User talk:Michael Hardy/Archive6

MDA

thanks for the editing. lseidlein

transfer

Hi, Please take a look at the lead at transfer principle. Is it at odds with the first paragraph of the first section following it? Katzmik (talk) 13:06, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

tessarine

Hi, Could you please comment at the deletion page? Katzmik (talk) 15:29, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Chernoff bound

Hi,

could you please have a look at the revised version of the article? Hopefully, it is more clear (from the mathematical point of view); however, I am not sure I conform to all the wiki-standards. It would be wonderful if an experienced wiki-person would have a look.

Thanks, Sasha

Thank you…

…for restoring me to "couth"ness . I've worked enough with LaTeX2e that I should have known better. As for inline TeX, I guess it's a matter of opinion, but I can see that HTML would be better in general. Thanks again. -- Avi (talk) 21:20, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Re: Student's t

Last year someone confused two sided and one sided confidence intervals and thought the table was wrong and changed the table. I wasn't aware of that edit, as I didn't have the Student's T article on my watchlist. I happened to visit that article because I wanted to look up the critical T-values. I saw that the values did not agree with those from my calculator and Mathematica. I then saw that the table couldn't possibly be correct, because the first entry in the top column was 50% which should correspond to a T value of zero by symmetry. I then corrected that error. Count Iblis (talk) 19:58, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

2008 meetup

---

Minnesota Meetup

Saturday, 2008-10-11 noon (12:00)

Please pass this on! RSVP here.

---

You said you wished you could have made the last meetup, so I wanted to make sure you knew about this one. Hope to see you there. Jonathunder (talk) 17:05, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Please be civil

Your post, "Before graphing calculators they used common sense (except for people who didn't use common sense). Look: If you don't understand graphs of polynomials, rational functions, exponential and logarithmic functions, etc. without a graphing calculator then you don't understand, and a calculator won't change that. Calculators are not supposed to be a substitute for using your head. Nor are they supposed to be an anesthetic." can be interpreted as incivil. Please rephrase your comments in a more polite way please. I recommend you reread the rules of the reference desk, in particular, "Be polite and assume good faith, especially with users new to Wikipedia." Thank you. ScienceApe (talk) 03:33, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Why would it be considered uncivil? The person asked how to do something without graphing calculators, for which in fact graphing calculators don't help. I told him that. You need to understand the problem INSTEAD of using a calculator as a substitute for understanding. That answered the most important part of the question. You quote the rules: Be polite and assume good faith. That's what I did. Should I have lied and said a graphing calculator would help him understand when it won't? Michael Hardy (talk) 05:04, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Mathematical Editing

Hi Michael, I hope you're well. You seem to be quite an expert when it comes to mathematical type setting within Wikipedia. It seems that you spend a lot of your time correcting mistakes like n-1, etc. Do you think there's a way that Wikipedia itself could be changed so that if one types n-1 then the correct version is returned? It would save a lot of time and effort. Some of the command lines to get n-1 looking like it should a very long, and especially for new editiors, they are totally incomprehensable. Can you see a solution?  Declan Davis   (talk)  15:11, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I guess you don't have anything to say... oh well :o(  Declan Davis   (talk)  02:37, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid such things might require human judgment that can't be automated, but I haven't thought through all the issues. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:40, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Dear Michael,

How the content of the pdf file, which contain math formulations expressed via embedded LaTex could be simplest way converted into format which I could post as a section in my Wikipedia user page ? Thanks,Regards, ARP Apovolot (talk) 22:31, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

I may not be the best person to address this question. Possibly user:Oleg Alexandrov could say something useful about it. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:53, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Traffic statistics

Hi Michael, In september the page non-standard calculus really took off and shows 40 hits daily on the average. I think this is a great chance to influence things here. I am still hoping some better trained people than I will comment on my edits here as well as transfer principle where I wrote a rather daring introduction which I imagine not everyone agrees with. Katzmik (talk) 16:09, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

How does one find out how many hits a page is getting?  Declan Davis   (talk)  16:37, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

See this site. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:41, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Minimum distance estimation

Hello. I've cobbled together a start for the article, but as your statistical expertise far outweighs mine, could I trouble you to look it over? Thank you. -- Avi (talk) 19:05, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

The Shipman Inquiry

Hi, I just noticed that you've been removing the "The" from this article's title to make it just "Shipman Inquiry". I think the 'the' should be kept however, since it is part of the name on the front of the report, rather like The Hobbit for example... See here for confirmation. Malick78 (talk) 20:25, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Easy as pi?: Making mathematics articles more accessible to a general readership

The discussion, to which you contributed, has been archived, with very much additional commentary,
at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 35#Easy as pi? (subsectioned and sub-subsectioned).
A related discussion is at
(Temporary link) Talk:Mathematics#Making mathematics articles more accessible to a general readership and
(Permanent link) Talk:Mathematics (Section "Making mathematics articles more accessible to a general readership"). Another related discussion is at
(Temporary link) Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Making mathematics articles more accessible to a general readership and
(Permanent link) Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics (Section "Making mathematics articles more accessible to a general readership").
-- Wavelength (talk) 01:39, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Nice work.

Thanks for all the clean up on Fourier transform. You have a sharp eye. Thenub314 (talk) 13:38, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about me getting touchy-feely about the balloon calculus affair

VG ☎ has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Cheers, and Happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

I had already been accused of bad faith by an admin after the Esquisse AfD the other day, so my fuze was getting a bit short. VG ☎ 01:44, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Minneapolis Meetups

Town Hall Brewery
maps.google.com
1430 Washington Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55454
(612) 339-8696
October 11, 2008
Saturday at 12:00 noon (midday)
Meetup RSVP

Muddy Waters
maps.google.com
2401 Lyndale Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55405
(612) 872-2232
October 10, 2008
Friday at 10:00 PM (at night)
Alternate meetup RSVP

Hope you can make it. Feel free to pass along these invitations. -SusanLesch (talk) 17:52, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

edit summary

Michael Hardy, don't forget about the edit summary and marking the edit minor. Pdbailey (talk) 04:48, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the edits to Modes of convergence (annotated index)

Hi Michael, I manually reverted the changes you made to the section depths and left a note in the discussion page, but everything else is much appreciated! Wikimorphism (talk) 06:23, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Probability categories

I've been working on some articles like Lee-Yang theorem and Ursell function that ought be be listed by the math bots as mathematics, but I'm not sure what math categories would be best. Do you have any good ideas about probability categories they would fit into? R.e.b. (talk) 18:15, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I've put the "probability distributions" category on the second one, and I see that someone's done the same with the first one. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:46, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

RFC Bates method article

I am contacting you quite randomly. For the following reason. The reason is the Bates method article, which in my opinion is edited by parties who are far from objective. Most logical associated party ophthalmology or a group focussed on just being skeptic. I am hoping for your comment on some current essential and interesting issues. Issues in which presenting objective strong arguments are completely neglected and ignored. If you have time and are willing to share you opinion and arguments, please do. My goal is to come to some kind of decision tool. By clearly stating if an argument is valid or not by the objective editor. My request is also to give a weight-factor for example between 1 and 10. For exmple1 for a valid argument but not very important and 10 for a very important argument. And zero for a fake-argument. Please feel free to comment and look at the current three RFC. Nr 1, Nr 2 and Nr 3 on the talkpage of the Bates method article. Seeyou (talk) 20:49, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Sikhism other observations

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Sikhism other observations, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised because even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. Neelix (talk) 14:16, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Re deleting my 3 entries each describing unique unsolved conjecture

Michael,

I noticed that you expressed lack of understanding what my entries are all about and how they differ from each other ... Rather than deleting those entries - would it make instead sense to investigate it further with the goal to improve the content and its appearance ? Apovolot (talk) 20:11, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Re: section depths

Unfortunately, the maximum section depth is four equals signs “$====$”, and so to accomodate four section levels it is necessary to start with one “$=$”, and in the rare case of the modes of convergence index, I don't think it's worth sacrificing the logical content that section nesting provides for the sake of typesetting. I agree it's inoptimal, but I think it's best to err on the side of content here. ^.^ Wikimorphism (talk) 04:38, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikimorphism, I believe you may be mistaken here. I think the maximum section depth is six equals signs. At least, that's what my experiments indicate. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 19:25, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

"Notability" and "Original Research"

Dear Michael - FYI,

I have plenty of email responses similar to the one I list below as an example re each of my 3 conjectures.

Regards, Alexander R. Povolotsky

---

Forwarded message ----------

From: Dan Asimov <asimov@msri.org> Date: Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 6:57 PM Subject: Your recent conjecture on sci.math.research To: apovolot@gmail.com

Dear Alexander,

Your recent post to sci.math.research was an interesting conjecture.

Sincerely yours,

Daniel Asimov Visiting Scholar Mathematics Department University of California Berkeley, California Apovolot (talk) 00:06, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Cantor set

Did you mean to replace a lot of en dashes with spaces? [1] — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:46, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually I intended to change hyphens to ndashes. I hope I've fixed that now. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:16, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Archiving assistance

Michael Hardy, hi, would it be alright if I set up an archive bot for your talkpage? Some people's browsers start having trouble with anything over 32K, and yours is currently over 200K! But I could set up a bot that would automatically archive any inactive threads (like anything that hadn't received activity in 30 days or so), and then you wouldn't have to worry about it anymore.  :) Let me know, --Elonka 14:36, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks; I've taken care of most of it now. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:20, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah, feel the breeze! Nice job.  :) --Elonka 22:42, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

"Density functions are not defined pointwise"

Just spotted this in the talk for likelihood. I don't quite understand what you mean. (Just as I thought I'd got the gist of pdfs...). Take the Gaussian pdf:

$\varphi _{\mu ,\sigma ^{2}}(x)={\frac {1}{\sigma {\sqrt {2\pi }}}}\,e^{-{\frac {(x-\mu )^{2}}{2\sigma ^{2}}}},\quad x\in \mathbb {R} ,$

I thought I could plug in an x there and get the density at (point) x? Or do you mean the definition of the pdf itself is not given in a pointwise fashion? --Andy Fugard (talk) 19:08, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

At any one point or at any set of points whose measure is 0, one can alter the density function above, and it's still a density function for exactly the same probability distribution because if you integrate it over any set, you still get the same number as the probability assigned to that set. Standard measure theory. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:31, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I'll need to digest that, but thanks :-) --Andy Fugard (talk) 11:57, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Note from Alexander R. Povolotsky

Dear Michael,

By the way, you might be interested to read the info below.

Regards, Alex

Forwarded message ----------

From: David Stodolsky Date: Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 6:06 AM Subject: Re: Online Scientific Publications To: apovolot@

The criteria for any document to be considered a scientific publication is peer review. This criterion is met by the OEIS, however, without publication also in an archivable format, it might not be regarded as such by many and there is the risk that the database would go off-line making it impossible to verify a contribution. Those contributions appearing in the books, however, would escape these considerations. dss On 19 Oct 2008, at 05:03, Alexander R. Povolotsky wrote: > Dear Doctor Stodolsky, > What is the criteria for the Information posted online be considered as official > scientific publication ? > For example please consider > OEIS (The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences) posted at > www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences ... David Stodolsky, PhD Institute for Social Informatics Tornskadestien 2, st. th., DK-2400 Copenhagen NV, Denmark Apovolot (talk) 16:08, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Integral expression

Thank you for adding that idea to the article! -- Mghostsoft (talk) 14:11, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for correcting my typo

No message was necessary. --Rogerb67 (talk) 01:39, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

wiki pedants

Hi, Gandalf is giving me a hard time (again) on the talk page of The Analyst. Could you please comment? Katzmik (talk) 10:26, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Gandalf's continued antics

Hi, Gandalf reverted my edit (twice) at uniform continuity based on a mathematical error and his lack of understanding of infinitesimals. Please comment. Katzmik (talk) 10:10, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Talk notice

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at Voyagerfan5761's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Tuvok[^T@lk/_Improve] 18:16, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Partial Fractions

I quoted "Beginning Calculus" because in the article it stood for a class of course names. Slightly surprised you disagree. Martin Packer (talk) 18:27, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Partial Fractions

I quoted "Beginning Calculus" because in the article it stood for a class of course names. Slightly surprised you disagree. Martin Packer (talk) 18:27, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

neither of which claim/s

Actually, in regards to the change you just made in Ethical egoism, I think that both "neither of which claim" and "neither of which claims" are grammatically correct - they simply convey different meanings. I think the difference is this, based on the fact that "neither" conveys "not X or Y." In "neither of which claims," the "or" of that statement is exclusive - that is, it can be one or the other but not both. Because in this case only one of the possible values is true, the pronoun "neither" is guaranteed to be singular, and therefore it is safe to make the form of the verb singular as well. In this case, the "not" is applied to both X and Y individually rather than the statement as a whole; "neither of which claims" means "(not X) or (not Y) claim."

