User talk:Trovatore/Archive01

DO NOT EDIT OR POST REPLIES TO THIS PAGE. THIS PAGE IS AN ARCHIVE.

This archive page covers approximately the dates between 1 July 2005 and 13 October 2005.

Post replies to the main talk page, copying or summarizing the section you are replying to if necessary.

I will add new archivals to User talk:Trovatore/Archive02. (See Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.) Thank you. Trovatore 06:10, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi! waiting for comments.

Math-stub

Hi Mike. Welcome! Here, is the default welcome message:

(default message removed) --Trovatore 1 July 2005 03:50 (UTC)

And I wonder, why did you put the math-stub at the top in the prewellordering article? I don't know if there is any hard rule, but from what I know the stub should always go at the bottom, and most people put it right before the categories. Just wondering.

Also, it seems you like math. Then, Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics and its talk page are good to have on the watchlist. There the math people gather. You are welcome to put yourself on the list of participants there. Enjoy! Oleg Alexandrov 1 July 2005 02:50 (UTC)

Baire space

Hi Mike. I'm glad you liked the rewording. Feel free to change "subspace" back to "relative". I changed it to "subspace" because that seemed to me like the more common and more likely to be understood term, especially by the general reader. That this is so is confirmed somewhat by the fact that Wikipedia's article is called "subspace topology" and "relative topology" redirects to it. However, I've just noticed that Willard's General Topology uses "relative", Bourbaki's General Topology, uses "induced" and Steen and Seebach's Counterexamples in Topology has "... is called the induced (or relative or subspace) topology ...". In my experience all three terms are (or were) common, but It has been many years since I was a practicing topologist (or mathematician for that matter), so I may be unfamiliar with current usage. Are you saying that you think "relative" is more usual in the context of the Baire space, or in general? I think I will ask some of my topologist friends what they think. By the way, welcome to Wikipedia and our Mathematics Project — Paul August ☎ July 1, 2005 13:43 (UTC).

Endo/Exo-centric

Good catches on my brain bubbles. The "lion house" one was missing a "zoo". The other one, I'm not sure where why brain was on "bittersweet", but I replaced it with "shortcoming" (noun, from an adjective plus a verb). Also, I think both words have meanings in other fields too, but I was too lazy to document them... Noel (talk) 05:35, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

<math>

Hi Mike,

After some discussion we decided to avoid using <math>/TeX for inline math (at least until MediaWiki is fixed). I fixed Borel equivalence relation, you might want to check if I didn't introduce any errors.

Cheers, --R.Koot 21:16, 17 July 2005 (UTC)</math>

Looks good. I have some other articles that I don't really think can avoid inline TeX, though. I would be violently opposed to breaking all such instances out into display mode; the articles would become unreadable. --Trovatore 21:19, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Definable number

Thank you; I was blanking on Löwenheim-Skolem. I see the problem, and it may be a real disproof. Put your proof on the talk page; and a placeholder in the article ("Countability may be consistent with ZFC (see Talk)" or something of the sort).

One note. Your ℵ doesn't work on my computer, so Aleph-one would be better. Septentrionalis 16:30, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Yikes. I think we'd better go back to LaTeX. I have to be able to use $\aleph$ inline. --Trovatore 18:02, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

vfd

Would you reconsidder your vote on incontrovertible evidence? I don't have time to rewrite the article now but I will do it sometime. Cheers, --R.Koot 21:06, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Re: Incontrovertible evidence

The more I talk with nobs on the discussion page, the more I think he never had in mind any genuine technical term from any field. I don't know an awful lot about the law, so I can't say for sure whether "incontrovertible evidence" is a technical legal term, but no one's provided any source saying that it is. If "incontrovertible evidence" is his own synthesis of concepts called by other names, then it's a neologism or OR, and doesn't belong on WP. Do you know any technical meaning of "incontrovertible evidence", thus called, as a specific term of art, in any discipline? --Trovatore 18:00, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

The same thing started crossing my mind. It seemed like a genuinem law term, but since I have no expertise in that field so I cannot be sure. I would however like to see the word incontrovertible wikilinked in the mathematics article. However I no longer think that it should be linked to an article named incontrovertible evidence. But I would not know how it should be named eiter. --R.Koot 18:20, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

John von Neumann

As I read Categorization#Creating_subcategories and following, anything in Category:20th century mathematicians counts as in Category:mathematicians and the only reason there are any articles, rather than categories, in the latter is that no-one has policed it lately. But your Wikipedia may vary. Do consider this, and remember that categories are still limited to 200 members. Septentrionalis 18:52, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, I don't really agree with that. I note that it's listed only as a "guideline", not a "policy". But really I think the ideal solution is, when you go to the category page, it should show you all articles in the transitive closure of that category (that is, in the category, all subcategories, all their subcategories, etc). Then categories would better serve the function of lists, which are nearly unmaintainable. --Trovatore 19:53, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

