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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 16:46, 24 April 2008.

Émile Lemoine

[edit]

previous FAC (19:02, 9 April 2008)


I'm renominating this after a recently failed nomination with no supports or opposes. I've made the article longer in case there was any hesitation about that, and have fully addressed any partially addressed concerns in the previous FAC. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 03:03, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support No major problems that can be determined from right now. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:22, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Could you add a few sources to flesh out his relationship with "triangle geometry". This seems very important, and might need three or four more paragraphs at the bottom on that topic and one more at the top to gloss over his role as a mathematician for general reference. The page doesn't have any problems I see, but I think it would be nice if you added this for the unexperienced or non-knowledgeable. I would definitely approve if you fleshed it out in this way (although I am definitely not going to "oppose" either way). Ottava Rima (talk) 04:56, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Good job so far. However, the formating of the one diagram of "The Lemoine point" seems to cause a few problems. Perhaps shrink the picture down to 200, just say "diagram of the Lemoine point" and put a paragraph or two on what the point is specifically in the section the picture will be in. That will help add more weight to why Emile is important and will explain the point to outsiders without possibly confusing them as a picture caption may do. The lead may need a little reworking to have his math contributions as its own paragraph, so that there are two paragraphs of biography and one paragraph of notable contributions. There should be enough meat in the biography sections to summarize two paragraphs worth at the top (one more sentence added to the first paragraph, maybe 3 or four added with the first line of the second paragraph to talk about his action career). How does that sound? Ottava Rima (talk) 01:12, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
For your first point, it is described in the adjoining text, and it originally was very small, but Randomblue below wanted a more descriptive image caption and a larger image, so I provided. I'll work on expanding the lead. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood
I think randomblue is wrong here based on standard captioning principles. The concept is large enough to warrant a few paragraphs, or even its own page. Putting it into a caption only causes confusion. If you like Emile, you could probably write up a few other pages about his works and put "see also" or "main article" on this page. Read this for some ideas on how to work the information. :) Ottava Rima (talk) 16:05, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I decided to put it at 300 px and remove the long caption except for the color legend (which doesn't belong in the main text) for a compromise. What do you think of that? Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 17:43, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I rewrote the lead. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 18:00, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Looks much better. By the way, should you add "Lemoine's Conjecture" which is defined as "Every odd number which is at least 7 can be expressed in the form of 2p + q where p and q are prime" made in 1894(according to Dickson's History of the Theory of Numbers 4 vol. I, p. 424)? This was later transformed for use in the "Know/Don't Know Problem". It was is refined into (Refined Lemoine's Conjecture) "For any odd number m which is at least 9, there are odd prime numbers p, q, r and s and positive integers j and k such that m = 2p + q, 2 + pq = 2^j + r and 2q + p = 2^k + s" (p. 201 of John O. Kiltinen and Peter B. Young "Goldbach, Lemoine, and a Know/Don't Know Problem" Mathematics Magazine Vol. 58, No. 4 (Sep., 1985), pp. 195-203) They say "the study has directed our attention to more subtle aspects of the additive theory of prime numbers. Our conjecture (RLC) reflects this, dealing with interactions of sums involving primes whereas (GC) and (LC) deals with such sums only individually. This conjecture and the open questions about numbers at levels two and three are of interest in their own right because of the issues they raise within this fascinating and often baffling additive realm of the prime numbers."( p. 202-203) I think that might be a little important in showing another one of his theories and how it was being applied later in another way (reinforces notability of his work). What do you think? Ottava Rima (talk) 21:22, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the addition. It's probably is notable enough for the "contributions" section, since it was refined later; I'll add it. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 21:48, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I haven't read much yet except the lead and the 'Lemoine point and circle' paragraph. The lead contains too many times the word 'he', especially close to the beginning of sentences, which breaks the flow a bit. In the 'Lemoine point and circle' paragraph, since the article isn't long, a one line explanation of the technical terms 'symmedian' and 'concyclic' would be greatly appreciated, since they aren't very common for the non-geometer. Finally, the picture in the 'Lemoine point and circle' paragraph is unexplained, so that it is currently useless. Randomblue (talk) 00:57, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment In the 'Construction system' paragraph, "The previous solution had simplicity 400" by who? when? and what is the current status of the problem? You got the reader interested, give him some flesh! Randomblue (talk) 01:01, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Lemoine has been described as a founder of modern triangle geometry, a term used by several mathematical associations such as the Mathematical Association of America" This is redundant. The whole last paragraph should be merged to the previous.Randomblue (talk) 01:03, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I actually intend to expand that last bit very soon (within the next hour, probably) in accordance with Ottava Rima's request, describing his role as the founder, etc. The presenting of the same information again is useful in leading off the topic, and I must say, the coverage is already more thorough despite the fact that I haven't finished writing it yet. Several featured articles have a concept summarized in one section and then expanded on in another. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 01:47, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments Good job in addressing my comments, but there are still concerns and copyediting to be dealt with
    • 1 "Simpler modern solutions now exist, such as the solution by Frederick Soddy in 1936 and the solution by David Eppstein in 2001." what simplicities?
    • 2 Maybe explain the colours of the picture and, possibly, make it bigger, since it's rather illegible.
    • 3 "Lemoine's system of constructions, called Geometrography" was it Geometrography or "géométrographie"?
    • 4 (two accents in fact) "Une regle d'analogies dans le triangle et la specification de certaines analogies à une transformation dite transformation continue(1893)" you forgot many accents and there is a spacing error (space after continue). Check out for these!
    • 5 When using references not in English, format the references as in German flag.
    • 6 "As a mathematician, Lemoine published a great number of papers" Everything is relative, maybe give a specific (approximate) number.
    • 7 In the references, avoid (in en) and (in english) without capitalization (see previous comment)
    • 8 "École D'Architecture and the École de Mines" -> École d'Architecture and the École des Mines. I'm a native French speaker, I'll try and correct mistakes.
    • 9 the Geometrography is presented quite a few times in this small article, making it a redundant read
    • 10 The capitalization of the nouns in the French titles seems inconsistent. I forgot the rules. If you don't know them either, then I can go check them up.
    • 11 Your page numbering in the references is inconsistent abbreviationwise. Sometimes you abbreviate as in 733-4, and sometimes you don't. I prefer you abbreviate everything.
    • 12 What is the Congrès de Pau?
    • 13 I don't like the Anglicization, maybe stick with the original to make the article more 'original' and 'French sounding'.
      • Well, they took fewer steps; the exact number is not mentioned in the source. I think I addressed your second point pretty well. As for your third, the former is a Anglicization of the latter term; should this be explained? The next point about the title I've addressed; I checked the source and I was in fact only missing one accent. For the multilingual references, the {{cite}} family of templates by default formats it a different way when language= is specified, so I've converted all the refs to that format. I quantified the papers. I'll do the rest tomorrow. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 03:00, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • 14 "I quantified the papers." where?
    • 15 many links need to be disambiguated: analytic, collinearity, concurrency (twice), parallel, point, and vertex
    • 16 inconsistency remain for the languages in reference (different for ref 17 and ref 20)
    • 17 the angle bisector from the point A is too long; you can cut off a bit on the bottom of the picture (gain of space and nicer)
    • 18 all dates should be formatted like 'November 22, 1840' and not '22 November 1840'
    • 19 a 'List of selected works' paragraph at the very end would be appreciable, as in Mario Vargas Llosa
    • 20 the article Société Mathématique de France says it was founded in 1871, not 1872. Who's right?
    • 21 you put the French maths societies/clubs/associations in italics but not "Mathematical Association of America" and "American Mathematical Society"
    • 22 Lemoine played music, but what instrument?
    • 23 I may be mistaken, but it seems the set of operations doesn't include drawing an arbitrary point or line in the plane. If so, how would one start a construction with an empty plane?
    • 24 Emile's name is both on top of and below his picture. Delete bottom one.