On the other hand, in saying "neither of which claim," you are indicating that you recognize the implied "or" to be non-exclusive. That is, "neither" can refer to one, the other, or both. In fact, by choosing the plural form of "claim," you are implying that it probably is both - which, in the case of the ethical egoism article, it is. In this case, the "not" is applied to the entire expression; "not (x or y)" becomes "(not X) and (not Y) claim," indicating two things which do not claim, hence, the plural form of claim.

You follow? I'm just making this up because it seems reasonable to me; tell me if you think something's wrong with it. Brad Gibbons (talk) 20:49, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I think you're quite wrong. If I say "Neither A nor B is correct", that means A and B are both incorrect. If I say "Neither A nor B are correct", that's just a grammatical error. Michael Hardy (talk) 06:02, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks.......

Thank You so much for removing the "prod" tag and adding more about the theorem. You see, I am contributing for the first time to Wikipedia. Seriously,I didn't know these rules. Well, I just opened my textbook and saw the theorem and said "Hey! Why not post this on Wikipedia?" But dude please tell me, is it serious or something? Does it have to be deleted because I don't have any other extra information. Please man, help me!

Please, have a look on

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:P-chart

212.239.157.3 (talk) 14:54, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Martin Segers

AfD on 2008 attack at Beijing Drum Tower during Olympics

You have previously contributed to the debate on the article, and may like to express your views on the deletion of this article here. Ohconfucius (talk) 01:56, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Dehn function and Max Dehn

Dehn function is indeed named after Max Dehn. The basic reason is that Dehn proved that the standard presentations of closed surfaces groups of genus at least two the word problem is solvable by Dehn's algorithm, and an immediate consequence of that is that for these presentations the Dehn function satisfies Dehn(n) ≤ n. This is basically the first quantitative and qualitative result regarding Dehn functions (although, of course, Dehn himself did not use this terminology and did not even explicitly state the above inequality). The same inequality holds for any group with Dehn's algorithm (such as small cancellation groups). The term Dehn function appeared at about the same time as word-hyperbolic groups were introduced and groups satisfying Dehn's algorithm (which turned out to be equivalent to hyperbolicity) were the first basic example regarding Dehn functions. That was probably the more immediate reason for the choice of the terminology. In geometric group theory there is only one well-known Dehn, namely Max Dehn and he is considered one of the founding fathers and towering figures in the subject. So when some notion in the subject has "Dehn" in its name, it always means him (like Dehn's algorithm, Dehn function, Dehn presentation, etc), and people in the area usually don't bother to say this explicitly because it is assumed to be understood. I'll look for a good reference for this in relation to Dehn function (for the moment I don't think I have explicit reference where the attribution is made, but I'll look up some papers from early 1990s when the term actually first came into wide use). Nsk92 (talk) 14:10, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia's Expert Peer Review process (or lack of such)for Science related articles

Hi - I posted the section with the same name on my talk page. Could you take part in discussion ?

User: Shotwell suggested (on my talk page) "I would endorse a WP:EXPERTADVICE page that outlined the wikipedia policies and goals for researchers in a way that enticed them to edit here in an appropriate fashion. Perhaps a well-maintained list of expert editors with institutional affiliation would facilitate this sort of highly informal review process. I don't think anyone would object to a well-maintained list of highly-qualified researchers with institutional affiliation (but then again, everyone seems to object to something)."

We could start with that if you would agree ... - could you help to push his idea through Wikipedia bureaucracy ? Cheers, Apovolot (talk) 15:59, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Your thoughts on MUH

Since you are apparently so knowledgeable, I'd be curious to know if you have any thoughts on the mathematical universe hypothesis by Max Tegmark. In the event that you haven't the actual paper, here is a link to it on arXiv. Thanks. --AB (talk) 12:24, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Hacker ethic

I see you have taken an interest in this article. Over the last few days a lot of material has been added to it by new editors who are students on a class project, which been causing a stir at AN/I here. In my opinion their need to "put something in" has left the article over-detailed and unbalanced, and it would be a better article if returned to its state at 23 October - essentially as you left it. Rather than just do that, I have suggested it on the talk page to see if there is a consensus. Would you like to look at it and see if you agree? Regards, JohnCD (talk) 23:30, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

More appropriate title for 2008 attack at Beijing Drum Tower during Olympics

• I have set up a poll to vote on the new name of the article. Please go to the talk page. Ohconfucius (talk) 06:53, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Is there something going on with the math rendering today?

This is re: Over at Radius of convergence -- for some reason the TeX wasn't rendering in my browser, but when I moved the period outside, it rendered properly. And now it renders both ways. RayAYang (talk) 17:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I haven't noticed any problem. I'll look around. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:56, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Neater equation

I didn't mean neater in code, I meant neater in presentation. I think it looks cleaner than

$\sum _{}^{}{\frac {{v_{\mathrm {max} }}^{2}}{10^{4}}},$

...which was what was already there (though yes, both of them do use more braces than really necessary). Would something like

${\text{ACE}}=10^{-\!4}\sum ({v_{\mathrm {max} }}^{\!2})$

\text{ACE} = 10^{-\!4} \sum ({v_\mathrm{max}}^{\!2})

work for you? —AySz88\^-^ 16:14, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

My Talk Page

First off, don't post snobbish comments on my talk page because I don't like it. See my talk page for the rest of this.... (Amelia Jansen, posting from an alternate computer) - 74.64.120.155 (talk) 00:26, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

From where I'm sitting, "mild criticism" seems closer to the truth than "snobbish". Michael Hardy (talk) 23:08, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

y=x

Are you sure that this was an error? It seems very plausible that his first use of integral calculus was to find the known area under y=x. --NE2 23:37, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

If it's true, then more should be said than what was there. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:11, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

PResumably you know more about how to find the sources than I? --NE2 00:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

LaTeX symbols

Dear Michael Hardy, thank you very much for your opinion at the deletion discussion about the table of LaTeX symbols. I have proposed including the new layout at m:Help talk:Displaying a formula#LaTeX symbols. Regards, --Julian (talk) 14:36, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Multinomial theorem

Hi, There is a slight argument at Multinomial theorem. Thanks, Brendan. McKay (talk) 04:09, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Cumulative density distribution function.

I only now noticed that you had left a comment on a subpage to my user page some time ago (diff). I'm just stopping by to say thank you, and ask if I got the correction right. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 17:00, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

This edit does correct that problem. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:26, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Non-exclusive ethnic group

An article that you have been involved in editing, Non-exclusive ethnic group, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Non-exclusive ethnic group. Thank you. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:06, 21 November 2008 (UTC) .

Michael, per your comment, I just want to call to your attention this - what else could I do? You say this is how AfDs should not be done. Well, it was I who filed the AfD, but I did not do this. In fact I was careful to follow all protocol's for filing for a deletion, including contacting you. Your comment makes it look as if I am to blame for subverting appropriate wikiprocess. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:55, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Osmotic coefficient

Hi, Michael!

Well, I'm doing work on the backlog at suspected copyright violations, and when I saw this article Osmotic coefficient my first thought was to send you a message saying "Oh, look! A new article containing equations that hasn't been deleted yet!" (possibly because the equations weren't added until the second edit). However, the article does seem to be a problem in terms of copyright: too similar to this website: http://goldbook.iupac.org/O04342.html I was wondering if you might be willing to help modify it to fix the copyright problem. A Google Books search brings up books such as this which could be used as additional references: Weiss, Thomas Fischer (1996). Cellular biophysics. MIT Press. p. 196. ISBN 0262231832, 9780262231831. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) If you don't have time, don't worry, I or someone else will do something with it. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 00:17, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Regression

You've got the wrong person. These are the disam edits I made. Nothing to do with regression. --Woohookitty^Woohoo! 05:08, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry—I hadn't noticed there was another earlier editor. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:05, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

You are right

I was having in mind lim(x->inf), and talk was about 0/0. I guess it is only inertia (lim when x->inf) from all those mathematics courses :D

Dzenanz (talk) 19:19, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment at radius of convergence

I was wondering what could be done about the repeated mistakes by people, but a comment in the main article itself, hadn't occurred to me. RayAYang (talk) 01:15, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Elementary

Hi, Thanks for your comments and edits. It may be helpful to make Elementary calculus into a useful tool for someone who actually wants to learn the basics using *R. Currently the standard calculus pages are far more developed than the hyperreal approach. What do you think of actually including some of the explanations and details from Keisler's book at that page? I was thinking of something even more elementary than Non-standard calculus. Katzmik (talk) 21:22, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to see some example of the utility of Keisler's microscope in the article. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:38, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure how exactly you mean your cryptic comment, but I will guess a direction so please let me know if this is what you meant. When one looks at a curve under a magnifying glass, its curvature decreases proportionally to the magnification power of the lens. Similarly, an infinite-margnification microscope will transform an infinitesimal arc of a graph of f, into a straight line up to infinitesimal error (only visible by applying a higher-magnification microscope). The derivative is then the (standard part of the) slope of that line. This seems to be a useful device in explaining the derivative, which is moreover pedagogically proven to be effective. Katzmik (talk) 08:31, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Occurrence-in-subtuple problem

this time it got speedily deleted... is arXiv not enough and/or is the problem really too uninteresting? (Biolex2 (talk) 15:20, 30 November 2008 (UTC))

The grounds for speedy deletion that were given were that it was a re-creation of an article that had been deleted after an AfD discussion. That is grounds for speedy deletion if it was identical to the originally deleted article, but not if the reason for deletion was remedied.

In this case there was a paper cited in the arXiv. I think one could object that the arXiv is a barely refereed forum, especially when the author of the paper there is the same person who wrote the Wikipedia article. I think if you can cite a refereed source, you can create the article again, citing that source, and no one will be able to maintain that it's fair game for speedy deletion. But it may well be that the arXiv is not enough.

If you do recreate it and cite a refereed source, it is possible that an administrator will fail to realize that the reason it was deleted has been addressed and will speedily delete it again. But in that case, it should be possible to undelete it and overcome that argument. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:37, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Minor edits to Bernard Hanzon, Bruno Dupire and Damiano Brigo

Thanks for that, you have indeed a sharp eye Piloter (talk) 07:26, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

request

Please how to reach the user-page you created in my account ?? Luoguozhang (talk) 08:57, 4 December 2008 (UTC) please answer here !! (user name is luoguozhang and not luoguoshang !!) thanksLuoguozhang (talk) 10:36, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Now it is OK! Thank you for all. Please have a look on the page and give us hints. Thank you for the help.Luoguozhang (talk) 00:08, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

a little help !

Professor, Please have a look on the page and give your opinion, and please tell us how to move the 'contents' box to the top!! it does not appear in Editing Mode it vanishes mysteriously... Perhaps for you it is a simple task, if so please do it on our behalf , with all gratfulness. 谢谢你 Luoguozhang (talk) 13:24, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

If you look at my recent edit you can see how to move the table of contents to the top. But I'm not sure that's a desirable thing to do. It's not how it's generally done in Wikipedia articles. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:06, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Topology Expert

Based on his talk page, it looks like he's having problems with the IP autoblock even after you've unblocked him. Pcap ping 20:36, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

a little help !