That ideal solution would be very good. There would be problems: How long will Category:Categories take to load? are there any very long category loops? But until then, we must do what we can. I don't intend to move v. Neumann; but somebody probably will. This was just a thoughtSeptentrionalis 22:20, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

What the technical issues might be, I don't really know--I haven't looked at the WikiMedia architecture. (I've been generally very impressed that it just seems to work most of the time.) But is there a process for proposing such a feature, and giving the developers a chance to comment on whether it can be done? --Trovatore 23:59, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Uncaught 3rd Strike Rule

You are correct; this method of reaching base only applies when first base is unoccupied or when first base is occupied and there are two outs. I've updated the article. Thanks.

It's looking more and more like the article is going to be deleted, but at least it's going to be factually correct! William L. Gann 17:57, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

The Ethics of Madness

The story does start at least, on Plateau. However, the plot starts many years earlier on Earth and ends many many years later above the galactic disc, with only a small bit in the middle taking place on Plateau (although at least two years). IIRC we don't learn very much about Plateau government, but it seems much more lenient. Splarka 07:06, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Maybe you could say something about that in the appropriate section, and maybe clarify the connection between the terms "Plateau" and "Mount Lookitthat". --Trovatore 17:35, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Readded the ethics bit, but not sure what you mean by connection between the terms. Do you mean a paraphrase of the summary of the story of the discovery of the mountain? (Try saying that 5 times really fast! heh) Splarka 06:19, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I just can't remember which is the planet, which is the mountain, which is the plateau on the mountain, which is the city where everyone lives. I'm not sure Niven was actually consistent about these things. --Trovatore 09:21, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. Tau Ceti is the star, Plateau is the planet (one is said to live on Plateau, meaning the planet, not the mountain), Mount Lookitthat is the mountain. I haven't read A Gift from Earth in a while, but I think the plateau areas on Mount Lookitthat had greek designations such as "Alpha" "Beta" "Gamma" depending on status (elevation, habitability, etc) but no overall name for the flat bit. The inhabitants are called mountaineers. I don't remember the name of the city or cities, I can't find it in Ethics (I'll have to find and reread Gift sometime). As for the system, here are some extracted quotes from Gift (excuse typoness) Splarka 19:26, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Tau Ceti is a small cool-yellow GO dwarf with four planets. Strictly speaking, none of the planets are habitable. Two are gas giants. The third inward has no atmosphere. The innermost had too much.

That innermost world is about the size of Venus. With no oversized moon to strip away most of its air, it has an atmosphere like Venus'; thick and hot and corrosive. No human explorer would have marked it for colonization.

But the ramrobots were not human.

During the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries, the ramrobots explored most of what later came to be called "known space." They were complexly programmed, but their mission was simple. Each was to find a habitable planet.

Unfortunately they were programmed wrong.

The designers didn't know it, and the UN didn't know it; but the ramrobots were programmed only to find a habitable point. Having located a world the right distance from the star to which it was sent, the ramrobot probe would drop and circle until it found a place at ground level which matched its criteria for atmospheric composition, average temperature, water vapor, and other conditions. Then the ramrobot would beam its laser pulse back at the solar system, and the UN would respond by sending a colony slowboat.

Unlike the ramrobots, the man-carrying slowboats cold not use interstellar ramscoops. They had to carry their own fuel. It meant that the slowbats took a long time to get where they were going, and there were no round-trip tickets. The slowboats could not turn back.

So Plateau was colonized. For the innermost world of Tau Ceti is like Venus in size and atmosphere, save for one mountain. That straight-sided mountain is forty miles tall, and its nearly flat top is half the size of California. It rises out of the searing black calm at the planet's surface to the transparent atmosphere above; and that air can be breathed. Snow covers the peaks neae the center of the Plateau, and rivers run lower down--rivers that tumble off the void edges of the Plateau into the shining mist below. The ramrobot landed theere. And founded a world.

Several centuries passed.

"Keep a monitor on Hooker," he told the Belt Political Section. "We'll pay the standard fee. We want to know if he turns back or if he changes course towards some inhabited world."

Three weeks later the word came. The actinic spark that was Hooker's drive had definitely shifted towards Tau Ceti. Loughery had to admit that Plateau was a good choice.

