Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2013/Mar

More disambig help requested.

Not sure if Orbital angular momentum (21 links) is a math issue, but Secure Hash Algorithm (21 links) seems to be and has been tagged as WP:DABCONCEPT, and we also have Algebraic semantics (20 links) and Curvature tensor (20 links). Please help if you can. Cheers! bd2412 T 12:15, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree Secure Hash Algorithm is a WP:DABCONCEPT. What if the procedure to proceed? Is it sufficient to remove the {{disambig}} and {{conceptdab}} tags and to add a stub tag? D.Lazard (talk) 12:53, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

While this is sufficient, it would be better to add a sentence or two, with sources, indicating how the listed links are examples of a general concept. bd2412 T 03:56, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Orbital angular momentum is a physics concept, a topic in quantum mechanics. Secure Hash Algorithm is a topic in computer science, but of interest to mathematicians as well. The last two are math concepts. I disambiguated links for a number of articles for Orbital angular momentum, but not all of them. It's a drag to be manually chasing down all the link locations and going through the edit cycle for each one. Are there any automated tools to help with this? --Mark viking (talk) 14:16, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

There are a few really excellent tools for disambiguation. The primary tool is a program available at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser. bd2412 T 03:56, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. I've finished with Orbital angular momentum in article space. --Mark viking (talk) 04:40, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I’ve done algebraic semantics.—Emil J. 14:23, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! bd2412 T 03:56, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

By the way, almost all of the incoming links to Degree (total 55 links) are through the Degree (mathematics) redirect, and judging by the listings on the disambig, these will also need expert attention. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:56, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Review request

Hi, I created a new article Dershowitz-Manna_ordering and it was suggested to me to ask here for some reviews (it's my first new article). I would appreciate any hints or comments as how to improve it (e.g. it is an orphan, but I refrained adding any links before getting some feedback). Dtldarek (talk) 19:48, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I only took a quick glance, but here are some quick comments:

• It would be nice to include the statement of who Dershowitz and Manna are.
• Some more information (even just a sentence or two) about the context or importance of this order would be helpful; right now, I am skeptical that this article would be of much use to someone who didn't already know its contents.
• There's a lot of notation used that isn't necessary; most notably, the use of the quantifiers $\forall ,\exists$ instead of writing out a sentence makes the reader work harder for no obvious benefit.

--JBL (talk) 20:07, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm a fairly new editor myself. Welcome! The article looks like a good start to me. Some suggestions for improvement:

• Break the main section into

1. A lead section, where you introduce the ordering, give an informal notion of what it is about for the non-specialist, and why it is significant in term rewriting systems of computer science in general
2. A definition section where you precisely define the ordering. I second JBL's suggestion to replace non-necessary notation with English prose. It also helps to define your notation. For instance, let readers know that $S$ is a set and that $M(y)$ is a cardinality function (I think) representing the multiplicity of element $y$ in $M$.

• How does this ordering compare to other multiset orderings? It may be useful to establish a "See also" section pointing to other orderings with articles on Wikipedia.
• It is useful to a give web pointer to references where you can. For instance, here is a pdf of the Jouannaud paper.

--Mark viking (talk) 20:56, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I suggest moving this discussion to the article's talk page. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:16, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Good suggestion, I'll copy the comments so far over there. --JBL (talk) 23:02, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Math Jax problem

I switched over to Math Jax. On my browser (Windows IE 9, version 9.0.8112.16412, update 9.0.13) the formula

$n=4,\;\;z=-1,\;\;z^{2}=z^{4}=1,\;\;2\not \equiv 4{\pmod {4}}.$

< math >n = 4, \;\; z = -1, \;\; z^2 = z^4 = 1, \;\; 2 \not\equiv 4 \pmod{4}.< /math >

does not render correctly (the \not\equiv should be ≡ with a line through it, but is a space on my browser)

Is there some other place where this should be reported?

Thanks - Virginia-American (talk) 16:10, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Should work: $\not \equiv$ (Windows 7, IE 8). Maybe just your browser... you might see help:displaying a formula and the talk page. Sorry, M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 16:39, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Works for me (OS X, Chrome) so it does seem likely to be a browser or installation issue. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:13, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

It looks OK in my Firefox 19 browser. JRSpriggs (talk) 07:51, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Also OK on my Firefox 19 under Linux. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 11:33, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I'd guess it is a font problem of some kind. Dmcq (talk) 12:53, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I have precisely the same version of IE on Windows 7 and it works for me. Rschwieb (talk) 14:00, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Did you install the STIX fonts? (see here). RockMagnetist (talk) 18:04, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Graph theory ~ too technical tag

Hi,

I have added a too technical tag to graph theory for the following reason:

talk:graph_theory#Too_technical__.2803.2F03.2F2013.29

Perhaps we could try and reach a consensus on a course of action?