Oh No! We asked for a little help, and you did a tremendous job!!! We feel really small in front of you !! We are introducing the last references, is it possible that you launch the 'Move' action; or, if it is not complicated , to initiate us doing it ? Luoguozhang (talk) 21:09, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

PS. what is meant by "It's not how it's generally done in Wikipedia articles".? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Luoguozhang (talk • contribs) 21:11, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Warning

I am stunned that I have to give a warning to a fellow admin, especially one who appears to have retained the tools for so long that neither an RfA nor logs can be located indicating when you received them. However, unblocking your friends when they egregiously violate the rules, especially when others have already declined an unblock, per rationales such as this are an abuse of not only the project and its aims, but of your colleagues. Wikipedia works basically because people do not act positively or negatively on a personal basis. Recent ArbCom proceedings (Motion re SlimVirgin, C68-FM-SV, Tango, Physchim62) have addressed the topic of administrators who have abused the community's trust in this way - it should be noted that all four resulted in loss of adminship. If I see any further evidence of your acting to protect your mates or indeed punish your foes with the tools with which the community has trusted you, I will request their removal at ArbCom. I am still gobsmacked that after such potent warnings administrators are still willing to put themselves before the community they represent. Orderinchaos 02:35, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Look:

• "Topology Expert" is not any particular friend of mine. I don't know much about him, except that (1) he has contributed competent edits, (2) his grammar and attention to Wikipedia style conventions are somewhat lax, although not as much as they were initially, (3) he is sometimes something of a hothead.
• You refer to someone "egregiously violat[ing] rules". That calls for explanation. The explanation was not on the page purporting to provide it. It was cryptic. I felt abused in having to try to decipher it instead of having the rationale stated explicitly. How hard can that be? I still don't know what rules he is thought to have violated. And that's not for lack of trying. He did some rash and clumsy edits to an article about a school, one of which contained an accusation for which he didn't cite evidence, and they had to get reverted. That is a reason to revert and to complain to him. It's not a reason to block him. They were not bad-faith edits; they were poorly done edits.
• Why can't you state clearly and explicitly the grounds for his blocking, rather than saying he egregriously violated rules while not telling me which rules nor stating the specifics of his violation?
• I have blocked users for habitually putting stupid graffiti into articles or blanking the articles. I have never blocked a user because I was angry at him. Nor because he was angry at or even abusive toward me. And I doubt I will ever do that. And that's not for lack of plenty of opportunity. And it looks to me as if anger, rather than violation of rules, is probably what got this user blocked.

Michael Hardy (talk) 03:18, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

As an uninvolved bystander: Topology Expert was blocked by User:Redvers (not Moondyne or Sarah) for the reason stated here. It was to do with his edits at WP:AN, not Christ Church Grammar School or any other article. The reason for the block is explicitly stated by Redvers at WP:AN. There is no evidence that Redvers was angry when doing so, or that he had had any previous interaction with Topology Expert. Euryalus (talk) 04:05, 6 December 2008 (UTC) In hindsight, my post just adds to the "drama". The points I added have been said several times by others, no need for me to jump in as well. Euryalus (talk) 04:56, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, and it appears on the AN that Redvers did attempt to work with the user before concluding that a block was the only remaining option to solve the situation. I realise we're dealing with a fairly young person here (TE), and as someone who's worked with that age range, I'm aware they can be random, take offence or get upset at things a mature user may gloss over, etc. That was however, no excuse for the violations of WP:AGF, WP:NPA etc at the noticeboard. When the problems with his claim were highlighted, he not only continued but escalated it and tried to add new accusations against other users. That is standard, textbook-case disruption. What would have happened had somebody not blocked? He'd simply have got much, much worse, and someone would have had to block him for a week AND a bunch of people would have had to sort out a right mess. Process wonkery at the expense of plain common sense is generally not advisable. (Also, if he wasn't a friend, why was blocking him, in your words, "disrespectful to me", given that you were an uninvolved party? I have every sympathy for those who mentor users, I used to do it a fair bit myself, but if they got blocked, even when I disagreed with the rationale, I didn't consider myself sufficiently neutral to act.) Orderinchaos 04:41, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

It's disrespectful to anyone who wants to know why he was blocked to write about it cryptically. You talk about what he "would have" done. It may take me a while to become convinced of anything like that, to say the least. He appeared to have reached the point of saying he'd plead no-contest and withdraw from the situation, yet you say he "would have" posted more of whatever it was that offended people. There've been lots of times when he did things that people objected to that he corrected after they explained their objections. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:53, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Redvers did, in almost painful detail and in a way in which I believe even an average-intelligence individual of TE's age (acknowledging his clearly exceptional intellectual abilities) would be able to understand, on at least four occasions during the progress of the AN. TE's responses included for example: "No, I will not drop the matter and listen to vain administrators who have far too much power for their own good. In fact, I am angry that admins are being biased and I might want to take the matter a step further." That is not "pleading no-contest and withdrawing". His very last contribution to the AN was to try and impugn yet another administrator. Orderinchaos 04:58, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Order. The block log specifically mentioned the discussion at WP:AN. Why instead respond based on a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#User:Topology_Expert_blocked_for_trolling.2C_unblock_declined and ignore the larger discussion? Why still not notify the larger community and instead just attack the blocking admin? I am trying to figure out how you would see a notice on the project talk page, go to unblock, see a block log that mentions WP:AN, unblock, respond at the project, tell the blocking admin, and still not comment (or clearly even review) the discussion at large? And from that, you want everyone else to "drop the matter"? -- Ricky81682 (talk)

There was no discussion about the block on the math page. An announcement there was made by an editor who isn't even associated with the math project, for reasons unknown. It was removed for some time by a different editor. — Carl (CBM · talk) 05:11, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

(This is not in reply to any of the posts before, so I'm not sure where to put it.) Michael, just a courtesy notice so that I'm not talking behind your back and so that you know where I'm standing. I just wrote on User talk:Topology Expert that "Michael's unblock without discussion was very very wrong and, notwithstanding the huge respect I have for the work he does, I will support Orderinchaos in bringing it to the ArbCom if it happens again." The key words here are "without discussion". -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:09, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Michael probably already knows this, but just to add my agreement (as the "wronged party") with Jitse: if this happens again without discussion, I will countersign Orderinchaos's Arbcom case. ➨ ❝ЯEDVERS❞ a sweet and tender hooligan 17:54, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

"Without discussion" also describes the block, if the reason for the block was something other than the discussion about the article about the school, as is claimed above. Without discussion is pretty much my whole point; there should have been discussion before the block. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:22, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I have one comment and no more: my block was because I was wasting valuable editors' time (according to the blocker) but aren't the blockers wasting time here when they can make many valuable edits?

Topology Expert (talk) 16:50, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Boubaker polynomials

Hi, it seems you helped Luoguozhang (talk · contribs) move his draft from user page to Boubaker polynomials. I don't know if you're aware, but that topic was an object of quite some controversy about a year ago, as a COI editor (probably Boubaker himself?) kept creating such an article against a consensus that there was nothing to establish notability, and last time it came to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boubaker polynomials (2nd nomination) I closed it as "delete with prejudice against recreation". Can you judge if the concerns about notability and reliable sources have been met in the meantime? I have no opinion on the matter myself, as I'm quite clueless about the topic area.

Luogouzhang's behaviour struck me as odd; he kept contacting me the other day about advice on how to re-create a deleted page, but wouldn't tell me what page he meant. Given the context, I'm now not sure how much innocence to assume on his part.

I've also enquired at the mathematics wikiproject for outside comments, just to get a few more eyes on the situation. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:00, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

He also contacted about the same thing and in email told me which article he had in mind. If you look at the history of the new article you'll see that I created it as a subpage of his user page, more-or-less identical to the deleted article, and after he'd done lots of editing, drastically changing the content, I moved it to the article space. I told him in email it would need to be different from the deleted article in that it would need scholarly references sufficient to establish notability. He's added lots of those but I have not checked them. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:24, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Woops!

Thanks for cleaning this up in History of the Church–Turing thesis. I worked with Bill a lot on this article and thought it would be pressing him a little too much to change this. He has a thing about "The Wikipedia Police."

Softtest123 (talk) 22:02, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Mountain climbing problem

Mike, take a look at my new article, just in case I made some stylistic or WP formatting mistakes. I think people might enjoy this article more if it had an example or at least a figure, but I am no good with that. Later, Igor —Preceding unsigned comment added by Igorpak (talk • contribs) 03:03, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Line article

Hi Michael. Can I prevail on you to take a position on the question I raised just now concerning the second sentence of the article on lines at the bottom of that article's talk page? If you agree with Tango I won't argue the point further. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 06:44, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the introduction!

And for your help with the David Freedman entry. When my account has ripened for another 2 days, I intend to move the article to David A. Freedman (statistician) (i.e., to add his middle initial, which he used in published work)

Best wishes, Pbstark (talk) 17:33, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Birthday problem

I meant that as at 366 it is 1 it cant be asymptotic, i assumed it was a simply mistake as the curve does looks like most asymptotic curves otherwise i would have discussed the change first. I'm not a mathematician so if my assumption is incorrect feel free to revert the edit. In future i will try and leave better explanations. thx --77.99.150.12 (talk) 14:52, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

.9<1

Hi, please let me know if you think it is worth pursuing an adequate presentation of the *R viewpoint at .9 Katzmik (talk) 18:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps—I look at it within a couple of days. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:38, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Bishop–Keisler controversy

An article that you have been involved in editing, Bishop–Keisler controversy, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bishop–Keisler controversy. Thank you. Mathsci (talk) 05:43, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Outside opinion

I would greatly appreciate some commentary about myself. Two editors recently criticized me as an editor here on wikipedia, and I thought I should seek the advice of someone more experienced here. I choose you specifically because you are in favor of keeping the Bishop-Kiesler article. User:Katzmik has been accusing me of making hostile edits to cripple the article so it will be deleted. User:Topology_Expert has simply accused me of being obnoxious. It seems to me, if I am making other editors so angry perhaps I should take a moment to rethink my edits and make sure I am being a good wikipedian before I assume that this forum just makes peoples tempers run high. If you care to comment, I would appreciate it. Thenub314 (talk) 13:18, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Since my comments are being discussed here, I would like to clarify that I did not mean my comment as a criticism of you personally. Rather, I feel that your lack of appreciation of what I feel is an important subject leads you to make (perhaps well-meaning) edits at Bishop-Keisler that in the end are less than helpful. I tried to explain this in detail in the case of your removal of the epsilon-delta quote. I certainly have other things to say about the other edits you have made, but perhaps we should wait until AfD is behind us. Katzmik (talk) 13:23, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I continue to stand fully by my contention that if an editor wishes to recommend a page for deletion, he should refrain from editing the page in question due to possible conflict of interests. In fact, there should be an explicit wiki policy to this effect. Katzmik (talk) 13:28, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Coxeter element

User talk:Nbarth#Initial context setting

Hi Mike – thanks for the lede for Coxeter element!

Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 21:56, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Mahalanobis distance

Dear User.

You contributed to the Mahalanobis distance article. Some of its content lacks citations for verification, has been challenged and may be removed. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references.Calimo (talk) 10:19, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I am very sorry!!!

I really don't understand how you comment got deleted, but I really owe you an apology. And I will comment so on the AfD page as well.

OK. Michael Hardy (talk) 07:57, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

secondary sources at Criticism of nonstandard analysis

Hi, Could you please add the secondary sources you uncovered to the article? I think the debate at AfD is pretty much finished so we might as well finish working on the article. Katzmik (talk) 18:02, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi, could you please take a look at the new page Influence of non-standard analysis. Katzmik (talk) 13:38, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Please check the correctness of the proof at extreme value theorem. Katzmik (talk) 17:47, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi Michael, Thanks for your comment at the talk page of Criticism of non-standard analysis; I tried to amplify them there (see if you agree). In the meantime, there has been an attempt to derail the AfD decision by moving the material on the page to a different page; I would appreciate assistance in retaining the AfD decision which clearly goes in the direction of retaining the page under the current title "criticism". Katzmik (talk) 09:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Exner equation

Thanks for fixing up Exner equation - it was the first article I contributed to, and I never caught those wikipedia style formatting guidelines when I went back and looked at it. Now that you've edited it, I think I'll read over them again for general help - thanks! Awickert (talk) 05:48, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

P. M. Pu

Hi, the recent redirect at this page may not be consistent with guidelines. Could you please check? Katzmik (talk) 13:57, 22 December 2008 (UTC) Keyi is giving me a hard time there. Could you please comment? Katzmik (talk) 11:03, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

MOS Math

I am not great with these things yet— thank you for your patient corrections.Likebox (talk) 23:35, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Collapse (topology)

Hi Michael Hardy, thanks for your contribution to the article on collapse. Woood (talk) 22:29, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Why use ƒ?