Plateau had suffered badly from the organ-bank problem in the two centuries before alloplasty, the science of putting foreign materials in the human body, had overtaken the techniques of organic transplant. All the inhabited worlds had gone through that stage. Its worst feature was that there was only one way to get the most important organic transplants.

On Plateau a small ruling class had held the power of life and death over its citizens. Life, because with unlimited access to the organ banks one could live forever. Death, becase any crime could be made a capital crime whenever the organ banks ran short. The citizens would not complain. They wanted to live centuries.

Then alloplasty had caught up. Now there were no organ banks at all on Plateau, and no capital punishment.

Loughery sent a laser to Plateau, warning them that a stolen ship was due to land there. He wasn't sure which would get there first, the laser or the ship. Ramships were fast.

Should he try another colony world? It was a confusing question. His mind was full of confusing questions. But it was obvious that Mount Lookitthat was his best bet, regardless of what happened when he got there. Plateau was the only world of Man that did not impose a death penalty. If they decided he'd committed a crime, he'd get medical treatment.

(After four hours of hopelessly searching, the pilot of Plateau's first colony slowboat had seen Mount Lookitthat rising suddenly out of an endless white furry plain. "Lookitthat!" he'd said, four hundred years ago, in the voice of one punched in the stomach.)

Loughery came to Plateau in a colonist ramship. It was a common practice in those days for Earth to finance one-way trips to the colony worlds simply to get people off the planet. On his sixtieth birthday Loughery, who had enough of being a UN official, took the UN up on its offer.

He could have chosen any of the colony worlds. He chose Plateau because the social structure facinated him. When he had learned enough, he intended to become a lawyer.

"That won't be easy," the mountaineer cop told him. Loughery had stopped the guy as he was coming off duty and offered to buy him drinks and dinner in return for information. "The mountaineer laws aren't as difficult as Earth's, at least from what I hear, but you may have trouble understanding the ethics behind them."

"I gather a mountaineer is a Plateau dweller."

"Now, do you understand the logic behind Hooker's sentence?"

"I'm afraid not. He got two years imprisonment for negligent homicide, with simultaneous psychotherapy and conditioning. Psychotherapy is a lost art on Earth, by the way. I don't question why he got two years, but why the negligent homicide?"

"There's the crux. He wasn't guilty of murder was he?"

"I'd say Yes."

"But we say he was insane. That's a legitimate plea."

"Then why was he punished?"

"For letting himself become insane."

Welcome to the PlanetMath Exchange project

Hi Mike. From your comment on my talkpage (I've replied to it there by the way) and your edits of PM-03 Mathematical logic and foundations, I see you have found your way to our PlanetMath Exchange project, and so I though I would welcome you to the project, thank you for your help so far, and invite you to add your name to the list of participants here. Again welcome and thanks for your help. Paul August ☎ 21:06, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Karel de Leeuw

• Thank you for filling in the red link from Theodore Streleski. I only got involved with the Streleski artcle when it was put up for deletion, and I expanded it, but was not aware of any de Leeuw material. It's good to have at least a stub on the victim of Streleski's crime, and the material about the trial came from the Stanford Faculty newsletter,[1] and the tone was of anger at the loss of de Leeuw. Hamster Sandwich 02:00, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Mathematical game theory

Thanks for noticing the comment. Feel free to remove the template if you feel like that page is not appropriately part of our project. I sort of indiscriminately went through the Category:Game theory and added all the pages to our project. Many pages on have been moved from the game theory category to Category:Combinatorial game theory. Is that the place for winning strategy? I agree that given the difference in approaches working to closely together would cause more trouble than its worth. --best, kevin ···Kzollman | Talk··· 03:29, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

Yikes, another complication I had not even counted upon, to misquote Arlo Guthrie. No, that's a third thing, though--again--there are connections. Somehow this all needs to be coordinated. --Trovatore 05:08, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Ohh good... nothing like more confusion :) Sorry, I don't know these other areas well at all. Something need to be done to sort this out. I think the best thing would be to create a sub-category for this area (like combinatorial game theory). Since I clearly don't know what I'm doing, why don't you handle this? If you want some help or advice from those of us that work on the other type of game theory, come by the wikiproject and post a note. Maybe the others will have a good idea. --best, kevin ···Kzollman | Talk··· 05:19, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

Mathematics

" Still POV; not everyone agrees it doesn't produce abs facts about world " – explain please. – Smyth\^talk 18:15, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

According to the realist view of mathematics (sometimes called "Platonist", but this term is contentious), mathematical objects are real things that exist independently of our reasoning about them. Thus they are part of the "world", as I understand that term. Then mathematical reasoning--starting from assumptions that are in fact true of the objects they purport to speak of--can indeed produce absolute facts about the world. --Trovatore 18:28, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Why revert Unicode changes?

