The new article Anti geometric mean and anti harmonic mean has been proposed for deletion for a lack of sources. This article needs rescuing. These two means are legitimate: one of them is the same as the contraharmonic mean. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 14:02, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
I've fixed the punctuation in the article's title. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:21, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Someone has been adding sections on and links to something called multilinear subspace learning to a variety of articles on linear algebra and multilinear algebra. I have removed one such section from the tensor article since it obviously didn't belong where it was. I'm wondering whether the rest of the added content is worth keeping though. There seem to have been only a handful of papers] published (in fairly obscure places) on this topic, most of them in the past few years and mostly by the same group of authors. What should we do about this, if anything? Sławomir Biały ( talk) 11:53, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Jurvetson2 ( talk · contribs) has created articles 33550336 and 8589869056. As far as I can see, the only interesting property of these numbers is that they are perfect numbers, so I don't think they meet the criteria for notability of specific individual numbers at WP:NUMBER. Speedy deletion was proposed for one article, but declined. I have noted my concerns on Jurvetson2's talk page. Should we take these articles to AfD ? Gandalf61 ( talk) 09:32, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
I've just saved the Kappa-Poincaré page from speedy deletion for the time being, but it definitely needs to be changed into something else, either be deleted (Wikipedia's search does seem to find all the k- K- and κ- variations already) or converted into a disambiguation page or a redirect. I'm not conversant in math issues, so I need to ask a question: Is there some particular reason that both the K-Poincaré algebra and K-Poincaré_group articles shouldn't be merged into subsections of the Poincaré group article followed by the creation of redirects for the various k- kappa- κ- -algebra -group variant names to that article? Alternatively, how about an article for k-Poincaré with the -algebra and -group versions as subsections. Because I don't understand the math or the significance of the math, I'm clueless but I'm sure one of you do. Best regards, TRANSPORTERMAN ( TALK) 16:38, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
The article titled chain rule currently says:
Does this last form really fail to "specify where each of these derivatives is to be evaluated"? It seems to me that the first form above clutters things in such a way as to interfere with understanding, and that the second, read correctly, doesn't really fail to do anything that should be done.
Opinions? Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:04, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Just out of interest why is chain rule marked as "mid priority"? T R 09:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
There appear to be a series of disputes with Optimering ( talk · contribs). One is listed at Talk:Algorithm. Another is at WP:COIN#Optimering and is mostly about an edit war at Luus–Jaakola. The assumption is that the user is the person whose work the user keeps citing, thus making WP:SELFCITE relevant. As Optimering has announced a preference to deal only with people who are also mathematical experts, I was hoping that some of you would please look at these disputes and see if you can help resolve them. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:02, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
I just created a new article titled G. J. Toomer. Quite a large number of articles link to it, but it's very stubby. Do what you can to improve it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 00:22, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
Hello, I saw on the discussion page of C*-algebra that this WikiProject supports the page. Is there anyone here who knows of references to support the statements found in the "Some history: B*-algebras and C*-algebras" section (that I have recently added 'fact' tags to)? Any help would be appreciated. 121.216.130.64 ( talk) 11:45, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
Should Archimedean property and non-Archimedean ordered field get merged? Michael Hardy ( talk) 21:42, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
This article needs scrutiny:
"no free lunch theorems... 'state[s] that any two optimization algorithms are equivalent when their performance is averaged across all possible problems.'" (The probability measure on all possible problems would be an interesting object, I assume.)
There is a related article, No free lunch in search and optimization, which cites an article by the well-known computer scientist Wegener, which probably can be salvaged. Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( Discussion) 14:04, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure it's the right board to post it on, but the article axiom caught my eye. AFAIK the notion of axiom being self-evident truth is very outdated: even when talking about logical axioms as described in the article, we cannot treat them as 'self-evident truths', if only because there are several logics (e.g. classical, intuitionist) that use different axioms, so calling them self-evident seems moot.
Is there anything that can be done to improve the article? I'm a complete layman in logic, so I didn't edit it myself. — Kallikanzarid talk —Preceding undated comment added 13:13, 6 March 2011 (UTC).
The "traditional" sense of the word makes sense in certain contexts other than mathematics. For example, in epistemology. To say it's outdated is to limit one's world-view to mathematics and forget that other subjects exist. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:26, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
Our article titled Basel problem currently begins like this:
Should we change "number theory" to "analysis", or to something else, or should we just delete it? Or let it stand? Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:24, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
I've changed it to read thus:
Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:49, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
Recent changes were made to citations templates (such as {{
citation}}, {{
cite journal}}, {{
cite web}}...). In addition to what was previously supported (bibcode, doi, jstor, isbn, ...), templates now support arXiv, ASIN, JFM, LCCN, MR, OL, OSTI, RFC, SSRN and Zbl. Before, you needed to place |id=
(or worse {{
arxiv|0123.4567}}
|url=
http://arxiv.org/abs/0123.4567
), now you can simply use |arxiv=0123.4567
, likewise for |id=
and {{
JSTOR|0123456789}}
|url=
http://www.jstor.org/stable/0123456789
→ |jstor=0123456789
.
The full list of supported identifiers is given here (with dummy values):
Obviously not all citations needs all parameters, but this streamlines the most popular ones and gives both better metadata and better appearances when printed. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:05, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
{{
cite book}}
: Check |isbn=
value: checksum (
help); Invalid |ref=harv
(
help); Unknown parameter |address=
ignored (|location=
suggested) (
help)|isbn=0123456789
translate into a raw "
ISBN
0123456789", which is linked via the software rather than being linked through the template. So this means you can use |isbn=0123456789,
ISBN
0987654321 Parameter error in {{
ISBN}}: checksum,
ISBN
1029384756 Parameter error in {{
ISBN}}: checksum
and it will be converted to Bob's Book.