Why should we use ƒ instead of f? Just because it looks more like the TeX font? What is ƒ really for? I.e., I assume it wasn't added to HTML for use in math. --David Marcus (talk) 02:23, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't know why that character was originally created, but my reason for using it in non-TeX mathematical notation is only that it more closely matches TeX style than does the ordinary italicized "f" character. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:34, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this use should be mentioned or recommended on Help:Displaying_a_formula and on Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(mathematics). --David Marcus (talk) 18:15, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

You may be interested in Ƒ. -- Avi (talk) 00:32, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Maximum spacing estimation

Thank you very much for your help, Michael! -- Avi (talk) 22:43, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

		The E=mc² Barnstar
		For consistent and continued help with mathematical and statistical articles, both polishing good articles and pruning poor ones. Avi (talk) 22:57, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:04, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Rating

Maybe I'm biased, but I think at this point it is a Bplus, and I'm thinking about a GAN. May I trouble you to review it and see if I am overenthusiastic? Thank you, and Happy New Year. -- Avi (talk) 00:31, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Lightbot

I am curious as to why you have reblocked Lightbot's IP when User:Thehelpfulone unblocked the bot/IP a couple moments ago. - NeutralHomer • Talk • January 3, 2009 @ 16:05

User:Thehelpfulone has removed the autoblock on Lightbot's IP now twice and you keep adding it back. For someone who says they don't mind if another admin removes the block, it seems you do mind. I am curious as to why the continuous blocking of the IP. - NeutralHomer • Talk • January 3, 2009 @ 16:34

Dude, when you block a bot, do it with autoblock disabled. If LightBot was running from the toolserver, practically every bot on this website would be shut down. Please be careful. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 16:36, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I was entirely unaware of any blocks or unblocks besides my own until these messages showed up here on this page. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:46, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Now I've looked at the logs and I'm really puzzled. I did not reblock Lightmouse after anyone else unblocked that user, and I have never "kept adding it back" or "continuously" blocked that user. What makes you think anything like that ever happened? Michael Hardy (talk) 20:19, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Lightmouse got the (first) autoblock removed, everything was fine and he had to ask again to have it removed after it seemed to be added back. - NeutralHomer • Talk • January 3, 2009 @ 20:30

Requesting Help

Could you help in wikifying 'Formulation of Euler spiral'?

The sandbox version that requires heavy edition is here: User:Ling Kah Jai/Track transition curve.

Ling Kah Jai (talk) 14:09, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Could you help on the dispute at the dispute at Talk:Track_transition_curve page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ling Kah Jai (talk • contribs) 12:51, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for helping. Many thanks. --Ling Kah Jai (talk) 06:34, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

On the hand is it possible to ask Wikipedia to produce a standalone WYSIWYG program for TeX formula editing and enabling code drop (copy and paste) from this program directly on to the sandbox? That will definitely help cutting down the time spend in editing the formula! thank you again. --Ling Kah Jai (talk) 06:40, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

new WP:RDREG userbox

This user is a Reference desk regular.

The box to the right is the newly created userbox for all RefDesk regulars. Since you are an RD regular, you are receiving this notice to remind you to put this box on your userpage! (but when you do, don't include the |no. Just say {{WP:RD regulars/box}} ) This adds you to Category:RD regulars, which is a must. So please, add it. Don't worry, no more spam after this - just check WP:RDREG for updates, news, etc. flaminglawyer^c 22:07, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Copula page

I updated the copula (statistics) page, but being relatively new to Wikipedia I'd like to ask you if you can take a look to make sure the edits I did are appropriate. Thanks Piloter (talk) 20:31, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Dashes and Richard Bethell (1772–1864)

It doesn't seem very helpful to "correct" the redlink to Richard Bethell on one page and not chase up the other two links to that same redlink - that way lies the possibility for duplicate article creation in future. I've updated the other three links on two pages now, but please watch out in future. I think it's better for all the links to one person to be consistent, even if malformed. Your edit summary of "if this breaks some links, correct the titles of those other pages" seems inappropriate - if you're breaking a link to correct a format, then please make a redirect from the correct to the incorrect title. (I see that the links from John Marshall (industrialist) all seem to be OK as you've moved the pages despite your comment which implied you weren't going to!). PamD (talk) 08:43, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

This is one reason why it would be a good idea to allow redirects to non-existent pages. It used to be allowed and the policy was changed without discussion in a dishonest manner by bullies in 2005. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:37, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

User talk:Bassis

Way to be nice to a newbie. Mind keeping it a bit calmer in future? Starting a post with 'this is an INCREDIBLY bad way to start an article' is unlikely to make a new editor feel appreciated. Your point has to be made, yes, but it could easily have been made with a lot more tact. Ironholds (talk) 17:52, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

CSD

You might be interested in the link at the end of my sig, and the articles linked from there.---Balloonman ^PoppaBalloonCSD Survey Results 21:45, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Adjust your tone

Do not again come to my page with the type of tone you displayed here. Whilst you have every right to reinstate, you do not have the right to come to my page with a holier than thou attitude that displays such rudeness. A check of the history of this article reveals that its deletion followed the speedy request for such deletion of a page that simply said, Poisson hidden Markov models are a special case of hidden Markov models where a Poisson process is associated with different states of a Markov model. PHMMs are not necessarily a Markovian Process themselves because the underlying Markov chain cannot be observed and only the Poisson signal is observed. That content was speedy tagged by another editor and the tag was simply removed by the initial editor with/despite a hang-on request, no additional information was placed at the articles talk page. CSD is an area often back-logged and I was working through a large list of such items. On the next occasion please ensure that you explain your case and given the availability of new evidence I would have gladly assisted you or concurred with your view. Thank you.--VS ^talk 22:13, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed; see my comment above. Article contributions are no excuse for civility akin to that of a brick through a front window (sorry to sink to your level). Ironholds (talk) 22:14, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

As a person who has been working towards reform at CSD (see my essays), I have to admit, if I saw that article, I would have assumed it was patent nonsense as well. The fact that it might be real, doesn't alleviate the fact that is fits the mould of WP:nonsense to somebody who is not familiar with PHMM... I mean, it fails the basics of even simple dictionary defition. Eg it uses circular reasoning... a PHMM is a special case of a HMM where a P process is associates..." Definitions are usually expected not to assume that the person knows what an HMM or P is. I was expecting to see something more egregious.---Balloonman ^PoppaBalloonCSD Survey Results 22:36, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I hope you see the irony of a user who earlier rudely warned a new user for creating pages that only a PhD could read having a mathematics page tagged for deletion because to the common man it looks like nonsense :P. Ironholds (talk) 22:38, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I never proposed deletion of an article because it was badly written; I proposed rewriting it. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:49, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Balloonman wrote:

is fits the mould of WP:nonsense to somebody who is not familiar with PHMM...

That is nonsense, because I was certainly not familiar with that concept. But the deletion was absurd and irresponsible, since even one who had never heard of Markov chains or Poisson processes could have taken five seconds or less (more likely less) with Google and ascertained that there was something there. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:47, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

• Your display of tact and courtesy to fellow long standing editors and administrators is again noted Michael. However, rather than attempt to push your case as to what I and others are doing incorrectly, please instead come to CSD as often as possible - Balloonman, myself and so few others spend hours there at times and we could do with someone with your obvious talent and spare time.--VS ^talk 23:57, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

In re "tact and courtesy", the fact is that it looked as if you weren't paying attention to what you were doing, and I still think you should have done a better job of it than that. Taking five seconds with Google does not seem unreasonable. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

SOPHIA (European Foundation for the Advancement of Doing Philosophy with Children)

Why did you remove the speedy tag from thhis? It was made by a banned user in violation of a ban, with no substantial edits from anyone else. Sticky Parkin 18:28, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, I've deleted it and then recreated it without the banned user in the edit history. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:10, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Now I'm told that violates copyright, so I've restored the edit history. The answer ends up being that it's an article that ought to exist.

Why was the speedy deletion proposed in the first place? That the article was created by a banned user in violation of the ban is not enough to answer that question, since the policy says in that case an admin MAY speedily delete, NOT that an admin MUST speedily delete. So why should that particular article get deleted? Michael Hardy (talk) 01:01, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

It's up to you, it gets a fair few google hits but not many in news and books, where I usually find my WP:RS, [2][3] so I don't know how notable it is. I's not just that it's created by a banned user, it's that there's no-one else really made major edits to it than him. But really I've had problems finding when User:Ekajati or one of his many names would be officially counted as banned, so I thought he counted as ban-violating then, which obviously we don't want to encourage.:/ But I don't think he was. Could you possibly find out when he officially counts as banned for me? If an article he's created is useful, that's great, but a lot of his articles are of borderline notability. Maybe I'll prod in future- sorry to annoy.:) Sticky Parkin 01:19, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Nonsense of List of Jewish American lnguists

Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on List of Jewish American lnguists, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because List of Jewish American lnguists provides no meaningful content or history, and the text is unsalvageably incoherent.

To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting List of Jewish American lnguists, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. To see the user who deleted the page, click here CSDWarnBot (talk) 10:20, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

FYI, I just deleted it as a redirect from an implausible typo. Whoever tagged it in the first place clearly needs to learn their CSDs better :) the wub "?!" 13:28, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

_{} and _

Hi, I saw your edits to Lebedev quadrature that dropped the brackets for subscripts and superscripts. I wonder, is this a readability issue, MOS, or otherwise. My latex style is quite pedantic in this and other aspects, but I'm more than happy to adjust my style if it saves people from cleaning up after me. Thanks, THEN WHO WAS PHONE? (talk) 16:12, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Using needless curly braces, writing x_{1} where x_1 will do, can cause newbies to think those braces are necessary. I recently edited an article that contained lots of things like this:

x - { \frac{{ {a} - {b} }}{{ {c} - {d} }} }

where obviously the following would suffice:

x - \frac{ a - b }{ c - d }

The latter is certainly easier to read.

Why would you write x_{1}^{2} where x_1^2 has the same effect and is easier to parse mentally? Michael Hardy (talk) 19:13, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Without such brackets, I need to read an expression left to right to understand what it represents. With brackets, I can look at it as an entity and understand. This has no effect for a single subscript obviously, but it's so ingrained that I don't think to make exceptions. I see your point about newbies however, and will adjust my style for wiki editing. THEN WHO WAS PHONE? (talk) 20:24, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

MSE

You are correct, sometimes I am guilty of not thinking things through fully. Thanks! -- Avi (talk) 23:31, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

About Wolfram Demonstrations Project

Hi Michael - I reviewed your restoration of Wolfram Demonstrations Project, and while I fully agree that this restore was appropriate, I wanted to remind you that in restore summaries it's best to stick to the letter of the policy - G11 does not regard notability, but "[p]ages that exclusively promote some entity and that would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic." The argument that the website is impressive is WP:ILIKEIT; the association with Mathematica is not sufficient to justify inclusion (WP:INHERITED); and the person making the deletion should not be taken into consideration. The better argument to make is that the G11 deletion was invalid because the article is not promotional; other arguments can be raised at AfD, if an AfD happens later. Dcoetzee 23:55, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

RE: Poisson hidden Markov model

I want to apologize for having marked this for deletion. As soon as it had popped up back on my watchlist it was evident that I did not make a good decision in applying a speedy tag on it whereas more discretion would have been appropriate. Thank you for letting me know, and I will try to be more careful while patrolling the new pages log. Please accept my humblest apologies. TheLetterM (talk) 03:59, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:06, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Complex argument (continued fraction)

Howdy, can you check that I summarized the problem accurately? When I first read over the page I was pretty pissed people had marked this for deletion as original research without even marking the citations as having {{failed verification}}. I then realized the problem was not with the cited material, but with the conclusions drawn from it. In particular, it struck me that the article author was trying to make a point, and explain how the point was historically justified. JackSchmidt (talk) 04:16, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Re: Conditional Probability

Oh please I already said I got the section in that textbook I was referring to wrong. Did you just not see that or did you just have to make a point.

According to that textbook: the derivation of $P(A|B)$ includes setting for each elementary event/occurrence $\omega _{i}\not \in B$ the conditional probability to zero, as in $P(\omega _{i}|B)=0\forall \omega _{i}\not \in B)$.

