefly. There's a case for ignoring FA completely; but if we do, we should cease to note it in the project statistics, and we should probably lobby for another way to pick front page articles. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:10, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
(independent comment: ec) Many many thanks for reporting so carefully on this here, C S. I am particularly interested in the comments about ratings. One thing I would emphasise is that these are primarily a tool for editors not for readers, which is why they are placed on talk pages.
However, FA is a bit of an exception, because of the high profile and the little star these articles get. In this regard, we all know that it is quite difficult to get maths articles listed as FA, because of all the WP:MoS and inline citation hoops, but I have also found it surprising that it takes quite a bit of work to delist an FA whose content quality is poor. My main experience was with Galileo, an article that utterly failed to address his mathematical contribution. To list this as FAR, I was expected to make a serious attempt to fix the problems, which I am not qualified to do, so I ignored it. Eventually, after some weeks and disagreements, it was delisted. I suspect it would be a lot of work to delist (say) Archimedes for inadequate coverage of his huge contribution to mathematics. I don't have any conclusion to make here. Does anyone else? Geometry guy 23:20, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, thank you very much for reporting on the WikiMath section. A few follow-up questions:
Arcfrk ( talk) 00:40, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I think it's a good time of year to reflect on the status of the project. What articles did you feel were success stories in 2007? Are there any articles or processes that should be given more emphasis in 2008? What's the status of mathematics on Wikipedia at the end of 2007? — Carl ( CBM · talk) 14:09, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
According to the section of the WikiProject page, "some issues to think about":
“ | Probably the hardest part of writing a mathematical article (actually, any article) is the difficulty of addressing the level of mathematical knowledge on the part of the reader. For example, when writing about a field, do we assume that the reader already knows group theory? A general approach is to start simple, then move toward more abstract and general statements as the article proceeds. The suggestions below are intended to help us achieve this.
When describing a concept in terms of some other concept (for example, explaining rational numbers in terms of integers), be sure to:
|
” |
I find there are many incomprehensible Wikipedia articles on mathematics, physics and related subjects, which is unfortunate, given the importance of mathematical thinking in being able to gain a deeper understanding of many useful subjects, ranging from economics to technology. Bear in mind that those who are able to understand the technical concepts are those who have the least need to look them up in a general encyclopædia!
However, adding a prominent link to relevant articles is not enough, as it may lead readers on a wild-hyperlink-chase, if you will: they find a concept they don't understand, so they click on it, only to be sent to another article that assumes a level of mathematical knowedge they don't have. Rather, the default should be to:
By the way, I oppose the use of " trampoline" articles for any but the broadest of topics, such as, perhaps calculus. As far as I know, most print encyclopædias don't use them, unless you count the articles in Micropædia, which aren't really trampoline articles anyway.
Finally I wish to suggest that WikiProject general audience be revived. 69.140.159.215 ( talk) 03:42, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
On a related subject, the Joint Math Meetings in San Diego will feature the AMS Special Presentation Wiki Math, organized by Bill Casselman, Tuesday January 8, 2008, 2:15 p.m.–4:15 p.m. The abstract sounds very intriguing, and I think that the Math Project should send its deputies (incognito?) to check it out. Arcfrk ( talk) 15:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi all, finally some data for page view of Wikipedia articles is available [3]. So I thought I'd use that to see what the most popular mathematics articles are. For the first twelve hour of December 10 2007 the most view articles were:
you can see a more extensive listing at User:Salix alba/One day of mathematics page views, and more detail day by day listings of individual articles at [4]. -- Salix alba ( talk) 14:00, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
One thing I did note was that Portal:Mathematics gets a quite a high number of page views, more than the Mathematics page. I guess this is because it is linked from the Main page. As such it serves as an important route into the mathematics articles, yet does not seem to get much attention. -- Salix alba ( talk) 12:20, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
List of scientific theories and laws. AfD? Mct mht ( talk) 11:56, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Would some mathematicians give their opinion at Wikipedia:Peer review/Force? Thanks a 10^6. ScienceApologist ( talk) 18:20, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I would appreciate some help in this discussion (as well as the two sections below it). There's a dispute over whether three parameters can be mapped to a geometric solid. SharkD ( talk) 03:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Please take a look to the edits by an unregistered user who cutted a lot of things, I don't understand them quite well and I am a little skeptic.-- Pokipsy76 ( talk) 17:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
User:Deego seems to have decided that most or all of the articles about mathematical software read like advertising and is flinging around frivolous advert & notability tags. I have reverted some, but he is restoring tags when I (and others) revert. Can an admin familiar with this general class of article please have a look at his recent contributions? -- Pleasantville ( talk) 16:59, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Dear all,
Uninterested third party here. I have looked at User:Pleasantville, and overall she seems to be a constructive Wikipedia editor. I also see on User:Pleasantville that she does work for Wolfram, and so hopefully I think it's best to be mindful of WP:COI and the guidelines on external links and promotional material (see, e.g., [5], [6], [7], [8]).