On Lebesgue integration, you say "(rv curpsbot-unicodify)". What's wrong with User:Curpsbot-unicodify? Thanks! — ciphergoth 17:43, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't think removing semantic information from the source is appropriate in math formulas. See the discussion on the bot's talk page. --Trovatore 17:47, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Substub

Thanks for the changes to the protected page template. The problem is that templates don't normally need to be protected from re-creation, so the {{deletedpage}} template isn't really designed to be used with them. I hoped it wouldn't cause any glitches, but it looks like I was wrong. Hopefully what you did has sorted the situation out so it won't happen again. Thanks again, and sorry for the problems! Grutness...wha? 09:13, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

AoC, LEM, ITT, etc.

Hi, I noticed recently your comment on the Axiom of choice page with respect to the proof I posted deriving the law of the excluded middle from choice. You noted that in Per Martin-Lof's Intuitionistic Type Theory, this proof doesn't go through. I have only a very superficial familiarity with ITT, but this surprises me and I'm always open to learning more. Could you perhaps point me to what specifically in the proof is problematic in that setting? Thanks.

(I'm never really sure whether new comments should go on the top or bottom of a talk page, but I imagine it's not terribly important either way...) -Chinju 04:11, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I can't really tell you off the top of my head. I haven't touched ITT in a dozen years, and even then I didn't have a very clear idea of how it related to intuitionistic set theory (of which you may know there are various flavors). But I recall that the idea of why ITT proves AC is that, to be able to assert that you have a collection of nonempty sets, you already have to know how to pick an element from each of them; otherwise you wouldn't be able to assert that they're nonempty. --Trovatore 05:36, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

P.S. the convention is that new comments go at the bottom. --Trovatore 05:36, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Linebreaks

Hi Trovatore. Just wondering, what is the reason for insering linebreaks in Universally measurable set? As far as I am aware, people avoid linebreaks, as they look very ugly when one looks at the diff and when editing in a edit box of different size than the length of the broken lines. Thanks. You can reply here. Oleg Alexandrov 01:10, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, when I did a diff on it after some small change, the sections being diffed were enormous and looked very strange. I thought the smaller units would improve things. Perhaps I was wrong.... --Trovatore 01:15, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I would think that the linebreaks cause more problems than they solve. About the enormous sections, it is a good sign that that paragraph is too big, and needs to be split into smaller and more digesteble pieces. (In other words, the huge paragraphs are symptoms of a disease, and the cure is not linebreaks, but better writing. :) Oleg Alexandrov 01:21, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Take a look at this diff and you should see what I mean. It's not really in a terribly long paragraph; I think the real problem is that it's comparing things with markup in them. --Trovatore 01:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, on the left there was a long paragraph, because of poor spacing. You fixed that. Now things should be balanced I think. Oleg Alexandrov 01:31, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, reverting to pre-linebreak version. Any thoughts on the question I pose on the article's talk page? --Trovatore 01:34, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Set

Can you think of a set that cannot be defined in words? It seems to me that, whatever notation may be used, at some point an explanation in words is required for human comprehension. Peak 03:36, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

There must exist such sets, because there are only countably many ways of defining a set in words, and uncountably many sets. --Trovatore 03:38, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Let me elaborate a little bit. The way to think about sets, at the maximal level of informality, is: You've got some things, possibly infinitely many of them. You want to take some of them, but not all of them (actually you're also allowed to take none, or all, but that's just two extra cases). You're allowed to choose which ones you take completely arbitrarily -- there is not required to be any rule whatsoever that describes which ones you take and which ones you don't. It may happen just by accident that the ones you wind up taking, are precisely those that satisfy some given rule, but this is not of the essence. --Trovatore 03:44, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

The section we're discussing is called Describing sets so I was assuming we're talking about sets that can somehow be described. I think it would be clearer if your point were made explicit. Peak 04:17, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, took a crack at it. --Trovatore 04:21, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Unrestricted comprehension and paradoxes

Hi Trovatore. I've posted a question about the axiom of unrestricted comprehension and paradoxes, at Talk:Axiom schema of specification. Could you take a look? Thanks. Paul August ☎ 21:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Another county heard from

Thank you very much for removing the Pope Kiddy Fiddler article. I am not the most ugly person that has ever existed. User:Cryptoderk holds this honour.

Thanks again!