Again though: I am not a stats buff. I am a complete amateur at stats - so please go and blame the authors of that book and not me since I am just citing their work.--Somewikian (talk) 17:35, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I've looked at page 134, which you cited, and I can't see that it gets anything wrong. It certainly never says that A must be a subset of B in order that P(A|B) be defined. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:40, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Moving an image

[4]: The only way is to move an image is to download it and then upload it again. And be very careful to check "what links here" when you do it, in case multiple articles use the image. - Jmabel | Talk 18:45, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Social Science & Medicine and Social Science and Medicine

Thank you for the help.Iss246 (talk) 18:21, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Rochelle-Park-Rochelle-Heights Historic District‎

You declined my speedy-deletion request for this article. Would it have been helpful for me to explain that the banned user who created this article has created more than 300 confirmed sockpuppets, at least one of which created a version of this article previously (as Rochelle Park, New York)? Would it be helpful to know that this user has a long history of adding plagiarized content and disguising the origins of that content? Would it be helpful to know that the URLs linked in this article as sources and ELs are actually just the home pages of very large websites, and that the other sources are the same types of unobtainable offline sources that this banned user has "cited" in the past in order to disguise copyvios? This user works long and hard at undermining Wikipedia in diverse ways; s/he does not deserve any "benefit of the doubt." --Orlady (talk) 01:32, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps it would have helped to know some of that, but I didn't. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:34, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I've just inquired about some related matters at Template talk:Db-meta. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:40, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the typographical cleanup on the Gosper's Algorithm page

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another thing to edit

thanks for fixing my plural in this edit. You may want to update Category:Unprintworthy_redirects, which now reads "do not replace these redirected links with a simpler link unless the page is updated for another reason." PDBailey (talk) 19:38, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Re: Ekeland

Thank you so much! It's embarrassing but that was just one of my edits so that I could upload media to the commons and somehow be useful at the same time. Does the page need a math formula to exist? All I would be able to do is paraphrase someone else's work which I don't think would be fair. eldavojohn (talk) 19:32, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

It certainly doesn't need to have any math formulas in order to exist, but in view of the nature of the subject, it will probably remain essentially a stub until some specifics about the mathematics are included. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:27, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Request for your advice

Is Maximum spacing estimation ready for an A-class discussion, or does it have too many gaping flaws? -- Avi (talk) 17:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Orthonormal Basis

Hi I had a couple of queries regarding the orthonormal basis article that I posted on the discussion page. I would appreciate if you could have a look at them when you find the time. Thanks 203.167.251.186 (talk) 04:21, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

re: Study skills

Just wanted to drop a note of thanks for your help with the Study skills article. Looks like it's been saved, as Icewedge closed the AfD with a keep. I'll try to add (or remove) what I can in the near future. Thanks again for your help. — Ched (talk) 06:52, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Bombardment?

Hi. I must say, I don't agree with your untagging of these two pages. They are not only badly written, they are exact copy pastes of [5] and [6]. These are not even articles - they have no context whatsoever and do not identify their subjects. As such, I believe they fall under A1 of CSD. Now, if you want, I'll create AfD for the two of them, but I really think speedy delete is much more acceptable. Thanks. Peasantwarrior (talk) 18:59, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you tag them as speedy candidates for copyright infringement? Nothing in the "speedy" tags that were there would have led me to suspect them of being copied from a web site. To call them "very short articles" that do not give enough context to identify the subject is clearly wrong. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:02, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I'll do that. Peasantwarrior (talk) 19:04, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Boubaker polynomials

Hello,

I noticed you had restored this article in response to a claim by Luoguozhang. The same user has posted the same demand on my discussion page on fr:. You had justified the restauration with this comment: "userfication of a now-deleted article originally created by another user, in which this user has expressed an interest in modifying it to make it encyclopedic". I wanted to inform you that a check-user on fr: proved that Luoguozhang was indeed Mmbmmmbm, ie the first creator of the article: his IP address is tunisian, and in the same range as the ones previously used by Mmbmmmbm. I'm afraid you have been fooled... Best regards, GillesC (talk) 13:17, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure that matters as long as the content of the article is suitable for an encyclopedia. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:19, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

OK. This will probably end with a new AfD procedure. Hopefully no Scolas will come back GillesC (talk) 08:42, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the help with my miss capitilising (sp?) Design of experiments. It's always nice to get constructive help that doesn't make you want to run away ! PaulHurleyuk (talk) 20:46, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

You have several times pointed out (correctly!) that I did not follow Wikipedia or Latex conventions. Are there some documents that I should read to improve in the future. (Usually I just look at random existing articles and model my code accordingly). Thanks. Encyclops (talk) 19:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

There's Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics). Michael Hardy (talk) 04:52, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion

I undid your changing of the headers in Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion. Besides the fact that the change can break links others may have to those sections, Wikipedia:TALK#Behavior_that_is_unacceptable says "As a rule, do not edit others' comments, including signatures." There's been a long standing consensus that correcting the spelling and grammar of other editors on talk pages is unacceptable. --Fabrictramp | talk to me 22:03, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I didn't edit anyone's comments; I only edited section headings. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:51, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Hermite Polynomials

I have deleted the category by accident. Already corrected. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MaciejDems (talk • contribs) 11:25, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Someone did not respect your editing

Dear Michael, A Fr:User reverted your last revision here [7] . A discussion is egaged. If you can solve this[8], it will be good: none (really none) can contest your editing, Thanks Etaittunpe (talk) 23:35, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Ethnos

I think you are probably right and if you want to correct my edit please go ahead. The problem is, I am on leave this year and not with my personal library. I made an edit last year properly sourced - Shaye JD Cohen is probably the world's leading expert on late Hellenistic Jewish history at this time. I do not remember but I am guessing I found the word online and cut and pasted it into WP (i.e. not using proper Greek letters) and you see what the result was. Recently people complained on the talk page and since I do not have Cohen's book handy, I asked another user who knows Greek to help out be he never responded...so after a week or so I just did what I hoped was a reasonable transliteration. If you can correct me believe me I would be grateful!! Slrubenstein | Talk 19:39, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

In other words, I do not think I was trying to write "ethnos" in Greek. I think that a year or so ago I tried to copy the Greek spelling from a book on 1st century Jewish history to Wikipedia. I did not know how to access the Greek alphabet for Wikipedia, so I did some cut and paste from someplace and WP turned my cut and paste into something. Most recently, I tried to turn the Greek into an English transliteration. But it all started with my trying to copy the Greek from a hard-copy book and botching it. I hope this makes sense. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:42, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

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Maximum of a discrete uniform distribution / German tank problem

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the edits & merge proposal!

I agree, German tank problem is the correct place for this discussion – shall I merge these? (I’ll lead with the intuitive & historical description, and then have technical discussion and applications after – does this sound good?)

—Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 18:46, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

At this point I'm not sure what the appropriate title of the merged article should be. Possibly neither of the above. I'll think about it..... Michael Hardy (talk) 18:49, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I’ve merged the articles (at German tank problem) and put a redirect from Maximum of a discrete uniform distribution; I’ve no strong feelings about what the article should be called, though in US & UK (secondary) education it seems to be widely called the “German tank problem”. Properly, it’s “Estimation of the maximum of a discrete uniform distribution”, but that’s a bit verbose. If you think of a better title, feel free to move it there; advise me if you’d like me to update links, which I’d be happy to do.

—Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 23:36, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Studentized residual

See: User talk:Nbarth#Horribly misleading sentence

Corrected title & linked —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 15:27, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Michael,

You’re right, my edit at studentized residual is very misleading; I was contrasting it with standard score (i.e., sample vs. population), but, as you correctly say (and as the article discusses), the concept is much more important in the context of regressions.

I’ll think about how to reword it – thanks for the catch.

—Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 00:59, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Your wording fixing things – thanks!

I realize that my misunderstanding (and incorrect emphasis) was because I didn’t understand that this is crucially about multivariate distributions and regressions, and that the existing article emphasized the difference between errors and residuals much more than the fact that it was the behavior of regressions.

In fact, the article on errors and residuals in statistics didn’t mention regressions, and just distinguished between population and sample mean – I had thus just assumed that the point of studentizing was the same (uses sample data, not population).

I’ve thus:

• expanded errors and residuals in statistics to emphasize that the distinction is subtle and important in regression analysis, and
• fronted that this is an issue about regressions in studentized residual#Motivation, and explained that the issue is about the behavior of regressions, namely that they better fit at endpoints.

Thanks for drawing this to my attention and explaining this – I hadn’t realized that this issue even existed, and it’s quite subtle.

Hope we’ve fixed it sufficiently – please make any other changes you find helpful!

—Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 14:37, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Theorem/nature of generality

It is a bit of a trivial matter since it only means transposing a first and second sentence. However, it absolutely is not the case that provability is more general than derivability. Every instance in which someone "proves" some statement of mathematics has some formal language derivation associated with it, however the converse is not true. I have given this argument at length.

I do think that putting the more general statement of the concept belongs first, so as to develop the understanding in the article. Perhaps we disagree about what it means to be "general"? It seems to me that the statement which describes more truths is more general. Those statements are usually less useful i.e. "pines are tall" vs. "trees are tall." There are more trees than pines so therefore the later is more general. Stating that theorems are derived does not presume any semantic concepts like truth and proof, and therefore is more general. Truth and proof only come into the picture when we deal with the semantics of theorems, which certainly is not more general than considering only their syntax. A fundamental understanding of theorem includes that it is a syntactic concept (as is mentioned in the lead paragraph already).

You and the others are pretty well versed, so I am at a loss for the widespread misunderstanding. I hope you reevaluate it. It will help people's understanding of it if you do. Be well,

Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 00:53, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe the more important point is that the version more easily understood by the lay reader should come first. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:29, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I think this notion of considering "syntactic" theorems with no semantic content is nonsense except when limited to a narrow context of formal logic. Theorems are true statements in mathematics that can be proved. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:32, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm a little disappointed in your view about nonsense. However, I can't really complain too much about theorem because so far I have gotten almost everything included in it that I wanted.

At least it appears that we agree that derivability is more general than provability. However, I think you are erroneously trivializing the role of "formal logic" in helping the lay reader to understand the topic. Be well, Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 04:12, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think formal logic is trivial, but I think it fails to capture a lot of stuff. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:14, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

About math formulae

Thanks for addressing 800x600 window size of a math formula. See explanation at User_talk:Wikid77#Confusion over math formulas. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:31, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Square Root of Two

Ah, you are right! I guess I wasn't really thinking about what I was doing..... For some reason it seemed to make sense when I was typing it in. Ah well, thanks for correcting my mistake! — Kortaggio ^{Proclamations} _Declarations 23:49, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Come to think of it now, I supposed the "logic" I was going through at the time was that $x^{-1}=1/x$ and $2^{1/2}={\sqrt {2}}$, so therefore $2^{-2}$ must somehow equal ${\sqrt {2}}$ for x = 2. I now really understand why people are so stringent on defining and solving mathematical equations with rigour. Again, thank you for catching my error. — Kortaggio ^{Proclamations} _Declarations 00:09, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, it appears that what you were looking for was

$2^{2^{-1}}={\sqrt {2}}\,$

but what you wrote was

$2^{2\cdot (-1)}.\,$

Michael Hardy (talk) 00:24, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I never thanked you for fixing up Units place

Thank you also for removing the stub tag. It made me feel verified. I don't completely understand how assessments are used or by whom but I plan to WP:BB and apply the start class template now. :)--Thecurran (talk) 09:49, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Glivenko

Did WP really missed the article on Glivenko? Or I missed it somehow? I created a stub for now, I will be back with more later. (Igny (talk) 02:11, 26 February 2009 (UTC))

Cavalieri's principle

It seems you're working on a draft. Great! I was really surprised to see it's a redirect to Calivieri. An obvious big gaping gap in our coverage. --C S (talk) 03:27, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I never thought I would be approached about an edit from April 2007, but I stand corrected! Lol. I have added the full source name.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 09:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

List of statisticians

The only reason for the edit is the lack of article and of any reference whatsoever. If that person exists and is notable, a stub of an article with a cite by a reliable source could be made and would be sufficient for inclusion in the list. Otherwise it's just an unverified red link with no context. Additionally, Amazon is not a reliable source, because it's a commercial site, and I don't think it provides enough to show whether the person passes WP:PROF.--137.122.49.102 (talk) 23:02, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I see your WP:RED and raise you a WP:CITE, WP:N, WP:RS, WP:PROF and WP:WTAF. There's no reason for the red link to stay because there will never be an article, because the person does not pass the notability guidelines.--137.122.49.102 (talk) 15:43, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Undoing edits gives an autosummary which is often sufficient for lists (due to addition of spam, vanity or vandalism entries). I removed 3 red linked entries in that article by undoing previous edit, one was a non-notable prof (checked using google), one a vanity or fake entry (a statistician born in 1987 automatically raises a red flag), and this last addition with again no source and no cite. I wouldn't remove red links if they were at least supported by a reliable cite. WP:RED explicitely states that a red link should be notable and verifiable in order to be kept (particularly in list articles). Without anything to back up the red link, I don't see why more precision in the edit summary would be necessary.--137.122.49.102 (talk) 17:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

