User:Retarius/Arena

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The God that failed

I would be interested to know why Marxist Communism, built around a notion of freedom and justice, ended as one of the most oppressive doctrines ever devised? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.147.185.233 (talk) 12:28, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

well, but what is that big difference between marxist communism and leninist communism and maoist communism. The fact is, all communism have failed because communist economies were not that successfull growth economies and wealth creators as capitalist economies were. Meanwhile, who are you Mr/Ms.86.147.185.233 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.96.29.48 (talk) 13:20, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

You could do worse than to read George Orwell's Animal Farm, 86.147.185.233. Its first target is Stalinism, but I think it will work for you. Xn4 14:51, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Marxists would contest that ended, yet alone that it ended as one of the most oppressive doctrines ever devised. The USSR and its Empire is seen by many as somewhat of a false start, and that a true Marxist Revolution is still to come. Ninebucks (talk) 18:31, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

It's worth noting that Marxist revolutionaries are often "ends justify the means" types of folks, a philosophy justified largely through Marxist materialism though I doubt Marx would have read it in quite that way. The end result is that you often have had new regimes desiring to sweep aside old regime entirely, by any means necessary. The results are almost always grim and in no way prepare the country in question for being any sort of liberal political environment. All of which is a long way of saying that the motivations for those to start Marxist revolutions have often led the revolutionaries in question down very nasty paths, though I would have note that such has been the case in many non-Marxist revolutions as well. Additionally Marxism puts a strong priority on centralized control and rule of the state during its early phases (dictatorship of the proliteriat), and in practice phases never seem to end though in theory they are supposed to. Personally I consider the Marxist belief in the eventual dissolution of the state under Marxist rule to be something of the same character as the Christian belief in the second coming of Christ—it's always around the corner, it never happens, but it serves as a justification for all sorts of behaviors. But then again I'm something of a materialist myself, albeit a misanthropic yet empathetic one. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 23:10, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

It's a mixture of ideology, of politics and of circumstances. There was always a millenarian dimension to Marxism, an assumption that history proceeded by great leaps; that an ideal society could only be achieved by turning the world upside down and inside out. The general optimism to be found in Marx's theory, that the new world would emerge from the womb of the old, carried to life, it might be said, by the 'dynamics' of history alone, was also accompanied and contradicted by a fearful realism based on a reading of historical events. For Marx, and for those who came after, most notably Lenin, the Paris Commune provided an example of what might and could go wrong in a 'proletarian' revolution; history might have brought it to life but there were those on the wings who cared nothing for the process of historical inevitability. If the revolution was to defend itself it had, therefore, to be as ruthless as its enemies.

After October 1917 Lenin, in defending the 'dictatorship of the proletariat', which in practice meant the dictatorship of the Bolshevik Party, used a Red Terror that was even more ruthless than the White Terror employed by Adolphe Thiers in 1871. But victory was achieved in direct contradiction to Marxist theory, including that of Lenin himself outlined in State and Revolution, that the state would 'wither away'. Instead the apparatus of coercion, the agencies of state power, grew stronger, not weaker. The Communists, moreover, though in isolation, and with an increasing siege-mentality, still held to the conviction that 'history' was on their side, which meant refashioning society in their own particular image, no matter the cost, in the forced collectivisation of agriculture and rapid industrialisation. The perceived intensification of the 'class struggle' that this process brought about deepened, still further, the coercive power of the state in the hands of Stalin. And so it continued in its own way, and with its own dynamics; through Mao, through Pol Pot, in ever decreasing circles, ever more murderously perverse; ever further from, or closer to, the Marxist ideal. Clio the Muse (talk) 01:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Marxism

I thought the responses to the earlier question on Marxism and tyranny very interesting indeed (The God that failed-19 November). I now have a question of my own arising from this. Is there a fundamental intellectual weakness in Marxism as a body of thought that somehow leads to a process of degeneration? Was the worm already in the bud? I hope my question is not too vague. Stockmann (talk) 19:22, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

On a slight tangent I've always thought Communism could be summed up in six words - 'Great in theory, lousy in practice' Exxolon (talk) 21:23, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I would reccommend Karl Popper to anyone interested in the intellectual hole at the centre of Marxist theory. The Poverty of Historicism is as good a place to start as any, but The Open Society and its Enemies is better. DuncanHill (talk) 21:36, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I've just been struck by the thought that the historian whose writings I enjoy most is A. L. Rowse, a lifelong Marxist, and the philosopher whose writings I most enjoy is Karl Popper. Odd that. DuncanHill (talk) 22:02, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

There's a big difference between Marxism as a body of thought and Marxism as a philosophy of the state. There are plenty of smart Marxists (though I find most Marxists to be a bit narrow, not all are), but there have been pretty much zero successful/non-totalitarian Marxist states. If I were to do a rather off-the-cuff sort of assessment, I'd say that Marxism (and Marx himself) does best when it is providing analysis and critique of the capitalist/imperialist state, but is absolutely miserable if not lousy when suggesting what ought to be done about it. It's a great way for looking at how states work (one of many ways, to be sure—don't believe anybody when they tell you there's only one way to look at things that is correct), but it's a really, really lousy formula for how to run a state. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 23:01, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

