User talk:Jitse Niesen/Archive3

Gyrofrog RfA

I just wanted to thank you for your vote of support in my request for adminship! -- Gyrofrog (talk) 05:39, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

RE: Imation (3m)

Yes, thank you. I knew there was something I forgot. Grika Ⓣ 01:58, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Please vote on list of lists, a featured list candidate

Please vote at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of lists of mathematical topics. Michael Hardy 20:47, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Rousseau

Hi Jitse. I've voted keep, but I have just realized that both wikilinked authors on book (graph theory) point to the wrong people. I'll fix it.

best wishes, Robinh 07:13, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Quantum indeterminacy

Please see and comment on Talk:Quantum indeterminacy#Dispute status of this article. Thanks --CSTAR 18:07, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

No Day/No Night

Your edits to No Day/No Night alerted me to the fact that I'd forgotten to remove the AfD header from the article when I closed the AfD discussion. Thanks for fixing this! -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 17:25, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Not a problem. Speaking of which, though, can I bother you to close Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nonnacris? It got missed on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2005 October 1 (which has now scrolled off of WP:AFD/Old) because it was blanked for a few days on the 14th. Looks like a clear delete, and not worth relisting. —Cryptic (talk) 17:31, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I closed the debate and deleted Nonnacris. Interesting how a well-timed blanking can disrupt the AfD process. Let me think whether this can be fixed. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:14, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Just wanted to thank you for the comments on my talk page, as soon as I finish the article I am working on I will go back and add sources where neccesary Robbjedi 23:14, 19 October 2005 (UTC) Ah, you fixed it for me, at the risk of being redundant thanks. Robbjedi 23:27, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

manifold

Hi there, If you read the context carefully, you'll see that that n refers to the n in S^n and R^n, not where the circle is embedded. --Tong 23:56, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm awfully sorry about that, you're absolutely right. I restored it to the correct (your) version. Thanks for paying attention. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 00:02, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

thanks! :) --Tong 03:45, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Blatcherism

Hi Jitse. I could do with some help keeping the ranting out of Blatcherism. Charles Matthews 07:47, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Now a 3RR violation. Please revert and block. Charles Matthews 13:05, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm on it. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:18, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

SSRI

Zeg, niet om het een of ander, maar die grapjas op de SSRI-pagina heeft geen hart onder de riem nodig. Sommige mensen zijn nou eenmaal niet gevoelig voor normale argumenten. Groetjes. JFW | T@lk 11:21, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Om eerlijk te zijn, vind ik je niet helemaal onschuldig. Ik denk dat het beter is om geen sarcastistische opmerkingen als "Calls his friends at the Censorship WikiProject to boast of his achievement" te maken. Maar dat is op zijn hoogst een klein misstapje, vergeleken met Shibidee. Misschien had ik beter niets kunnen zeggen. Hoe dan ook, ik realiseer me terdege dat het niet eerlijk is om jullie beiden over een kam te scheren, maar ok gokte erop dat je het wel kon hebben.

Het moet een hels karwei zijn om de WP pagina's over medicijnen vrij te houden van speculaties en ik bewonder dat je dat probeert. Ik ben vaak blij dat ik vooral aan de wiskunde pagina's werk, waar we minder last hebben van POV- en original research pushers.

Weet je trouwens een goed boek over het menselijk brein voor iemand als ik? Ik zoek iets wat begrijpelijk is (mijn voorkennis is ongeveer VWO biologie), maar niet te populistisch. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:56, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Nee, onschuldig ben ik niet. Helaas gaan de POV-pushers zelden vanzelf weg, zeker als ze erg zeker zijn van hun zaak. Op Talk:Myocardial infarction heb ik twee zulke leukerds die denken dat ze hartaanvallen kunnen genezen met behulp van een onbekende theorie en ouderwetse (en gevaarlijke) medicijnen. Soms is sarcasme helaas het enige wat werkt...