Bg9989 (talk) 12:43, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Graph automorphisms table missing an implication

The table at Graph_automorphism#Graph_families_defined_by_their_automorphisms (and at Template:Graph families defined by their automorphisms) doesn't indicate that all distance-regular graphs are regular graphs. They are, aren't they? There isn't some subtlety to the definition that I'm missing? Is there a stronger implication from distance-regularity? -- Creidieki 18:50, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Please review Matrix_multiplication#Multiplication_of_n-dimensional_matrix

A large new section materialized at the end of the matrix multiplication article: Matrix_multiplication#Multiplication_of_n-dimensional_matrix. It is apparently some operation which is not even power-associative. I don't immediately recognize the mathematical content, and the English is a bit broken. It is also unsourced. Still, it could be a candidate for inclusion in that article. If anyone has a chance to take a look, please drop an opinion on the talkpage. I'm mainly trying to figure out if it is something real or some sort of niche topic. Thanks! Rschwieb (talk) 14:14, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree, and apologies to Rschwieb for edit conflicts. M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 14:29, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Templates braket, vec and intmath

Not a desperate issue... Anyway I recently created these templates for use with {{math}}, so faults are my responsibility. Are they discouraged by WP:MOSMATH? Probably... I need to know for compatibility with the up-and-coming WP:MOSPHYS. Please note I inserted them into this table. Thanks in advance for feedback. M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 17:25, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is just awful for mathematics

You can learn a lot from reading most Wikipedia articles, unless the article you're reading is about mathematics. Mathematics articles on Wikipedia are written entirely in domain specific jargon and protected by an impenetrable wall of circular learning dependencies.

Is it that mathematics is such a hard problem, or that our mathematician editors are far too concerned with being technically correct and not enough with educating? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.29.74.212 (talk) 03:00, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Gee, who would have ever guessed that anyone would think that?! This project has been told this many many times. Their response is the boilerplate language visible on this page above. Basically the idea is that they don't care, and would prefer if the people levying this kind of criticism would just accept that the culture is the way it is, and that they won't change to satisfy anyone but themselves. Greg Bard (talk) 03:06, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

What do you propose? Let us not only tolerate illiteracy and destructured thinking like a formal proof of modus ponens, but even promulgate such oversimplified and appealing lies? To my opinion, there should be even more “walls of circular learning dependencies”. Each article should state which theories it uses, or, at least, on which facts (theorems) it depends. With present chaotic structuring it is sometimes impossible to understand which concept depends on which assumptions. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:05, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Math is hard. Barbie took a lot of criticism for saying it, but she was right. There is no royal road.

As for being correct versus educating, all articles, not just mathematics ones, need to be first and foremost correct. "Educating" per se is not their purpose at all — Wikipedia is a reference work, not a textbook. It's an excellent resource for self-education, but you have to do the work yourself. --Trovatore (talk) 04:01, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

There is no excuse. It's a wiki. It is always possible to make the concepts available to someone who wants to reason it out for themselves. I have seen cultural and systemic behavior which frustrates those ends. Greg Bard (talk) 04:20, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

The problem is not with the corpus of mathematics articles. Collectively, they are the best free resource for mathematics that exists on the planet, by far. The problem is that people expect to be able to understand them without doing work, and it can't be done. --Trovatore (talk) 04:31, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

To misquote George Bernard Shaw, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the Wikipedia; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the Wikipedia to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Tom Ruen (talk) 05:07, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Mathematics is hard, but using more jargon than necessary and needless upfront generality can make it harder than necessary. The first thing we should ask when someone complains is for some example articles. Many math articles will always be incomprehensible to the general reader, but many, even in advanced topics, admit a basic explanation that give non-specialists some idea of the topic. There is always room for improvement. For example, I just edited the traveling salesman problem to state the problem in simple terms before the flood of jargon. There is always room for improvement without sacrificing accuracy and completeness.--agr (talk) 05:25, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

No doubt. There are lots of articles that can be improved along these lines, and specific examples are welcome, preferably with specific reports about what part is confusing. --Trovatore (talk) 05:30, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

To misquote Larry Niven and his Neutron Star, find yourself a middle ground or the tide will rip you apart. I spend much more time on the wiki for my place of employment these days than Wikipedia... I think I agree with you, if what you are saying is that there is a constant struggle between what we already know and what we have to repeat in order to get that message across. Wikipedia is a moving target. --Trakon (talk) 05:24, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

"domain specific jargon and an impenetrable wall of circular learning dependencies"... I remember that my late father complained me, in quite similar words, about mathematics, more than 40 years ago, when neither Wikipedia nor Internet were not imagined. This is not a property of Wikipedia but a property of mathematics. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 06:50, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Some mathematics articles are bad, some are very good. Wikipedia is still a work in progress. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:43, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Really I think the biggest problem with mathematics articles on Wikipedia is that there are simply not very many editors who are good at writing mathematics articles and are willing to spend additional volunteer hours to make our articles better. I have edited maybe one or two hundred mathematics articles (out of tens of thousands). But of these, I would say that on fewer than ten articles was I really willing to devote the many hours it takes to produce prose that is understandable to a general audience and is, at the same time, thorough in its coverage and depth, and encyclopedic. The fact is, this is very difficult to do. It's much harder than writing pedagogical material aimed at a particular audience. It requires, among other things, that the author have a nearly complete understanding of the topic, a sense of how everything fits into the subject of mathematics and the sciences as a whole, as well as good skill at communicating in English.

Also, editing mathematics articles is something of a thankless job. Instead of being praised for the work that we do, here we are repeatedly collectively heckled because of the generally poor quality of mathematics articles for the purposes of learning a subject. We also have to then defend the articles we devoted all this time to against misguided attempts to rewrite them. There are roughly two kinds of rewrite attempts: the formalists, who think that every mathematics article should start with formal definitions and theorem statements, and the bad pedagogues, who think that because an article mentions topics that they do not understand means that they must rewrite the article—ironically without actually understanding the topic themselves!

And, let me add, that of course mathematics is different from other areas. Whereas with a few months of study, I imagine someone with a basic science background can edit articles on climate change or evolution, it literally takes years of study for someone to even understand the statements of some of the top problems in mathematics (such as the Langlands conjectures, the Hodge conjecture, and the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture). Of course, someone with only a few months of background in a subject will almost certainly lack perspective, and I believe this is a problem of articles in more accessible areas of science such as climate science which suffer from too many editors, in mathematics lack of perspective is particularly glaring. Even experts can lack perspective, as often experts only know what they do, and not how it relates to other topics. Thus their way of thinking about something is clearly the right way.