WP:PHYS

Hi, I noticed you editing the Clebsch-Gordan coefficient, so I take it you are familiar with some physics. Might I convinced you of joining WikiProject Physics?Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:51, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Deaths in 2009

I would hope that you would know standard policy by now. Determine consensus before making a change in long-standing policy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Star Garnet (talk • contribs)

I wasn't proposing to change a policy, but rather to create a policy where there was none before. (If such a policy existed, please point it out to me.) It differs from what had been customary, and in that it resembles edits I make every day to articles, in which I change material that's been there for a long time. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:47, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, that was too brutal, but just as with other such changes in the past (almost all of which were rejected), one person's belief cannot change the page without consensus. Also, what is customary is virtually policy. Star Garnet (talk) 19:02, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Definition of probability distribution function

This discussion may interest you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wiki me (talk • contribs) 17:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

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edit summary

Michael Hardy, you recent edit at the CDF page was an undo and included no explanation. This implies that the previous edit was vandalism and makes it harder for other editors to (a) use their watch list, and (b) understand your intentions. I would appreciate it if you used edit summaries more often when you edit. Thanks, PDBailey (talk) 18:51, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Geoffrey Martin DAB

Good work with that one (two mathematicians!). I was just wondering whether it would be best to disambig them all using brackets (for profession) or middle initials, or leave as-is, whatever. Cheers, - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 21:48, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Re Strange edit

I've replied to your post on my talk page there. Paul August ☎ 00:30, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Virtually identical redirects with different targets

Hello, Michael. You recently posted a bot request for a list of redirect titles that are virtually the same, yet redirect to different targets. I was hoping to wait for a new database dump to try this on, but because that is a distant and constantly receding target, I decided to run an analysis of the 2008-10-08 dump. The results are in the pages listed at Special:PrefixIndex/User:RussBot/Similar titles. I haven't gotten around to writing an explanation page yet, but basically I grouped all titles in namespace 0 that were identical except for (a) transliteration, (b) capitalization, and (c) punctuation. The punctuation criterion seems to have led to some false positives, since I simply ignored everything that wasn't an alphabetic or numeric character. I then listed any group that contained at least one redirect, and where there were at least two distinct articles referenced by the members of the group. (Be careful what you wish for, this is a lot of articles.) Since it is based on a five-month-old dump, there are likely to be some entries that are no longer valid. Have fun. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:17, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Very interesting! Relying on a "dump" necessarily slows things down. Ultimately we'd like to have software that spots these as soon as they're created. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:35, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure it's technically possible to do that on the Toolserver. But I don't know PHP and don't have an account there. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 22:03, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

• There's a new dump available. Are you interested in having this report updated? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:07, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Logic thinking automation and Concept algebra

Hi, I noticed you started editing those two articles (or one of them at least). Do you reckong they are notable enough to keep? I have no understanding of the topic itself but I placed the tag on those pages because it was a terrible translation and looked like something copied of Shilong's blog. Akerbeltz (talk) 18:41, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if they're notable enough to keep. The title of the one I edited seemed familiar from other contexts. I'll see if I can figure out where I heard of it. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:02, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

That would be very helpful. I think, if nothing springs to mind in terms of notability, you might as well leave them be for now because if they do end up getting deleted, you'll have wasted valuable time! Akerbeltz (talk) 19:04, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Double redirects

You may be interested in Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Double redirects. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:39, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with File:Samsung Document Camera.jpg

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Picky

So English is not my native language. This was not writing on article space, so who cares. Garion96 (talk) 14:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

too many capitals

Thanks for all the typographical improvements, Michael. Hope I can remember all the good advice in my future edits:-) --Tromp (talk) 19:00, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Logarithmic differentiation

Hello, thanks for correcting a few things on this. You seem to be an experienced mathematician, looking at your created articles. What did you think of the article? Did you see room for expansion anywhere? —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 01:19, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Punctuation

I thought the rule was to use spaced en-dashes or unspaced em-dashes, not spaced em-dashes? —David Eppstein (talk) 05:31, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Nena Kerner

Hello, you sent me a message regarding vandalism of the Nena article, but I think you meant to send it to 24.62.228.150 instead ^_^ I am the one who fixed the Spanish "Niña" in her early years section.. I am Weasel5i2, just too lazy to log in at the moment. :) 24.28.76.30 (talk) 09:02, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

False premise

Hello Michael. Sorry for not responding earlier. It was only meant as a joke, as the phrase was used to describe it in a film I once saw. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fergananim (talk • contribs)

Red Links

Thanks for the reminder. I restored the AFL Gold Coast wikification. Mgreason (talk) 13:32, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

File:Samsung Document Camera.jpg

Hi, good job on getting permission for this image to be licensed under the GFDL. People, in general, are indeed often willing to do so. To totally avoid this image being tagged in the future you could send the permission e-mail to permissions-en AT wikimedia DOT org. This way the image will be tagged by WP:OTRS. Garion96 (talk) 18:16, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I've forwarded the email. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:26, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Gian-Carlo Rota

I was a student and friend of his (as you may also have been). I assume they know the exact time of death using the customary forensic techniques - temperature of body, amount of rigor, etc. Colleagues in the math department at the time said he was found in his reader chair in the living room. They didn't mention what he was reading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.216.90.120 (talk) 12:01, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

DRV

I have opened a DRV on the wrangler categories, on which you opined. Occuli (talk) 02:40, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Functional integration (sociology)

Thanks for the info. I wasn't sure whether it is appropriate to remove a non-existent article from a caption like this. It seemed strange to me: the caption suggested that the reader should "see" this article, which is clearly impossible. Nevertheless, I don't see any obstruction to the possible future creation of such an article. Sławomir Biały (talk) 22:57, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I have re-removed the redlink. Actually, I did so after coming across Wikipedia:Hatnote#Non-existent_articles, which states that redlinks should not appear in hatnotes. Feel free to revert me if you still disagree. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:50, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Help with move and new user welcome

Hi Michael,

Can you, please, move the page Relatively Hyperbolic Group to its rightful place? A relatively new user, evidently unfamiliar with our MOS conventions, wrote most of the material, but he also created redirects at other versions of the title. On a related theme, it would be nice to let him know in a gentle way that we do have some style conventions here! Arcfrk (talk) 02:38, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

That's very cool Michael. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Henry Delforn (talk • contribs)

Thank you.

Replied on Talk:Lidstone series

Hi Michael, Long time no talk, I've been vacationing from wikipedia, and doing linguistics/AI work instead, e.g. here. linas (talk) 20:20, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Law of the unconscious statistician

Thanks for doing the renaming and clean-up on the page! I was the one who stuck in all that inline tex, hope it wasn't too much of a hassle replacing it :) digfarenough (talk) 19:18, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

You are usually a helpful user

How about alittle helpful advise now? Been working on a new artice (Anna Baltzer) and this one user (User:Crusio) is not giving me chance to complete the article by modifying (deleting) the content (not just taggin it). I left him a message explaining the work but he doesn't seem to want to respond. Any friendly advice how to handle this problem? Henry Delforn (talk) 01:17, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposal for Sturm-Liouville Orthogonality

I am contacting you because you indicated interest in saving the incompletely marked up page that I inadvertently introduced into the wikipedia main name space. (see Save this article!) I have now completed the markup for the proposal. However, I need some guidance on how to proceed. I looked at the Talk:Sturm–Liouville theory page. Other than the entry you made in January 2009, the latest entry was made in December 2005. This suggests the talk page is no longer actively followed. Should I enter a proposal entry there and hope for the best? Or should I place the proposal on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics page? Or should I do both? Also, I would appreciated some advice on the appropriate way to move from the proposal stage to creating a sub-page for the proof. There seems to be some disagreement about whether proofs belong on Wikipedia (see another proposal discussion). So, is there a way to resolve this issue before any sub page is created? Dnessett (talk) 16:52, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Great job working on classical hamiltonain quaternions!

I looked over and greatly approve of your edits!

That was a lot of really great work on your part, keep it up.

Unfortunately a recent discussion to move both the articles tensor of a quaternion and even more recentlythe vector of a quaternion into the main article have made the article a tad long.

The last section Classical_Hamiltonian_quaternions#Contexts_of_quaternion_geometry_and_linear_algebra written long ago by an editor with very little experience, has some degree of merit, but needs a total rewrite, and could benefit much from the talents of a man of your caliber. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homebum (talk • contribs) 06:47, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

En dash attack

Hi Michael Hardy

Your edit to Edward George, Baron George resulted in the wholesale breaking of category links.

While en dashes are preferred by WP:MOS for numerous purposes (including in page/category names), you cannot simply change the formatting of linked text without verifying that the corresponding article or category exists with the preferred punctuation.

Regards, Bongomatic 09:56, 20 April 2009 (UTC) If you wish to reply, please do so here, without commenting at or adding a {{talkback}} template to my talk page—I will watch this page for a few days.

Editing Barnstar

		100,000 Edits
		I, Bugboy52.4, award you for reaching 100,000 edits according to the List of Wikipedians by number of edits generated 11:45 pm, 24 February 2009. Keep up the good work!________________________________________________________________

Thank you. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:51, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Jewish orphans controversy

This article begins by saying this was a legal dispute. Does that mean a lawsuit was filed? In what court? A French state court? A Catholic ecclesiastical court? What did the court ultimately decide? Michael Hardy (talk) 02:48, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

It's legal because it was based on an ancient form of canon law that was adopted during the council of Toledo in the High Middle Ages, although it would be best to double-check the sources on this. The code of canon law was later reformed after the Second Vatican Council and so this particular legislation no longer applies in canonical jurisprudence. Another thing is that the Holy See is a legal and political entity which does have a clear separation of powers, and so the Church's judicial power is closely related to the executive Magisterium of the Holy Father. For instance, the Roman Inquisition was technically legal because it was under the direct authority of the Pope, who is a head of State. A possible comparison to this is the CIA, which is a legal organization under direct control of the American President, and which was recently caught in a legal controversy about kidnapping and torture (see extraordinary rendition by the United States). ADM (talk) 03:31, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank You

I did indeed mean to type theories instead of theorems. I was working too quickly. Feel free next time to just correct any errors.l santry (talk) 17:06, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Mass HTML code cleanup

What do you think about [9]? The same editor has been going through tons of articles with this CodeFixer script. It seems like this is basically undoing a lot of your work. --C S (talk) 10:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I have had a look at both versions (as seen by one reading Wikipedia, rather than in edit mode), but somehow do not notice any difference. However, this is most likely due to my inexperience with such objects. Is there supposed to be a difference in the two versions, or rather, is it simply just for the purpose of keeping Wikipedia "uniform" in terms of the code used? --PST 12:22, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think he's actually undoing what I did. In some cases I've changed the letter x to ×, and those certainly look different in many fonts (the letter x sits on the line on which the other letters rest and the × symbol is higher; the letter may have serifs and may be affected by italicization and the mathematical symbol is not; etc.) and the symbol that that user replaces the × with looks like the ×, not like the x. Similarly, I've replaced hyphens with minus signs, and those look different on most browsers: -5 is not the same as −5. But the symbol that the user you mention puts there looks like the minus sign, not like the hyphen. So as far as I can tell, this is not a case of undoing what I've done. Michael Hardy (talk) 13:57, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Ok that's what I thought. But I noticed you have a preference for using something like &minus in html code instead of just inserting the minus sign. I didn't know if that's for ease of typing or what. --C S (talk) 20:14, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Resp

In response to that edit, it's kind of hard to see the page, so I'll do my best to explain. This was an unpublished theory as to how it could be applied. It had no references and no way to be encyclopedic with regards to Wikipedia (a mathematical encyclopedia maybe...maybe...). — BQZip01 — ^talk 03:03, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Continuous Repayment Mortgage

Hello Michael

I recently contributed the following article on Continuous Repayment Mortgages. Have been advised to include links from other pages and I wondered if it would be appropriate to add a link from the page on Linear Differential Equations for which I note you are a major contributor. I thought such a link could perhaps be included in the "See also" section.