Een boek over het menselijk brein... ik moet je een antwoord schuldig blijven. Human brain heeft niet eens een aardig werk in de aanbeveling. Je zou de reference desk kunnen proberen. JFW | T@lk 13:17, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you very much for the Markov number graph. It's good, it has the right depth (enough to illustrate the paragraph but not so many as to overwhelm). PrimeFan 20:38, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Nelder-Mead method

To recap the article: The method finds an optimum solution to a problem with N variables when the solution varies smoothly from one point in the N-dimensional solution space to the neighboring points. For example, a 2-dimensional map showing the elevation of a piece of land or the depth of a pool of oil, or optimizing the outcome of an experiment where many conditions are varied over some known range. With an elevation map, simple inspection shows the answer to the question of the highest elevations; thus illustrating that the usefulness of the simplex method lies in cases where the value at various points is hard to come by, and an exhaustive search is infeasible.

A computer program to use the simplex method to automatically find an optimum is typically of the form: (1) choose N + 1 points, (2) find the values (if unknown) at those points (the elevation, depth, speed, cost, execution time ... whatever is being optimized), (3) stop if we found a good enough value (by any of several criteria), else choose a new point closer to the other points (typically by half) in place of the worst valued point (creating a new smaller simplex), (4) go to step (2).

Many variations exist depending on the actual nature of problem being solved. The most common, perhaps, is to use a constant size small simplex that climbs local gradients to local maximums. Visualize a small triangle on an elevation map flip flopping its way up a hill to a local peak.

To recap my comment: The method used in a simplistic fashion produces local optimums, but used in a sophisticated fashion finds absolute optimums within the criteria the article describes.

On to your questions:

What is the "sophisticated fashion" to use Nelder-Mead? The simplexes can grow and shrink and can be seeded at multiple places (both in accordance with the nature of the problem space being investigated) until what is sought is found (usually a good enough maximum). There is nothing stopping the technique from being used until the actual maximum is found, not just a good enough maximum is found. (But why bother? The point of the technique is that the data is expensive to obtain and the solution is going to bring a profit; why waste money on a solution that will yield negligible additional profits? - more on this non-math point of view below)

Perhaps you are thinking of the technique used in a simplistic fashion where only one seed is used and the simplex does not change in size, as indicated in the article: The most common, perhaps, is to use a constant size small simplex that climbs local gradients to local maximums. Visualize a small triangle on an elevation map flip flopping its way up a hill to a local peak.

What do you mean with an "absolute optimum"; is this the same as a global optimum (see Optimization)? I mean the optimum within the solution space being investigated by the technique. Any part of the solution space not investigated by the technique may contain a better optimum. The "vary smoothly" part is critical here as arbitrarily abrupt variation invalidates the usefulness of this technique (which may be what you are thinking of. Note that I come at this from a programming solutions for petroleum investigations standpoint; not a pure math point of view. Physical and practical limits rather than math theory. The investigation of the physical world rather than mathematical entities.)

Which criteria are you refering to? "a problem with N variables when the solution varies smoothly from one point in the N-dimensional solution space to the neighboring points."

I'm sorry to bother you with these questions. No bother at all. I programmed this stuff in the 1980s and I knew it only as "the simplex method". If you know more than I do about this, I'm all ears. Learning more about stuff is a main reason I'm here at wikipedia. WAS 4.250 14:22, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

request for deletion on the QM article

Hi,

I saw your question about why people want to delete that philosophy of QM article, and I was going to answer directly below your posting. While I was writing, somebody posted a similar question and so I put my reply at the bottom. I probably won't say it in the discussion regarding deletion of the article, but I have stopped trying to make it better because Ingham will not respond to any of my questions that try to get at what he is really trying to say. He also won't tell me the location of the stuff that he is drawing upon, other than claiming that it's in Messiah's textbook somewhere. I've spent many hours trying to figure out what he is trying to convey and trying to dig out his sources. Not knowing what he is trying to say, I am unable to determine what to do about it. For instance, I cannot say that it is wrong. I've tried to fill in the margins of the discussion, suspecting that what I have included is at odds with what he is trying to say, but he seems perfectly happy with what I've added. So, I am baffled and also frustrated. P0M 03:41, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I think I may have found the place in Messiah's textbook that Ingham has been talking about. If only Ingham wrote as clearly as Messiah I would save myself much trouble. The segment I am concerned about in the "philosophy" article is the section on measurement. I just started to paraphrase it and then realized that however I paraphrase it I will end up cleaning it up but in some way that may or may not have anything to do with what he is really trying to say. Whatever it is that he is trying to say, it doesn't map onto anything that is in the passage I found in Messiah, which is pretty much a description of Heisenberg's microscope without mention of Heisenberg. I wouldn't have found it except that I recently learned that measuring an electron with protons is the nub of the HM thought experiment so I flipped through looking for "microscope". I may not be examining enough text around the microscope discussion in Messiah, but it looks to me to be a standard treatment. It may be that Ingham's argument is that if given exact values for all parameters of the experiment then one could write one Ψ function, compute its values for some later time t, and get a determinative answer for the location, velocity, etc. of the electron... Big "if." But given the unclarity of that section, I could be totally off the track.