There is only one good solution to this problem. We need more expert mathematicians editing Wikipedia, since these are the only people who are really able to help with articles on advanced mathematics. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:55, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I think you've hit the nail on the head here.. in fact, I found your rant motivational. :-) Mark M (talk) 16:38, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I'll admit I'm one who is definitley responsible as a "bad pedagogue" in the above description... M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 17:13, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Broadest possible audience

There is a norm in Wikipedia that the introductory material in an article should be accessible to the broadest possible audience. I think I've followed that in the many mathematics articles I've written. And I think it's generally been followed in Wikipedia mathematics articles.

There are cases where it has not been followed. Especially in new articles. Those often need a lot of work, not only because of that. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:12, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Relevant to this discussion, there is an open CfD discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 January 24#Category:Elementary mathematics which proposes to "upmerge" certain elementary mathematics categories. I think that one step towards making math articles as user friendly as they reasonably can be made is to identify levels of difficulty within the field (for example, algebra is obviously going to be more complex than multiplication), and aim to insure that articles covering less difficult topics are indeed less complex. The hard stuff may be hard, but it should be possible to figure out the hard articles by starting with basic articles and methodically working up from them. bd2412 T 21:00, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I must admit I'm not altogether keen on that. I believe every article should aim to have the first third of it at least fairly easily understandable to someone who is about six months away from starting on it but wants to know something about it. I'd be happy for elementary school children learn the basics of calculus. As to going from basics to more complex the thing I would like is for a way of placing articles into a partially ordered list of depends on and dependencies. This would make instances of circularities and undue dependencies more obvious. We're always going to have circular dependencies because we're describing things as they are rather than writing a textbook but I certainly think something like this would help. Dmcq (talk) 22:06, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I've been looking at a bunch of math articles at the college and lower level and I think there is a common problem with them. Their introductions tend to be a sea of jargon and blue links to other articles. If we were trying to scare off lay readers, we'd have a hard time doing better. Here is one example: Group (mathematics). This article is supposed to be the elementary explanation (it's advertised as such at Group theory). As of this writing Group (mathematics) begins:

"In mathematics, a group is an algebraic structure consisting of a set together with an operation that combines any two of its elements to form a third element. To qualify as a group, the set and the operation must satisfy four conditions called the group axioms, namely closure, associativity, identity and invertibility."

Only much later in the article do we get a full definition, and that is surrounded by a bunch of well meaning explanatory material that I find excessive and which fails to mention the cyclic groups, perhaps the easiest example to understand. Instead we get a ponderous explanation of the symmetry group of a square. Oh, and it's a Featured article. And I am afraid this is not an isolated instance. --agr (talk) 17:28, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

The observation about a sea of jargon and blue links in the intro is true, but it is not clear that this is avoidable. Dancing around the real concepts by avoiding terminology will probably result in a more tortured, harder to understand intro, but I could be wrong. Supply what you think is a good alternative wording for the group article.

It's a shame that cyclic examples might be missing from the juncture you mentioned. They should definitely appear!

Explaining the symmetry group of a square is a good idea, but that is pretty ponderous... this would be better material on the symmetry group page, which could be referenced in the group example. Rschwieb (talk) 17:47, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

The first sentence pulled by agr is an illustration of what happens when "formalists" edit articles. The first sentence went from "In mathematics, a group is a set of elements together with an operation that combines any two of its elements to form a third element", which I think more harmoniously segues into the rest of the somewhat leisurely discussion of what a group is, to its present form which has a bit more unnecessary jargon. Also, from the third sentence on, the rest of the first paragraph now seems like excessive throat-clearing and needs to be streamlined or cut.

I differ in my assessment, however, since I think the selection of examples in the "Definition" section is exactly appropriate: an abelian group and a non-abelian group that illustrates the notion of symmetry group (which is in some sense why there are groups). Cyclic groups of course are treated as examples in their own right later in the article. Although cyclic groups are algebraically simpler objects to understand, I don't think that makes them intrinsically simpler things to understand than, say, a group of permutations on a set or a symmetry group of a geometrical figure.

--Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:15, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't mind the first section of Group (mathematics) too much. And, contrary to possible impressions, the article does discuss a cyclic group first - the integers are the first example given. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:35, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I should have said finite cyclic groups. These are the simplest examples of a group that is not an ordinary number system like the integers, and they are easy to understand. Remember this is supposed to be the introductory article. Symmetry groups are harder to understand because the elements are the rotations, not the positions. The elements of the finite cyclic groups are the numbers themselves and the operation is modular addition, which is also simple. The analog clock face is a familiar example. agr (talk) 21:52, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I think the symmetry group conveys essential information that finite cyclic groups do not: namely that a group is something "active" rather than something passive. I actually think this is helpful especially to readers hoping to get a sense for a group without getting distracted by technical details. Although obviously first year students taking a first course in abstract algebra would also benefit by rote checking that the axioms are satisfied, as an encyclopedia I think it's important to do something more substantial than that if we are to illustrate the importance of the group concept from the beginning. Sławomir Biały (talk) 22:08, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not saying it should not be mentioned, but it should not be the first non-trivial example.--agr (talk) 22:29, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I think finite cyclic groups are somewhat too trivial to be the first non-trivial example, but not trivial enough to be the first example. Our articles are not intended to be thorough introductions to a subject, and I think there is some benefit in using a non-commutative group for one of the two "highlghted" examples. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:19, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Groups are a perfect example of a math subject that laypeople are capable of understanding with no prerequisites and group (mathematics) is supposed to be the basic introduction to the topic. It would somehow be beneath us to make this article to easy to read? "... too trivial to be the first non-trivial example, but not trivial enough to be the first example..." We can't have 3 examples, increasing in sophistication? I don't follow your logic here at all. --agr (talk) 16:25, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I note that two more examples were added to the definition section of the group (mathematics) article. Opinions? Like I hopefully expressed above, I thought the original two examples were a good selection to give in the definition section. I could be pursuaded that cyclic groups might be worth covering in that section, but four detailed examples seems way over the top. We are supposed to be an encyclopedia, after all, not a textbook. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:51, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I've removed the example of the even integers. This group is isomorphic to the integers, so doesn't illustrate anything new, and as an example I think it was confusing than clarifying of the original definition, as it brought in notions such as homomorphisms, which hadn't been defined at that point of the article. I left the cyclic group and Klein four group, pending further discussion. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:08, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I would suggest moving the discussion of these edits to Talk:Group (mathematics), since they concern that article.--agr (talk) 04:01, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