I cannot say anything about User:Deego.
Sincerely,
Loisel ( talk) 22:55, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I was going to stay out of this, but I did just notice while browsing Wikipedia that Deego has been insistent on tagging the The Geometry Center article with a notability tag. This seems highly misguided, especially after a link to a Science article about the Center was added. The original WP article perhaps didn't do such a good job of establishing "notability", although certainly anybody that read the article carefully would not have tagged it. But the Science article gives good context, e.g. Center was first NSF Science and Technology Center, involvement of several Fields Medalists, early Web involvement (one of first 100 websites). I expect Deego mistakenly tagged some other articles too. -- C S ( talk) 04:59, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I have learned that the ability to rollback edits, which is used to revert vandalism more easily, can now be granted to non-admin users. Unlike the undo operation, rollback does not require entering an edit summary and can be done from the user contributions page. It should be used only to revert edits that are clearly vandalism, but does make this more convenient. At the moment, any admin can enable the rollback ability for any user (I don't understand the process by which this was determined). If you are interested, please ask me or another admin on this list. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 21:27, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Is this similar or based on anything real, or is it basically just a one-off joke limited to Futurama: Bender's Big Score? A google search reveals 23 hits and a google news and books search gets zilch, so it doesn't appear to be a "real" theorem. I'm sorry if it's a stupid question, but I never was any good at math... -- Scorpion 0422 01:20, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Category:Abel Prize laureates has been nominated for deletion. 132.205.44.5 ( talk) 23:13, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Is it possible to jump to a random math article (just like Special:Random, but restricted to math articles)? Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 18:35, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
There is a discussion going on whether the newly split-off Category:Metalogic should be merged back into Category:Logic. -- Lambiam 10:25, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
The article Grounded relation has been proposed for deletion. -- Lambiam 05:38, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
New user Ultra.Power has recently created three almost identical articles: Ultra power, Ultra Exponential Function and Infra Logarithm Function, and added links to them to other mathematics articles and lists. These articles appear to be describing a non-standard, non-notable, single sourced version of the tetration operation. I first saw Infra Logarithm Function on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity (other articles were not categorised) and added a prod tag. User:Utcursch quickly removed the prod tag with an edit comment "notable for mathematicians". Are these functions notable under these names and notation ? I haven't come across them in this guise before - I would say that the "ultra power" function is called hyperpower or tetration - and the articles do not seem to be saying anything that is not already covered by the tetration article. Views ? Gandalf61 ( talk) 10:58, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
What this article calls the "infra logarithm function" is common in algorithm analysis, with the notation (pronounced log-star). I agree that the nomenclature in that article appears to be a neologism, though. — David Eppstein ( talk) 20:50, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
It would be a shame to outright delete these articles, destroying this misplaced but interesting contribution from a talented user. A merge would be better, given the nice explanations and examples given in the articles. Is there a deletion discussion ongoing? Tparameter ( talk) 02:58, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
In irrational number, someone has added this:
They've cited an item published in that year. But it seems likely that the proposition is far far older than that. Perhaps what was published was a new proof of an old theorem. Does someone here know the facts? Michael Hardy ( talk) 06:17, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
The article titled Euler's formula says:
If it had said " complex number" rather than " real number", the identity would of course still be correct. The question is whether that statement ought to be called "Euler's formula"? Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:07, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