That's an excellent point 24.147.86.187 (or may I call you 24?). I think one could say that Rowse found Marxism a useful tool in analysing historical power relationships, while Popper concentrated on how Marxist policies impacted on personal freedoms. DuncanHill (talk) 23:05, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) Is the (rather extreme) version of historicism that Popper sets up and then attacks really a hallmark of Marxism and Marx's theory of history? If I remember correctly (it has been a long time), he never defines what philosophy he sees as being Marxism, but the (mostly side-ways) attacks on Marxism appear directed at Marxism-Leninism, which has more to do with Stalin than with Marx. I also don't see how Plato's political ideas apply to Marxism; to me they appear rather antithetical to it. I can see how they apply to ideologies with a fascist tinge, such as corporatism.  --Lambiam 23:07, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Let's reduce this question, Stockmann, to the most basic terms. What is Marxism? Oh, I know what the standard answer is: it's a synthesis of German idealism, French politics and English economics. But at an even more basic level Marxism is no more than the intellectual process behind this supposed synthesis. Marxism, in other words, is Pallas Athena emerging fully armed from the head of Karl Marx in the shape of a nineteenth century Zeus. He conceived and he encompased in one mortal life a doctrine which supposedly explains the whole procees of human history and evolution. In this shape it is as absolute as the most doctrinare of Medieval scholasticism, because it envisiges and embraces the end of history itself. This, in all of its appealing simplicity, is its strength; and this, in all of its ambition and arrogance, is its weakness. For the process of degeneration, or, better still, the process of ossification, begins with the death in 1883 of the prophet himself. You see, while Karl Marx stopped, history did not. Clearly, with the master no longer present, the doctrine required interpretation and adjustment. The canon was safe for a time with Friedrich Engels in the role of Aaron. But with Engels's departure in 1895 there is no sure path left, no way of adjusting Marx to the continuing evolutions of history.

By the turn of the nineteeth century the German Social Democrats, by far the strongest Marxist party in the world, had turned the doctrine into sacred text rather than living practice, something to be visited on high days and holy days, and largely disregarded thereafter. It was Eduard Bernstein who recognised that Marxism, as it stood, was becoming historically obsolete, and was bold enough to suggest that there was a better, more modern way of dealing with the problems the party faced. He was attacked for his challenge to accepted orthodoxy by Karl Kautsky, the guardian of the sacred flame, though, for all his efforts, the theory became steadily more instrumental and less relevant. There was no one left to say, with authority, what Marxism was, and what it was not-at least not until Lenin took it in an entirely different direction from the Social Democrats-and from Karl Marx.

With Lenin Marxism moves in steadily decreasing circles; no longer the doctrine based historical inevitability and the mass party, but a doctrine of political action embraced by a self-selecting and conspiratorial elite. Lenin wins in Russia by a process that in no way corresponds to Marx's historical model; but political victory brings intellectual authority. Alternative views, like that of Rosa Luxembourg or Julius Martov are disregarded, because Marxism has now become predicated on political success; it becomes, in turns, what Lenin, or Trotsky, or Bukharin or Stalin say it is, with authority always and everywhere derived from power, and power alone. In the end it becomes no more than an intellectual excuse, cynically exploited to justify the power and practice of the Soviet state. And so it continues, fragmenting and dividing, finding homes further and further from its origins, degenerating to ever more oppressive and ever more murderous forms. It is one of history's greatest frauds, a supreme exercise in bad thinking and bad faith; bad as theory, worse as practice. Clio the Muse (talk) 00:13, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Clio is right that it all depends on what is meant by "Marxism". If by "Marxism" one means Marx's theory of capitalism as a "mode of production", or way of organizing economic life, and the body of theory that builds on his work in this area, then I question whether a body of theory exists with better explanatory power for the workings of capitalism. If by "Marxism" one means the quasi-religious belief in Marx's grotesque theory of history and the practice of totalitarian politics masquerading as the "dictatorship of the proletariat" that Marx prescribed, then I agree with Clio that it is a fraudulent and oppressive ideology. Marco polo (talk) 01:29, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, you have to agree that some aspects of Marxist theory are not totally worthless; indeed, much of historical and economic work has adopted them (often without crediting them)—the idea of the superstructure and a core, things like commodity fetishism and the labor theory of value, the idea that values shape around the modes and forces of production, etc. Whether one individually finds such an approach useful or not (in my work, I don't), those theoretical questions and elements aren't fraudulent, and much of the Marxian approach to things has been assimilated into our modern approach to big questions about society, labor relations, etc. Again, I would draw the distinction between Marxism as a tool for analysis and a Marxism as an ideology—the latter is the fraud, the latter is piss-poor, the latter is the producer of bores at best (there is nothing more dull than a committed Marxist) and maniacs at worst. But the former is something quite different, so let's not tar all of Marx with the same brush as all of his followers, just as we would not with Christ. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 01:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Marxism as a 'body of thought' would encompass several things: Marxian economics, Marxist political theory and marxist historiography - here generally with a lowercase 'm'.

