Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2013/Dec

-Discussing-Philosophy of mathematics Recurrent themes include:

Should be in Talk:Philosophy of mathematics, not here
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Philosophy of mathematics Recurrent themes include: • What are the sources of mathematical subject matter? X experience and experiment • What is the ontological status of mathematical entities? X Abstract concepts • What does it mean to refer to a mathematical object? X Abstract concepts objects • What is the character of a mathematical proposition? X Reforming one to others • What is the relation between logic and mathematics? X One of systematical reforming one to others. • What is the role of hermeneutics in mathematics? X Making sense of math for human • What kinds of inquiry play a role in mathematics? X One of input info of math • What are the objectives of mathematical inquiry? X more information for math • What gives mathematics its hold on experience? X Theorize exp for systematizing • What are the human traits behind mathematics? X extremely objecting objects • What is mathematical beauty? X equally objecting of objects • What is the source and nature of mathematical truth? (equally objecting-source)-(abstract concept truth-nature) • What is the relationship between the abstract world of mathematics and the material universe? X the world of mathematics abstract measurably the infinity of the material universe — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chuong19861986 (talk • contribs) 08:20, 1 December 2013 (UTC) This page is not a forum for discussing such matters. At first glance your post would be better suited for Talk:Philosophy of mathematics. Howeover, the questions that you ask are copied from Philosophy of mathematics, and the sketch of answers that you propose are your own thought. As such, they can not be used to improve our encyclopedia (see WP:No original research), and are thus also irrelevant for Talk:Philosophy of mathematics D.Lazard (talk) 13:11, 1 December 2013 (UTC) Hatting. Also note that, if this were to be in Wikipedia, even on talk pages, the bullet points should be using HTML lists or Wikicode lists, not raw bullets. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:54, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Rational trigonometry

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rational trigonometry may need input from here. -- 101.119.15.209 (talk) 11:10, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

And there is another closely related situation Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Spread_polynomials which could use the same input. Rschwieb (talk) 14:37, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Derivative

The recurrent debate about the balance between accessibility for the layman, accurateness and level of technicality has started at Talk:Derivative#Definition of the derivative about a concrete edit. I'll reinstall the reverted new section "Definition and terminology" [1] only if there is a consensus. D.Lazard (talk) 18:51, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Ortsbogen theorem

The article titled Ortsbogen theorem is on a topic that seems worth having an article about. It's been prodded for lack of evidence that anybody knows it by that particular name. And apparently it's not known by that name in English. Someone used a German word apparently because that's what they knew.

I appears that there may be no standard name for this theorem in English. So we have the challenge of deciding what to call the article.

I think maybe "Ortsbogen" could be translated as "local arc", but I'm not sure that terminology makes any sense. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:17, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I do not see why this topic is worth having an article about. The article makes no case for notability. Euclidean geometry is loaded with tiny theorems like this. Are we to have an article on each one? (Perhaps I am too unfamiliar with the articles in this area of Wikipedia.) Mgnbar (talk) 05:37, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Google scholar finds plenty of hits for Euclid III.21 so there may be a case for notability. Certainly I think it's a useful theorem; I've used it in my own research (and partially generalized it to 3d: if S is a convex subset of a plane in 3d, then the locus of points on one side of the plane from which S subtends a solid angle greater than or equal to a given threshold is convex) [2]. Still, that's not the same as justifying the existence of a stubby article half of which is devoted to explaining an obscure Swiss name for the theorem. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:40, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I think the usual translation of "Ort" (literally place, location) in this context would be the (geometric) Locus (mathematics). A more common (and more general) term in German is "Ortskurve" (geometric locus), where "Kurve" stands for a planar/plane curve and "Bogen" (="arc") is simply a special type of curve. As far as notability is concerned, having an article on an (unnamed?) theorem of Euclid's Elements might be ok, but we certainly need a more appropriate English name rather than this German term (in doubt simply use Euclid's enumeration scheme for theorems/propositions as a name).--Kmhkmh (talk) 07:38, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

P.S.: We seem to have that group of theorems of Euclid's Elements already covered under Inscribed angle and outside Switzerland the usual German name for that theorem is "Umfangswinkelsatz" or "Peripheriewinkelsatz".--Kmhkmh (talk) 07:49, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