(outdent, edit conflict) I don't think the question asked was what people ought to say, but what the encyclopedia ought to claim as truth. FWIW I think we can safely describe the complex-z version as "Euler's formula", irrespective of whether Euler himself considered complex z's. (One source for this usage is Ian Stewart and David Tall: Complex Analysis, Cambridge University Press 1983, p. 85). It seems to be generally accepted that named theorems may be restated in newer terminology, or even generalized to new settings, without losing their name. For example, you can use Euclid's algorithm in domains that Euclid had never heard of (and would have considered grievous fallacies of concept if he had); or pick up a selection of algebra texts and marvel at the variety of propositions billed as the Nullstellensatz. – Henning Makholm 01:42, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Why doesn't Category:List-Class mathematics articles exist? Nousernamesleft talk and matrix? 02:10, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
This seems to be part of a pattern of categories of prize winners nominated for deletion [16]
Does anyone know what is going on here? It seems someone called
User:Lquilter has some kind of mass deletion of categories campaign using some spurious criterion called "over categorization by award". Is there such a concept? Has it been agreed somewhere as a principle? I think we need to look at what is happening here and nip it in the bud before we everything including
Category:Fields Medalists.
Billlion (
talk)
09:01, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
See also User_talk:Billlion#categories vs. lists where I reply to a query by User:Lquilter. It be interested in people's opinion over the value of categories in database searches. Billlion ( talk) 01:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
In the Spherical coordinate system, there are three quantities that define a coordinate: distance from the origin, azimuth, and zenith (collatitude).
The symbols used for these quantities has historically been inconsistent, and worse, in Wikipedia it is internally inconsistent. Compare:
Main problem is azimuth and zenith. Some use and , others and . This catches my attention because I have a homework assignment that I'm working on now, and I was terribly confused. The literature in general is confusing because different sources follow different conventions, but Wikipedia is especially tragic because it's self inconsistent.
So I suggest we unify things. I'd be happy to scavenge every trace of inconsistency and fix it myself. But I thought I'd discuss first. I suggest that we go with Wolfram's convention [17]. It's nice because:
Main problem is confusing and . Yesterday was the first time I worked in spherical coordinates. In cylindrical coordinates, is azimuth, and I found it really confusing that some sources use this for zenith in spherical coordinates. Why in the world would it be the opposite of cylindrical coordinates? Makes about as much sense as an extremely poisonous frog driving a motorboat. I'm mentioning this so that you see the point of view of someone who's just stumbled on the topic...
Let's get a consensus so I'll get to work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ben pcc ( talk • contribs) 21:32, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Coincidentally, just today I've seen a remark in an undergraduate level textbook on differential geometry to the effect that the use of phi and theta for spherical coordinates in this book is the opposite of the convention adapted by many authors of calculus textbooks. Arcfrk ( talk) 04:55, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't think you'll ever achieve consistency here. Different people feel too strongly about one convention or another. Personally, I would vote for using θ for the zenith angle and φ for the azimuthal; for two reasons:
I realize that others will (strongly) disagree. I think the most we can hope for is consistency within an article. -- Fropuff ( talk) 17:28, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Since I am very unlikely to contribute any deep insights myself, here are the most relevant links I have found so far.
From reading these sources I have learned that things are much more complicated than I thought. Apparently, whether someone writes (ρ,φ,θ) or (ρ,θ,φ) is related to the exact definition of φ and θ including handedness. Both the symbols and the order in which they are written vary. -- Hans Adler ( talk) 19:03, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Looking at the flurry of different opinions, I think that this sucks. Mathworld's convention makes more sense and is supported by some people who are easily confused (eg me), but rest of world uses something else. I'm not sure what to do or what can be done.