Of the three, the first, like all economic theory, is extremely sensitive to assumptions. The assumptions made by Marx when he was writing in the high noon of Victorian capitalism were that monopolies would continue to increase, and that value would be added essentially through the production of real goods. These assumptions failed: monopolies never spread naturally beyond those industries which are natural monopolies and a vastly increasing proportion of national income came from the production of services.

The second, Marxist political theory, was unfortunately dependent upon Marxian economics; in the absence of the clear class-based confrontations that Marxian economics predicted, Marxist political theory began to make no sense whatsoever. Hence the wild attempts to fit facts to theory: the creations of categories of "temporary allies" of the proletariat in the bourgeoisie, the replacement of the changing of relative prices with outright expropriation as a method of transferring funds from agriculture to industrialisation, and, as Clio points out, the prioritisation of the 'party' and radical intellectuals, when Marx himself would have been hard put to make a theoretical distinction between the party and the proletariat. So that was doomed to failure.

The third, marxist historiography, is alive and well. As 86.187 says above, much of our social analysis is carried out using tools of class-based analysis. Interestingly, neoclassical economics, which one would think is the traditional enemy of Marxism, would agree completely with that tradition's approach to rational analysis of broad movements using technical progress as the initial motive factor.

To sum up, the only problem with Marxism is that Marx died. Like any large, diverse body of work being used for political purposes, those with an interest in a particular interpretation would focus on that; and because of the diversity of the man's entire body of work, any particular hypothesis would find support somewhere, through some form of esoteric textual analysis. If this reminds you of certain religions, you would not be the first to make that comparison. The intellectual flaw in Marxism is that there was a sacred text to start off with; the flaws in its application are flaws that would emerge in any such project, regardless of the context of the text. Relata refero (talk) 09:17, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

How much of a sphere can you see from one point?

Particulary to do with planets. I have always assumed it is 50% but I started thinking about it and I thought that it surely must be less, at some point the surface of the sphere will be paralel with your direction of vision. Is there some mathematical relationship that any one could write that would describe this? Cheers, Shniken1 (talk) 05:10, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

• Let $R$ be the distance between the observer and the center of the sphere. Let $r$ be the radius of the sphere. Then the apex angle of the visible spherical cap is $2\arccos {\frac {r}{R}}$. Using the formula found in the solid angle article, the solid angle of the cap is $2\pi (1-{\frac {r}{R}})$. Since the full solid angle of the sphere is $4\pi$, it means that the visible surface area is ${\frac {2\pi (1-r/R)}{4\pi }}={\frac {R-r}{2R}}$. If $R>>r$, this ratio approaches $1/2$. - Sikon (talk) 07:15, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

All of it... provided it's completely lit with nothing obscured, and you use a few mirrors. Of course, that's assuming mirrors are not disallowed in your question. Though, if we're talking planets, those giant mirrors can get expensive. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) -- HiEv 10:09, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Giant mirrors? What are talking about? --Taraborn (talk) 13:35, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

He was making a joke about the scale of planets necessitating a giant mirror to see the sides out of view. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 13:51, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, you could do it with smaller mirrors and use a telescope. It does raise an interesting side question though: how many mirrors would you need? (I'm guessing 2, but possibly 3?) --SB_Johnny | ^talk 14:07, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh. I didn't see the "All of it..." part... --Taraborn (talk) 14:43, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

When I'm out flying in my spaceship, I always measure the angle $2\alpha$ that the planet covers from my point of view and the distance $h$ to the surface. That way, I get the planet radius as

$r=h{\frac {\sin \alpha }{1-\sin \alpha }}.$

—Bromskloss (talk) 19:02, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

thats the craziest semiangle $\alpha$ I've ever seen! Furmanj (talk) 00:54, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Really, how do you mean? —Bromskloss (talk) 12:20, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Exponential naming

"Square" and "cube" are apparently used to describe the exponents 2 & 3 because of their relationship to geometrical forms. Are there any forms that could lend their names to higher powers? Retarius | Talk 02:47, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I read a book a bit ago that called four-dimensional figures "planoplanes". I think it was the Arithmetica Infinitorum. Black Carrot (talk) 02:53, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, in that direction, many n-dimensional objects are named after 2 or 3-dimensional objects they resemble, with some modifier (hyperplane, hypersphere, hypercube, n-ball, etc.) Black Carrot (talk) 02:55, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Apparently quartic functions can be called "biquadratic", so maybe the fourth power could be a bisquare. Black Carrot (talk) 03:03, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I was attempting to explain powers of numbers to someone I was tutoring when the question arose: "If three is a cube, what does four make?" (Golden Rule: To discover how little you know about something try explaining it to someone who knows nothing about it.) I tried to imagine a four-dimensional form to use as a name-source but, of course, that fourth dimension is Time in conventional discourse. Retarius | Talk 03:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