ISBN [[Special:BookSources/0123456789,
ISBN
0987654321 Parameter error in {{
ISBN}}: checksum,
ISBN
1029384756 Parameter error in {{
ISBN}}: checksum|0123456789, '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000017-QINU`"'[[ISBN (identifier)|ISBN]] [[Special:BookSources/0987654321 |0987654321]]<span class="error" style="font-size:100%"> Parameter error in {{[[Template:ISBN|ISBN]]}}: checksum</span>, '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000018-QINU`"'[[ISBN (identifier)|ISBN]] [[Special:BookSources/1029384756 |1029384756]]<span class="error" style="font-size:100%"> Parameter error in {{[[Template:ISBN|ISBN]]}}: checksum</span>]]. {{
cite book}}
: Check |isbn=
value: invalid character (
help); templatestyles stripmarker in |isbn=
at position 13 (
help).
Headbomb {
talk /
contribs /
physics /
books}
18:41, 8 March 2011 (UTC){{
cite book}}
: Invalid |ref=harv
(
help); Text "|isbn=9781852238923,
ISBN
185233892X
" ignored (
help){{
cite book}}
: Check |isbn=
value: invalid character (
help); Invalid |ref=harv
(
help); Unknown parameter |address=
ignored (|location=
suggested) (
help); templatestyles stripmarker in |isbn=
at position 16 (
help) —
David Eppstein (
talk)
20:57, 8 March 2011 (UTC)This pretends to be a piece of theory of Lorentzian manifolds, but… it is a theory of doubtful notability. Incnis Mrsi ( talk) 09:18, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
I've created Ptolemy's table of chords, in its present form an imperfect article. Work on it! Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:12, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
Mathematics WikiProject members, please, this is being discussed at:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Names of small numbers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Names_of_small_numbers#Names_of_small_numbers
Thank you. Pandelver ( talk) 00:05, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
There's a math-related arbcom case in which someone has proposed something along the lines that discussing math on talk pages without references or (lord forbid) pointing out an error in a WP:RS is a blockable offense (after warning, of course). Linky here. Tijfo098 ( talk) 07:22, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
You are invited to comment on the content dispute regarding the stubbing of the Mathematics in medieval Islam article Thank You - Aquib ( talk) 04:11, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Numerical_approximations_of_π#Requested_move. Cheers, Ben ( talk) 11:52, 16 March 2011 (UTC).
The usage of {{ pi}} is under discussion, see Template talk: pi . 65.95.13.139 ( talk) 13:40, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Another editor is insisting on adding their bit on calculating quarter squares to Multiplication algorithm and I'm failing to get them to desist, latest round at Talk:Multiplication_algorithm#Construction_of_tables. ANyone like to have a look at it thanks? Dmcq ( talk) 13:11, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
There are many used notations for cardinal numbers and cardinality. In all (advanced) mathematical articles which use them, we need to clarify whether the axiom of choice is assumed, and whether the von Neumann cardinal assignment and/or the assumption that cn(cn(X))=cn(X) (i.e. that "the" cardinal number of a set has the same cardinality as the set) is made. The "Union" of cardinal numbers requires some assumption similar to the von Neumann cardinal assignment, and the Sum or Product of an infinite set of cardinal numbers requires some version of the Axiom of Choice to define.
I would like to have a centralized discussion on this, putting pointers on all the articles which refer to "cardinality". I was also thinking that merging initial ordinal with aleph number might be a good start. The constructions are the same, but the assumptions are different. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:20, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
I would not merge those two, no. I think aleph number is an appropriate title for a brief, and not extremely mathematical, article of fairly limited scope, namely just to tell people what these funny , , thingies that they may have seen somewhere are. For deeper information, readers should be directed to articles like cardinality. -- Trovatore ( talk) 00:00, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
@Arthur: Personally, I am not very worried about the (potential) conflict of interest. The articles we are talking about are on completely established subjects, and the books by H. and J. Rubin are mainstream, not fringe sources in any way. There are plenty of other editors who watch the articles and can edit them to add other references. Your identity is known, and you are a long-time contributor to the project. Given those facts I think you should not be too worried about editing the articles, and I will say that again if anyone raises the issue. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 00:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
I was thinking about puttting in a link to interval (mathematics) for things like (−π, π] because people keep 'correcting' it to two round brackets. However there is a little problem in that one then gets three right square brackets or else one has to put in a space or the right bracket is black as in (−π, π]. Any ideas on a good way of getting it looking right thanks? Dmcq ( talk)
We had this discussion a while ago (in 2003 or so?) and one of the things that got decided was that the brackets in asymmetric intervals should be enclosed within "nowiki" tags. Has that been neglected lately? Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:22, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I've seen bots "correct" semi-open intervals and similar mathematical notations. I'm aware of the nowiki solution, but seem to recall that this doesn't always discourage the more vigilant bots. A template solution seems best. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 12:35, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
I have formatted the argument (complex analysis) article using math type formatting for any inline mathematics throughout. I also set up a {{ mvar}} template to do individual variables easily. Any comments gratefully received. Dmcq ( talk) 15:14, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
The article Florentin Smarandache has been nominated for deletion for a 2nd time ( AfD here); members of this project may be interested in commenting. Mlm42 ( talk) 18:35, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Opine here. Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 17:59, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
On the suggestion of one of the editors interested in the arbitration on Monty Hall problem, I started a little essay on mathematical notation in probability theory and its applications. First draft is at essay on probability notation; you can talk about it at: probability notation essay-talk. Comments are welcome! Especially if you can tell me that this is all superfluous because it's been done, and done better, before. Richard Gill ( talk) 18:21, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
I've put an "orphan" tag on Duffin–Schaeffer conjecture, so get busy and think of a few (dozen) articles that should link to it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:49, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
A new article on the Criss-cross algorithm for linear optimization has been nominated for Did You Know?:
Corrections and comments are especially welcome. Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( Discussion) 03:48, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
I was looking at Normal number and there seems to have been an edit by a well-meaning anonymous user which broke the markup. I would revert his edits, but I don't know enough about the subject to know if he was correcting an error in the article and made a mistake. Could someone with some more math skills than I take at look at the last two edits? Thanks.