But one note: it's supposed to be ok as long as things are "clearly defined". In the spherical coordinates it's clearly defined, not usually so anywhere else around here. Usually I have to recognize something like and go from there. Put a picture of spheric coordinates in each article? A link to latitude? An explicit statement that "we're going for [or against] the convention in [some source]"? It. Sucks. Terribly. Math isn't supposed to suck like this. That's what metric vs customary is for. This is even worse than . - Ben pcc ( talk) 21:22, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
The word zenith for an angular coordinate is incorrect. Zenith means upwards. This must be corrected. The words "Azimuth" and "Zenith Distance" are specific for horizontal coordinate system and not for general spherical coordinates. Bo Jacoby ( talk) 23:37, 23 January 2008 (UTC).
There's a discussion at Talk:Integral regarding whether we should make the multiplication (if we believe there to actually be one) in an integral explicit. That is, should we write
or
At first blush this seemed straightforward to me: the latter is diverging from standard usage, and even assuming there actually is a multiplication (rather than an anachronistic notational juxtaposition) seemed to be tacitly accepting infinitesimals (and thus going outside the range of definitions of integral discussed on Integral; Riemann, Lebesgue, etc.). Discussion of these points didn't help resolve the issue, and the discussion has now waded into deeper waters than I have the desire or time to get involved in. Perhaps I'm just wrong, or coming at the problem from too narrow a perspective; analysis isn't my field anyway. I would appreciate any input people can provide. -- Leland McInnes ( talk) 14:44, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
WARNING: Bo Jacoby ahead. -- C S ( talk) 17:47, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
If one does a change of variables (uses the chain rule), then
which justifies to me the idea that the integrand is multiplied by the differential. JRSpriggs ( talk) 01:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I just spent a half-hour doing some edits on Gershgorin circle theorem that would normally take a minute or two. Five minutes after saving it, I still can't see the article after the edits. TeX seems not to be working today. All I see in the article is the TeX code. I tried previewing it repeatedly while editing, and it never worked. Is this happening to everyone else? Michael Hardy ( talk) 14:54, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Can someone look at logical graphs and tell me if its real or not? It's essentially incomprehensible to me, and is written in such a style as to make me not want to even try to comprehend it. For a while, I confused it with G. Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form, for which I have a personal distaste for, as its shallow, clothed with un-needed cryptic drivel, and is just barely on this side of the distinction of real-vs.-crank math. So, with that prejudice, I was taken aback to find the article on logical graphs, which I can't make heads or tails out of. linas ( talk) 04:58, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Hello,
The French Wikipedia article Arithmétique modulaire is (in my opinion) an extremely good article, that I would like to translate into English. The article is much more technical than modular arithmetic on the English Wikipedia. What they did in the French Wikipedia was to have two articles: congruences on the integers (non-technical) and modular arithmetic (technical). I suggest we do something similar here. I just wanted your opinion on this before starting this (rather big) work.
Randomblue ( talk) 12:03, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
There is a way to move an article from French Wikipedia to English Wikipedia with the edit history intact and translate it and have the translated version's edit history show all edits both before and after the translation. I don't know how it is done. A number of articles I originated got translated into German and appear on German Wikipedia with me as the original author, and if you go back in the edit history you see the article on which I worked is in English. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:32, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I am looking for other editors to participate in a broad task force to organize Wikipedia's articles on Boolean algebra, propositional logic, and related topics. The current organization is quite idiosyncratic, and has been the subject of discussion before. The initial goal of the task force would be to outline the current structure of these articles (the topics covered by each and how they interconnect) and discuss improvements to this organization. If we are successful we will come out with a proposal that can be announced more widely.
Participating in the task force would not require a large time commitment. If you are interested, please look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Logic/Boolean algebra task force and add yourself to the list of editors. The page was created under WikiProject Logic only for convenience. I hope that I will be able to gather editors with a wide range of backgrounds to participate. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:59, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I amended the assessment from Stub to Start-Class now that someone has added a decent amount of bio. Hope that's ok. Secret Squïrrel, approx 12:00, 29 January 2008 (Earth Standard Time)
Hi. You may be familiar with the Philip Greenspun Illustration Project. $20,000 has been donated to pay for the creation of high quality diagrams for Wikipedia and its sister projects.