I've communicated briefly with the person who put up the rfd. He got all the way through a physics major and seems to be clear in his thinking. He contributed to the discussion of the argument but didn't get any responsive communications I guess. P0M 22:00, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for comments on Kuramoto model

Hi Jitse,

Thanks for your useful comments on my Kuramoto model page. I've changed the wording a bit in response to several of the ambiguities that you pointed out. There is definitely quite a bit still lacking, including applications (as you suggested). I've vaguely heard things about Kuramoto models & epilepsy, but there are other more concrete applications that I could put in.

About line numbers, I meant to say equation numbers. It's tough to refer to equations without being able to insert those. It's doable with the level of detail that I included in the Kuramoto page, but if I ever wanted to show a real calculation I think it would be next to impossible. Is it frowned upon to put a lot of math into Wikipedia pages? I don't see any real drawbacks to it as long as the introduction is clear to non-math people...

Anyway, thanks again for your comments. Feel free to correct me when my contributions are unclear.

Dannya222 05:47, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the corrections. There is no need to rush; I know that writing a good article cost a lot of time.

My opinion, which is shared with most mathematicians and physicists around here, is that we should try to make things as simple as possible, but not oversimplify so much that it hampers understanding. I wouldn't worry about having plenty of formulas. The level of detail is a bit of a grey area. Personally, I think that detailed calculations or proofs do not belong in an encyclopaedia in general. However, this depends very much upon the specific case (and on who you ask). For instance, I think the explanation in the section called Transformation suffices; we do not need to include the computation on how to derive the transformed equation,

Equation numbers would be very useful, but they are unfortunately not supported. You can emulate them by hand, for instance: "Consider the transformation

$\xi =t-cx.\qquad \qquad (1)$

Substitution of (1) into the equation yields …" It's a bit ugly, but better than nothing. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:27, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments on Jerzy Zygmunt Łoś

...his year of death is indeed 1998, but he had a severe stroke in 1996 (which was the main cause of his death in 1998). The wording might have caused some confusion. Thank you for the other stuff as well. I'll take a look at them. Aucaman 02:40, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Kompik

If you want, have a look at User_talk:Kompik#Limits_and_AC. We have discussed about these things already, I've changed the page once more, now it should be already correct.

Nonlinear eigenvectors

Hi Jitse,

I've not encountered the use of eigenvectors relating to nonlinear transformations in my own studies. I was just taking Vb's word for it. --MarSch 15:24, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Googling and thinking about it awhile, what about T : C → C : z → z² viewed as a transformation of R². It is nonlinear and it has the real line as eigenspace. --MarSch 15:32, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

What the heck is the eigenspace of non-linear operator? Still Tv = λv? You can of course generalize things till you get tired, but I doubt that this concept is actually used or useful in math. References please? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:35, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

The peculiar heading caught my attention. We do talk about subspaces invariant under an operator, either pointwise or as a whole; but I don't recall seeing them called eigenspaces. The z² example does not fit the requirement of pure scaling by a constant factor along the real line; (x,y) ↦ (3x,^y⁄_1+x²) would. I won't underestimate the creativity of mathematicians, but a reference for a non-linear eigenvector (except locally, in the Jacobian) would be news to me, too. --KSmrq^T 00:46, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Pi

You are right. Please edit the other paragraphs that also begin with "pi". I just checked with the Chicago Manual of Style online and they responded accordingly: Rephrase, don't start with a symbol, it's ackward. Jclerman 22:55, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Math edits howto

Thanks for the &isin. Learning Wikipedia math conventions is like learning LaTeX all over again, but without a nicely designed manual. Sadly, the tables in Wikipedia:Markup#Character_formatting don't exactly catch the eye, although I did check these before my edit to Differential_operator#Coordinate-independent_description. Anyway, I hope you agree that my edit was in good faith.