DavidSol ( talk) 01:34, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Pick's theorem seems pretty applicable to your project. You might want to examine it and tag it if appropriate. Cliff ( talk) 05:50, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
The arbitration of the Monty Hall problem is nearing its decision phase.
Two proposals for the arbitration committee's decision concern Wikipedia policy on mathematical articles, especially original research versus secondary sources. Both proposals endorse editors' use of "arithmetic operations". This language could be of great concern to this project, and deserves your attention. Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( Discussion) 23:47, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
I think that the OR rule together with the Copyright law make coverage of mathematics (or any other subject) impossible. You have to think (commit 'original research') to do mathematics. The only alternative is to blindly copy from 'reliable' sources which violates copyright. Of course, such copying and the verification that the source is indeed reliable also require thought (OR). So the rule against OR is an absurdity which should be repealed.
The reason we have a rule against OR is to try to avoid disputes about what is correct reasoning by appealing to an outside source. Notice that in mathematics, this is usually only necessary when one or more of the disputing parties is a crank or troll. However, refusing to allow an edit on grounds that it is OR is ultimately just an excuse for rejecting what we think is false without having to get the agreement of a crank or troll. JRSpriggs ( talk) 03:05, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I (K.W.) suggest the following changes:
I would suggest that we strive for consensus language here, and then ask our leaders to communicate consensus suggestions to the ArbCom page. Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( Discussion) 11:34, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
If you guys can get together a variant form of words quickly, and post it on the proposed decision talkpage, it can be put in as an alternative.
Providing examples is not a problem - slotting in different variables to a sourced method is not OR, nor is it really deriving from first principles. Glossing should not be a problem if you have some referencing to show the general applicability of the gloss. I do have concerns with the example Kiefer gave on his talkpage [1], but I'd have more problems with the old version that the new, assuming that somewhere in the sources cited are the two equations, the definition of limits, and the information about strictness in relation to Minkowski sum. It is the old example which seems to have lots of derivations without referencing. -- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 14:20, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I've only had a chance to skim most of the Arbcom case, but it seems like the main issue is the detailed derivations from first principles. The language used should more closely reflect the actual problem, rather than casting an overly broad net against anything that could possibly be construed as original research. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 16:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't have much to say about the MHP apart from thanking the people who have commented on the arbcom page. I did want to say something related. Lately, after discussion at WT:TECHNICAL and WT:NOR, and looking at WP:NOT, I have been thinking about the underlying issues that lead to these disagreements. I'm only thinking about articles at the advanced undergrad level and beyond here; articles on basic topics are less problematic because there are plenty of low-level references. But there are few references on advanced topics that are accessible to an untrained reader.
Three points:
I think that we do a reasonable job at balancing these things in our articles, both overall and in mathematics. My main point is that if we realize that Wikipedia's goals are sometimes in conflict with each other, it can help us find a middle ground. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
In response to comments made by editors from this WikiProject, Arbitrator Elen of the Roads has proposed an alternative wording of the principle, which caused concern here, for other arbitrators to consider and vote upon. You can comment on the proposed principles at Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Monty_Hall_problem/Proposed_decision. Geometry guy 23:42, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Regardless of the OR statement of principle that ArbCom may or may not adopt, I am concerned by what the examples of what they are claiming is OR in their statement of facts -- specifically the three claimed examples cited at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Monty_Hall_problem/Proposed_decision#Article_has_been_subject_of_original_research Article has been subject of original research.
As far as I can see (more detail on the decision talk page here, here, and here), none of these three examples properly constitute original research.
It seems to me that this is no small issue, because the examples Arbcom cite are going to be the most direct operational indication of what they consider to be OR, and how they mean whatever principles they adopt to be interpreted.