Requests are currently being taken at m:Philip Greenspun illustration project/Requests and input from members of this project would be very welcome. If you can think of any diagrams (not photos or maps) that would be useful then I encourage you to suggest them at this page. If there is any free content material that would assist in drawing the diagram then it would be great if you could list that, too.
If there are any related (or unrelated) WikiProjects you think might have some suggestions then please pass this request over. Thanks. -- Cherry blossom tree 16:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
The surprisingly new article titled extraneous solution could use some work. Michael Hardy ( talk) 13:50, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Archimedes has made it to the Main Page, there may be some edits to watch for. BTW did we lose the convention for bolding main page articles, they all seem to be bold. -- Salix alba ( talk) 21:10, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
That "supposed quote" by Gauss struck a discordant note with me. With a few mouse clicks, it can be traced to a sentence in E.T.Bell (the actual expression used was "epoch making"), and as the regulars will no doubt remember, his assertions should be taken with a pot load of salt. Incidentally, Gauss famously left deeply emerged in thought after Riemann's inaugurational lecture "On the hypotheses which lie at the foundation of geometry". Thus Riemann's insight was so revolutionary that it left Gauss speechless I don't think that an endorsement from Gauss is either necessary or appropriate for the article about Archimedes, though. Arcfrk ( talk) 00:46, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Shortly after Euclid, compiler of the definitive textbook, came Archimedes of Saracuse (ca. 287-212 B.C.), the most original and profound mathematician of antiquity.That book also states that Gauss restricts to Archimedes along with Newton the term summus. -- Jitse Niesen ( talk) 11:36, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
It is tempting to use this terminology because of the intuition that it conveys (within a certain context), but is such use widely accepted? The article lists no references. Arcfrk ( talk) 09:45, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
I've suggested an idea at Talk:Second-order_logic#Explain formula idea and given an example there. I thought it would be good if there could be an "Explain formula" link next to complicated formula, that would show/hide an explanation. Perhaps a template could be created for this kind of thing. Any comments on this idea? — Egriffin ( talk) 16:29, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
I recall reading somewhere that only one proof of a certain proposition should be in an article, so how does one choose the proof? For example, in the article Simson line. there exists a more elementary proof than the one given. Should I replace it or not? Nousernamesleft copper, not wood 03:07, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Whether there should be only one or more than one within the article depends on the purpose of inclusion of the proof. With Pythagorean theorem or quadratic reciprocity, the fact that so many different proofs exist is notable. With propositions whose proofs are routine, I'd often want to include only one. Michael Hardy ( talk) 15:31, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Foundations of statistics has been nomited for deletion. As we've seen happen before, the arguments for deletion go something like this:
I think maybe I'll try to start a statistics WikiProject. There's no community and Wikipedia work in that field, even by those who know it well, is so uneven because we lack conventions and the like.
Express opinions on that article here. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:23, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Inspired by a post at the village pump, I'm wondering if anyone else thinks there ought to be a link to Jitse's random article tool on Portal:Mathematics, as seen on Portal:Middle Earth for example. (And Jitse: would you mind?) Algebraist 23:20, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Petergans, a retired specialist in least squares (among other things), rewrote the article on linear least squares from a more specialized point of view which is harder to understand. Now he wants do the same thing for Gauss-Newton algorithm (a nonlinear least squares algorithm). See Talk:linear least squares and Talk:Gauss-Newton algorithm .
While experts are welcome on Wikipedia, rewriting articles from their point of view and making them not comprihensible to others is I think not good. Can we have a discussion here on that, to keep the conversation in one place and have it be seen by more folks? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 16:01, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
one place and have it be seen by more folks? Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 16:01, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Dear Oleg and Petergans,
If I were an external reviewer, I would say that the new article is not ready for prime time.
Aside from Oleg's criticism, I have the additional criticism that the new article inserts statistics into every possible nook and cranny. This obscures the main idea and should have been segregated to its own subsection.
Petergans, wikipedia needs experts like you, but it's a learning process (or at least it was for me). I must say I'm not familiar with all the articles on Wikipedia, but please compare your linear least squares and numerical analysis, integral or Eigenvalue, eigenvector and eigenspace, I think that's the direction we're going as a whole in the Wikipedia math project.
