User talk:Gandalf61/Archive11

Narcissistic number

Hey Gandalf, the code i provided is perfectly ok, I have run it in 3 or 4 compilers before giving it here. Thought it might help others. And what do you mean by unsourced? Do you mean that I have provided no external link to verify it? Man you don't need it. Verify it yourself. And as for the source, you will find 3 or 4 such ‘unsourced’ codes in the Tower of Hanoi page. So you deem they ought to be deleted too? And you said it's too long? Try to get a shorter code for this program. If you can, I will eat humble pie. And what do you mean by it's not notable. I tried high and low by googling to get a comprehensive list of such numbers, but there was none. So won't it be better if someone had a program at hand to generate them themselves should they happen to need to? Waiting for your reply on my talk page. Cupidcobra1 (talk) 15:26, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

It may be great code, but WP:NOR still applies - unless you can show that it has been published or discussed in a reliable source, then it does not belong in Wikipedia. I have also deleted the code examples and associated OR text from Tower of Hanoi. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:50, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

moments of the riemann zeta

i'm sure this is not the right place to do this but is there any chance you could help me understand what is meant by the 'moments of the riemann zeta function'? i am a physics major, aware only of the connection between zeta and random matices (montgomery-dyson etc.). and is there any sense in which the non-trivial zeros of the riemann zeta can be regarded as a discrete spectrum? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.233.134.138 (talk) 17:19, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, no, that's not an area I know anything about. You could try asking at the Mathematics Reference Desk. BTW, I have removed your email address to protect your privacy. Gandalf61 (talk) 19:09, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Square root calculation

Hello..

I was tempted to give that method of quick calculation just coz I didn't find this little known method over the internet including wikipedia. Coincidentally, as u say, it is the first iteration of the Babylonian Method. But for a layman who just wants a method, this example can be included as a title "Fast Application" on that page below the description of the "Babylonian Method", don't u think so? The methods described on the current page use many variables and are not too user friendly if we go into applying them and I believe that information is useful till it is usable by anyone which includes children. Otherwise as u feel comfortable.

Regards

Paekut (talk) 19:46, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

65536 (number)

Re this edit of yours from April 2008: I have the first (1986) edition of David Wells' Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers and he doesn't mention this property. Did you perhaps intend to reference the revised (1997) edition? (I don't have that). See also discussion at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics#65536 -- power of two without 1, 2, 4, or 8 in decimal representation, to which you might be able to usefully contribute. Regards, Qwfp (talk) 08:33, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to Amazon's "Look Inside" feature I've now found this is indeed in the revised edition and fixed the ref. Regards, Qwfp (talk) 12:47, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you are right, the reference should be to the 1997 edition. Gandalf61 (talk) 20:46, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Opinion request

Would you please weigh in at the Examples discussion at Talk:Fringe theory? Thank you. Tom Reedy (talk) 20:57, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

• Vacuum cannot be proper vacuum. There must be a medium to hold the dark energy and there exists an isometric medium consisting of photons which are holding the dark energy as photons are the smallest elementary particle in term of energy as well as mass.

If we cannot create a perfect vacuum, then we cannot conclude that an electro magnetic radiation can propagate without a medium.

A photon cannot be mass less. Its rest mass is assumed to be zero as it is so small that it cannot be weighed. Its momentum can be observed as it is not so negligible.

A photon cannot travel from the source of an electro magnetic radiation to another to carry out the energy. Photons only transfer the energy from one point to another as per the basic rule of the transverse wave as an electro magnetic wave is a special kind of transverse wave.

Vibration is the only way to transfer energy from one point to another. Different mode of vibration produces different kind of energy. So if we try to construct the T.O.E. equation, then we have to find out the equation of different mode of vibrations.

A string is hypothetical as we cannot explain that by which matter it is made of. What there exists in any elementary particle to produce the mass, charge etc. is a medium of high dense photons. The photons absorb energy from different rays of different frequencies. As there exists a magnetic moment in every elementary particle, the photons cannot escape from the particles. The continuous energy state change (as it absorbs energy from a ray having a definite frequency or of its multiple integral) of the photons produces a definite mode of vibration. As a result the mass and charges (in some cases) of the particles are produced.

A black hole is continuously expanding and the proper vacuum only exists in the active gravitational field of it because the gravity of a black hole is so intense that it attracts even the particles of negligible masses, like photons.

The Big Bang is a cyclic process and it could occur from any black hole irrespective of its size or energy. The time period can be different but any black hole can end up with a Big Bang.