This theorem is exactly the main theorem of inscribed angle. Thus the English name is proably "inscribed angle theorem". Apart for the name, the only part of Ortsbogen theorem that is not in Inscribed angle is the assertion "Points outside this arc form sharper angles than θ, while points within this arc form wider angles". It is easy to include it into Inscribed angle. Thus merging would be a good solution if prod fails.D.Lazard (talk) 08:43, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I support a merge, but I think the merge should be to Locus (mathematics) with only a brief mention in Inscribed angle. Contrary to what has been said above, this result is not Euclid III.21–the "inscribed angle theorem", but rather its converse, which Euclid did not prove (a proof of this important converse is given by Heath–emphasis is Heath's). I've made this correction in the article already, but the point may have some bearing on the disposition of the article. Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 16:08, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

The article Apollonian circles covers most if not all the content of this article. Heath's version doesn't use the idea of a locus, though it's trivial to get the locus result from Heath. I would say merge but is there any non-German speaking person who would refer to this as the Ortsbogen theorem? In general I think finding geometrical theorems or WP is more difficult than it should be, though I don't know how it should be fixed. There was a long standing tradition of giving theorems names like "the 47th proposition of Euclid" rather than something easier to remember like the Pythagorean theorem, which may have made sense at the time but the result is now there are dozens of theorems which everyone can state but no one can name. --RDBury (talk) 17:44, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

French Wikipedia has an article titled Arc capable. The concept is defined as the set of points M in the plane such that the angle AMB is equal to a specified constant, where A and B are specified points. This seems to be exactly synonymous with the German word Ortsbogen. A google search on any of the following seems to show that the term is in frequent use in German-speaking secondary schools:

ortsbogen site:.de

ortsbogen site:.ch

ortsbogen site:.at

So French an German have a term for the arc defined that way and English apparently has none. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:17, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Two or three propositions

There seem to be two or three separate geometric propositions here:

• As the point M moves along an arc of a circle from A to B, the angle AMB remains constant.
• If M is on an arc of a circle from A to B, then the angle AMB is half of the angle AOB, where O is the center.
• If the point M follows a curve so located that the angle AMB remains constant, then the curve it follows is an arc of a circle. That arc seems to be the referent of the French phrase arc capable or the German word Ortsbogen. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:25, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Illustrations

Arc capable

Kreiswinkel

Fasskreisbogen

The illustrations in the first and second articles listed above may be worth using here. The first and third seem to be on exactly the same concept that the word Ortsbogen refers to. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:30, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Generic (mathematics)

The page generic (mathematics) currently redirects to general position. The only page that uses the generic link directly is forcing (mathematics), where it refers to something in model theory, not the algebraic geometric notion of general position. I'm not quite sure what the correct fix is. -- Walt Pohl (talk) 17:01, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

The "something in model theory" was an essential part of Paul Cohen's argument proving the independence of the continuum hypothesis in 1964, for which he won the Fields Medal. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:41, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I've changed that redirect to generic property which is a bit more appropriate (and includes general position). Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 17:41, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

. . . and now I've changed it to a disambiguation page. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:11, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Notification: Featured Article Review for Stephen Hawking

There are some serious deficiencies which several users have identified in the Stephen Hawking article which was promoted to FA status earlier this year after an FAC that wasn't rigorous. Please feel free to comment and contribute to the debate at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Stephen Hawking/archive1 on whether this article should be delisted and what work needs to be done.--ColonelHenry (talk) 17:06, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Mathematical constant

This page had an extremely complicated list of mathematical constants in addition to another, older table. I split the table off into list of mathematical constants, but this has overlap with list of numbers. Any suggestions?Brirush (talk) 02:01, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Nominate László Fejes Tóth for inclusion in project

Currently, the László Fejes Tóth article is supported only by the science and academia biography work group, which marked it as Low-importance. I note very few, if any at that working group, who write on mathematics or mathematicians. The article supports the claim that, together with H.S.M. Coxeter and Paul Erdős, he laid the foundations of discrete geometry. Therefore, I nominate the article as one worthy of inclusion in your project. Sincerely, User:HopsonRoad 15:27, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Please go ahead and add the {{maths rating}} template to its talk page and to the talk pages of other articles as you see appropriate. That will mark it as being part of this project. But it already was integrated into project resources such as Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Mathematics/Lists, because of its mathematical categories. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:25, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Done. Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 17:36, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. User:HopsonRoad 23:23, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Multiplication definition needs help

While the subtraction and addition articles have managed to use clear and simple English to introduce their subjects, the same cannot be said for multiplication. Multiplication is defined in terms of "scaling." Who is there that knows what scaling is (there is no link or explanation) -- especially in this context -- but does nto know what multiplication is? My request for clarification on the multiplication talk page has brought no response. So I have come here to ask for help.Kdammers (talk) 13:22, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I have edited the lead of multiplication. I hope that this solves your concern. D.Lazard (talk) 18:00, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Inscribed angle

Given the two points A and B, the set of points M in the plane for which the angle AMB is equal to α is an arc of a circle. The measure of the angle AOB, which O is the center of the circle, is 2α.