That would be a better opportunity to teach the theory of language than math. It shows up in all sequences that people started naming before they realized they couldn't stop. First, second, third, then nth. Eleven, twelve, then n-teen. Linear, quadratic, cubic, quartic, quintic, n-degree. Ten, hundred, thousand, million, n-illion. Black Carrot (talk) 03:27, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Now I've had a chance to look at some of the concepts you've referred to I think a valid terminology could be derived from the table shown in the article on the hypercube. Although "Two hexeracted" might lose in a cost/benefit analysis against "Two to the sixth". Many thanks for your guidance, Black Carrot. Retarius | Talk 04:00, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

That's a good word. I wish I had a copy of that book still, I think it had some other odd words for powers. That was back when algebra was some newfangled toy, and I think he made up a lot of stuff. For instance, according to his article he was the first person to use the infinity symbol in print. Black Carrot (talk) 05:26, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I usually refer to fourth powers as Quarts, (for Quartic) and Quints for 5ths and so forth. This is mainly due to my having studied Polynomials a fair amount on my own. A math-wiki (talk) 08:04, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

See zenzizenzic and zenzizenzizenzic. Gandalf61 (talk) 14:52, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Apparently a question of long standing...Zenzizenzic? Now that's a word for quiz nights! Retarius | Talk 01:44, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Inverse color

How do I calculate the inverse color for a color? i.e. if I'm given a color, I want the color best suited for the background color, i.e. most readable.

I have seen many many online inverse color tools that simply assume it's the 256 complement (if I am using that term correctly), so (to use decimal), 10's inverse is 245. But of course then you get the color #808080 (i.e. 128 128 128), and the inverse is not correct at all.

Does anyone have a better formula? I'm thinking perhaps the color such that new minus old color has the maximum absolute magnitude. Any ideas? Ariel. (talk) 10:48, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how exactly you're calculating the inverse, but you want to be breaking the colour down into its red green and blue components. For a given colour $(R,G,B)$, your inverse will be $((255-R),(255-G),(255-B))$. Readro (talk) 11:21, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

The answer depends on definition of 'inverse' , that is what color model you use. It's quite safe to assume that black and white should be 'inverse' to each other. But what do you mean by inverse of, say, bright yellow? Should it be dark brown (light–dark inversion, i.e. lightness inversion in HSL color space) or rather intense blue (RGB inversion, proposed by Readro above)? --CiaPan (talk) 12:30, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

If what you're after is a color which is as different as possible from the given color, then yes, you want each of the RGB components to have the maximum distance between them. This will always be a color with RGB components of 0 or 255. So for (192, 140, 60), for example, the most distant color will be (0, 0, 255). Of course, I am assuming here that in terms of perception, the components are completely unrelated and 128 is midway between 0 and 255. Also, this will not be bijective - the same color will be the "inverse" of many colors. If you want a bijection which guarantees that the colors will be quite different, you can take each RGB component and add 128 modulo 256. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 12:39, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Readro's inversion, and 128 modulo 256 both don't handle gray - they produce gray as the result. Meni's idea - is I guess, for each component - if it's greater than 127 make it 0, if it's less or equal, make it 255. I think that should work. CiaPan: you ask which type of inversion - I would answer: both. Because otherwise you don't handle gray (the opposite color to gray is still gray), so you need lightness change, but light yellow on dark yellow is also hard to read, so you also want a color inversion. Would Meni's idea do that? Ariel. (talk) 13:30, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, now I understand (I hope). :) Well, yes, Meni's idea is best for you: it will give most contrast color possible, approximately inversing the hue of a given color and choosing its maximum or minimum value. For example for yellow and similar colors you'll get intense blue; for any bright gray color, including white, you'll get black; for all very dark colors you'll get white, an so on. --CiaPan (talk) 13:41, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[ec] Adding 128 modulo 256 does handle gray - it produces black or white for the result (for dark grey it will give light grey, which works but is perhaps suboptimal). My other suggestion will turn light yellow to light blue and dark yellow to white. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 13:56, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I miss-understood what you wrote (misread the modulo). I tried it - it handles some colors better then others. It doesn't produce the opposite color (from a color wheel) for all colors like this color for example, on the other hand this seems OK. The other method you posted works nicely, except cyan is not a very easy color to read. Ariel. (talk) 15:38, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

You've asked two completely different questions here. A perceptually "opposite" color is not generally a good background color for maximum readability. The most-distant-in-RGB strategy will get you cyan on red, which is a terrible combination for readability even though these are perceptually very different colors. The add-128-modulo-256 strategy will give you such horrors as red on grey. In these cases cyan on black and red on white would have been far better. You should also take into account that you may have colorblind users, and what looks good to you may be unreadable to some of them. I think your best bet is to use a black background for all bright colors and a white background for all dark colors. To judge the brightness of an RGB color you could use the sRGB formula in the Luminance (relative) article. If it isn't obvious by now, your question really belongs on the science desk; human color perception is complicated and weird, and there's no simple mathematical answer to the questions of what looks most different or best. -- BenRG (talk) 15:24, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