The discussion has continued there. Sławomir Biały (talk) 22:47, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Broadest possible may in fact be very narrow. As pointed out above, many math topics are simply inaccessible to people without the requisite knowledge. It would be great if you could write a meaningful "lead" sentence that someone whose last math education was high school algebra 20 years ago could find useful, but that's not always possible and when it is possible, it's not always beneficial. Perhaps the best thing to do is ask yourself "1) what is the least amount of education someone would have to have to understand the bulk of the article, and 2) what is the least amount of education someone would have to have to understand a 1-paragraph, written-as-lay-as-possible summary of what the topic is about?" Frequently #2 would be "2 or 3 semesters of college-level math in a sequence that leads to this topic" or at the very least, several weeks or months studying key ideas pulled from a 2- or 3-semester college-level math sequence. Frequently for #1 it's the same or more. For a few articles, it probably requires the equivalent of a 1- or 2-semester graduate-level sequence, having done a Masters Thesis in a closely-related topic, or having followed research in a closely-related topic for several months or years. The bottom line: Do what you can to make articles as accessible as practical, but don't sweat it if the problem of "how to we write high-level math articles so they can be understood by someone who doesn't even remember high school math" turns out to be intractable. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 19:59, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Opening sentence

To quote the Manual of Style WP:BEGIN: "The first sentence should tell the nonspecialist reader what (or who) the subject is." I don't see any reason why we can't strive to achieve the same in mathematics articles. Nonspecialist being the key word. The difficulty, of course, is that it's not easy to explain a topic in one or two sentences to a nonspecialist reader, due to the (seemingly) necessary use of jargon. But difficult is not the same as impossible; striving to minimize the amount of jargon in the lead (especially early in the lead), together with mentioning simple examples in the lead, both seem like achievable goals. Mark M (talk) 19:38, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Not really in reply, but an additional thought along these lines. WP:LEAD demands that the lead should define the topic for the widest likely audience, and should summarize the main points of the article. I have always felt that there is a tension between this and making the lead of the article understandable to a layperson, since I think part of the task of the lead is not just to summarize the more understandable parts of a topic, but also the more sophisticated aspects of it to some (usually lesser) extent. It can be difficult to strike the right balance, and there is not clear consensus about what this entails (not even within this Wikiproject). Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:46, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

To the extent that there is any conflict here, it has an easy and natural resolution. A specialist will have no trouble recognizing and getting past an introductory paragraph or two that takes a limited, initial view of the subject, to find a broader treatment within the the article, while most non-specialists will be put off by a blast of jargon and miss any introductory material later in the article. If need be, the intro can end with a "More generally,..." paragraph with the jargon and the links. --agr (talk) 19:54, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with this, to the extent that it is usually desirable to put the more easily understood things earlier in the lead. But I find it personally helpful to avoid canned phrases like "More generally..." since they don't often lead to clear writing. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:13, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Without concrete examples of particular first sentences, it is hard to say anything concrete. Not all "jargon" (i.e. vocabulary) is bad, and not all of our articles are intended for readers who have no background whatsoever. But some jargon is avoidable, and doing so can make the article more accessible. I find it better to write "one level down": assume that the reader is just taking the course before the one where the topic at hand would be covered. I think that the idea that we could write generalized flag variety in a way that would be meaningful to 6th graders is farfetched. At some point it is up to the reader to use the helpful blue links to chase down the prerequisites for the topic. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:15, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I quoted Group (mathematics) above. It's since been improved a little. A someone else pointed out, Wikipedia is a work in progress by volunteers. Writing a level N article for a level N-1 audience is better than writing for a level N or, worse a level N+1 audience (which happens), but I do not think we should be content with that. It's a judgement call how far down an opening sentence can reach, but even in an article as technical as generalized flag variety perhaps some context for mathematicians working in different fields could be given.--agr (talk) 16:36, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Template {{no footnotes}}

Some editors tag systematically math article with {{no footnotes}} and similar templates. In many cases, like in Algebraic variety, this is true, but it suggests wrongly to the reader that some part of the content is controversial. This is the reason for which I have moved the tag at the bottom of the article, considering that the tag should not removed (it is true and it puts the article in a relevant category), and that it is not useful for the general reader. I have been reverted.