I'd welcome second and further opinions on these examples, and whether we think they are OR or not, because the Arbcom members are refusing to engage on the merits of these links; yet are still happily voting for the proposition. Jheald ( talk) 09:55, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Even some ArbCom members refused to vote on using its exact current wording in their principles (which they are still struggling to formulate in that respect). So, clearly WP:CALC is deficient. I suggest you guys take this opportunity to improve the wording in the policy, so you won't have to put out this kind of fire in the future. All the best, Tijfo098 ( talk) 18:27, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
There is a new proposed wording. It works for me. Does anyone else have any thoughts about it? Sławomir Biały ( talk) 14:11, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
The decision has been publicized. Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( Discussion) 00:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Just to let you know, I have updated my mathJax user script to recent version 1.1 of MathJax. Notable change is the support for webfonts via CDN (i.e., no local font installation requirements). Details at the user script documentation page. Feedback welcome. Nageh ( talk) 21:37, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
... is John Milnor, who has been awarded the Abel Prize. The article is OK as such, but could obviously be expanded quite a bit. Charles Matthews ( talk) 09:43, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
There seems to be a bit of hostility to the newly-listed article Drinker's paradox on the article's discussion page. Various editors are grumbling about deletion, original research, etc. I thought perhaps someone in the project should investigate. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 12:16, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Apparently someone rediscovered the trapezoidal rule and managed to get it published. See Tai's method. Just an article about the trapezoidal rule under another name? Or an article about how something weird like that can happen? Either way, is the article in some way worth keeping? Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:49, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
The 'Math and logic' symbols in the editor include a load of special symbols. Is it okay to use all these in maths articles? For instance can I say ℝ rather than in inline maths? And by the way I don't believe I should bold that as in ℝ, would that be right too? Dmcq ( talk) 12:56, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
"Inline" as opposed to "displayed" use of TeX within Wikipedia has always been problematic. Things like the following can happen:
Obviously the e should be at the same level as the surrounding text and the x3 should be in superscript, but that's not what happens. Also on some browsers, the part in math tags looks comically gigantic. You can also get siuations like this:
The right parenthesis is on the next line! It also happens with periods, commas, etc. "Displayed" TeX, on the other hand, generally looks quite good:
So I generally prefer non-TeX notation in an "inline" setting. Michael Hardy ( talk) 00:54, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Over at Talk:N-dimensional space we're having a traditional merging discussion. The issue is that these articles (and probably others) all contain redundant material: Space (mathematics), Vector space, Dimension, Dimension (vector space), Basis (linear algebra), Euclidean space, Manifold (mathematics), N-dimensional space. So I thought I'd bring it up here.
My opinion: Each kind of space (vector, Euclidean, manifold, etc.) obviously deserves its own article. Additionally the Space (mathematics) and Dimension articles seem useful as catalogues/overviews. But Dimension (vector space) could be merged into Basis (linear algebra) and/or Vector space, and N-dimensional space could be merged into Space (mathematics) and/or Dimension.
Any comments? Mgnbar ( talk) 16:39, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Special case is currently a stub article that could use a lot of work, both within the article and in other articles that should link to it. Get busy. Michael Hardy ( talk) 00:45, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Hi! I use Wikipedia very often and thought for sure that a policy of yours was to add in a "page history" page that showed any changes to an article and by whom for that page?
I ask because your page on Summation had early in its write-up an image of an example of Induction ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/5/d/1/5d1ba66a7aca2c258985399ff22410ef.png ) ... odd that that very image wasn't there just a few days ago for another image that was the exact same equation but in different form.
I looked for the history of why and who changed that image because its odd I been coincidently writing a paper on the example of Induction used of the original image and linking this very page for that image and sending that paper to leading Set Theory specialists and other university piers and that image was very helpfull in dealing with the issues the paper regarded. Now suddenly someone changed the image to a different example of Induction and I find the timing very peculiar. It doesn't change anything about my paper except for it to be easier to understand for anyone needing to see the example of Induction I was using from here but is now changed. I only linked to the page on Summation.
Anyways, how did that image change on the Summation page without anyone ever knowing it happened or why in the pages history?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by G2thef ( talk • contribs)
In looking over some project work I did for an undergrduate computing degree I noted that the academic supervising me had come up with what he called a 'slew' transform.
I've put a rough note in my userspace at Wikiversity (because of concerns about verifability here) The link is : http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:ShakespeareFan00/Slew_transform
I'd appreciate someone from the WikiProject that understand 3D transformation stuff, to help provide a better citation , or indeed a creative commons licensed proof that will show what's stated is correct.
A 'slew' transform is a transform where 'distances' parrallel to an axes before a 'slew' are preserved, as opposed to a 'shear' where they are not.
I'm also trying to understand how to abstractly define a 'grid'. ( The best definition I can think of for 2D is that a 'grid' is
a regular arrangement of points and lines that fills a plane.
For a 'cubic' style of grid, this regular arrangement can be more formally considered as a (Lattice Graph?) formed by the Cartesian product of 2 path graphs, representing lines perpendicular to each other. However, I'm thinking I need to put in some kind of constraint on where the grid points can be placed, and I'm not entirly sure how I specfiy that constraint in an abstract math way...
A 'polar' style of grid is however more complex, being the Cartesian product of a number of path graphs(?) with some kind of cycle graph , ( aka a Prism Graph?). Again some kind of constraint would need to be defined on where grid points can be placed..
And finally Has this sort of thing been done before in a textbook a math noob can understand? Sfan00 IMG ( talk) 22:36, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
The context of the slew transform by the way in the original project was based on being able to convert a 'cubic' lattice to be transformed into a 'heaxagonal' or 'parallelogrammic lattice' one (in 2 dimensions).