I've just added this illustration to the article titled Inscribed angle. I found the picture on this French Wikipedia page.

The article could use some work, including making it explicit that we may want to consider two or three theorems of Euclidean geometry, one of which I stated in the caption. I will probably be back to work on it unless someone first brings it to condition that I cannot improve. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:19, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Representation theory of the Lorentz group#The covering group

User:YohanN7 has made good contributions to the Representation theory of the Lorentz group article. One thing which may interest mathematicians here is something called "the main theorem of compactness" as described in the link to the section on the talk page.

Does anyone know if we have an article (even just a stub) relevant to the representation theory of the Lorentz group? If not would anyone like to create it? (I can't). M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 13:02, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I was really referring to the main theorem of connectedness, but I got it wrong on the talk page. Nonetheless, both theorems exist under those names. They are really simple; If f:X→Y is continuous and X is compact (connected), then f(X) is compact (connected).

See e.g. John M. Lee, Introduction to Topological Manifolds, Chapter 3. YohanN7 (talk) 13:40, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I really don't think it warrants a separate article. It is already contained at Connected space#Theorems. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:11, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Great, thanks for finding! We could at least redirect the red link main theorem of connectedness to Connected space#Theorems and include a hatnote indicating the redirect. I'll do it now. M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 14:43, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

And that, of course, solves the problem. Thanks guys! YohanN7 (talk) 14:54, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

GCD question

Hello all. I'm working on an update for Module:Math at the moment, and I have a question about the greatest common divisor function when passed zero and negative numbers. If you know about that kind of thing, I'd be grateful if you could comment over at Module talk:Math#Testcases. Thanks. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 03:45, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

This page is for discussion of the maintenance and improvement of Wikipedia's mathematics articles. The proper place within Wikipedia for the kind of question you raise is Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:40, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Schröder–Bernstein theorem

I am trying to gauge support for a possible move of Cantor–Bernstein–Schroeder theorem to Schröder–Bernstein theorem (or some close variant). Please comment at talk:Cantor–Bernstein–Schroeder theorem#Article name. --Trovatore (talk) 08:45, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

List of quadratic irrational numbers set in a systematic order

Is the article titled List of quadratic irrational numbers set in a systematic order worth having? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:46, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

It is clearly WP:OR, not only the list, but also the chosen ordering: If such a list would be published in a mathematics journal, it would be restricted to quadratic integers and would be sorted by the discriminant of the generated ring. Moreover, the table entries for each number is also clearly original research. I strongly recommend deletion. D.Lazard (talk) 18:17, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I have proposed deletion. Ozob (talk) 02:03, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

The article's primary editor has contested the prod, and the article is now at AfD. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of quadratic irrational numbers set in a systematic order. Ozob (talk) 02:54, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Scheffé’s lemma

Any opinions of the article titled Scheffé’s lemma? Its deletion has been proposed. Michael Hardy (talk) 06:32, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

67 hits for that exact phrase in Google books (most looking like textbooks), so despite the fact that I haven't heard of it before I'm pretty sure it's notable. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:59, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

The title of that article seems to be inconsistent with the recommendations in the section of the manual of style on apostrophe usage. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:10, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

I added links to the French and German WP's; they have actual articles rather than just a theorem statement. The French version states it as a theorem in probability theory rather than real analysis, otherwise it is the more complete, just in case someone want to translate and add the material to the English version. If no one want's to expand it then I'd say merge into Dominated convergence theorem which is the only article that links to it; it's AfD bait as it stands. --RDBury (talk) 14:08, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't see a clear rationale for merging to dominated convergence. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:29, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

If the article were to be merged then I think DCT would be the best target since the one usually presented as a corollary of the other, see e.g. [3]. Expanding the article would be better than a merge, but if no one is going to expand it then it would be better to move the less-than-minimal material that's there to another article. --RDBury (talk) 18:02, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