--Silly rabbit, kicks are for trigs.

total binary relations

Hi, I got your message. You're right, I was being hasty. I thought I was making the definition more clear - but i was making it incorrect. I'll be more careful next time. Thanks for catching me. Fresheneesz 06:33, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

prime number theorem

Jitse, can you add a few sentances about n^2+n to prime number theorem? I just skimmed that and saw nothing. Acutally, I'm surprised, since I would have thought the exponential integral bound would have been not square-rooty like that ... but whatever. linas 14:45, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

List of well known mathematical formulas

I suppose it will go somewhere. If you don't like it then put it on hte VfD page and let the community decide. --Member 02:45, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Vandal blocking

Hello Jitse, thanks for your note about how long to block vandals. Ordinarily, yes 24 or 48 hours is an appropriate length of time to initially block a vandal IP address, however in the case of User:216.11.82.82 there was no sign of the vandal learning their lesson after the initial warnings and indeed from their edit to Science [1] it seems plain that they weren't going to stop quickly "How do you know that i am deleting things from this website? Ar you stalking me? i'll will find out You guys need to get real lives and contribute to society in a real manner", therefore a salutory lesson is in order rather than wasting time allowing them to vandalise multiple articles and revert each of them individually. If it's a multiple-user address, then they can ask for the block to be lifted after a few days. -- Arwel (talk) 16:21, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

how to talk

Hi Jitse, I'm sorry for my english and wikipedia could be a useful way to improve my english. Anyway thanks for your advices.

P.S. Have I to write here for talk? Bye —Preceding unsigned comment added by Frag (talk • contribs)

Civility intervention requested

On the talk page Talk:Proof that 0.999... equals 1 anonymous IP User:158.35.225.229 said the following:

---

• I* did not add it - *Rasmus* added it. He was trying to prove his point. So in saying I am wrong, you are saying he is also wrong. However, from the way *you* (I will continue to do

this because it annoys little boys like *you*) write, I can tell you are some immature young punk who has nothing better to do with his time. Have you not heard the saying?

• • • • • • Speak when you are spoken to boy!******** 192.67.48.22

---

The "signature" IP does not match the true IP, and aside from deliberately provocative remarks on the cited talk page the only other edit from this IP was vandalism. This latest remark crosses a line of civility and becomes not only derogatory but a highly offensive ethnic slur (spoken in the manner of addressing a slave). I have not been a party to the conversation and do not wish to become one. But perhaps now would be a good time for an admin (hint, hint) to have a word with this user. --KSmrq^T 21:08, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and wrote a comment on user's talk page. First time offenders need to be treated lightly. If the user keeps on doing that even after warned, one may meantion the stick (meaning the possibity of being blocked). That's how I would see it. Let us see how things develop. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:36, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I wrote something a bit more stern on Talk:Proof that 0.999... equals 1 at the same time, seeing that he made multiple remarks crossing the line. It might well be the same person because both IP addresses seem to be within ExxonMobil. Let's see how it develops. KSmrq, thanks for telling me.

Oleg, thanks for cleaning up the mess at Talk:Mean value theorem (divided differences). Apparently, the software does not like it when I edit the talk page in one tab and move the page in another tab, but I didn't notice that something went wrong. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 22:37, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you. --KSmrq^T 22:55, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Duncharris' RfC

I will check this shortly (Wikipedia is being very slow at the moment), but I beleive that I have not signed the section endorsing the initial summary by the complainants, only sections endorsing (or not endorsing) summaries by other users. As far as I am aware (and I'm not completely au fait with all the procedures) this is allowed. If I have made a mistake and signed to endorse teh initial summary and the section of trying and failing (this is not allowed) then I will correct it. Thryduulf 22:31, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I have now checked, and found I was in error, so I have corrected this. Thank you for pointing it out to me. Thryduulf 23:05, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Jordan block

Hi there

I've took the liberty of creating a separate Jordan block article because I felt that the subject would benefit from a dedicated article. My line of reasoning was that if an interested wikipedian browsed the Jordan normal form article and felt the need to read a bit of information regarding solely jordan block matrices, the wikipedian would have an article which would fulfill that. Besides, having a dedicated article makes some actions possible, like the listing of that type of matrix in Category:Matrices, which can be another path for a user to find himself on the jordan normal form article.