The color is actually the background color, and I just want something readable for the text label on top of the color (the color blind person would read that - I think contrasting colors and brightness simultaneously should be readable to a color blind person, just changing the color would not be). I tried making all the text either black or white, it worked for many colors, but not for all of them. The ones that were mid-way in luminosity were hard to read. So far the most-distant method worked best, but some colors look terrible, as you mentioned. There has to be a better way - your cyan on red are both full luminosity colors, I want to also invert the luminosity. So solid red should become black (the cyan at 0 darkness). (Well, I think I want that - I don't really know what I want :) Ariel. (talk) 15:49, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Can you give examples of colours for which neither a white nor a black label worked well?  --Lambiam 18:02, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

For example: this color in white and this one and in white. I mean it's not terrible, but a color instead of black or white would be better. Ariel. (talk) 15:47, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Note that properly converting RGB colors to grayscale isn't quite as simple as just adding the components together. In fact, the precise conversion formula will depend on the specific RGB color space used, but a quick and dirty rule is to weigh the red channel by 30%, the green by 60% and the blue by 10%. Thus, to pick the maximally contrasting color from the set {black, white}, given the background color (r, g, b) ∈ [0,1]³, one might use the formula:

${\mbox{color }}={\begin{cases}{\mbox{black,}}&{\mbox{if }}3r+6g+b\geq 5\\{\mbox{white,}}&{\mbox{otherwise}}.\end{cases}}$

—Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:31, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I particular, the rule I give above produces, for extremal backgrounds choices, black on green, yellow, cyan and white, and white on black, red, blue and magenta. Simply using the unweighted mean would yield the opposite choice on green and magenta, which I think you'll agree would not look optimal. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

You could also perhaps experiment with lowering the threshold a bit, say from 5 to 4.5, since the human eye seems to be somewhat more comfortable with black on a dark background than with white on a bright one. But the 50% threshold ought to work well enough. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:48, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Is the Ariel asking about complimentary colors as in art and design? Complimentary are the exact opposite of each other and shows the best contrast. It is based on RYB not RGB. 2 complimentary colored paints when mixed will always be black. See http://www.faceters.com/askjeff/answer52.shtml NYCDA (talk) 23:58, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Two complimentary colors, as it says in the article you linked, usually mix to a muddy brownish color. Black and white have to be produced separately, essentially as two more primary colors. Black Carrot (talk) 04:16, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

That would be Complementary colors. AndrewWTaylor (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 08:45, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I know what they are, I was asking how to calculate them. And if they are a good choice. Ariel. (talk) 15:47, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

(See above for 2 colors that didn't work great with black or white.) All the ideas posted worked pretty well, but I think it can be better. I like the most distant color rule, but I'd like to remove cyan, magenta, and yellow from the options, since those colors aren't the easiest to read. Any ideas? Ariel. (talk) 15:54, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Mathmatically the opposite of "all" is "some", not "none". Opposite of gray is white or black depending on your prespective. You might be better of if you add 128 to the component if the value is less then 128, substract 128 if the value is greater then 128. For 128 itself, you can set it to 0 or 255. Using this rule, you get

sample sample sample sample

NYCDA (talk) 19:11, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Alot of people seem to be trying to invert colour mathematically. What is needed here is to invert for the eye. Itensity is not equally effected by the colours. Intensity is generally: (0.299*r) + (0.587*g) + (0.114*b). Opposite intensity = (0.368*r) + (0.080*g) + (0.552*b). So for grey of 128,128,128, the opposite is 47 (0.368*128), 10 (0.080*128), 70(0.552*128), you then invert that to get 208, 245, 185. For gray 32,32,32 the opposite colour is 12,3,17 -> 243,252,238. For red (255,0,0), the opposite itensity is 94,0,0 -> 161,255,255. Opposite of blue (0,0,255) is 0,0,140 -> 255,255,115. Opposite of dark green (0,128,0) is 0,10,0 -> 255,254,255. This is the TRUE opposite. The value I use (0.386,0.080,0.552) are beacuse of the sensitivity of the eye, we see green the most and blue the poorest. Samples: Grey Grey Blue Blue Darkgreen Darkgeen Red Red D.Yellow D.Yellow Green Green I think you will find that no matter what colour you put in, you will get the most pleasing 'opposite' colour for human vision. Note that there is another set of values for computer screens. With these values red and green will be to bright. I know that these are the values for print (newspapers etc) but for computer screens I don't know. I think the green 0.08 is alot higher.--155.144.251.120 (talk) 01:10, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

How did you calculate the opposite factors? I can see that they add to .666 but why is that what you choose? Also the Luminance (relative) has different factors. That article has very different numbers, and different from Ilmari's 30/60/10 rule as well. Edit: found it, the Luma (video) has your numbers. Ariel. (talk) 01:41, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, I just figured it out. The sums each add to 1. Two set of them add to 2, and 2/6=.666. Ariel. (talk) 01:43, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I take back my never mind - for the values in the Luminance (relative) what do I do for .7152? Take the absolute? I tried that, but the new factors: 0.4541, 0.0485, 0.5945 don't add up to 1 anymore. Ariel. (talk) 01:55, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