Sincerely,
Loisel ( talk) 16:53, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for alerting me to the discussion on this page. Let me explain my motivation for proposing the major project. It stems from the fact that I'm an experimentalist (chemistry), not a mathematician. The earlier linear least squares article would be all but incomprehensible to most chemists, if not others like physicists and biologists. So naturally, I have slanted my draft articles towards the experimentalist, that is, towards the application of least squares methods rather than their purely mathematical basis. Here we have a dilemma. The chemist will not be familiar with specialist mathematical notation, and the mathematician will find the applications aspect difficult!
A second motivation was the apalling lack of consistency in notation across related articles. In particular I feel it is important that both least squares and regression analysis be presented in more or less consistent notation. Otherwise it looks as though they are completely separate topics, which they are not.
Thirdly, the current Gauss-Newton algorithm totally misses the point, that it deals with a sum of squared residuals, as is clearly stated in the lead-in of the introductory article, least squares. There's nothing wrong with the maths, but it's not about the Gauss-Newton method as I know it.
For the moment non-linear least squares resides in User:Petergans/b/sandbox. I will revise it in the light of comments, both here and on talk:least squares or talk:Gauss-Newton algorithm. It can then be moved to its own page, where you guys or any else can tweak it further. The question remains, what to do about Gauss-Newton algorithm, re-write it or over-write it?
My draft adresses all four of these issues. Petergans ( talk) 22:06, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
I am puzzled as to what, exactly, you guys find more difficult about my presentation than about the older one. Is it the use of matrix notation? Is it the reference to experimental data? Is it the inclusion of statistics? Is it too generalized? Regarding statistics, from my perspective the optimal values of the least squares parameters are meaningless without estimates of the associated uncertainties, which indicate how many digits of the value are significant - the experimentalist needs to know both the results and how reliable they are. Petergans ( talk) 08:50, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Oleg has moved the article from my sandbox to non-linear least squares and placed a redirect in User:Petergans/b/sandbox so that I can no longer use it. This is premature and out of order. Will an administrator please restore my sandbox, remove the article non-linear least squares and the redirect in User:Petergans/b/sandbox, so that I can work on the draft in the light of the discussion here, before "publishing" it. Petergans ( talk) 00:24, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Jakob.scholbach suggested looking at the German version of least squares. I have also looked at the French version. This is how the problem is stated there.
Les quantités , inverses des variances des mesures sont appelés poids des mesures. (Literal translation) The quantities , the inverses of the variances of the measurements are called the "weights" of the measurements
Both French and German articles are based on the premise that least squares is applied mathematics, and that therefore the physical circumstances of its applications are an integral part of it. Petergans ( talk) 09:48, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I have found that there are two articles on this topic which slightly contradict each other - Newton's method uses the function and 1st derivative. I was taught this at school as the Newton-Raphson method. Then there is Newton's method in optimization which brings in the 2nd derivatives. Is there a generally agreed way to distinguish between the two methods? I would refer to them as first and second order Newton methods. Petergans ( talk) 14:24, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
This question has reared its head again at WP:VPP#Mathematics. Algebraist 01:34, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Do we have a policy or guideline on the use of technical terms? If not, we should.
I was just looking at finite element method, and it uses two technical terms, "Dirichlet condition" and "displacement condition", to refer to the same thing.
I personally think that, as much as possible, a single article should stick to a single notation, and a single technical term per concept. I think listing other terminologies and notations is a good thing, but I don't think that intermixing terminologies and notations within the article, for no good reason, helps in any way.
So do we have such a policy? Where is it?