I, Soumya Roy, to whom you've answered before, am definite to prove all those things stated above. But I cannot do it alone without your help because of insufficient equipments and proper laboratory. I'm definite if we prove all those things no one can stop us from winning the Nobel. These things cannot be proved yet because no one has ever think these in this point of view. Please try to help me. Contact me in this number : +919800706005. Please contact me as early as possible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.194.162.85 (talk) 13:12, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Verdy p

I see we both are having problems with the above user concerning his edits of both Continued fraction and Generalized continued fraction. I sent a Level two advisory to his talk page via WP:Twinkle after reverting more his edits (some of which you previously reverted). Thanks for helping me in this area. − Glenn L (talk) 04:28, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

List of unsolved problems in physics

Hi, I don't particularly like the form of your rewording of my contribution from "Cyclic universe Is the universe cyclic in nature or a one-off occurrence? Have space and time existed forever?" to "Ultimate fate of the universe Is the universe heading towards a Big Freeze, a Big Rip, a Big Crunch or a Big Bounce ?" The cyclic version is more general and does not involve particular scenarios or the notion of an ultimate fate. Please don't change it again. Androstachys (talk) 15:33, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Your edit warring has been flagged at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics. Let's see what other editors think. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:41, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Unblock-auto request

Thank you. Gandalf61 (talk) 12:03, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Merging articles during live AfDs

...is highly disruptive. Please don't do again what you did for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Clackson scroll formula. T. Canens (talk) 14:42, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Do you have a policy or guideline that supports your notion that I was "highly disruptive" ? Or is that just your personal opinion ? 'Cos from where I am standing, I openly and transparently made a bold edit and said what I had done in the AfD, and any editor could have just reverted my edit if they disagreed with it. Even now the Clackson scroll content can be simply and easily stripped out of Archimedean spiral if anyone wants to do that. If you think the content should not have been merged, and think that what I did was not in line with the eventual AfD consensus, then why on earth did you close the AfD as a redirect ??? Gandalf61 (talk) 14:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Having now read your talk page, I think I now see where you are coming from. Looks to me like you made a bad call on the AfD closure, User:Kmhkmh questioned you closure actions, and then you decided to have a go at me. If you felt the AfD consenus was to delete, then your correct course of action was to remove the Clackson scroll section from Archimedean spiral and then delete the original article. You made a simple mistake, but saying that your hands are tied by Wikipedia's license and then trying to blame your mistake on me is showing very poor judgement, in my opinion. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:21, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Wikipedia:Guide to deletion#You may edit the article during the discussion, specifically the last bullet point; there was a huge RfC on this at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Archive 58#Merging during live AfD. Users have been blocked for this before. If I removed the merged content, then people would start arguing that I'm involved, biased, etc. Further, we do permit a section on a topic in an article even though the topic is not notable as a standalone article. If the discussion centered around, say, verifiability, I would perhaps have less reservation at removing it directly, but it concerned mostly notability of the topic, and I do not think that the debate can be read to indicate that this content is unsuitable for Wikipedia in any form. T. Canens (talk) 17:11, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

actually as far as the name and the use in blacksmithing are concerned there are 2 issues notability but also reliability/verifiability/correctness (see below).--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:39, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but as long as any of the merged content remains, the history must stay. T. Canens (talk) 18:04, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

T. Canens - let's see what that guideline says in full: "AfD participants should not circumvent consensus by merging or copying material to another article unilaterally, before the debate closes." So now, not only are you accusing me of being "highly disruptive", you are also saying that my motivation for merging the material was to circumvent consensus. And then you tell me that "Users have been blocked for this before", so on top of everything else you are threatening to block me. You have no right to come here and insult, bully and threaten an editor in good standing, when all I was trying to do was improve the encyclopedia. You should have applied AGF and asked me politely why I had merged the material, and did I realise this could be controversial. And if you think that the AfD consensus was in favour of keeping the material, then I completely fail to see why are you complaining about my merge in the first place. Gandalf61 (talk) 19:22, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I certainly am not accusing you of intentionally circumventing consensus; the effect of the merge, however, is to insulate the editing history from deletion, which is why it is discouraged. And I certain do not mean to suggest that I am going to block you for this single episode. Finally, I meant that I cannot discern a consensus either way on keeping the material as opposed to the article. I apologize for not phrasing it better. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Request review of my actions. T. Canens (talk) 00:30, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Okay. Apology accepted. And I see that with help from Kmhkmh you have now fixed your bad AfD closure, so everything is sorted. I understand that content merge during an AfD is discouraged and is potentially controversial - but that is light years away from "highly disruptive". I hope in future you will remember that approaching a well-intentioned editor by accusing them out of the box of being "highly disruptive" is not acceptable behaviour on Wikipedia, and is not going to lead to a productive discussion. Remember that the object in your hand is a mop, not a sword. Your type of high-handed "shoot first and ask questions later" attitude is what makes new contributors feel that Wikipdia is a hostile and unwelcoming environment, and drives away useful editors. Fortunately I have been around for a while, and I have seen this sort of trigger-happy gratuitous rudeness before. It no longer surprises me, but I will not put up with it. Please don't do it again. Gandalf61 (talk) 09:17, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually I prefer to look foward instead of discussing who and where some of us might have made a bad judgement call. Currently we have 2 things that are somewhat problematic, a redirect for clackson scroll formula and a section titeld clackson scroll formula in Archimedean spiral. If you read the AfD discussion and the discussion page of the Archimedean spiral carefully,I'd assume we can all agree on the following:

• There is nothing with the approximation formula as far as the math is concerned
• However its name and use in blacksmithing is not appropriately sourced. The name essentialy hinges on one source (scat report), whereas the use presumably hinges on 2 sources (scat report and publication by clackson). The reliability/notability/reputability of both sources is not established and questionable. None the people involved here and in the AfD did have a first hand look at those resources either.

Based on that I'd suggest the following remedy. Delete the Redirect and the section in the Archimedian spiral article. For the latter however it would be sufficient as well, just to remove the clackson and blacksmithing references and keep the approximation formula. On that note the spiral article should be augmented by the exact formulas anyhow.--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:07, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Kmhkmh - I have no problems with any of your suggestions. The only thing I have a problem with is T. Canens insults and threats, coming here and trying to bully me to justify his dubious closure. Do whatever you like with the articles. I am done here. Gandalf61 (talk) 19:22, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I went ahead and removed the section in archimedean spiral now and lit looks like Timotheus Canens has deleted the redirect as well now. Problem solved :-)--Kmhkmh (talk) 04:07, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Warning

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to vandalize Wikipedia, as you did at Dark flow, you may be blocked from editing. -- Fire Vortex (talk) 16:01, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I am meant to be intimidated by that nonsense ? By repeatedly inserting cut-and-paste text from here into the dark flow article you are breaking Wikipedia's copyright violation policy. There is no evidence that the source page has a license that is compatible with Wikipedia's GNU Free Documentation License. Therefore you must not copy its text into Wikipedia. Copyright violations like this are taken very seriously at Wikipedia - as our policy says: "Contributors who repeatedly post copyrighted material despite appropriate warning may be blocked from editing by any administrator to prevent further problems". I strongly suggest you stop edit warring before you dig yourself into an even bigger hole. You may, of course, rewrite the text in your own words. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:15, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not require any licences if material is copied from a public domain:

"Contributors agree to release their original content under both licenses when they submit it, and material from public domain sources or other compatibly-licensed sources may also be used in accordance with the copyright policy, provided correct attribution is given. However, material copied from sources that are not public domain or compatibly licensed without the permission of the copyright holder (unless brief quotation used in accordance with non-free content policy and guideline) is likely to be a copyright violation." Wikipedia:COPYVIO -- Fire Vortex —Preceding undated comment added 16:54, 28 September 2010 (UTC).

"Public domain" has a very specific meaning in copyright law - see Wikipedia:Public domain and s:Help:Public domain. Just because that site says "You can use this material if you include the proper credit" does not make it public domain. So what exactly is your reason for thinking the material on that page is public domain ? Gandalf61 (talk) 09:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Equation of State - Reply to comment on discussion page

I have posted a reply to your comment concerning my proposed edit of the Equation of State (cosmology) article on this page's Discussion.

Kentgen1 (talk) 18:09, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for reviewing my article on Rob Schenck

I appreciate your time in reviewing my article. I will work to correct the areas you mentioned. Thank you R. T. Gates (talk) 02:44, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Modular division

Hi,

You reverted my article about Modular division because it did not have sources. Do you think this is a reliable source? It's from Robert Campbell, who teaches number theory in UMBC, Maryland. He says that "As the last example points out, modular division does not always produce a unique result".

In any case, I think the redirect to Modular arithmetic is misleading, because that page has no information about modular division. It should, at least, be a stub with links to Modular multiplicative inverse and Division (mathematics).