Regarding the translation issue, that article isn't a translation. I created the article from scratch and I opted for that summary because I do my fair share of translations. So, instead of figuring out an original summary, I shamefully opted for the type of summary I usually use :)

I now see that maybe the best way of doing things would be to discuss this first. But now that the damage is done (I created an article without consulting anyone), what are your views on this subject? I suspect that you don't feel that this article has any merit.

Best regards --Mecanismo 18:54, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Broken Signatures?

Hi, Jitse, some time back I noticed that when I sign comments with ~~~~, the link to my talk page is broken. It looks as though someone edited the script and broke this feature. I tried asking about this in the Village Pump but got no response. Do you know happened and/or how to fix it? ---CH talk 23:52, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Just to be clear, I manually fixed my signature above to what I used to get with ~~~~, but I won't manually fix my signature for this postscript, so that you can see the difference! ---CH [[User_talk:Hillman|(talk)]] 23:57, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Works for me, and I can't imagine why its broke for you.There seems to be some blanks or odd caracters after your name: maybe check your "user preferences" Special:Preferences ??

Chris, can you put Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics on your watchlist? I just unearthed Speed of gravity which I plan to edit back towards the direction of reality, but wouldn't mind if you brought your merry band of gravity people over to look at it. linas 00:16, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I haven't had any problems but I heard others do have problems. It is supposedly explained at WP:SIGHELP. Does that help? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 00:33, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Jitse

Just saw your post on my talk page. I will check my email now and respond shortly, I hope. Paul August ☎ 03:19, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Telescoping series/Method of differences

Well, that's fine with me. Me? I've always known this as simply the method of differences (I haven't heard of the former).

Nevertheless, you can merge it - I will simply redirect method of differencing and fix the disambiguation links.

Cheers. x42bn6 Talk 00:58, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

AfD: Sholom Keller

Just a note that in your delete summary at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sholom Keller you misstated that I voted to Keep and to Delete. Peyna 01:54, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the message. I fixed it now. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 02:02, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Just wanted to express my thanks for the careful and thoughtful work you put into closing this AfD. --RoySmith 02:04, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Same here; it's reassuring to know that admins do more than just count heads when reviewing AfD. Peyna 02:19, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

You ARE the administrator, so I won't challenge your decision. However, I would like to point out the following: Google results for "Shalom Keller" - as per my comment on AfD - reveals quite a number of sourced articles with more credibility than random blogs.[2]DayKart 05:14, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks!

Now that my RfA is finally and properly completed, I want to thank you for your support. I'm not sure if physics knowledge will help me block vandals, but it couldn't hurt. ;-) -- SCZenz 18:10, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Signpost

Thanks for editing the Signpost. While we frown upon adding new stories or making major changes, fixing something like a bad link is fine, and I appreciate you doing so. Ral315 (talk) 14:43, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Removing vandalism warnings

Regarding User talk:208.62.252.66, please don't delete prior vandalism warnings when adding a new, higher-level warning. By leaving the complete history of warnings on the user's talk page, it's easier for admins to determine whether and for how long to block a user. Thanks. | Klaw Talk 18:19, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I think it is silly to leave the messages. This seems to be a dynamic IP address, so an admin shouldn't take messages left months ago into account. However, I concede that deleting messages is uncommon, to say the least, so I won't do it again. Thanks for your note. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:35, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Re: Evidence presented to ArbCom

Jitse -

I'm not sure what to do with the broken category links. They don't work because the cateogries no longer exist. I think that the red helps to emphsize that. If you have a suggestion then you can present it, but perhaps you should have read all of the evidence first.