My question is thus the following. Is there a recommendation of this project for the place of the tags like {{no footnotes}}, when there are not a warning about a possibly controversial content? At the top, or like for stub templates, at the bottom? D.Lazard (talk) 03:14, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Imho this is sometimes simply overtagging not every math article needs footnotes. If you have relatively short math article with no content issues, based on very few sources (say textbook section or journal articles). It is good enough to simply list them at the end. If I see such articles tagged I simply remove the tag.--Kmhkmh (talk) 04:09, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Algebraic variety doesn't fall in this class, though. RockMagnetist (talk) 04:23, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, i somewhat agree. Imho Algebraic variety is in a grey area, it is probably already a bit too long with and given the references are not really specific enoug (no pages or chapters) to locate the content quickly.--Kmhkmh (talk) 04:59, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

IMO, the footnotes serve two purposes: provide a source to potentially verify controversial content and to guide the reader to the sources for more details. As a reader, I find it pretty irritating to read large swaths of unreferenced paragraphs and sections and have no idea where this content came from. Articles are necessarily summaries of the topics, and particularly for advanced math topics, it would be nice to know where to go for proofs and more examples. For non-controversial content, one would not need many citations to point the reader to the source or sources, but they should be there.

In that context, it would be nice to have a tag along the lines of "This article needs citations to show readers where to go for further information." --Mark viking (talk) 04:40, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Well the article sort of tells you where to go for further information though, any of the 4 books listed under references, they lack specifity though.--Kmhkmh (talk) 04:59, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

The bottom line, though, is that there is no special property of math articles that justifies a separate policy on footnotes. RockMagnetist (talk) 05:51, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

T:No, not in particular I treat other articles the same way. However in my subjective experience that scenario is more common in math articles, maybe because they are more likely to be be uncontroversial (in comparison to some other areas)--Kmhkmh (talk) 06:14, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Well we had a very similar discussion several years back and came up with Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines, so in reply to RockMagnetist there is a special guideline on footnotes for scientific articles.--Salix (talk): 06:52, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out - I don't recall seeing those guidelines before. To me, their approach to uncontroversial knowledge seems misguided. If a single expert were writing the article, a few general citations at the beginning might suffice. But if multiple editors contribute, this method provides cover for all sorts of sins. Somewhere I read the suggestion that a reference or two, added at the end of a paragraph, could be taken as support for the whole paragraph. That method seems better to me. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:47, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

In Algebraic variety, the first section is full of definitions and probably is uncontroversial. But Discussion and generalizations is full of judgements and sweeping generalizations and is crying out for citations. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:54, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia conventions are that tags like "No footnotes" should be at the top of the article or section to which they apply. Why? Because that's where editors expect to see them, and they will likely be moved there if they are elsewhere. For articles which footnotes are clearly not needed, perhaps a different template can be added to the top of a "References" section stating something like:

This mathematical article discusses general, widely-known mathematical concepts for which references are not needed. If you add a reference here, remove this template. If you believe references are needed for this article and do not have references to add now, [[ARTICLE_TALK_PAGE|discuss]] it and if there is no objection within 7 days, remove this tag and add {{unreferenced|date=MONTH YEAR}} or a similar template to the top of this article.

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 19:46, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Examples of convolution

I saw the wiki page, but I couldn't find any examples using actual numbers evaluating the formula. Could you give some examples of convolution, please? Mathijs Krijzer (talk) 22:45, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Just FYI: this user seems to be spamming widely with this question. --JBL (talk) 22:58, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

No, I try to be very targeted and small scale! ;) Mathijs Krijzer (talk) 23:31, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Mathijs, leaving messages at 18 user pages is excessive; see contributions, range:

14:07, 2013 March 9 User talk:Zueignung

…

14:22, 2013 March 9 User talk:PAR

(Also at 3 project pages and the article talk page.)

Further, there is no need to place a large article extract with your question (example diff) – if the editor in question has any expertise, the brief question as edited above (“The wiki page has no concrete examples – concrete examples please?”) is sufficient.

I assume you just want to improve Wikipedia, or personally want some help, but leaving this many messages makes a lot of work for people – at the least everyone needs to read through your request and the page in question, and then look around to see if anyone else is working on it.

Instead, if you have a question or request for improvement, please ask it first on the one project page that seems best. In this case the Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics or perhaps this page (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics) would be relevant. If you don’t get an answer in a day or two, it is appropriate to slowly ask at more places.

Also, in your reply to Joel, who is clearly upset at your messages, denying it – saying “no, I’m not spamming” – does not help the discussion. If you instead say “I’m sorry if I’ve caused any problem – I tried focusing my question to 18 people who seemed active on the page.” you’ll at least come across as thoughtful and considerate.

So in future, I would suggest:

• Place questions and requests at a single project page, such as this.
• Apologize when you offend someone, even unintentionally.

Good luck with future editing!

—Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 03:30, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I’m sorry if I’ve caused any problem – I tried focusing my question to 18 people who seemed active on the page. --Mathijs Krijzer (talk) 11:25, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with the message on my talk page. I'm not sure I see any urgency about numerical examples in this instance. Michael Hardy (talk) 13:17, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Image at The Quadrature of the Parabola article

I was browsing through The Quadrature of the Parabola and came across this image:

Now, am I missing something, or is that incorrect? It seems like the dotted line (and "height" arrow) should be perpendicular to the base. --JaGa^talk 04:45, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

That's a different formula. The area of a triangle is 1/2 (side) (segment from opposite vertex to side, perpendicular to the side), the formula you're thinking of. But it's also 1/2 (projection onto x axis) (segment from opposite vertex to side, parallel to y axis), as the picture shows. The second formula can be related to the first by an affine transformation. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:35, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

The h is indeed perpendicular to the w, as should be evident from the pictures. Notice that if you take the vertical dotted line to be the "base", then you have two triangles – one to the left of the dotted line and one to the right – and the sum of their two heights is w, so (1/2)hw is the sum of their two areas. So the formula is correct. Michael Hardy (talk) 13:19, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

The statement is certainly true, but it is also liable to be extremely confusing to anyone who e.g. stopped taking math after calculus. It would be nice if it could be reworded so as to not cause this problem. In particular, the use of the word "height" for the segment in question is surely misleading. Is there a better phrasing/wording? -JBL (talk) 15:22, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, it would be nice if the section mentioned this "x/y axis projection" area formula - I've never heard of it, and it would have made for an interesting discovery. Instead, I was just confused by the diagram. --JaGa^talk 17:17, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

List of orderings?