Can you suggest a better way to describe what a slew transform appears to be doing, because I'd like to be able to explain it clearly to other people? Sfan00 IMG ( talk) 09:52, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
While this unreferenced article looks cool, I can't find anything in google books to support it. WP:OR? Tijfo098 ( talk) 05:21, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I guess most of these are perfectly okay but is there some that even someone familiar with Charles Saunders Pierce isn't familiar with or thinks is unnecessary? Dmcq ( talk) 18:50, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Logical graph is a nebulous article that could use work. I think the term existential graph has been used more recently, and perhaps even by Pierce. Tijfo098 ( talk) 04:09, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
There is a deletion discussion under the auspices of our project that could benefit from its input. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 00:21, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
The new article Anti geometric mean and anti harmonic mean has been proposed for deletion for a lack of sources. This article needs rescuing. These two means are legitimate: one of them is the same as the contraharmonic mean. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 14:02, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
I've fixed the punctuation in the article's title. Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:21, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Someone has been adding sections on and links to something called multilinear subspace learning to a variety of articles on linear algebra and multilinear algebra. I have removed one such section from the tensor article since it obviously didn't belong where it was. I'm wondering whether the rest of the added content is worth keeping though. There seem to have been only a handful of papers] published (in fairly obscure places) on this topic, most of them in the past few years and mostly by the same group of authors. What should we do about this, if anything? Sławomir Biały ( talk) 11:53, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Jurvetson2 ( talk · contribs) has created articles 33550336 and 8589869056. As far as I can see, the only interesting property of these numbers is that they are perfect numbers, so I don't think they meet the criteria for notability of specific individual numbers at WP:NUMBER. Speedy deletion was proposed for one article, but declined. I have noted my concerns on Jurvetson2's talk page. Should we take these articles to AfD ? Gandalf61 ( talk) 09:32, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
I've just saved the Kappa-Poincaré page from speedy deletion for the time being, but it definitely needs to be changed into something else, either be deleted (Wikipedia's search does seem to find all the k- K- and κ- variations already) or converted into a disambiguation page or a redirect. I'm not conversant in math issues, so I need to ask a question: Is there some particular reason that both the K-Poincaré algebra and K-Poincaré_group articles shouldn't be merged into subsections of the Poincaré group article followed by the creation of redirects for the various k- kappa- κ- -algebra -group variant names to that article? Alternatively, how about an article for k-Poincaré with the -algebra and -group versions as subsections. Because I don't understand the math or the significance of the math, I'm clueless but I'm sure one of you do. Best regards, TRANSPORTERMAN ( TALK) 16:38, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
The article titled chain rule currently says:
Does this last form really fail to "specify where each of these derivatives is to be evaluated"? It seems to me that the first form above clutters things in such a way as to interfere with understanding, and that the second, read correctly, doesn't really fail to do anything that should be done.
Opinions? Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:04, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Just out of interest why is chain rule marked as "mid priority"? T R 09:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
There appear to be a series of disputes with Optimering ( talk · contribs). One is listed at Talk:Algorithm. Another is at WP:COIN#Optimering and is mostly about an edit war at Luus–Jaakola. The assumption is that the user is the person whose work the user keeps citing, thus making WP:SELFCITE relevant. As Optimering has announced a preference to deal only with people who are also mathematical experts, I was hoping that some of you would please look at these disputes and see if you can help resolve them. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:02, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
I just created a new article titled G. J. Toomer. Quite a large number of articles link to it, but it's very stubby. Do what you can to improve it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 00:22, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
Hello, I saw on the discussion page of C*-algebra that this WikiProject supports the page. Is there anyone here who knows of references to support the statements found in the "Some history: B*-algebras and C*-algebras" section (that I have recently added 'fact' tags to)? Any help would be appreciated. 121.216.130.64 ( talk) 11:45, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
Should Archimedean property and non-Archimedean ordered field get merged? Michael Hardy ( talk) 21:42, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
This article needs scrutiny:
"no free lunch theorems... 'state[s] that any two optimization algorithms are equivalent when their performance is averaged across all possible problems.'" (The probability measure on all possible problems would be an interesting object, I assume.)
There is a related article, No free lunch in search and optimization, which cites an article by the well-known computer scientist Wegener, which probably can be salvaged. Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( Discussion) 14:04, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure it's the right board to post it on, but the article axiom caught my eye. AFAIK the notion of axiom being self-evident truth is very outdated: even when talking about logical axioms as described in the article, we cannot treat them as 'self-evident truths', if only because there are several logics (e.g. classical, intuitionist) that use different axioms, so calling them self-evident seems moot.
Is there anything that can be done to improve the article? I'm a complete layman in logic, so I didn't edit it myself. — Kallikanzarid talk —Preceding undated comment added 13:13, 6 March 2011 (UTC).
The "traditional" sense of the word makes sense in certain contexts other than mathematics. For example, in epistemology. To say it's outdated is to limit one's world-view to mathematics and forget that other subjects exist. Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:26, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
Our article titled Basel problem currently begins like this:
Should we change "number theory" to "analysis", or to something else, or should we just delete it? Or let it stand? Michael Hardy ( talk) 19:24, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
I've changed it to read thus:
Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:49, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
Recent changes were made to citations templates (such as {{
citation}}, {{
cite journal}}, {{
cite web}}...). In addition to what was previously supported (bibcode, doi, jstor, isbn, ...), templates now support arXiv, ASIN, JFM, LCCN, MR, OL, OSTI, RFC, SSRN and Zbl. Before, you needed to place |id=
(or worse {{
arxiv|0123.4567}}
|url=
http://arxiv.org/abs/0123.4567
), now you can simply use |arxiv=0123.4567
, likewise for |id=
and {{
JSTOR|0123456789}}
|url=
http://www.jstor.org/stable/0123456789
→ |jstor=0123456789
.
The full list of supported identifiers is given here (with dummy values):
Obviously not all citations needs all parameters, but this streamlines the most popular ones and gives both better metadata and better appearances when printed. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:05, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
{{
cite book}}
: Check |isbn=
value: checksum (
help); Invalid |ref=harv
(
help); Unknown parameter |address=
ignored (|location=
suggested) (
help)|isbn=0123456789
translate into a raw "
ISBN
0123456789", which is linked via the software rather than being linked through the template. So this means you can use |isbn=0123456789,
ISBN
0987654321 Parameter error in {{
ISBN}}: checksum,
ISBN
1029384756 Parameter error in {{
ISBN}}: checksum
and it will be converted to Bob's Book.