Good luck, I'll be very busy in the coming week, so might not respond before that time. For now, it's still a firm oppose for me, since typos are everywhere. Randomblue (talk) 04:07, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

      • I believe I've addressed all your points except a select few: for #9, which occurence(s) do you exactly suggest removing? They all are necessary in their respective contexts. For #10, I believe it's first word capitalized, all other words except proper nouns not. I can't find a French title that violates that in the article. For #14, see DHMO's second comment. For #20, I have a very reliable source (the Smith one) that says that, while only a self-published source in that article says otherwise, so I believe this article is right. For #23, I don't think that drawing a point is an operation per se - a point can't be "drawn," as it has no area and is simply a location in the plane. As for drawing a line, I believe that extending a line would include extending a line of zero length. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 23:41, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • Generally, refs shouldn't be used in the infobox
  • "Most of these papers are included in Nathan Court's College Geometry, and occupy fourteen pages in it" --> needs some rewording...the stuff after the comma is awkward
  • "Instead, he took a brief vacation" - "instead" isn't really necessary
  • "Other results in the paper included that the symmedian from a vertex" - feels like you're missing a "the idea" before the "that" or something like that...
  • "In this context, "modern" is used to refer to geometry developed from the late 18th century onward." - needs a ref
  • "Geometrography" this is sometimes in italics, sometimes not. Be consistent.