The new article Dershowitz–Manna ordering is currently an orphan, i.e. no other articles link to it. I looked at List of order theory topics and Glossary of order theory, and it didn't seem to fit in either in their present forms. Then I looked for Lexicographic order in both lists, and it isn't there. How many other special types of orders are not in any such lists? Should another list be created for more concrete things like these? Michael Hardy (talk) 13:38, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Creating a new list for concrete ordering schemes is a good idea. The other two lists you mentioned seem to be about ordering theory in general. Lexicographic and Dershowitz-Manna orderings are more used in computer science than mathematics, but I could not find a relevant CS list, either. Collocation deals with types of ordering relations, but seems more specialized to alphabetic ordering relations. --Mark viking (talk) 17:41, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Monomial order does not appear in Glossary of order theory. It appears in List of order theory topics, but the specific monomial orders listed in eponymous article do not. D.Lazard (talk) 19:33, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

See below — we could also use a list for classes of orderings (total order, partial order, weak orders, preorder, cyclic orders and well-quasi-ordering, etc. as well, to which ordered set could redirect. This would be different from Dershowitz–Manna though because that's an individual ordering rather than a class of orderings. I have started such a list at List of types of ordered set.—David Eppstein (talk) 19:36, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Cross reference to list

Apparently {{cross-reference}} is now deprecated, and users have been going around converting it to {{dab}}, which is generally a mistake (cross-reference pages are the deliberate target of links from other pages; dabs cannot be). I think this affects this project more than others, as the cross-reference format was invented for math pages by Michael Hardy. A solution I have used for the former Erdős conjecture is to convert it to a list format: List of conjectures by Paul Erdős. Perhaps others like this should be converted in the same way. Pages formerly listed as cross-references and needing attention include

• Continuity (mathematics)
• Dedekind completeness (already gutted and turned into a redirect to one specific type of Dedekind completeness)
• Ordered set (already gutted and turned into a redirect to one specific type of ordered set)
• Real-valued function (still in place with the cross-ref template removed)

—David Eppstein (talk) 16:07, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

User:Wikid77 and "breaking up complex formulas"

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T47973

After his goal of speeding up citation templates at the expense of accuracy and formating, he's now doing it to < math> templates. See his edits to Gamma function.

This is as neutral as I can get. He made it both mathematically and visually wrong, and impossible to edit. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:20, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

So far, as far as I can tell, he's only edited Gamma function and Ring (mathematics). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:26, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Wow, that is an unmaintainable mess of math tags! The Gamma function page should not load so slowly; maybe this is a MathJax problem on his end. In any case, this decimation of math formulas should be reverted, to preserve the mathematical and typographical structure of the formulas and to preserve editors' sanity. --Mark viking (talk) 17:52, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

• Optimization of math-tag text can be taught in essays, and problems have been exaggerated, just as fears of fast cite templates were hyped to exaggerate small differences; instead, many claims of "broken templates" were actually caused by invalid parameters in older articles. -Wikid77 14:35, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Most (but not all) of Wikid77's edits to Ring can be undone; I'm on a mobile device so didn't do it myself, but it seems to me that they should all be reverted ASAP. --JBL (talk) 18:25, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

The problem seems to due to problems with the time taken to render the page. There is a hard limit of about 60 secs to render a page after the "save page" button has been pressed. If that time is passed you get an error page displaying and the edit will not be processed. There is a section on the talk page Talk:Ring (mathematics)#Technical difficult with editing ring (mathematics) when an editor repeatedly had problems getting an edit saved. Part of the problem is the number of math tag which seem to be taking a long time to process. A similar problem was seen at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics#Posting here is really slow today. What I find curious is that we have not had similar problems before, why have we suddenly started getting these getting problems.

Given a real problem with timesouts when rending the page uneditible something needs to be done. We can hope the problem goes away, we can try and find out from developers when these problems have started, or we can change the article so it does render within the allowable time. Personally I think the article is overlong which too many section on generalisations and special cases. These could be split of into other articles. Using {{math}} for simple equations is one way of getting the page to render in time. Splitting up <math> tags does not seem a good solution.

PS on the topic of citation templates Wikid77 is doing good work with help of the community on converting citations to Lua at Module talk:Citation/CS1. These should be almost identical to the current templates and will cure a similar timeout problem on pages with lots of citations.--Salix (talk): 20:52, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if his actions with Lua citation templates are constructive; I know there is consensus that his creation of "cite-quick" templates was a significant change, and should never have been implemented as a replacement for the "standard" citation templates, as it changed formating and lost data. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:37, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

There was no final consensus in long discussions, but some editors even suggested to use {cite_quick} for entire articles, which can work in thousands of articles, because support for all major parameters was added later. It was similar to seeing a new house under construction, then claiming, "This house can never withstand rain," because some windows needed window panes. Total exaggeration. -Wikid77 14:35, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I remember that, but I think his new work on citations is much improved. There are very few changes of formatting, and the changes that are there are clear improvements. (I tried it on Riemann hypothesis as a test case.) There is a minor hangup getting this installed (Lua is broken for pdf downloads) but when these citation changes do roll out I think it will be a good thing. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:52, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