I think the logical dependency is clear enough, but that doesn't really translate into how an encyclopedia should treat the subject. The lemma under discussion is really "about" convergence in L^1 more than it's about bringing limits under the sign of the integral, which is what DCT is about. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:16, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

For the German article I figured out the history, basically Frigyes Riesz shows the theorem Lp or L1, the elegant standard proof via Fatou is by Phil Novinger 1972 and Henry Scheffé proved 1947 independently of Riesz, that a.s. convergence of probability densities implies uniform convergence of probabilities of fixed sets, which is equivalent to L1 convergence. C.f. the english language references in de:Satz_von_Scheffé. --Erzbischof (talk) 11:34, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Algebra

There is a discussion involving only two editors about the content of the lead of algebra. Although both editors have attempted to explain their position, this discussion turns out into a starting edit war, because of the absence of third party opinion. As this vital article is one of the 500 most frequently viewed articles, third party arbitration would be welcome. D.Lazard (talk) 17:04, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

December 2013 disambiguation links

Greetings! Math-related disambiguation pages with large numbers of incoming links for the December 2013 disambiguation contest are listed below. Any help with fixing the links to these pages is appreciated. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:02, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

• Adjoint: 20 links
• Vector: 18 links
• Sum of squares: 16 links
• Characteristic equation: 14 links
• Correlation coefficient: 14 links
• Complex vector space: 13 links

Why is Complex vector space a disambig page? -- Taku (talk) 23:21, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

On 24 February 2011‎ User:Nbarth changed it into one. Why he did this, I can't say, but if it should not be a disambiguation page, feel free to revert that change. It was made boldly and without discussion, and can be reverted boldly and without further discussion. bd2412 T 02:05, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I made it into a disambiguation page because "complex vector space" can mean two separate things:

1. a vector space over the complex numbers, or

2. a vector space over the real numbers with an additional structure, a linear complex structure.

These are closely related but distinct concepts, particularly in geometry (the difference between complex manifolds and almost complex manifolds) and representation theory.

This was perhaps unclear because one definition was in prose and the other as a list element; I've corrected this to a list with 2 items, as above. Is this clearer?

—Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 02:31, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

But these are two different ways of describing the same thing (a complex vector space). I don't think disambiguation is what is needed. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:16, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree, and I have turned complex vector space into a redirect to vector space. Ozob (talk) 15:09, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

In light of the above explanations, I also agree with this redirect. A disambiguation page is for unrelated concepts that happen to share a name, not for "closely related but distinct concepts", which are best served by treatment in an article that explains the distinction between them. bd2412 T 18:26, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Adding two more:

1. Semisimple: 15 links
2. Noetherian: 14 links

Cheers! bd2412 T 17:50, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

These two last articles are WP:CONCEPTDAB articles: all the "disambiguated" links are strongly related. In particular, Noetherian should be named Noetherian property: all the articles linked in it refer to the same Noetherian property: non-existence of an infinite strictly increasing (or decreasing) sequence. D.Lazard (talk) 18:29, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I can't claim to have enough knowledge of the field to say one way or another, but please feel free to move boldly with respect to these. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:41, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I changed these two from mathdab to set index articles. This means that it is allowed to have incoming links (although probably many incoming links can and should go to more specific articles) and that the paragraph of explanation at the start of these is ok to keep. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:47, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. bd2412 T 18:50, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and the other advantage of using {{sia}} instead of {{mathdab}} is that we aren't restricted to only have one bluelink per line, so we can wikilink some explanatory terms. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:22, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Isn't "noetherian" effectively synonymous with "ascending chain conditions" (albeit much shorter and cooler)? Perhaps "noetherian scheme" is an exception, but it basically a generalization of "noetherian ring" so maybe we should merge it to ascending chain condition? -- Taku (talk) 13:11, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

What is "it"? If I just read the last sentence it looks like you want to merge "Noetherian scheme" to "ascending chain condition," but I feel like the original intent of the sentence was to merge "noetherian" to "ascending chain condition." In the latter case, I can see why one might have this idea, but I would also say IMHO that the current structure that channels the maximum/minimum conditions and ascending/descending chain conditions to the same page, along with the independent Noetherian disambig page seems satisfactory. The use of the four condition terms is in the spirit of pure lattice theory, whereas using "Noetherian" in abstract algebra is majorly an homage to an important algebraist. Rschwieb (talk) 13:56, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