Yeah, a more mathsy-person might find more stuff. :) dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 07:28, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment Sorry about that, but I believe featured articles should be irreproachable, and there are still typos I can detect. Since the stuff I detect is quite superficial and only deals with a fraction of all the potential mistakes, this articles requires a thorough copyedit by a fresh eye.
  • 1) I can spot at least two mistakes in "Note sur les propriétés du center des médianes antiparalleles dans un triangle (1874)"
  • 2) "La Géométrographie ou l'art des constructions Géométriques (1892)" why is Géométriques with a capital?
  • 3) Inconsistent spacing between "2p+q" and "m = 2p + q, 2 + pq" -> I prefer LaTeX
  • 4) "Nouvelles Annales de Mathématiques" why capitals everywhere?
  • 5) "called, respectively, the second and third Lemoine circles" should that be "circle"?
  • 6) "John Kiltinen and Peter Young|For any odd" what is the | ? why repeat they're names anyway?
  • 7) in the "Lemoine's conjecture" paragraph, there is a very long citation. Have you checked the MOS to see if you don't need a citation box?
  • 8) "His abstract "géométrographie"" but "Lemoine's system of constructions, the géométrograpie" with or without "?
  • 9) "Journal des mathématiques Élementaires" first, there is a typo at élémentaires, then, why a capital for élémentaire?
  • 10) In the "Early years" paragraph, many of the schools are not wikilinked
  • 11) "collinearity, concurrency and concyclity," but "placing it on a given line, drawing a circle with the compass, placing a straightedge on a given line, and extending a line with the straightedge." be consistent on use of the comma
  • 12) "To none of these [geometers] more than Émile-Michel-Hyacinthe Lemoine is due the honor of starting this movement [of modern triangle geometry]... <- You haven't closed the citation.
  • 13) Lemoine is best-known -> best known?
  • 14) "are included a fourteen-page section" did you miss out a word?
  • 15) "Additionally, he founded a mathematical journal. [6]" no need for space between "journal." and "[6]"
  • 16) "La Géométrographie ou l'art des constructions Géométriques (1892)" but ref 13 doesn't have "La", please please please watch out for this kind of things. I don't have the sources in front of me so I can only detect the inconsistencies...
  • 17) do we really need the (in English) for ref 18 (and others)?
  • 18) "the Association in Lyon" what is the Association?
  • 19) For titles you seem to use italics. Why not for "La Trompette"?
  • 20) "but was discouraged by he fact" typo
  • 21) "entitled L'intermédiaire des mathématiciens along with Charles Laisant" maybe give a word of this Laisant, e.g. his relationship with Lemoine
  • 22) " The American Mathematical Monthly, in which much of Lemoine's work is published" I would be nice if you put the journal and page number in "List of selected works", so as to facilitate finding the sources
  • 23) Watch out for overlinking, École Polytechnique is linked twice in the lead
  • 24) Does "music" really need to be linked?
  • 25) In the "Middle years" paragraph la géométrographie is discussed three times, and twice in just one subparagraph "(which he called "géométrographie")" and "entitled La Géométrographie"
  • 26) inconsistent use of parenthesis for dates for "in Pau in 1892, and again at Besançon (1893) and Caen (1894).[2]"
  • 27) "He also participated and founded several mathematical societies and journals, such as the Société Mathématique de France, the Journal de Physique, and the Société de Physique, all in 1871." Is the "Société de Physique" a "mathematical society" or "journal"?
  • 28) "Early years" could have dates in parenthesis, same for middle and later years
  • 29) In refs, "Eric W. Weisstein" linked and "Weisstein, Eric. W." not linked, be consistent
  • 30) sometimes "Mathematical Association of America" in italics, sometimes not
  • 31) ref 18, "1893-1-1" : use consistent dating
      • For #1, if there's a mistake, then it's in the source, because I checked it three times against the source and they're completely the same. For #3, I prefer LaTeX too, but I think that such simple expressions shouldn't merit it. For #5, that's a definite no. For #7, see Wikipedia:CITE#When_quoting_someone. For #10, the schools are not notable enough to have articles. For #13, actually, "best-known" is perfectly acceptable. For number 14, the article already says "are included in a fourteen page section," not the quote you gave. For #18, it is quite clear that the Association being referred to is the one described only about five words earlier in the same sentence. For #19, according to MOS, it shouldn't have italics or quotations, (i.e. like The Beatles), so I removed the quotations. For #22, Lemoine didn't write that about himself (obviously), so I'm unsure as to why it should be in the list of his most notable works. The page numbers are given in the footnote directly following that sentence. For #24, I believe it should be per WP:CONTEXT. I'm confused as to the nature of #27. Why is that even an issue? In addition to your points, I've given the article a thorough copyedit, and hope that it meets your standards now. Thank you for you thorough review. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 20:37, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • 1) The correct title is "Note sur les propriétés du centre des médianes antiparallèles dans un triangle". if your source is wrong, then the source maybe isn't that good
  • 3) Granted
  • 5) Ok, I'm not an English expect
  • 7) I trust you on that one
  • 10) I disagree, the École des Mines, at least, is very famous
  • 13) Are you sure? When I search "is best-known" in google, the first 50 results are exclusively "is best known"
  • 14) I changed it myself before you arrived
  • 19) Ok for the change
  • 22) You miss-understood what I was trying to say: could you please add the American Mathematical Monthly details for his articles in the list of works so that when I go to the library I can find his original work
  • 23) You haven't addressed this point
  • 24) WP:CONTEXT says "Provide links that aid navigation and understanding." Does the link to music aid navigation or understanding? I'm not convinced.
  • 27) It's a bit as if you said "I like vegetables, such as carrot, beans, and pork. Pork isn't a vegetable. In the same way, the "Société de Physique" is (referring to the title) a physical society, not a "mathematical society" or "journal" as claimed.
  • 30) This hasn't been addressed in the refs
  • 32) Ref 19 has a red link
  • 33) Ref 13 has a typo
  • 34) I'm still don't understand why placing a point, and drawing an arbitrary line aren't operations allowed in his "construction system". Maybe a word of explanation would be nice.
  • 35) ref 4 has two dots in a row
  • 36) geometer links to List of geometers. Is that what you want? or rather a link to geometry?
  • 37) géométrograpie, typo
  • 38) "2+pq=2j + r" inconsistent spacing
  • 39) "Francoeur prize" inconsistent use of capitals
    • Fo #1, it's an article written by an American who didn't know much French, so I suppose that's why the French is flawed. For #10, ah, my apologies, I only tried the first one and then assumed they were all alike. It seems that all but one of them have articles. For #13, I've seen the hyphened version used in some texts, and according to this it's correct English. For #22 sorry, but I think that none of the notable works listed in the "list of selected articles" section were published in the American Mathematical Monthly, or at least my source(s) specify that they were published elsewhere. If they were reprinted in the American Mathematical Monthly, I have no knowledge of it. For #24, I still think it adds some context, but if you insist, I'll remove it. For #27, I guess I didn't think about the "mathematical" part of the "mathematical society". I'll change it to "scientific societies," a broader term. For #36, yes, that is what I want. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 02:47, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • 13) I think the hyphened version is correct when "best-know" is an adjective, as your reference says. However, here, "best" is an adverb and "know" is a verb, so maybe the correct form is indeed "best know".
  • 40) Please change all é to é, and maybe the corresponding to è (see source to understand)
  • 41) "Association Française pour l'Avancement des Sciences" is written in full length three times in one paragraph
  • 42) I count 14 times the word "he" in the small "Later years (1895–1912)" paragraph
  • 43) When reading Wikipedia:CITE#When_quoting_someone they say "For long quotes, you may wish to use Quotation templates." The quote in the "Lemoine's conjecture" paragraph takes up two thirds of the paragraph. I think for clarity it deserves a template.
  • 44) "University Northern Iowa", "of" missing
  • 45) "Other mathematical work includes a system he called géométrographie and a method which related algebraic expressions to geometric objects." maybe talk about his conjecture in lead as well
  • 46) There are virtually no article that links to Émile Lemoine. Maybe we ought to publicize him a bit in articles such as Symmedian, Société Mathématique de France, Problem of Apollonius, Brocard circle, Brocard points, Nagel point, Tarry point, and Charles Ange Laisant.
  • 47) Could we have a pronunciation for his name, since non-French speaking people may have problems pronouncing his name?
  • 48) Are you sure "Francoeur" shoudn't be written "Francœur"?