The Lua-based cites run nearly the same speed as the fast markup-based cites, but support all prior parameters plus variant spellings, such as "authorlink" or "author1-link". -Wikid77 14:35, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I've filed a bugzilla ticket, bugzilla:45973, in relation to the issues that have apprently recently appeared with the math caching system. Dragons flight (talk) 02:48, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

• See below: "#Teaching math-tag optimization". -Wikid77 14:35, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

It looks like there is a fix to the bug on cache problems with maths which should be rolled out in the next version. So hopefully rendering speed problems will go away.--Salix (talk): 23:10, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Teaching math-tag optimization

I think the optimization of math-tag text can be taught, so more editors will be aware of the techniques to run 105x faster. Also, other editors have suggested there might be some ways to write multiple math-tag groups in a clearer format. For example, to set $x$ to a rare value "67.5431" rapidly, then just separate that value as {math} font, to format over 100 times faster:

• Old format:  <math>x = 67.5431</math>
• New format: <math>x =</math> {{math|67.5431}}   ←runs 105x faster

To calculate the optimized speed, just divide by 105, so the old format, running $\approx$ 0.6 second, will quicken to 0.6/105 or $\approx$ 0.00571 second to rapidly format with a separated value as {math|67.5431}. The basic principle is that optimized math tags can reformat about 105x times faster than complex math tags, so that is how I had changed article "Ring (mathematics)" to reformat within 19 seconds, rather than the original 54 seconds of the complex math tags. I can sympathize with fears of becoming "math-tag calculus" but the main technique is akin to "substitution by parts" to solve the slow speed by rapid handling of each part of an equation.

The problem, as slow math-tag processing (lack of quick symbol cache images), has persisted for weeks, and there is no guarantee of a quick fix because some complex equations, and most separate symbols, are in fact, using quick symbol cache images, but not every formula, even though some very complex, multi-line equations use rapid cache images. Hence, use more math tags everywhere, rather than italic letters, so write more: "where $f(x)$" not "where f(x)" because the math-tag version of short $f(x)$ is lightning fast. Also, many of the most-complex equations can be left in the original math-tag format, where optimization is not needed everywhere. Instead, just optimize some shorter equations, such as $x=$ 67.5431, until the total reformat time drops below about 20 seconds for the entire article page. These simple rules of "math-tag calculus" can be explained in an essay. We want more people writing the Gamma function as "$\Gamma (z)$" not "Γ(z)" when the optimized math tags can reformat so quickly, using the same font as in the longer equations. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:35, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

To repeat my comment from your user page: please never again edit a Wikipedia math article in the way you have done to Ring and Gamma function. Bug-fixing for certain users is not, in fact, more important than general usability, which you destroyed. --JBL (talk) 14:47, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I see little benefit in having our editors learn a particularly arcane method of tag optimization which renders certain equations difficult to read or edit. It seems that if the current variant runs too slowly, that is a technical problem to be solved by the developers, and editors can continue editing in the style to which we are accustomed, and have been trained to use by years of reading and writing in TeX. Ray^Talk 15:22, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

If this conversion could be automated (which I doubt, because big fences (such as parenthesis) [reasonable], big integrals [perhaps unreasonable], and spacing could not be preserved in the "optimized" version), and the original formula were left in comments, then it would only be a minor inconvenience for editing. If an editor needed to edit the formula, he could kill the "optimized" version and uncomment the reasonable version. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:37, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

For reference:

<math>x = 67.5431</math>

$x=67.5431$

<math>x =</math> {{math|67.5431}}

$x=$ 67.5431

<math>x =</math> <big>{{math|67.5431}}</big>

$x=$ 67.5431

Please do not convert this to a table, because < big> doesn't expand the table row height. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:44, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I sympathize with wanting to make things load faster but you have to keep your priorities right. In the third pillar of WP:5P it says 'Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute.' The only complex things that should be put in are things which are really needed for the purpose of producing an encyclopaedia. Anything else and we detract from the 'anyone can edit'. I would really like people to ensure articles are split a bit sooner as there is a tendency to produce monolithic blocks and that is I believe what we should mainly be trying to do to get things to load faster, after all it is supposed to be mainly web based with links rather than being a book, plus there's room for improvement of course ensuring pages can be cached better. Mathjax has been chosen as the main target for anything more than very simple maths and it will be improved and the hardware for displaying pages will be improved too. Putting in funny tricks is just destructive of Wikipedia's aims. It might help a few people in the short term to load a page faster but tricks like that are very destructive in the long term. Dmcq (talk) 15:54, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

This sort of change should not be done. If an article does not already use the {{math}} template, but instead uses the <math> tag consistently, editors should not change the way the math is formatted. This has been discussed at length on this talk page. Moreover, using both {{math}} and <math> is the "worst of both worlds" - if we were going to use {{math}} we would use it for the entire formula, not just for half of the formula. The ultimate goal, as Dmcg says, is to use MathJax for everything, as which point these tricks are only going to make things worse. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:56, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