"It" is clearly "Noetherian". By the way, except for Noetherian scheme, all the occurrences of "Noetherian" in the list Noetherian qualify as "Noetherian" an object such that some poset attached to it has the ascending chain property or the descending set property. For rings, it is the poset of the ideals. For rewriting systems, it is the poset of rewriting chains. Thus "Noetherian property" is almost the same as ACC or DCC, except that ACC and DCC apply only on posets, but "Noetherian" applies to objects that maybe are not posets, but allow to define posets with ACC or DCC. I have not a clear opinion about a merge. But what I have just written should appear (better formulated) in the lead of Noetherian or in the lead of the result of the merge.D.Lazard (talk) 16:48, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

A merge of this sort would probably suck in Artinian as well, at least, if we were being consistent. This again does not seem optimial. And D.Lazard's point about the adjective applied to things that are one-step removed from the poset that has the chain condition is a very good one. Rschwieb (talk) 13:43, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Oof, it is definitely unfortunate that tradition and circumstance has caused the dual poset to be emphasized in some cases, resulting in a mixture of ACC and DCC. I really hope we don't add anything more that reinforces "the ascending chain property or the descending set property" or else we risk fooling layreaders into thinking that the ACC, DCC and Noetherian are all equivalent. I'm also just now noticing the difference in wording... the descending "set" property?! It looks like a typo to me, but is it a cleverly crafted choice, somehow? Rschwieb (talk) 13:57, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Here is another one that will definitely require expert attention: # Conway polynomial: 13 links. Thanks! bd2412 T 16:52, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Found another one: Boundedness: 14 links. bd2412 T 04:30, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Bell's Theorem

The article on Bell's Theorem (belonging to subfields: mathematical physics, quantum information, ...) has been an enormous mess for a long time. I just started doing some cleaning up but a major rewrite is needed. Maybe it is a good time to do this? The usual controversies are somewhat abated at the moment. It needs a concerted effort by a lot of reasonably well-informed people, who are not in the first place motivated by a particular (minority?) point of view on the topic. Richard Gill (talk) 11:44, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Fortunately it's not so messy that it's title is Bell's Theorem. It would be easy to change it from that to Bell's theorem, but then there'd be a problem of fixing all the links. Probably we have the link-fixing problem already anyway. But the current title is already Bell's theorem, not Bell's Theorem. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:29, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Loewy decomposition

Loewy decomposition needs copy-editing and probably other work. In particular, currently only one other article links to it: Alfred Loewy. I'll add it to the list of differential equations topics if that exists. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:30, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Powerstructure axiom?

This question actually arises from Wiktionary, where we have found various references to the term "powerstructure" in mathematics (as in "Powerstructure Theorem" or "Powerstructure Axiom"), for example [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. It occurred to me that this might also merit encyclopedic mention. Cheers! bd2412 T 15:21, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I have never before encountered the word "powerstructure".

Your first two citations are to the same work, a treatise on the philosophy of mathematics. It is incomprehensible to me. The fourth citation is a reference to the aforementioned work.

The last citation is to a dissertation abstract. It's only a snippet, and not enough context is provided to understand it.

The third citation seems to introduce the word "powerstructure" (see snippet on page 382). I suspect this is a specialized, technical usage.

As far as I know, none of the above are in general usage. Ozob (talk) 04:03, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I too have never encountered this term. I agree with Ozob's analysis; based on the references given, there is no good reason to create a Wikipedia article about it. Ebony Jackson (talk) 04:32, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

"Powerstructure" is an analog of a power set in the context of mathematical structuralism, which in turn is an alternative theory for the foundations of mathematics. The powerstructure axiom is the analog of the Axiom of power set. As far as I know, this alternative theory, championed by Stewart Shapiro, hasn't attained wide notability, but it and other elements of his structuralist program might be worth a mention in his article. --Mark viking (talk) 05:41, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I have added this definition to the Wiktionary page. Cheers! bd2412 T 23:46, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Organizing the List of Fourier analysis topics

Should the List of Fourier analysis topics get organized into sections? Michael Hardy (talk) 21:29, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

That is a good idea. List of harmonic analysis topics is already organized into sections and might be a useful starting point, as there is a good deal of overlap. --Mark viking (talk) 21:34, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Greetings from AFC

You may be interested in helping out WP:AFC by taking a look at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Transient convection diffusion equation. It seemed vaguely ok to me at first glance, but I don't know enough to gauge the article or its similarity to Convection diffusion equation. Thank you! --TKK! bark with me! 07:23, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

It looks like the Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Transient convection diffusion equation intends to describe time dependent diffusion processes and consider solution methods, but the Convection diffusion equation already does this (note the time derivative in the general equation, with mention of the static case). It also seems the transient equation is a special case of the Convection diffusion equation because that involves a general diffusion coefficient, while the transient equation uses specific parameters.