ISBN [[Special:BookSources/0123456789,
ISBN
0987654321 Parameter error in {{
ISBN}}: checksum,
ISBN
1029384756 Parameter error in {{
ISBN}}: checksum|0123456789, '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000017-QINU`"'[[ISBN (identifier)|ISBN]] [[Special:BookSources/0987654321 |0987654321]]<span class="error" style="font-size:100%"> Parameter error in {{[[Template:ISBN|ISBN]]}}: checksum</span>, '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000018-QINU`"'[[ISBN (identifier)|ISBN]] [[Special:BookSources/1029384756 |1029384756]]<span class="error" style="font-size:100%"> Parameter error in {{[[Template:ISBN|ISBN]]}}: checksum</span>]]. {{
cite book}}
: Check |isbn=
value: invalid character (
help); templatestyles stripmarker in |isbn=
at position 13 (
help).
Headbomb {
talk /
contribs /
physics /
books}
18:41, 8 March 2011 (UTC){{
cite book}}
: Invalid |ref=harv
(
help); Text "|isbn=9781852238923,
ISBN
185233892X
" ignored (
help){{
cite book}}
: Check |isbn=
value: invalid character (
help); Invalid |ref=harv
(
help); Unknown parameter |address=
ignored (|location=
suggested) (
help); templatestyles stripmarker in |isbn=
at position 16 (
help) —
David Eppstein (
talk)
20:57, 8 March 2011 (UTC)This pretends to be a piece of theory of Lorentzian manifolds, but… it is a theory of doubtful notability. Incnis Mrsi ( talk) 09:18, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
I've created Ptolemy's table of chords, in its present form an imperfect article. Work on it! Michael Hardy ( talk) 23:12, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
Mathematics WikiProject members, please, this is being discussed at:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Names of small numbers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Names_of_small_numbers#Names_of_small_numbers
Thank you. Pandelver ( talk) 00:05, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
There's a math-related arbcom case in which someone has proposed something along the lines that discussing math on talk pages without references or (lord forbid) pointing out an error in a WP:RS is a blockable offense (after warning, of course). Linky here. Tijfo098 ( talk) 07:22, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
You are invited to comment on the content dispute regarding the stubbing of the Mathematics in medieval Islam article Thank You - Aquib ( talk) 04:11, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Numerical_approximations_of_π#Requested_move. Cheers, Ben ( talk) 11:52, 16 March 2011 (UTC).
The usage of {{ pi}} is under discussion, see Template talk: pi . 65.95.13.139 ( talk) 13:40, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Another editor is insisting on adding their bit on calculating quarter squares to Multiplication algorithm and I'm failing to get them to desist, latest round at Talk:Multiplication_algorithm#Construction_of_tables. ANyone like to have a look at it thanks? Dmcq ( talk) 13:11, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
There are many used notations for cardinal numbers and cardinality. In all (advanced) mathematical articles which use them, we need to clarify whether the axiom of choice is assumed, and whether the von Neumann cardinal assignment and/or the assumption that cn(cn(X))=cn(X) (i.e. that "the" cardinal number of a set has the same cardinality as the set) is made. The "Union" of cardinal numbers requires some assumption similar to the von Neumann cardinal assignment, and the Sum or Product of an infinite set of cardinal numbers requires some version of the Axiom of Choice to define.
I would like to have a centralized discussion on this, putting pointers on all the articles which refer to "cardinality". I was also thinking that merging initial ordinal with aleph number might be a good start. The constructions are the same, but the assumptions are different. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:20, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
I would not merge those two, no. I think aleph number is an appropriate title for a brief, and not extremely mathematical, article of fairly limited scope, namely just to tell people what these funny , , thingies that they may have seen somewhere are. For deeper information, readers should be directed to articles like cardinality. -- Trovatore ( talk) 00:00, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
@Arthur: Personally, I am not very worried about the (potential) conflict of interest. The articles we are talking about are on completely established subjects, and the books by H. and J. Rubin are mainstream, not fringe sources in any way. There are plenty of other editors who watch the articles and can edit them to add other references. Your identity is known, and you are a long-time contributor to the project. Given those facts I think you should not be too worried about editing the articles, and I will say that again if anyone raises the issue. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 00:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
I was thinking about puttting in a link to interval (mathematics) for things like (−π, π] because people keep 'correcting' it to two round brackets. However there is a little problem in that one then gets three right square brackets or else one has to put in a space or the right bracket is black as in (−π, π]. Any ideas on a good way of getting it looking right thanks? Dmcq ( talk)
We had this discussion a while ago (in 2003 or so?) and one of the things that got decided was that the brackets in asymmetric intervals should be enclosed within "nowiki" tags. Has that been neglected lately? Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:22, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I've seen bots "correct" semi-open intervals and similar mathematical notations. I'm aware of the nowiki solution, but seem to recall that this doesn't always discourage the more vigilant bots. A template solution seems best. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 12:35, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
I have formatted the argument (complex analysis) article using math type formatting for any inline mathematics throughout. I also set up a {{ mvar}} template to do individual variables easily. Any comments gratefully received. Dmcq ( talk) 15:14, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
The article Florentin Smarandache has been nominated for deletion for a 2nd time ( AfD here); members of this project may be interested in commenting. Mlm42 ( talk) 18:35, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Opine here. Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 17:59, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
On the suggestion of one of the editors interested in the arbitration on Monty Hall problem, I started a little essay on mathematical notation in probability theory and its applications. First draft is at essay on probability notation; you can talk about it at: probability notation essay-talk. Comments are welcome! Especially if you can tell me that this is all superfluous because it's been done, and done better, before. Richard Gill ( talk) 18:21, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
I've put an "orphan" tag on Duffin–Schaeffer conjecture, so get busy and think of a few (dozen) articles that should link to it. Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:49, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
A new article on the Criss-cross algorithm for linear optimization has been nominated for Did You Know?:
Corrections and comments are especially welcome. Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( Discussion) 03:48, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
I was looking at Normal number and there seems to have been an edit by a well-meaning anonymous user which broke the markup. I would revert his edits, but I don't know enough about the subject to know if he was correcting an error in the article and made a mistake. Could someone with some more math skills than I take at look at the last two edits? Thanks.