BTW - I am happy to see that others also finally working on this case. For working on it, I thank you. --EMS | Talk 21:08, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions

I mostly copied them from my lecture notes (equations are not applicable to copyright laws, and they are available in the Internet in many forms anyway). I hope I managed to write them understandably enough. Regular point means that the gradients of the active inequality constraints and the gradients of the equality constraints are linearly independent on that point.--Jyril 22:24, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I know, I'm not fully awaken at this time of evening, especially after studying the subject :). Except for my errors, I can assure that the source is reliable.--Jyril 22:55, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Re: FEM

Dear Jitse, thanks for your message. Actually, I am still writing the article on Galerkin methods and the article on weak formulations, which is closely connected. I hope, things will be clearer in a few days. Guido Kanschat 15:21, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Do you want to look at Galerkin mathod again and send me your comments? Guido Kanschat 17:46, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Re: Ragged matrix

You wrote: Hi Karol. I'm a bit uncomfortable with your entry on irregular matrix. I'm sure they exist and are useful, but I feel they shouldn't be described as matrices; how about something like "An irregular matrix is a generalization of the concept of a matrix"? Or perhaps it's better to link them to two-dimensional arrays (my experience is that "array" is more a computing term and "matrix" more a maths term). Furthermore, they are not just "inconvenient", but not studied at all in linear algebra (as far as I am aware). For this reason, I'd also like to remove Category:Matrix theory. However, I realize that I have a slanted point of view as a numerical analyst, so I wanted to check with you before editing the article. Cheers, Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:25, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Of course. I took the info directly from here. I just changed some of the wording and recatogrized the thing. Hope it's fine now, because I don't plan to expand it anymore, just made a stub. Karol 18:41, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks :) I actually took the link from a Wikipedia request page. Karol 19:22, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

blahtex logo

Making up a logo was a bit lower down on my priority list, but you inspired me:

Blahtex logo

So now blahtex has its very own logo (which isn't related to mediawiki). Dmharvey 03:59, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Redirects for deletion

Yes, I'm a fairly green admin and noticed the backlog on RFD when looking at another matter. I thought I'd take my crack at clearing it. Your comments on each of the entries you left were clear and I decided to resolve them (explanations at the talk page). Thanks for your note! Demi ^T/_C 07:46, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

RfAr summary on Carl Hewitt

Excellent summary: well structured and sharp. --- Charles Stewart 00:05, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Image galleries

You recently commented at Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Proposal_to_modify_WP:NOT_an_image_gallery. In a related development, another, in my mind, valuable Image gallery is up for deletion (AfD). Please comment as you see fit. Dsmdgold 15:35, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your tex advice

Thanks for your help at User_talk:Charles_Matthews#TeX_on_Envelope_theorem. I'm always nervous when I write tEx that others will see. there are usually different ways to do things in tEX, and you always want to be elegant in front of a crowd. Smmurphy^(Talk) 02:40, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you

Excellent. I have now done a couple of more edits in the ANN types section. This is also a quite weak section. The problem with ANNs is that the community has been conflating models with learning algorithms and it's a bit difficult to make a clean categorisation. So I don't know how I would go about doing it... more on the talk page. —the preceding unsigned comment is by Olethros (talk • contribs)

ArbCom case against CarlHewitt

I'm glad someone could some use for what was basically a frustrated growl;) I hope that this can put to a successful end without too much waste of your, or other editors valuable time. I wish I could be more help in this matter, but I stopped dealing with Carl's activities at that point. Had I not I would have probably followed CSTAR into the night. DV8 2XL 16:25, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Isabelle

I uploaded Image:Isar example.png in the sandbox just to see how it will look like for a Wikipedia user in a browser. It looked bad. I would remove it, but I read somewhere in the documentation that only admins can remove uploaded stuff. I do need help with what I want to do. My plan is to include a link to the proof as an internal link in the Isabelle entry. The point is that the example Isabelle proof there is somewhat misleading as it shows the old, "apply" command based style. Many Isabelle users still use it, but most would use the newer "declarative" style that is easier to follow for a casual reader. The file at [3] is in pdf format and I can not find any reference in the documentation how to include an internal link to a file that is not a (jpeg or png) image. --Slawekk 17:23, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Heads up on talk page vandalism

We have yet another anonymous IP editing Talk:Proof that 0.999... equals 1, but this time we had vandalism, deleting an entire section of more productive discussion. Looks like User:Shanel was right on top of it, and left a comment on the IP talk page. If you're not still keeping a eye out, you might want to.