There doesn't seem to be much thermodynamic content in the Convection–diffusion equation article, so maybe the transient equation could be merged in a section of Convection–diffusion equation?

This should also be notified at WP physics. I'll do that now. M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 11:20, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Abel functions

• Abel function (AfD discussion)

You might want to contribute to the discussion. Don't forget to mention Karl Weierstrass. Uncle G (talk) 14:41, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Willard Gibbs FAC

Hi. I could use some help with the current FA nomination of the article on Josiah Willard Gibbs. Please take a look and comment as you see fit. Also, some time ago I mentioned here that I think Gibbs should be re-assessed as of Top importance in both chemistry (he's the father of physical chemistry) and physics (he's one of the three founders of statistical mechanics), and of high importance in math (he created vector calculus and pioneered convex analysis). I got no response back then, but I see no harm in bringing this up again. - Eb.hoop (talk) 20:12, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

New article that needs a look - Uzawa iteration

I'm new page patrolling and I'd appreciate someone with math knowledge having a review of Uzawa iteration. Thanks, Ego White Tray (talk) 23:24, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Requested move: Monoid ring

There is currently a move request in progress for the article above, at Talk:Monoid ring. If editors in this project are interested, please go there and contribute to the discussion. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 01:03, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Mathematical constant

There has been some $\tau$ vs. $\pi$ activity on Mathematical constant, but it seems mild. Brirush (talk) 14:49, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Multidimensional Transform

Should some of the material at Multidimensional Transform get merged into one of the Fourier analysis articles? Michael Hardy (talk) 20:35, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

No strong opinion but maybe keep it a separate article, since there are sources on the topic with the title (I've seen books at the library on multidimensional integral transforms, not just Fourier transforms, but don't have them to hand now), a quick google book search gives [9].

The article itself needs clean up, I'll do it later. M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 22:07, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

The article is really about Fourier series on the torus, but we don't seem to have an article about that. That's a rather serious omission in my opinion. For my part, I would like to see an article at least partly adopting the mathematical approach to the subject informed by some standard text such as Stein and Weiss. Sławomir Biały (talk) 22:38, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

A minor change of title is decapitalization: Multidimensional Transform -> Multidimensional transform, but should the title be changed to anything more specific? M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 23:08, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Preferred information in bibliographic entries

I'm sketching out what would be required for a bibliography of Paul Erdős. The sources I have use mr and zbl numbers, but many (most) of his publications also have a DOI number. I assume the first two are more useful to this community. Should I plan on including the DOI as well? (I understand that {{cite doi|}} fills in much of the information, but based on my tests I'm not seeing it picking up mr and zbl. {{cite zbl|}} would be handy, but it doesn't exist.) Thanks! Lesser Cartographies (talk) 02:02, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

You should include both the MR and DOI information (and possibly Zbl although I tend not to use that one). MR provides a link to a review of the article on MathSciNet; DOI provides a link to the actual article on the publisher's web site. So both are useful. There are some reasons not to use {{cite doi}} — for one thing it uses a bot-enforced policy of abbreviating author names rather than allowing full author names, and for another it makes vandalism of bibliography entries hard to detect. So instead I would recommend using either {{cite journal}} or {{citation}} (but they produce slightly different formatting, so don't mix them in a single article). In the case of Erdős' papers you should also include a url to the paper, from http://www.renyi.hu/~p_erdos/ — often the DOI will go to a paywalled version of the article so it is also helpful to provide a freely-readable link. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:55, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:RefToolbar/2.0 is a great improvement on {{cite doi}}, because you can have it both ways - use the doi to search for information, then customize the information by hand. RockMagnetist (talk) 05:03, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

David Eppstein, RockMagnetist: thanks to you both for your helpful comments. Once I get the first hundred or so entries in shape I might post a request for review here. (It's a little humbling to realize Erdős has more posthumous publications that I've managed so far in my career with the benefit of being, y'know, alive....) Lesser Cartographies (talk) 23:10, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

{{MathCOTM}}

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