--Erel Segal (talk) 17:32, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I think a one-line aside in a set of unpublished on-line lecture notes is too thin a foundation for a whole article. More references, especially in books or refereed journals, would strengthen your case. In the meantime, I would have no problem with amending the redirect to point to modular multiplicative inverse, which is probably a more relevant target. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:04, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I think this would also be confusing. From a user's point of view, redirects should be used for terms that are equivalent, not just similar. Otherwise, the user wonders "how did I get here, I looked for modular division and this page contains nothing about modular division". I converted the page into a stub, trying to remove all disputable content - what do you think? --Erel Segal (talk) 11:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I think it still needs more sources. In particular, it needs sources that show that the term "modular division" is commonly used to mean the inverse of modular multiplication even when this inverse is not uniquely defined because divisor and modulus are not coprime. See Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources for Wikipedia's definition of a reliable source. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:21, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Fermat

Hi Gandalf ! Could you please have a look at my last edit, on my talk page ? [18:56, 13 November 2010 (UTC)]. For me, I'm quite sure that Fermat's proof has been found, but I don't know at all when mathematicians, who actually are studying Fermat's proof, will publish their decision. As a matter of fact, when the wait is long, they say it's very good sign ; so I really enjoy this time ;) Could I have your opinion please ? Thanks --Hobbit (talk) 22:02, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Here is Fermat's idea : http://franquart.fr/ - sorry, it's only in French language for now, but the proof itself is quite short. --Hobbit (talk) 22:12, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Butterfly effect

Hello, I am curious of why you reverted my edit to the buttefly article. Of course, I'm not claiming that your incorrect, but the definition could be simplified a little bit for the average user. --Monterey Bay (talk) 22:28, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

maybe it all started reverting a comma... Just kidding; feel free to delete this. --pma 13:39, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I reverted your changes because the previous version was better. The butterfly effect is a metaphor for sensitive dependence on initial conditions. A lot of confusion arises when people try to interpret the metaphor literally, in terms of real butterflies and real tornados, as you can see from some of the comments at Talk:Butterfly effect. It is not a process, which is the word you used in your change. I am in favour of clarity and simplicity, but not at the expense of accuracy. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:42, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I fail to make the connection. --Monterey Bay (talk) 03:27, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Eulerian polynomials

Hi Gandalf, I see that you gave the major contributions to the article on Eulerian numbers and polynomials. A question about the last identity in the section Eulerian_number#Summation_properties (relating Euler numbers of first kind, binomial coefficients, and Bernoulli numbers). Do you have a reference for it? Also, there is a similar formula for the Eulerian numbers of the second kind: maybe it is worth quoting it as well?

$\sum _{m=0}^{n}(-1)^{n}{\frac {\left\langle \left\langle {n \atop m}\right\rangle \right\rangle }{\left({2n+1 \atop m+1}\right)}}=2B_{n+1}$

(unfortunately neither for this I have a reference). --pma 13:53, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

No, sorry, I don't have a reference for the summation identity. Gandalf61 (talk) 14:35, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Composite Number Factoring Theorem

I see you were involved in the discussion on this page's talk page about it's proposed deletion. It didn't seem to be filed correctly; so I've posted a proper AfD. The article's AfD page can be found here. Thanks. — Fly by Night (talk) 17:49, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Matter

"Ordinary matter" is composed of quarks and leptons which have 2% of matter's rest mass. The rest of matter is not "matter," (quarks/leptons) but rather other kinds of energies and particles, both real and virtual. It's things like massless gluons, glueballs, and the kinetic energy of quarks. Quarks and leptons have no volume by themselves. Collections of quarks (hadrons) have "volume" of a kind, but it's only the kind of volume that a gas has (or would have, if the gas molecules had zero volume and the entire volume of the gas was composed of space you cannot penetrate due to the forces of the impacts against you). The volume of hadrons is like the volume of a watermellon, where quarks are watermellon seeds that are mathematical points. This is ironic in view of the "matter is anything that has mass and volume" definition we have. Quarks and leptons have no volume, and they're not much of the mass.

I'm curious about what it is that you object to, in pointing in the lede of matter, that most of the mass in matter-- isn't matter! And that indeed most mass we see and feel around us (atoms) is not associated with matter as quarks and leptons. And indeed, is not associated with particles that have any (rest) mass. Don't you think this complicates the picture a bit?

And by the way, dispite what Headbomb says, the only kind of matter that is not conserved, is the kind he wants to define as the sum of massive particle rest masses. Which is not what you measure on a scale, and is not what anybody else defines "mass" as. If you use a correct and self-consistent definition for matter, such as (invariant mass or relativistic mass), it is conserved. It must be, because it's simply a sort of energy, in different units. Matter, by contrast, is not conserved. Matter particles can be made from kinetic energy in accelerators, and this happens all the time. Throughout this process, mass of the system remains constant and so does energy. SBHarris 05:21, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Let's keep the discussion at Talk:Matter, where it belongs. Consensus there seems to be that the your changes did not improve the article. I think this is because of the way in which you express yourself, which is hard to follow and contradictory. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:01, 25 December 2010 (UTC)