DavidSol ( talk) 01:34, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Pick's theorem seems pretty applicable to your project. You might want to examine it and tag it if appropriate. Cliff ( talk) 05:50, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
The arbitration of the Monty Hall problem is nearing its decision phase.
Two proposals for the arbitration committee's decision concern Wikipedia policy on mathematical articles, especially original research versus secondary sources. Both proposals endorse editors' use of "arithmetic operations". This language could be of great concern to this project, and deserves your attention. Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( Discussion) 23:47, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
I think that the OR rule together with the Copyright law make coverage of mathematics (or any other subject) impossible. You have to think (commit 'original research') to do mathematics. The only alternative is to blindly copy from 'reliable' sources which violates copyright. Of course, such copying and the verification that the source is indeed reliable also require thought (OR). So the rule against OR is an absurdity which should be repealed.
The reason we have a rule against OR is to try to avoid disputes about what is correct reasoning by appealing to an outside source. Notice that in mathematics, this is usually only necessary when one or more of the disputing parties is a crank or troll. However, refusing to allow an edit on grounds that it is OR is ultimately just an excuse for rejecting what we think is false without having to get the agreement of a crank or troll. JRSpriggs ( talk) 03:05, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I (K.W.) suggest the following changes:
I would suggest that we strive for consensus language here, and then ask our leaders to communicate consensus suggestions to the ArbCom page. Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( Discussion) 11:34, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
If you guys can get together a variant form of words quickly, and post it on the proposed decision talkpage, it can be put in as an alternative.
Providing examples is not a problem - slotting in different variables to a sourced method is not OR, nor is it really deriving from first principles. Glossing should not be a problem if you have some referencing to show the general applicability of the gloss. I do have concerns with the example Kiefer gave on his talkpage [1], but I'd have more problems with the old version that the new, assuming that somewhere in the sources cited are the two equations, the definition of limits, and the information about strictness in relation to Minkowski sum. It is the old example which seems to have lots of derivations without referencing. -- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 14:20, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I've only had a chance to skim most of the Arbcom case, but it seems like the main issue is the detailed derivations from first principles. The language used should more closely reflect the actual problem, rather than casting an overly broad net against anything that could possibly be construed as original research. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 16:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't have much to say about the MHP apart from thanking the people who have commented on the arbcom page. I did want to say something related. Lately, after discussion at WT:TECHNICAL and WT:NOR, and looking at WP:NOT, I have been thinking about the underlying issues that lead to these disagreements. I'm only thinking about articles at the advanced undergrad level and beyond here; articles on basic topics are less problematic because there are plenty of low-level references. But there are few references on advanced topics that are accessible to an untrained reader.
Three points:
I think that we do a reasonable job at balancing these things in our articles, both overall and in mathematics. My main point is that if we realize that Wikipedia's goals are sometimes in conflict with each other, it can help us find a middle ground. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
In response to comments made by editors from this WikiProject, Arbitrator Elen of the Roads has proposed an alternative wording of the principle, which caused concern here, for other arbitrators to consider and vote upon. You can comment on the proposed principles at Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Monty_Hall_problem/Proposed_decision. Geometry guy 23:42, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Regardless of the OR statement of principle that ArbCom may or may not adopt, I am concerned by what the examples of what they are claiming is OR in their statement of facts -- specifically the three claimed examples cited at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Monty_Hall_problem/Proposed_decision#Article_has_been_subject_of_original_research Article has been subject of original research.
As far as I can see (more detail on the decision talk page here, here, and here), none of these three examples properly constitute original research.
It seems to me that this is no small issue, because the examples Arbcom cite are going to be the most direct operational indication of what they consider to be OR, and how they mean whatever principles they adopt to be interpreted.