This inverse doesn't seem right. For white you get Light green, and I think you should get black. Ariel. (talk) 02:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Some of 155's observations are good, but his method for inverting is completely bogus. For the color (186, 236, 164), the inverse he proposes is the color itself. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 23:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we need to look at this from a different angle, there are two things that seem to really matter to our eye, pigment and luminosity. So if we describe the standard RGB values in terms of these two. Thing of it like this, the pigment is the actual color, (direction of a vector onto the color wheel) and luminosity is the intensity of this pigment (length of said vector). There's also the issue of the grey scale, which could be thought of as a z-component of that vector which gives it depth. To avoid the issue of grey on grey, one could argue that the length of the vector should always be maximized to get the resulting color to be as different as possible from the first color. A math-wiki (talk) 07:43, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

After some further thought, I'll clarify my describtion a bit. On the XY plane, the direction the vector takes is the pigment (coloration), the length on the planes describes the intensity of the pigmentation, and the change in height over the length of vector is the luminosity with the brightest white being the highest positive value allowed, and the darkest black the lowest negative value allowed. A math-wiki (talk) 07:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

You might want to try somethjing like just inverting (red = 255 - red) then factor by the weighting of the lumanance: r = r/1.567889620, g = g/0.466070096; b=b/4.616805170; This takes care of greys because they go to greens:

blackblackwhitewhitegreygreydgreydgreylgreylgreyredredlredlredgreengreenlgreenlgreenbluebluelbluelblueyellowyellowlyellowlyellowindegoindegolindegolindegovioletvioletlvioletlviolet--Dacium (talk) 00:24, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Not understanding these calculus problems

I've been self-teaching calculus, so I'm not sure if I have covered the material required for these problems with sufficient depth yet:

f is a polynomial, integrate by parts: 0ƒπ f(x)sinx dx

(that's a definite integral from 0 to pi; I can't figure out how to display it right)

I'm stuck at f(pi)*cos(pi)- ƒ(cos*f'); it keeps looping around from f(x)sinx to f'(x)cosx and so on and so forth.

Is there anything else I need to do, or am I just missing something? Any help would be appreciated.

And I have no idea what's going on here:

g is defined for 0 ≤ x ≤ r by g(x) = qx(r-x), verify:
g(0) = g(r) = 0
g(x) > 0 for 0 < x < r
max g(x) = g(r/w) = qr²/4 = p²/4q

Is r special, or is it just a second variable? What about q? Where did p come from? Pointers to what I need to teach myself, useful pages, or perhaps a walkthrough of a similar type of problem would be most helpful.

Many thanks,
147.129.97.137 (talk) 10:11, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

For the first, I'll give a hint - when you do integration by parts, you differentiate one of the functions and integrate the other. You have done it twice - the first time you have differentiated the polynomial, which is good, but in the second time you have chosen to integrate it, so you end up back where you started. Try differentiating the polynomial both times and continue from there (in fact you will have to do it several times).

For the second - r is just a constant, you can treat it as if it was a number. It looks like the question is missing information about w and p, but it looks like w is supposed to be 2 and p is supposed to be qr, which also happens to be equal to $g'(0)\;\!$. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 10:22, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

For the statement g(x) > 0 to be true, q has to be positive. In general you should not encounter free variables like p in the statements you are required to prove unless they have been introduced in what is given; it suggests that the material was prepared in a sloppy way. Where did you find this material?  --Lambiam 19:27, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Learning maths from scratch

I always want to learn maths all over again, but I don’t know how to start with. Now, I’m undergraduate, I “parted” with everything science since high school, and I did almost nothing more than very simple statistics (like poisson distribution, but I don’t really remember it) and calculus (I don’t remember how to differentiate). So, if I want to know “advanced maths”, like what is being taught at university, what sorts of books (maybe in English) may I use (as an adult learner)?

My “junior high school” maths is about factorizing, polynomials, simple geometry (calculating angles) and so on; which areas do high school maths (I mean, for learning science subjects) and university maths cover? I’m looking for books for learning more advanced things (compared to my present level) and I don’t just concentrate on calculus or statistics (or something like that). Any suggestions? --Fitzwilliam (talk) 14:10, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

From my experience, university maths tends to recap all you learnt at school in the first year - try just going along to the first year maths lectures. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:39, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Especially maths lectures targeted at science students, rather than maths students. My Maths department (at a UK uni, I know it's a little different elsewhere) offers a module called "Mathematics for Scientists and Engineers" which covers a wide range of mathematical topics at a fairly basic level (by Uni standards) without assuming much (if any) prior knowledge. If there are similar modules are your uni, those would be the ones to go to. --Tango (talk) 16:11, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd go to a Maths Department. They love to find new students. Imagine Reason (talk) 23:15, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

What is your motivation? Do you want to learn advanced maths primarily because you feel it will be useful, or is it more for fun? If you have forgotten how to differentiate, maybe you should take a course in calculus (actually analysis) anyway, using a text that does not just give the rules and formulas but also precise definitions of concepts like the real numbers, limit, and continuity, and rigorous proofs. Other topics you may study that don't immediately require much prior knowledge are linear algebra and projective geometry. Also consider elementary number theory and combinatorics. A nice book is Concrete Mathematics; although aiming at hopeful computer scientists, it is also quite valuable for mathematicians. I'd also advice you not to go immediately very deep into one field of maths, but to first build up a fairly broad basic knowledge of various fields. Much of the more advanced stuff in maths requires some knowledge of other fields.  --Lambiam 00:26, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Wiki Text