Please do take a look at the article - would appreciate comments and/or suggestions for improvement.

Neil Parker (talk) 16:38, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps similarly a link from the page on Laplace transforms?!

Neil Parker (talk) 16:45, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

It should probably appear somewhere in the List of finance topics. Quite possible also in the articles you mention. To be continued.... Michael Hardy (talk) 17:05, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Please feel free to implement whatever links you think are appropriate.

Neil Parker (talk) 19:01, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I added links from the 'See Also section' in the pages on Linear Differential equations, Laplace transforms and RC circuits. Hope these will 'stick'.

Neil Parker (talk) 11:43, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks for all the 'tidy up' editing you have done on this article as well as creating the link on List of finance topics. Good to see the 'bot' has now removed the orphan tag.

Just one small point on the referencing. Although I have seen any number of informal solutions to the mortgage LDE, there is only one properly authoritative reference that I am aware of and that is Professor Hackman's course notes as reflected in the linked pdf document. Currently it looks as though the latter is a separate reference from the course notes. Neil Parker (talk) 08:42, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

happening to see this, it strikes me as WP:OR, original research. rather trivial OR mathematically, but OR nonetheless. DGG (talk) 14:53, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

It had crossed my mind to wonder about that, but I've never looked at it carefully; I only did some style edits. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:33, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for latest 'fixups'. I will try to be a little more careful to conform to conventions in any future edits.I responded to DGG re 'OR' on his talk page. In respect of it being 'rather trivial' I would say it is a rather obvious extension of continuous compounding and therefore no more or no less 'trivial' than the latter.

Neil Parker (talk) 11:30, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

MLE covariance matrices

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at Aobha's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Dashes

Please fix these yourself and try to be more civil in your edit summaries. I just wrote the article today. Mathsci (talk) 03:20, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

You leave me to guess which article you're talking about. Based on your own editing history, I surmise (but I'm not sure) that you're talking about Kostant polynomial. I did indeed fix something in it. I wouldn't have thought my edit summary could be taken as disrespectful to anyone. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:35, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

ndash in article title

Thanks for the pointer to editorial policy. --Stepheng3 (talk) 18:33, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Adding external Java applet links to Probability Distribution articles

Could you please weight in on this discussion (User_talk:Iwaterpolo#applets)? The main point is: Are external links to concrete Java applets (e.g., http://socr.ucla.edu/htmls/dist/Poisson_Distribution.html) appropriate, informative and encyclopedic, when placed at the end of probability distribution articles on Wikipedia? Thanks. Iwaterpolo (talk) 16:34, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it may be better to comment in this discussion page: Category_talk:Discrete_distributions Iwaterpolo (talk) 20:26, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't give up the fight ;)

I saw your comment on oscillator phase noise and of course your post on the physics project page. Fixing style mistakes seems to be just a little frustrating. It seems silly to me that someone with experience and knowledge has to spend time doing trivial stuff like this. I just wanted to let you know, though, that it is appreciated. I'll do what I can in the pages I stumble across, but we are both just minnows in giant Ocean of articles. Is there any tools that can help? TStein (talk) 06:44, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Probability metric

We are debating on notability and original research about the article. I always appreciated your contribution to wikipedia. Could you give us a little help here? I thought someone with math knowledge would be better to resolve this one. Talk:Probability metric --Memming (talk) 13:03, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Too many capitals

      Thanks, I will keep it in mind. Out of curiosity, can we use only html to write a wiki page? Amin (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:26, 24 May 2009 (UTC).

I'm not sure if you're asking whether html is the only thing that can be used, or whether a page can consist only of html. As to the latter question, I'm not rally an html expert so I'm not sure. As to the former, I think Wikipedia's version of TeX might qualify as something other than html that can be used in addition to the sort of text you always see. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:37, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Telesio - Galilei Academy of Science

I see you had a previous look at this article. Do you think it's salvageable? Including the lists of awardees? DGG (talk) 14:46, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

A word from Scholarpedia

The length of this page makes me dizzy  :) I have many questions for you, that I can summarize in one: what do you think of Scholarpedia in its current status? I think that the current team of assistant editors could benefit much from experimented Wikipedians.

About your article Sufficient statistic, keep in mind that you can invite a junior scientist (typically a postdoc from your lab) as a co-author to make things easier. Regards.

User Nemri on Scholarpedia

Ikkisan (talk) 00:50, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Logarithmic differentiation

Hello Michael.

I have a question regarding a general form on an article I started. See Logarithmic_differentiation#Quotients_of_composed_functions. Right here the concept of logarithmic differentiation in relation to quotients of composed functions is discussed. On re-reading the article, I started to wonder whether it would have been more correct to have the section discuss "quotients of functions" rather than "quotients of composed functions". After all, the principle discussed applies to "uncomposed" functions as well, so the general case should concern uncomposed functions rather than composed functions, right? What do you think? Thanks for any help. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 07:31, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip to the HTML math etiquette of WP:MOSMATH

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		For tireless typeset-editting and the implicit lessons imparted to the watcher. Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 15:15, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

About dashes on Coxeter–Dynkin diagram page

Hi, Micheal. I'm curious which section of the Math MoS you are referring too when you made the changes from dashs to endashs on the Coxeter–Dynkin diagram page. I didn't find a section there regarding dashs (maybe I'm blind). In any case, isn't it better to use "&ndash;" than the Unicode character? Just curious. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Second bullet point in this section. I don't really have a position on which of those forms is better. At any rate, math articles on things named after two people—probably a few hundred of them—have mostly been moved to that form from the hyphenated form. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:25, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Logarithmic differentiation

I have rewritten a portion of the article. What do you think about my version? Perhaps, some of the statements became duplicated, but I will fix it if you approve the changes. (Igny (talk) 00:25, 28 May 2009 (UTC))

It looks better than it did. Probably a variety of concrete examples would also help. I may add some within a couple of days. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:14, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

radical alterations to article intro to QM

Hi,

A new editor has unilaterally made many drastic changes to the article Introduction_to_quantum_mechanics to which you have made contributions. I do not think that the changes are desirable. I do not want to start an edit war. Could you please have a look at it? Thanks. P0M (talk)

Robbins pentagon

Dear professor, I've answered a question about Robbins pentagon on its talk page. Dedalus (talk) 10:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

A study on how to cover scientific uncertainties/controversies

Hi. I have emailed you to ask whether you would agree to participate in a short survey on how to cover scientific uncertainties/controversies in articles pertaining to global warming and climate change. If interested, please email me Encyclopaedia21 (talk) 17:51, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Kervaire-Milnor formula

A tag has been placed on Kervaire-Milnor formula, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a redirect to a nonexistent page.

I am not quite a mindless bot (12h, btw). If you really wanted the empty redirect here, feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag. –Meiskam (talk•contrib•block) 03:18, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your polite way of editing.

Thank you for your polite way of editing Constant Purchasing Power Accounting. It is a very engaging and positive contrast to the harsh style of some well-established editors and admins here on Wikipedia.PennySeven (talk) 11:41, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

statistical induction

Hi Michael

re Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Mathematics#Hypothesis_testing.2C_backwards.3F. I look forward to seeing your comment on the subject.

Regards Bo Jacoby (talk) 10:54, 11 June 2009 (UTC).

Hello. I'll probably look at this within a couple of days. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:29, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Birthday problem plagiarism accusations

Hi, I saw you commented at Talk:Birthday problem. Just as a little FYI, I thought I'd mention that I posted a message at the village pump regarding this user's behaviour (and background), as I thought it was strange to say the least. I've never encountered anything like this before. —JAO • T • C 22:36, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

About my editing

Hi! Thanks for the comments regarding my addons to the article about the square root of two. I have now explained the pattern which you didn't recognise (fully understandable!) FredrikMeyer (talk) 17:34, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi again! Added a reference to the book in which I read the proof, though I suspect I did it wrong. Also, how does one properly "answer" on the user discussion pages? Thanks. FredrikMeyer (talk) 22:41, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Orphan

Well technically it is an orphan, no doubt. The important question for this article is, is there somewhere it should link from. Else the tag is redundant. The next question is whether, in general AWB should spot and ignore lists in it's count, an it should. Slightly more deeply I have reservation on the concept of orphaned articles being useful. Rich Farmbrough, 03:38, 14 June 2009 (UTC).

The assumption is that all articles should be linked to from non-list articles. Seems to be putting the cart before the horse. We make links where useful not because some backwater is insufficiently linked/visited. The asteroid articles are a case in point. Rich Farmbrough, 18:02, 14 June 2009 (UTC).

Continuous Random Variable

Thanks for your many suggestions on articles I have edited. I am not a frequent editor and usually only make changes when I see something really wrong. Most of your suggestions look very helpful and I will work on them. Your suggestion for the van Hiele Model is spot on. I forget to consider people stumbling on an article who might have no idea what it is about, even though it bugs me when others do it!

As for the continuous random variables, I made the change because the preceding edit was flat wrong. (The previous edit said continuous RVs "can be realized with any of a range of values ... that have a probability greater than zero of occurring." This might be true of the Poisson distribution, as you pointed out, but is patently NOT true of continuous RVs in general.) I am not too happy with either my edit or yours, though both are technically correct. I think this still needs work. You are quite right that discrete random variables may also have infinitely many possibilities. However, my edit did not say that continuous RVs were the ONLY variables to have infinitely many possibilities. The edit did say that it was defined on a set of positive measure, which would exclude discrete cases such as the Poisson distribution. You are correct that it might easily have been misunderstood to mean that only continuous RVs had infinitely many possibilities, so it needed changing. However, simply deleting this fact leaves the explanation less than clear. I had put the part about infinitely many values in there to clarify the explanation for readers who might not understand what a set of positive measure means. For example, I can see a new statistics student who is only familiar with discrete RVs reading the part starting in Line 35 and asking, "How on earth can a RV have all zero values?" I think the little explanation "(there are infinitely many possibilities)" should be restored, or something better put in its place to help such readers out.

Your remark about the Cantor Set is undoubtedly correct. This will effect which definition of continuous RV is chosen since the Cantor Set has measure zero. Statistics is not my area of expertise, and it does not matter to me whether the continuous RVs be defined by their cdf or density function, as long as the article is consistent. I was primarily thinking of college students taking a statistics course for the first time (the kind of student I have taught). My primary concern is that the article be not only accurate, but also accessible to such students. --seberle (talk) 14:58, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Mixed model

Would you mind reviewing and fixing my <math> here? Best regards —G716 <^T·_C> 06:23, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

François Viète

I am very glad to see that you have made some changes on the page New algebra. It needs a lot. If you d'be please to help me, the article François Vète is much important either. My english is not very good (euphemistic) and I have no time to search referencies in english... I'am sure you'll find Jean de Parthenay (talk) 05:33, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

User talk:98.240.44.215

Just noticed your comment there. The user is in fact TennisAuthority, among many other aliases. ^LeaveSleaves 04:23, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Michael Hardy (talk) 06:27, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Dandelin spheres

Hi, I largely agree with the recent changes to this article (thanks for leaving a message on my Talk page). On the Discussion page of that article I've made a suggestion to help clarify the layout and understanding of the proof. Let me know what you think. --Milesoneill (talk) 08:04, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I take your point. How do you like my amendment? —Tamfang (talk) 19:40, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Looks good. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:19, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

concurrent relation

A relation R is said to be a concurrent relation if and only if The sentence that begins above is not an appropriate way to start a Wikipedia article. It doesn't tell the reader whether the article is about jurisprudence, theology, chemistry, music, kinship terminology, ...... etc. The sentence continues:

for any finite subset F of X, there exists a single element p of Y such that if a ∈ F, then a R p, where X and Y are sets and R ⊆ X x Y is a relation on X x Y. It still doesn't tell the reader any of those things, unless the reader is a mathematician (and it disregards the conventions of WP:MOSMATH). At the very least, you need to tell the reader that mathematics is what the article is about. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:41, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

yes, agree. believe it or not, i spent some time trying to start the article with "A concurrent relation is..." or "Concurrent relation..." but couldn't make the wording flow. it was late night and finally gave up by virtually copying/pasting. By the way, did you notice that the definition in the CRC line citation has an error in example #2 ? This is another reason (other than copyright violation) why not to copy/paste directly. I'll work on the wording in the near future, got another article for tonight. One last thing...A new category is needed, "Set theory|Relations" - is this a big deal to create? Henry Delforn (talk) 05:46, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

re: your notice in my talk page

re this: Michael, for quite some time I've been noticing your monitoring of math articles, in particlual, adding the "context" pieces. I really appreciate this "gloryless" job of yours. I do remember that context is important. However recently I am far less active in wikipiedia, sine I have much less free time I used to have. I write many new articles to file the gaps in the "wikinet" of knowledge, but I keep them to bare minimum, writing in great haste. Anyway, this is exactly how wikipedia works: a sum of partials asymptotically converges to the whole. And expectations of perfect texts from "true experts" is a stumbling block of various undertakings such as Citizendium. Vast majority of people are imperfect, but civilization somehow works and some even think it progresses. :-) - Altenmann >t 00:21, 29 June 2009 (UTC) P.S. The above may make me accused in justification of sloppiness, but I can live with this. - Altenmann >t 00:23, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