The events there do make me curious about Wikipedia conventions. One question is, what is an appropriate response if an identified party in article talk continues to not indent, not sign, insist on original research, show no interest in improving the article, and perhaps sling insults? And what is the response if the sources are multiple anonymous IPs? It's not obvious to me what would be productive and fair (other than not feeding the troll). --KSmrq^T 05:43, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I wrote something there. I hope the anon will be well-meaning to listen. Otherwise, probably one should ignore whatever that person says on the talk page and revert any incorrect changes to the article if that person may attept to write there. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:06, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I'm afraid that there is no productive and fair solution. Either, you continue to engage them, which (seeing the rest of the discussion) is unlikely to be productive, or you ignore them, which is not very fair. There is very little one can do in situations like this. I'd go for the pragmatic solution of ignoring them and reverting anything they write in the article, saying that it goes against consensus, is original research, and does not cite references. Of course, for the last one to work, there need to be some references in the article. Sorry not to be of more help. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:59, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Based on the anon comments so far, at this point ignoring them seems fair enough, but not far enough. A block could be done for a single IP or an obvious range, but these seem scattered. Disappointing. --KSmrq^T 20:59, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

your compliments

well..I feel flattered. Thanks :). I have two younger brothers, so I've gotten used to try and always be the mature one. And about my accent, nice to hear that it's improving..although I speak way too fast (and I mumble at times) in those spoken article-sounds. That recommendation of the sandbox was also a nice move. Cya around.. -- SoothingR^(pour) 14:14, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Choad

I have searched for this term and found conflicting results, which support the conclusion that "choad" can mean "penis" (seems to be the most common usage), "scrotum" (the definition I learned in my deformative years), and even "perineum" [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]. However, it's worth noting that the sources I found are not exactly what I'd consider reputable in an encyclopedic sense, but they do demonstrate a variety of meanings. Also another source makes an (again, uncited) assertion about the word's origin [11]. Try googling it and see what you come up with. So, as for how to encyclopedically handle choad/chode I count six options, in my own descending order of preference:

1. Write a {{disambig}} page that links to the scientific names of the body parts "choad" might refer to.
2. Redirect it to sexual slang and add, to that article, a few examples of notable slang words, such as "choad", that have varying definitions.
3. Campaign for the ability to redirect to a different wiki (not likely).
4. Replace it with a some kind of template linking to its wiktionary entry stating that "Choad" is merely a dictionary definition without potential for encyclopedic expansion, then protect it.
5. Leave it redirected to the most common, yet not universally recognized definitition (penis), accepting that it may be subject to later edit warring.
6. Make it a protected {{deletedpage}}.

— FREAK OF NUR_xTURE (TALK) 15:00, Dec. 19, 2005

Update: I decided to be bold and write an article. It's considerably more encyclopedic than the deleted material I perused, and thus not a {{db-repost}}. I was delighted to stumble upon the fact that Jargon File is public domain [12]. We'll see if it holds up at AFD, though. — FREAK OF NUR_xTURE (TALK) 21:14, Dec. 19, 2005

Your comments on Wikipedia talk:Redirects for deletion

Greetings:

Just wanted to let you know that I've responded to you on the talk page for RFD. The short version is: The archiving will be done by the admins who close the debates, as it is with all the other xFD pages. It will not fall upon the nominators to do anything more than what they're doing now.

All the best.
→ Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 18:05, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Crank-Nicholson series

I will look for a paper source.

But the order can be easily derived.

Lets take the first six members of the Tailor series of $f(x-x_{j})$ at time t=Nk+1/2

$f(x)=a0+a1x+a2x^{2}+a3x^{3}+a4x^{4}+a5x^{5}+0(x^{6})$

we can find the second derivative over x, then find first derivative over time from the heat transfer equation, then find the second derivative over space over df/dt and find the second derivative over time etc.