I'd welcome second and further opinions on these examples, and whether we think they are OR or not, because the Arbcom members are refusing to engage on the merits of these links; yet are still happily voting for the proposition. Jheald ( talk) 09:55, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Even some ArbCom members refused to vote on using its exact current wording in their principles (which they are still struggling to formulate in that respect). So, clearly WP:CALC is deficient. I suggest you guys take this opportunity to improve the wording in the policy, so you won't have to put out this kind of fire in the future. All the best, Tijfo098 ( talk) 18:27, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
There is a new proposed wording. It works for me. Does anyone else have any thoughts about it? Sławomir Biały ( talk) 14:11, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
The decision has been publicized. Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( Discussion) 00:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Just to let you know, I have updated my mathJax user script to recent version 1.1 of MathJax. Notable change is the support for webfonts via CDN (i.e., no local font installation requirements). Details at the user script documentation page. Feedback welcome. Nageh ( talk) 21:37, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
... is John Milnor, who has been awarded the Abel Prize. The article is OK as such, but could obviously be expanded quite a bit. Charles Matthews ( talk) 09:43, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
There seems to be a bit of hostility to the newly-listed article Drinker's paradox on the article's discussion page. Various editors are grumbling about deletion, original research, etc. I thought perhaps someone in the project should investigate. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 12:16, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Apparently someone rediscovered the trapezoidal rule and managed to get it published. See Tai's method. Just an article about the trapezoidal rule under another name? Or an article about how something weird like that can happen? Either way, is the article in some way worth keeping? Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:49, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
The 'Math and logic' symbols in the editor include a load of special symbols. Is it okay to use all these in maths articles? For instance can I say ℝ rather than in inline maths? And by the way I don't believe I should bold that as in ℝ, would that be right too? Dmcq ( talk) 12:56, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
"Inline" as opposed to "displayed" use of TeX within Wikipedia has always been problematic. Things like the following can happen:
Obviously the e should be at the same level as the surrounding text and the x3 should be in superscript, but that's not what happens. Also on some browsers, the part in math tags looks comically gigantic. You can also get siuations like this:
The right parenthesis is on the next line! It also happens with periods, commas, etc. "Displayed" TeX, on the other hand, generally looks quite good:
So I generally prefer non-TeX notation in an "inline" setting. Michael Hardy ( talk) 00:54, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Over at Talk:N-dimensional space we're having a traditional merging discussion. The issue is that these articles (and probably others) all contain redundant material: Space (mathematics), Vector space, Dimension, Dimension (vector space), Basis (linear algebra), Euclidean space, Manifold (mathematics), N-dimensional space. So I thought I'd bring it up here.
My opinion: Each kind of space (vector, Euclidean, manifold, etc.) obviously deserves its own article. Additionally the Space (mathematics) and Dimension articles seem useful as catalogues/overviews. But Dimension (vector space) could be merged into Basis (linear algebra) and/or Vector space, and N-dimensional space could be merged into Space (mathematics) and/or Dimension.
Any comments? Mgnbar ( talk) 16:39, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Special case is currently a stub article that could use a lot of work, both within the article and in other articles that should link to it. Get busy. Michael Hardy ( talk) 00:45, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Hi! I use Wikipedia very often and thought for sure that a policy of yours was to add in a "page history" page that showed any changes to an article and by whom for that page?
I ask because your page on Summation had early in its write-up an image of an example of Induction ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/5/d/1/5d1ba66a7aca2c258985399ff22410ef.png ) ... odd that that very image wasn't there just a few days ago for another image that was the exact same equation but in different form.
I looked for the history of why and who changed that image because its odd I been coincidently writing a paper on the example of Induction used of the original image and linking this very page for that image and sending that paper to leading Set Theory specialists and other university piers and that image was very helpfull in dealing with the issues the paper regarded. Now suddenly someone changed the image to a different example of Induction and I find the timing very peculiar. It doesn't change anything about my paper except for it to be easier to understand for anyone needing to see the example of Induction I was using from here but is now changed. I only linked to the page on Summation.
Anyways, how did that image change on the Summation page without anyone ever knowing it happened or why in the pages history?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by G2thef ( talk • contribs)
In looking over some project work I did for an undergrduate computing degree I noted that the academic supervising me had come up with what he called a 'slew' transform.
I've put a rough note in my userspace at Wikiversity (because of concerns about verifability here) The link is : http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:ShakespeareFan00/Slew_transform
I'd appreciate someone from the WikiProject that understand 3D transformation stuff, to help provide a better citation , or indeed a creative commons licensed proof that will show what's stated is correct.
A 'slew' transform is a transform where 'distances' parrallel to an axes before a 'slew' are preserved, as opposed to a 'shear' where they are not.
I'm also trying to understand how to abstractly define a 'grid'. ( The best definition I can think of for 2D is that a 'grid' is
a regular arrangement of points and lines that fills a plane.
For a 'cubic' style of grid, this regular arrangement can be more formally considered as a (Lattice Graph?) formed by the Cartesian product of 2 path graphs, representing lines perpendicular to each other. However, I'm thinking I need to put in some kind of constraint on where the grid points can be placed, and I'm not entirly sure how I specfiy that constraint in an abstract math way...
A 'polar' style of grid is however more complex, being the Cartesian product of a number of path graphs(?) with some kind of cycle graph , ( aka a Prism Graph?). Again some kind of constraint would need to be defined on where grid points can be placed..
And finally Has this sort of thing been done before in a textbook a math noob can understand? Sfan00 IMG ( talk) 22:36, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
The context of the slew transform by the way in the original project was based on being able to convert a 'cubic' lattice to be transformed into a 'heaxagonal' or 'parallelogrammic lattice' one (in 2 dimensions).
Can you suggest a better way to describe what a slew transform appears to be doing, because I'd like to be able to explain it clearly to other people? Sfan00 IMG ( talk) 09:52, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
While this unreferenced article looks cool, I can't find anything in google books to support it. WP:OR? Tijfo098 ( talk) 05:21, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I guess most of these are perfectly okay but is there some that even someone familiar with Charles Saunders Pierce isn't familiar with or thinks is unnecessary? Dmcq ( talk) 18:50, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Logical graph is a nebulous article that could use work. I think the term existential graph has been used more recently, and perhaps even by Pierce. Tijfo098 ( talk) 04:09, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
There is a deletion discussion under the auspices of our project that could benefit from its input. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 00:21, 31 March 2011 (UTC)