I would like to use more complex techniques in editing and I'm trying to find a full description of what is possible with the wiki markup language. I can't find a general tutorial or menu that shows all functions available and how to use them. Retarius | Talk 05:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I hope you get some good answers. As a recent editor, this has been a real bugbear for me too! Pee Tern (talk) 05:10, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:How to edit a page, or Help:Contents/Editing Wikipedia a subpage of the main help menu. -- Quiddity (talk) 05:12, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

If you want more advanced details, see: Help:Parserfunctions, Help:Magic words, Help:Template, Help:HTML in wikitext, and Help:Category. Basically read the entire MediaWiki Handbook, which has four large sections: for readers, for editors (this section tells the most about wikitext markup, naturally), for moderators, and for administrators. Also melt your brain on the Editor's index, which gives a pretty full description of what is possible on Wikipedia. A solid introduction to Wikipedia editing could easily fill up a year of college-level work. And that would be a fun course to teach. But on Wikipedia, everything you see is built by and for people who self-educate. I suggest that you take some notes on a user sub-page with links to the manuals you are reading. Also see the {{Google custom}} template, which has a table of examples which link to a list of places I have found handy for answering questions that come up in the course of Wikipedia editing (I wrote the table of examples, so I put in the links I use routinely when looking up answers to questions on the Help desk). --Teratornis (talk) 07:29, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you all - especially Teratornis - that's just what I was looking for! Retarius | Talk 05:56, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Page division

• First, thanks again,Teratornis, for the advice you gave me a while back on advanced editing sources. It's proving very helpful in writing my first article.

• I can't find an answer to this, though: I want to put two columns of text on my User Page in the "Useful Links" section. The one on the left will be the Wikipedia Links that I've already listed - the other column on the right would be External Links. (I checked Help desk archives and searched all the Editor's commands with Control-F, but no joy.) Retarius | Talk 04:08, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I gave an example of how to do this on your userpage. There are other ways. If this isn't what you want just revert. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:44, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

It's good that you tried searching before asking. With enough practice, you can find the answer to almost any question about Wikipedia that has an answer, because people have written, somewhere, about almost every important editing issue. (When they haven't, then you could be the first to write about some topic. A cool aspect of Wikipedia is that everything we do to help ourselves here can also be useful to other people, so Wikipedia is like a giant system of Pay it Forward. We benefit from all the work by people who came before, and we add our little bits to the knowledge pile to help the next wave of people.) Search the Help desk for: column finds several previous questions and answers relating to your question. That search also finds a number of results that aren't relevant, but some relevant results do appear on the first page, and they are recognizable from the sample text that Google displays. If you don't find results from your first attempt to search the Help desk, try again with different terms, fewer terms, or more general terms. Some things can be pretty hard to find, however, for example when you don't guess the particular synonym people have used to describe a particular topic. But the more you read the friendly manuals, the more you learn Wikipedia's jargon, and the better you get at searching. You'll know you're making progress when you can answer questions on the Help desk even though you don't know the answers when you first read the questions. --Teratornis (talk) 20:49, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Stored text on stolen generations for reference

Ex: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2163812.htm

The myth of the Stolen Generations - a rebuttal. 15 February 2008, 13:00

by Peter Read

---

Wednesday was the day for which some of the Stolen Generations have waited all their lives.

Keith Windschuttle is one of the few historians to question seriously the accepted account of how Aboriginal children were removed in large numbers out of fundamentally racist policies.

In last Saturday’s The Australian, while acknowledging some biological assimilation programs as obnoxious, he attacked my portrayal of events in NSW. He writes, 'Don't let facts spoil the day.' But as usual, his too-hurried research leads him into error.

What was happening in southern Australia?

Conscious from the 1870s that the part-Aboriginal population was rapidly increasing, Victoria and New South Wales were trying the policy of the 'designated reserve' from which Aboriginal people either could not or would not want to leave. But by the first decade of the twentieth century it was clear that the policy was failing.

Arable land in southern Australia was wanted by new settlers, the harsh regimes of some reserves were causing the residents to vote with their feet. So a new policy, exactly opposite to the first, was evolving by 1910.

This was progressively to reduce and ultimately to close the reserves by expelling the adults and removing the children.

That is the context in which Robert Donaldson, from 1916 the Protection Board's Chief Inspector, uttered the infamous words: '[t]here is no difference of opinion as to the only solution of this great problem - the removal of the children... In the course of the next few years there will be no need for the camps and stations; the old people will have passed away, and their progeny will be absorbed in the industrial classes of the colony'

That was the context of a new policy which Windschuttle ignores, the reason why Aboriginal schools were created only up to 1918 and the reason why the removal rate of children accelerated after that time.