Pope Cryptoderk II 22:03, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Comment on patent nonsense

Hi, Trovatore. I've just been reading your comments in the AfD for Valloween, and while I do agree the article is nn and nonsense, I want to point out that it is not WP:PN as defined therein. Note that, because of the dangers of excessive speedy deletion, the paramaters for such have been very narrowly defined. In particular, patent nonsense is defined as text lacking any sense or meaning. The fact that the semantic meaning derived from a sentence is nil is not enough; as long as any sense can be derived, it isn't WP:PN. I.e., phrases such as "xkidkas kII3h3r =+#@3" and "purple skinning comb in toroid eat baby gungle" are both patent nonsense; perhaps counterintuitively, the phrase "all purple crows are nazi sympathizers" is NOT. Well, imho, anyway. WP:PN does say "so completely and irredeemably confused that no intelligent person can be expected to make sense of it," but I'd argue that 'making sense of' and 'constructing meaningful semantics from' are different activities altogether. The Valloween article makes complete sense to me -- I see what they mean, roughly what sort of ppl they are, and why they 'contributed' it. Naturally, it doesn't belong here, and should be deleted. Just not speedily. Eaglizard 10:28, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I expect you're right, but the example you give isn't quite on point. The meaning of "all purple crows are nazi sympathizers" is completely clear; the meaning of the "Valloween" article wasn't at all. The meaning of several, or even all, individual sentences might have been clear, but those sentences were put together so incoherently that it was, on its face, more effort than it was worth to try to figure out the underlying narrative. That's why I called it patent nonsense. --Trovatore 16:16, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Damn! I missed that particular 'sentence' you quoted there on the AfD page... After I got done laughing, I had to admit, I see your point. No pending needed for that nonsense! I also think your action there is correct; the intentional tightness of the 'speedy' rules should be guarded, and there's quite enough in this article to provide someone with fodder for debate (unlike a 'proper' candidate for a speedy, imho)Eaglizard 17:14, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

S85

The S85 article is linked from the "list of BMW engines" and therefore it is obvious it is talking about an engine. If you know how to improve it then feel free to edit rather than just putting context. I already marked it as a stub and therefore also putting "context" is excessive. YCCHAN 22:21, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Does everyone know that a BMW is a car? There's an explicit policy or guideline somewhere about stating the obvious. As I interpret it that means "state the obvious at the very beginning"; you can get less rigorous later in the article, once you've weeded out everyone who's not actually interested in the subject. But people need enough information at the very start, so as to make that decision.

That said, you're right, I don't really know how to word it. --Trovatore 22:24, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I see what you're getting at, however I feel some exceptions can be made. The last time I checked, the only article on wikipedia that relates to a "S85" is the one I started on. If one would search for "S85" they would at least have some idea what they're looking for. i.e someone looking for more information on the engine. It's true that not everyone will know what a BMW is, but it should be the BMW article which addresses this issue not the S85 article. That said, most BMW engine articles will need a "context" note on every one of them! YCCHAN 23:13, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, I put a fix in place. I don't entirely like the repetition of the word "engine"; maybe you want to change the second occurrence to "powerplant" or some such. Not knowing much about engines I can't tell if that's appropriate. --Trovatore 00:50, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

OK I'll settle for the final edit. FYI, BMW used to make aircraft engines, now automobile and motorcycle engines. YCCHAN 02:34, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

re: Completeness (Boolean algebra)

I agree that it should indeed have a dab line on the top. But it really is the case that complete has two different meanings, I don't see the problem (then again, it might not be called complete and you wouldn't see it either). --R.Koot 16:31, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Can you give references for the computer science meaning? It shows up very very sparsely on Google, among lots and lots of hits for the math meaning, and all the CS hits look like they could derive from a single source, one D.W. Smith. See discussion on the talk page. --Trovatore 16:33, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[2]. I will try to lend my copy back. If the term is really not used that much, it might be better to merge the article, since the term is about Boolean logic, even if it is only used by computer scientists. --R.Koot 16:48, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Merge it into Boolean logic, you mean? That might make sense. Or we could give it the (rather ugly) name complete Boolean algebra (Boolean logic), or the slightly more euphonious completeness (Boolean logic). --Trovatore 16:53, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Near Vertical Incidence Skywave

Hello. I cleaned-up this article which you posted on AfD. I completely understand the reasons you had for deletion. I just cleaned-up the article, however, because NVIS is a notable radio propogation mode utilized on the Shortwave bands. I have no idea what was the point of what was there, but it did look like primary research or some kind of spam. Check out the article as it stands after my recent major revision.

Roodog2k (Hello there!) 16:06, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Please vote on list of lists, a featured list candidate

Please vote at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of lists of mathematical topics. Michael Hardy 20:34, 13 October 2005 (UTC)