Support :) I don't have much to say anymore, good job in addressing my comments.

Randomblue (talk) 08:51, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Reliable sources issues: A very large portion of this article is cited to mathworld.com, which appears to be a user-contributor site.[2][3][4] This is not the sort of scholarly source we should use in a bio. I am mystified that this article has gotten this far into two FACs, with Supports, without anyone questioning the sourcing. The final footnote has no publisher. The WP:LEAD is meager (should provide a compelling summary of the entire article, capable of standing alone while drawing the reader in). I easily spotted a MoS issue (WP:MOS#Ellipses), so it's unclear if reviewers engaged criterion 2 (if the sourcing is ironed out, you could ask User:Epbr123 to run through and check for MoS issues). Most urgently, please explain why MathWorld is used to source a biography. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:58, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't review sourcing, because I don't much about them. However, Mathworld is a pretty reliable source, since every user who participates has his/her name attached to the article, and the articles are reviewed (I think) before publishing. Randomblue (talk) 06:43, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is a biography that uses almost no print or scholarly or academic or peer reviewed or published sources; on Mathworld, see WP:V and WP:SELFPUB. What makes any author there a reliable source? Attaching a name isn't enough. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:50, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Quite a few of the contributors are famous mathematicians, although some of the less knowm must be PhD students or something.
The requisite per WP:SPS is: "Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." Are they experts published in the field by independent reliable sources? Or is Wiki merely parroting bio info found on an internet website (one author whose date of death is given as 1961)? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:03, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
For the Mathworld websites, there is in fact a mathematics treatise (ref #18) to cite the same material to address Karanac's concerns. As for MacTutor, there are some of Robertson's mathematical works listed on the University of St. Andrew's website. Unfortunately, the same can't be said of O'Connor. All I can find by him is NY Times articles unrelated to mathematics by him: [6]. I'm unsure if this would qualify MacTutor as a reliable source. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 22:27, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It sounds like, then, that you could remove Mathworld without losing citation, since it's doubled? Regarding MacTutor, see WP:SPS quoted above; if he hasn't been independently published, can those sources be replaced? When dealing with biographies, even if not BLPs, we really shouldn't be parroting info found on a non-reliable internet website, and we should strive for better sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:30, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Mathworld removed. I'll search for a source to replace MacTutor. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 00:39, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Source issues. Ling asked me to comment on this FAC and the first thing I see are helpful sources being questioned and removed. I am particularly surprised to see the MacTutor archive being questioned. This resource is published by the University of St Andrews and is linked from the School of Mathematics and Statistics webpage. Both Dr John J. O'Connor and Professor Edmund F. Robertson are professional experts on the history of mathematics, and have published on the subject in reliable sources in addition to the MacTutor archive. See this list of publications and this professional home page.
Mathworld has the editorial oversight of Dr. Eric W. Weisstein, a professional encylopedist, and is published by Wolfram Research. Additionally, much of the material on this website can be found in the CRC Concise encyclopedia of mathematics, edited by Dr. Weisstein and published by CRC press. If editors feel sensitive about quoting an online source with a name like "Mathworld", they could instead look in the encyclopedia, which is available online here and most of it can also be found at books.google.com. Geometry guy 11:34, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is exactly the kind of information that is needed to establish the source as acceptable per WP:V; what is surprising is that aspiring FA writers and nominators frequently do not know how to respond to these queries (usually from Ealdgyth, it's rare that Ealdgyth misses one) even when quoted WP:S or WP:SELFPUB, which explicitly state what kind of information we need to establish that a source meets WP:V. Thanks for the info, G guy; and please don't be surprised. It's our "job". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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