Windschuttle, on the basis of his rushed reading, asserts that not many babies were taken. But babies were commonly removed directly from stations without being listed on the files which Windschuttle uses.

Nor does he consider the children born to unmarried Aboriginal mothers in public hospitals in the major cities. Such mothers had virtually no chance of keeping their children, but how many such babies were lost to the Aboriginal people in this way are unknown.

Joy Williams, who sued the NSW government for developing mental illness while a state ward, was one of them. Born in Crown Street in 1942 to a Stolen Generation mother, she was immediately transferred to the Bomaderry home for Aboriginal babies. She has no record in the files which Windschuttle consulted.

There were many justifications provided by managers for removing children besides 'being Aboriginal' and similar forms of words. They illustrate how sharply the state distinguished Aboriginal from other children.

Being an orphan was often cited as a cause, and yet according Dr Naomi Parry’s calculation, 45 per cent of children removed in NSW from 1916 to 1928 had two parents living with them.

Another common citation was 'being in moral or physical danger'. That ploy represented little more than the Board's recognition that it could not solve the 'great problem' just by presenting 'neglected' children to a magistrate.

In 1915 the Chief Secretary told the parliament: 'At the present time the law is that the state can take control of neglected children, but under the law these children cannot legally be called neglected... If the Aboriginal child is decently clad and apparently well looked after, it is very difficult indeed to show that the half caste or aboriginal child is actually in a neglected condition, and therefore it is impossible to succeed in court.'

So the Board was granted the power to declare as a state ward - and hence remove - any Aboriginal child under 18 deemed to be 'in moral or physical danger'. In the 'reason for removal' the phrase occurs frequently!

The bypassed legal system could no longer protect Aboriginal children from the bureaucracy. That is another essential difference which Windschuttle misses.

Windschuttle accuses me of down-playing the beneficial policy of removing children to enter apprenticeships. But state wards were not Trades Apprentices, who learned a trade from a skilled worker. The condition of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal state wards was much more similar to indentures in unskilled rural labour and domestic service.

The children were 'apprenticed' as domestic servants just as white working class women were leaving domestic service for factory work, and just when the rural labour force was in serious decline after WWI.

Here a more sinister element enters the equation. Professor Heather Goodall calculates that 72 per cent of all the children over 12 who were removed from 1912 to 1928 were girls, which she describes as an intervention to restrict and control young Aboriginal women's sexual activity.

Parry found that 49 per cent of children were sent into service directly without any training at all. Many were later deeply traumatized by what Windshuttle describes as 'on-the-job training'.

In one by no means unique case, a girl was taken to the Cootamundra Girls Training Home when she was five, and ten years later was sent to 'apprentice' as a domestic servant. Not much more than a year later she had been in five different work situations, two Aboriginal stations, the Sydney Rescue Home, a police station and Callan Park Mental Hospital. When she was 20 a Board official casually noted, 'heard that she had returned to Darlington Point and living with sister'.

She at least knew where to return.

Until 1921 the board officials were not even required to return wards and even then they frequently did not take young people back to their communities.

The officials' motives were clear then, and are clear now: the children were supposed to lose their Aboriginality after their removal. In the Board's solution they were not supposed to return.

Windschuttle adopts his common tactic of singling out a particular historian for attention. But Parry, Goodall and Read are only three of a host of historians who have worked much more closely in the records than Windschuttle.

How insulting to the stolen generations and their descendants to be told that their history has been created by these 'recent academic historians'.

Windschuttle should try walking into the throng of stolen generations who gathered outside parliament this week and suggest that to them. He may be surprised.

---

You have remembered something from a doco, but not quite right. He pleaded NG and stuck with NG, even though his lawyer suggested he could plea bargain for G to Manslaughter. Button thought about it and agreed for the sake of saving his parents the cost of the court case, but when he kept saying he would accept 'even though he didn't do it', Hatfield realised he had to stick with the NG. And hence the parents lost their house and he got the verdict to the lesser crime of Manslaughter anyway.

I was invited to join the Government Media Office, though having been invited still needed to go through the process. I was taken on for Peter Downding, but Jeff Carr asked for me, so they switched me last minute and my first Min was Jeff Carr, Min for Police and Local Government. After the election I went to a couple of other Mins, before the new Police Min Gordon Hill asked for me, on the advice of a high-ranking police officer. So just the 2 Police Mins, but gained very useful info through them.

My advocacy for Palestinian immigrant Dr Naiem Abu Zeid was when working for the ABC in Geraldton (locum while permanent journo on leave). One of those stupid decisions where he could teach Australian medical students and could work with black Australians, but not white Australians. So he was with the Geraldton Aboriginal Medical Service and looking like being sacked, from a job that was vital to him, raising 3 children. I befriended the family, which ended up in Tasmania where Naiem died at 52 after gaining his PhD, from liver cancer probably gained from Hep C gained during his research to find a cancer cure. The eldest son was very soon after killed in a car crash when a drunk driver went on to the wrong side of the road, so very difficult for Souzanne, who had 6 children. The first girl, 3 when I met them in Geraldon, is getting married.