Loisel ( talk) 04:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
The first paragraph of WP:MOS does provide some guidance on this issue. -- Sturm 11:07, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
I did not find the term "Dirichlet condition" in Finite element method. -- Lambiam 22:25, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Is there a standard format and location for numerical examples in mathematics articles? Examples seem to be scattered or non-existant. See: Expected_value - 2 in intro; Standard_deviation - 1st section, step by step; variance - no example. If there is no standard, should we make one? -- Zojj ( t, c) 01:37, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
This article has had a rough start and could use some help. One important part is to improve the references, but this is a big task. An easy first step is to check the provided references to see if they actually support the claims made, and a second is to format the surviving references in a standard fashion. Silly rabbit and I have made some progress on this, but it would be good to have a few more eyes on the project. The topic may be heavily influenced by physics, so those with a dual background would be particularly helpful. As a warning: the original authors may have a WP:COI and may feel they are not being treated WP:CIVILly since their work has been called non-notable and proposed for deletion really quite a few times now. I think this is just an inherent problem with COI edits, and that there has not really been any incivility, but I felt I should warn you about the probable difficulty in finding consensus on the article as a whole. This should not really affect the refcheck, but when you comment on the references, you might want to double check you aren't accidentally insulting someone or otherwise inadvertently inciting something awful. Thanks for any help. JackSchmidt ( talk) 05:24, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Recently, I noticed that SVD was an article about a sniper rifle, with no reference to any other meanings. When I google search svd, most of the hits on the front page are for Singular value decomposition, a few are for other meanings, and only one (the wikipedia article) is for the rifle.
I moved the rifle article to SVD (rifle) and made SVD a disambiguation page. The creator of the rifle article has since moved SVD (the disambig page) to SVD (disambiguation) and put the rifle article back at SVD with the comment that "google gets enough first page hits to indicate this is a firearm". (Does google tailor your hits based on previous searches?) They did add a link to the disambiguation page at the top, which is good.
Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary_topic indicates that when there is a well-known primary meaning or phrase, that topic may be used for the main article with a link to the disambiguation page. Is the rifle really the primary meaning of SVD? Is this worth arguing about? Where would be a good place to have the "extended discussion" that might indicate that there is no primary meaning, and that SVD should be the disambiguation page? -- KathrynLybarger ( talk) 06:13, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
It seems that Talk:SVD should be moved to Talk:SVD (rifle). But Talk:SVD (rifle) already exists (although it is trivial) so I couldn't move it myself. Some admin should move it, preferably one who has been involved with the other recent moves in this cluster of articles. -- Dominus ( talk) 15:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Today I stubbed out an article about logician Warren Goldfarb of Harvard University. It was later tagged for speedy deletion since it did not sufficiently establish Goldfarb's notability.
I have contested the deletion: I believe Goldfarb is notable, although I agree that I did not establish this in the stub article. But before I put more effort into it, I would like feedback from members of this community: is Warren Goldfarb sufficiently notable to merit a Wikipedia article?
Thanks for any feedback you can provide.
-- Dominus ( talk) 01:14, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks all, and especially to DGG, who removed the speedy tag, and to David Eppstein, because I was completely unaware of Goldfarb's significance as an openly gay professor and his founding of the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus.
Several people mentioned his named chair as being evidence of notability. I was not aware that this was important. Can someone briefly explain its significance?
Thanks again, -- Dominus ( talk) 06:15, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to draw your attention to an issue in the definition of Decidability (logic), namely whether that definition should be based on the imprecise notion of "effective method", or the precise notion of "recursive computability". See Talk:Decidability (logic)#Precise and imprecise definitions. -- Lambiam 16:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
We at WP:1.0 are currently testing a bot for selecting articles for offline release, based on a balance of importance and quality. You are familiar with the quality scale, but we are also trying assess article importance. We want to develop a good algorithm that uses a four-component formula involving WikiProject assessment (Top/High/Mid/Low), no. of hits, no. of links-in and no. of interlanguage (interwiki) links. We now have some test results for Maths (scroll down to reach Maths), and we'd really appreciate feedback on the various algorithms. The first is a simple addition of weighted components, but the other two use a logarithmic function (which is more valid mathematically?!). Which algorithm works best - sort2, sort3 or sort4? We want to see that the listed articles are ordered from the highest importance-quality to the lowest; which list looks to be giving the most sensible ordering? Many thanks, Walkerma ( talk) 22:17, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
As much as I prefer to ignore wikipolitics to the extent possible, there's a question that may interest some here at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Proposal. -- Trovatore ( talk) 03:10, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
(←) I remember a while back there were some issues with the GA process, particularly regarding the formatting and use of inline citations; this was a motivation for the scientific citation guideline. But Geometry guy assures me this has gotten better.