Thus the Tailor decomposition over x and t will look like:

$f(x,t)=a0+a1x+a2x^{2}+a3x^{3}+a4x^{4}+a5x^{5}+0(x^{6})+D(2a2t+6a3tx+12a3tx^{2}+20a5tx^{3}+0(tx^{4}))+D^{2}(12a4t^{2}+60a5t^{2}x+0(t^{2}x))+0(t^{3})$

where D is the thermal diffusivity.

if we substitute the obtained equation for x=-h,0,+h and t=-k/2 +k/2 into Crank Nicholson scheme, we will see all the terms written are cancelled and the Crank-Nicholson scheme is exact. Thus, the errors came from the terms for x^6 and t^3 and so they are proportional to h^4 and k^2 (we take 2nd order derivative over x and the first over t).

Obviously, to get the fourth order over h we should take care over the boundary conditions. E.g. maintaining the adiabatic b.c as $x_{N}-x_{N-1}$ would destroy the 4th order instantly, but the scheme itself is 4th order (if the coefficients are constant).

BTW for the explicit scheme for the special case of r=1/6, we a getting the quadratic error over t and fourth orders over x. I am not sure if we should mention it. abakharev 00:08, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

The easiest way of checking this is to plug the Crank-Nicholson scheme into mathematica, subtract from it the exact derivatives (heat equation that is), and expand all in Taylor series (mathematica has a command for that). One can also do Maple too I think. Symbolic calculations saved my ass a lot of times when dealing with messy finite-difference schemes. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:25, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion

I'll see you over in History of Mathematics, I hope. Rick Norwood 15:39, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Renaming the List of mathematical topics

Hi Jitse. It seems that there is good support at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Proposed renaming for moving List of mathematical topics and its subarticles to List of mathematics articles, and same for List of lists of mathematical topics. I plan to do the moves one of these days, but I need to coordinate with you, since your snaky script has its tail into some of those lists.

So, one late evening, Los Angeles time, I will do the moves and patch my scripts, with you having to do the same by next evening (UK time) when your own scripts run (besides the current activity, there is also the one which touches List of mathematical topics (A-C)). Would it work for you if I do the move on December 22 (tomorrow night), and you fixing your scripts on December 23? Any other day is fine, as long as we agree on when. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:01, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

That's fine. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 14:00, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

That's done. -- Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:02, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

More on the current activity bot

Hi Jitse. One remark. Your bot updating the Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity page does not count the new items my bot has been adding to Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Mathematics. I understand why you don't like me, but why doesn't your bot like my bot? :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:42, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

My script resents to be called a bot; it said something about casting perl before swines. However, I asked it your question, and the answer is

10100110110100110101010010000101010100101010010101011010101010101010101010101010101101010100000011110110101

I can't make any sense of it, but perhaps your bot can. Hope this helps :) -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:08, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

There you have it, I can't ssh into the computer on which the script runs. I guess it's angry with you ;)

I've no idea what happened and I won't be able to find out as I'm 1000 km away and nobody is at the dept. So, I guess the "current activity" page will not be updated for a while. Ah well. Have a merry Christmas and a happy new year (actually, I guess it's the other way around for you). -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:22, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

That answer of yours is just like a python, long, thin, and useless. I guess after your script swallowed the recent prey (a lot of math articles needing attention), it is going to digest it for a couple of weeks in hybernation mode, so either ssh-ing it or even kicking it with the boot is not going to give you anything. Do you have the code of the script lying around? Then I could run it from my own linux machine. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:14, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

PS: That was firmly with the tail in cheek. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:58, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Replied by email. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 20:10, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Got your mail. If your script does not wake up in a couple of days I will take measures (skinning the thing is an option). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:59, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

My script is running again. Probably, one of the lines buried in an email going round the department some weeks ago was to be interpreted as "We will shut down all computers over Christmas unless you protest." -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 19:36, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Great! I tried to run your code, and installed the pywikipedia library, but it still complained about some missing XML libraries, so I gave up. By the way, you still did not answer the question of why your bot does not show 200 articles needing attention, but only 30. Are you trying to convince yourself into thinking that the articles needing attention are really just two dozen? :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:28, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

History of Math

Thanks for your suggestion, the article was in really terrible shape. I've been working on it, but would appreciate some help. Rick Norwood 00:38, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Apologies for the late reaction; this was caused by my Christmas break. I'm afraid I can't be of much help as I don't know much about the subject. Sorry to disappoint you. However, I do watch what you're doing and I'm very pleased with your work on the page. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 20:24, 10 January 2006 (UTC)