About: Frank Duckworth AfD and Tony Lewis AfD

I noticed you commented on the Frank Duckworth AfD. I withdrew the appended Tony Lewis deletion. It now has its own deletion discussion page. See User_talk:Shirt58#Frank_Duckworth_and_Tony_Lewis for why this had been added to your talk page.
--Shirt58 (talk) 12:43, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Your move of United States Numbered Highways

Your move is incorrect; "United States Numbered Highways" refers to routes such as U.S. Route 101, U.S. Route 1, etc., while United States numbered highways could be any numbered highway in the United States, such as Interstate 5, California State Route 1, etc. Please revert the moves. --Rschen7754 (T C) 21:26, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

If what you say is right, I think the article needs to be more explicit about the fact that the whole phrase functions as a proper noun. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:29, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Evidence Numbered highways in the United States as well; you carelessly deleted the redirect to this page when you moved it. --Rschen7754 (T C) 21:33, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I didn't do anything carelessly. Are you saying a move over a redirect is "evidence" of something? Michael Hardy (talk) 21:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Request that you withdraw personal remark

Michael - I am always happy to be corrected when I am wrong. However, I find your personal remark "Gandalf is 100% ignorant of statistics even at this simple level" in this Ref Desk thread to be insulting, inappropriate in tone for the Ref Desks, and a breach of WP:CIVIL. I politely request that you withdraw that remark. Gandalf61 (talk) 09:33, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:20, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

hyphens

Putting hyphens - that look rather like minus signs in front of numbers seems a bad idea, whatever the MOS says. r.e.b. (talk) 19:39, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

How many size-3 subsets does a size-8 set have?

The set of dimension-2 subspaces of a dimension-4 space is an example of a Grasmannian.

He was wearing size-10 shoes.

In the second case above, I'd prefer "2-dimensional subspaces". But it would never have occurred to me that those could be mistaken for minus signs.

${\begin{aligned}{\text{size-3 subsets of a size-8 set}}\\8-3=5\end{aligned}}$

I think I'll bring this up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:23, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Lower case headings

I know this is belated, but you posted a tip on my talk page about this a few months back. Thanks for the tip... Kuzosake (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:17, 15 July 2009 (UTC).

You're welcome. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:38, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 Hijacking

This article is about the event while Judgment in Berlin is about the book about this event. Therefor, both articles are needed. Wikipedia has other similar examples. For example, Black Hawk Down (book) and Battle of Mogadishu (1993). Olegwiki (talk) 06:36, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

re:No context?

This seems like an odd edit. The first sentence of the article was devoted ONLY to giving the context, and was the only part of the article that was clear. (This one may well end up being deleted for other reasons, but it was perfectly clear about the context right from the beginning.) Michael Hardy (talk) 16:56, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I have to say you are living in the past, I have accepted that mistake, and moved onwards. But thank you for highlighting once more. Thanks Patchy1Talk To Me! 17:02, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I didn't know you'd heard about this before. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:04, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Near set

I would like the title of the page I created changed back to "Near Sets." Near sets theory is based on comparing the similarity of two or more sets of objects based on features that describe the objects. Since one is always dealing with multiple sets of objects the title of the page should stand as "Near Sets" which agrees with all published literature on the subject. NearSetAccount 18:57, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, I think I'm starting to see, or at least suspect, what you mean. You're saying two sets can be close to each other and are therefore "near sets", but with only one set it's meaningless to speak of it's being close to something. Is that what you meant? Michael Hardy (talk) 00:11, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

reply

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at Nbarth's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

request for mediation

Dear Michael, there is an anonymous user who makes changes to the page Proofs involving the totient function. Every time I revert the changes, he comes back and re-introduces them. I suggested we talk about it on the talk page of the article, but to no avail. The user does not have a talk page. Look at the history to see what I mean. What to do? -Zahlentheorie (talk) 16:02, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Growth factor

By "growth factor" I meant the base of the exponential function; I've changed it to refer to doubling time instead. Ben Standeven (talk) 06:00, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Links to Waabu's web site

Hi. I'm the person who removed Waabu's external link from Logarithm. You conclude correctly that my action was caused by the conflict of interest, but the main reason is that the addition of links to this gentleman's web site was done on a fairly massive scale: some 18 articles was edited in one fell swoop. Even though the site may be relevant for the various articles, I'm pretty sure that this action violates WP:EL etc., wherefore I reverted the edits. Cheers. Favonian (talk) 20:55, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Why does the scale matter if the material is relevant to the article? This is not remotely comparable to a business trying to use Wikipedia to promote itself, and some of the messages on the user's talk page were impolite and appeared to disregard the content of the links. The "fell swoop" of which you write, in the case of the item on integrals, was 14 articles in slightly more than an hour. It looks as if whoever left the messages on his talk page did not give a single second's thought to either the content or the purpose of the links. It is one thing for a person to promote himself via Wikipedia; it is another for him to contribute good material that he wrote himself, in the form of external links. If similar content had taken a form other than external links, and had been added to 14 articles in an hour, everyone would be grateful for the contribution. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:12, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

"Why does the scale matter if the material is relevant to the article?" is the wrong question, as in many cases the material was irrelevant or only marginally relevant. The example cited above of Logarithm is a case in point: the link was to a large list of integrals, a minority of which have a connection with logarithms. It is not reasonable to link to every work which mentions anything connected with the topic of the article. Similar points relate to many of the other links.

"It is one thing for a person to promote himself via Wikipedia; it is another for him to contribute good material that he wrote himself, in the form of external links." Yes, but the author of the material is not always the best person to make an objective assessment as to what is worth adding, which is the reason for the following appearing at WP:EL#ADV "But in line with Wikipedia policies, you should avoid linking to a site that you own, maintain, or represent—even if WP guidelines seem to imply that it may otherwise be linked. When in doubt, you may go to the talk page and let another editor decide". Likewise Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest says "Excessive self-citation is strongly discouraged. When in doubt, defer to the community's opinion".

"If similar content had taken a form other than external links ... everyone would be grateful for the contribution." Two points here. (1) No everyone wouldn't: I would find it an irritation to have to sort through the great mass of stuff to find the minority of stuff which is relevant enough to its article to be worth keeping. (2) It did not take a form other than external links: what is relevant is what was done, not what we would have thought had something else been done. JamesBWatson (talk) 10:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the politeness or lack thereof in the messages on the user's talk page, only the one marked with a warning triangle is "peremptory" in tone. It was issued when the user added yet another link (to Algonquian peoples) about one hour after receiving the first warnings, to which he did not respond. The warnings are all created using standard templates, in my case using Twinkle, and though we can probably debate endlessly what is polite and what is not, they have been formulated with great attention to precision regarding graduated severity. Favonian (talk) 11:23, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

You're making a good argument against the use of standard templates, as opposed to using one's head. Look at the one with the warning triangle. It does not say that the material was inappropriately added, the impropriety being the conflict of interest; rather, it says the material was inappropriate. Calling it "inappropriate" implies that it would be out of place regardless of whether the person adding it had a conflict of interests. That is not true in the case of Algonquian peoples, nor of toponymy, and just as clearly false in several of the other cases. Where is the "great attention to precision" when you call the material inappropriate instead of saying the person who added it is not the appropriate person to make the decision to add it? The material was not inappropriate, even if he should have asked someone with no conflicts to make the judgment about adding it. The choice to use the standard template ignored that fact. Then the notice went on to call the addition of those links "spamming". That is idiotic. Spamming is not addition of material by a person who should recuse himself from the decision because of a conflict. Spamming is the addition of certain kinds of actually inappropriate material, and that means material that would be inappropriate regardless of who adds it. Then the standard template refers to "advertising or promotion". Where is the "great attention to precision" when things like the material he added are called "advertising or promotion"? A standard template that warns people against "advertising or promotion" should not be used except in cases of advertising or promotion. Is that so unreasonable an idea? Michael Hardy (talk) 11:43, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The argument that the author of the material is not the best person to make that assessment is inane. Since when does Wikipedia insist that material should be added only by the best person to make the assessment of whether it belongs in the article?

The notice added to the person's user page was one that might be appropriate for someone simply trying to promote his own business or his own views. That is absurd in this case. There is no reason why he couldn't have been told politely that he should ask others to judge his suggestions about particular internal links. Instead he was treated as if he had been simply adding spam. Michael Hardy (talk) 11:19, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I attempted to write a fairly long comment here, and it seems I made some mistake and inadvertently deleted this thread instead. I apologise for this, and I am now restoring the text. Perhaps sometime I will manage to rewrite my lost comment, but for now I do not have time. JamesBWatson (talk) 14:30, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:MOS related discussion

Hi, you seem to have a good understanding of WP:MOS and the need to have uniform mathematics articles across the Wiki. There's a discussion going on about complexity class names here, which could use your comments. --Robin (talk) 13:08, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Capital letters

Hi Michael, I hope you're well. What's the Wikipedia guideline for capital letters in expressions like euclidean space, cartesian product, abelian group, etc... ~~ Dr Dec (Talk) ~~ 14:09, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

"abelian" with a lower-case "a" seems thoroughly entrenched. I prefer not to extend that to others (including "Gaussian"). I don't know if there's a Wikipedia policy on this; I'm inclined to doubt it. When I'm feeling suspiciously inclined I wonder if those who write "cartesian" don't realize it's someone's name. (In the present day there are supposedly literate university students who claim they don't know who Euclid was.) Michael Hardy (talk) 18:11, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

If the two of you will permit me to inject a comment into this conversation, the Wikipedia manual of style for capital letters says Wikipedia's house style avoids unnecessary capitalization, and essentially the same line is found in other guidelines: the general policy is that in doubtful cases don't use capitals. The same manual of style also says Wikipedia does capitalize initial letters of proper nouns, and often proper adjectives. In doing this, we follow common usage, and when uncapitalized forms are the normal English usage (abelian group, k. d. lang), we follow common usage. My reading of all this is that where there is a widely accepted convention we follow it, but where usage is not fixed we do not capitalize except for proper nouns. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

There is a widespread usage convention that "Cartesian", "Gaussian", "Euclidean", "Archimedean", etc. are capitalized since they are proper adjectives derived from persons' names. "Abelian" is also derived in the same way from a person's name but for reasons not clear to me, it has become nearly universal usage to write it with a lower-case initial "a" (except at the beginning of a sentence or the like). Some people do write "euclidean", but the capital-"E" version could still be considered standard usage. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:33, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Some proper adjectives and even nouns eventually become used so much without direct reference to the original person/place/etc that they come to be generally felt to be common adjectives/nouns, and lose their capital. The word boycott has long since reached this stage. Among mathematicians abelian has reached this stage for a clear majority, while Cartesian has done so only for a minority. Since conventions can change over time there is bound to be a situation where both are commonly used, and so there will be the question "where do we draw the borderline?" No rule can ever give a definitive answer to this question: however a rule is phrased there will always be a borderline, and near to the borderline there will always be room for differences of opinion. Wikipedia's rule is essentially "follow standard convention", and I certainly agree that the convention is perfectly clear in the cases of "abelian", "Gaussian", "Euclidean", and "Archimedean". However, "cartesian" is quite common, but still much less so than "Cartesian". JamesBWatson (talk) 09:26, 6 August 2009 (UTC)