I think it's important to remember that the project itself doesn't have a voice; individual editors do. If a large number of editors here all feel strongly about something, they will speak up about it, but I attribute this to their own personalities as much as anything else. Unfortunately, it can come across as "math vs. everyone else", which is a perception I think everyone should be careful not to cultivate. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 22:23, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
I looked at WP:MOSMATH this morning, and I realized that it doesn't actually contain much advice about editorial style. It does contain a small amount, but mostly it gives advice about how to structure and write a WP mathematics article. Compare it to the real manual of style to see the difference. Both have specific purposes. I think it would be reasonable to do some combination of the following:
This would eliminate any confusion about the role of MOSMATH as advice about how to write good math articles on Wikipedia, rather than advice about how to punctuate those articles. Thoughts? — Carl ( CBM · talk) 16:00, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Here are a few things that are sorely lacking from the Mathematics Manual of Style:
It would also be helpful to comment on duplication of material in the "main" article and the corresponding sections elsewhere. This is part of a much wider consistency issue that is very, very challenging, but in some limited contexts, we can try to reign it in. It seems to be quite common practise to edit the section "History of algebraic widgets" of "Algebraic widgetology" to the extent that it becomes much more expansive than the corresponding "main" article, or sometimes, directly conradicts to the corresponding "main" entry. Conversely, some editors dump material from the "main" article into the sections of other articles, without first checking that it's correct. Frequently, it results in lowering the quality of the subsection (which could have been written later and/or by more expert editor). Arcfrk ( talk) 01:55, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Arcfrk's issues probably should not be discussed at WP:MOSMATH unless we have reason to differ from other articles, which we may. (Links to other guidelines make sense.) They should be covered, at least by cross-reference, at WP:MOS; at least #3 (headers and so forth) is covered in some detail. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:04, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
This is a courtesy posting. Please post your particular comments on individual articles on their repective discussion pages. I suggest that comments relating to more than one article be posted on talk: least squares. Please also note request to delete Weighted least squares
which contain more technical details, but it has sufficient detail to stand on its own.
In addition Gauss-Newton algorithm has been revised. The earlier article contained a serious error regarding the validity of setting second derivatives to zero. Points to notice include:
This completes the fist phase of restructuring of the topic of least squares analysis. From now on I envisage only minor revision of related articles. This note is being posted an all four talk pages. Petergans ( talk) 10:23, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Weighted least squares is now on AfD.-- Salix alba ( talk) 19:42, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
I wanted to ask whether people are interested in collaborating on the Riemann surface article, similarly to the collaboration on homotopy groups of spheres initiated by Geometryguy some months ago. The current article is in a decent start-up-shape, but I'm sure there is ample opportunity to improve and enhance it. Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 11:37, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
I nominated Aceromath for deletion; it is an article on a software program, and Oleg correctly recatted as software, but the author of the article has reverted; so our program may miss it. This looks like a newbie, a one-man company looking for free advertising, so we should delete but not bite. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:57, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
A week ago Zadigus ( talk · contribs) produced an article in French called "Lemme de Gauss" which turned out to be about Gauss's lemma (Riemannian geometry), previously a redlink from the DAB page Gauss's Lemma. I have moved it to the English title, and have also done a translation from the French to the best of my ability, which is currently in my user-space here, the main article being (mostly) still the original French for comparison. I would welcome any comments and improvements; in a few days, unless there are objections, I plan to move the translation into the main article, and fix the links from the article Exponential map to point to it. JohnCD ( talk) 22:40, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Currently the Logarithm article has at the very top two shots of pages with alternative definitions for the log. The question is, do they belong there, and are they more important than the log graph picture? Is that useful or pretty? Comments welcome at Talk:Logarithm#New old definition images. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 03:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)