This is typographically completely insane. Breaking formulas like this results in a mumbo-jumbo of bits using different fonts and sizes, it destroys proper spacing (such as around relation symbols), let alone the fact that the resulting markup is unreadable and unmaintainable. It also appears from bugzilla:45973 that the bug which prompted all this discussion has already been fixed, so a proper remedy should come in a reasonable time-frame.—Emil J. 16:06, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the others above, especially Dmcq--we must maintain the ability to easily read and edit math formulas. The recent slow rendering was a regression and a fix is already in the works. But even if this were a permanent problem, the speed optimization strategy you are proposing is the wrong kind of optimization--forcing editors to maintain template spaghetti code and forcing users to puzzle out math equations with ransom-note typography. A proper optimization, from a software engineering perspective, should be done behind the scenes and be transparent to the users. TeX can process many pages of complex math equations per second on a modern machine and caching eliminates even that delay. It's very likely this is fixable in mediawiki, rather than forcing a language change. Start optimizing mediawiki first and save breaking the user interface as a last, desperate resort. --Mark viking (talk) 16:39, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Since this came up I thought I'd point to an example of a case where splitting the formula inside the math tag is exactly the right thing to do: [1]. (Yes, they could be coded as html but math makes them more consistent with the other formulae in the article.) —David Eppstein (talk) 07:20, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

That may not even count as splitting a formula, since they are naturally two formulae to begin with. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:26, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Efficient performance is an important issue, but individual local fixes for it are imho not a good idea. Such needs things need to be fixed by improving that global rendering process (mediawiki software) rather than amending/changing the existing syntax. Other than that imho an easy to use universal way of handling math formulas is important, in particular for occasional editors. The more complicated we make that process by additonal tags and style requirements, the incovenient it becomes of editors in will in doubt drive them away. For that reason I personally already dislike the existing additional accepted templates and I don't mind to live to with a slightly less than optimal display if it allows for universal way for handling formulas. --Kmhkmh (talk) 08:17, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Agreed that mixing {{math}} and <math> is not effective... very unsightly/awkward practically and visually and it's so much easier to just use one or the other. M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 20:44, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Believe my experience, mixed {{math}} and MathJax looks fine when the former uses MathJax fonts. I have them installed locally and hence need only tweaks in the personal CSS. To make it an easily accessible option for registered users, Wikipedia needs class="texhtml" to use the same client-downloadable fonts as MathJax uses – it would allow to conserve a great amount of client-side CPU time and other resources. I could request a sysop at testwiki: and experiment with it there, but, without an actual interest of Wikipedia users, it would be worthless. Unfortunately, many attempts to discuss {{math}} within the range of WP:MATH degenerated to a pointless flame where a loud minority shouts that {{math}} and so will die (or must die), and no solution becomes possible. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 21:36, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi all,

It looks like the problem went away. Of course, the problem didn't go away by itself; it has been fixed according to [2]. My thanks to all who tried to help. Time to go back to math. -- Taku (talk) 23:55, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Renaming discussion regarding the article on Element (category theory)

The proposed renaming being discussed at Talk:Element (category theory)#Requested move may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Favonian (talk) 21:11, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Transformation

Please see WT:PHYSICS, where a discussion on creating an article on "transformation" is occurring. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 21:41, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Confusing wording in section "Confidence Interval"

This section refers to "chi-square deviate with lower tail area p and degrees of freedom n". From googling and wikipediaing, "deviate" isn't a well defined term. Also an authoritative notation for 2-parameter chi-squared distribution is difficult to find online, and I was under the impression that p is the area to the right of a threshold. Here, p is referred to as the lower tail area. Is this in fact the case? Craniator (talk) 23:16, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Which article do you mean? In "Confidence interval" I do not see such words. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 06:46, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Poisson distribution#Confidence interval, it seems. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:56, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Accordingly, I move the above comment to the talk page there. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 16:34, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Gen'ichirō Sunouchi

Does anyone know enough about the mathematician Gen'ichirō Sunouchi to add some evidence of notability to his biography? — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:19, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

He has a solid publication record sufficient to place him beyond any AfD. I added some of the most popular titles. Tkuvho (talk) 14:46, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

A collection of papers by some of the heavyweights in the field was dedicated to his 60th birthday (Tohoku Math J. 1972). Perhaps this is evidence of notability. Tkuvho (talk) 14:52, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

This is usually considered suggestive but not definitive for notability. In any case it should be added to the article.

Fermat 1607 birth?

Recent changes at Pierre de Fermat place Fermat's birth as "probably in 1607". There is recent scholarship claiming that the traditional date of 1601 is incorrect, and the correct date is 1607, but I am not sure to what extent this has been generally accepted. Tkuvho (talk) 14:30, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

The new user's recent edit concludes with the words "That's all nonsense. It's equal." (see adequality). Tkuvho (talk) 13:36, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

The source regarding the date of birth seems legit, but apparently not undisputed or generally accepted yet. The German and the French wikipedia therefore simply state the first decade of the 17th century as (approximate) date of birth. The French one also has a footnote explaining the situation in more detail. The MacTutor also doesn't side for a particular date ([3]). I found one recent number theory book that has adopted the new date but also other recent ones still carrying the old date. All in all it seems reasonable for the time being not to pick one date but give both or simply the decade.

The other unsourced other edit and its language don't instill confidence though. I#d remove that in doubt.--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:12, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

An initial publication for the 1607 date appears to be Barner, Klaus (2001). “How old did Fermat become?,” NTM: International Journal for History and Ethics of Natural Sciences, Technology and Medicine (New series) 8(4), 209-228. Cited by Friedrich Katscher [4]. Texts that have accepted this argument include Mollin, Fundamental Number Theory with Application (2008) [5] (also cites [6]); Lemmermeyer, Reciprocity Laws (2000) [7]; Dauben & Scriba (2002) Writing the History of Mathematics [8]. Deltahedron (talk) 07:26, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

An experienced editor just deleted (appropriately) some material that the new editor (Barner himself) added to the adequality page. I am concerned though that the new editor might misinterpet this. Can someone place an explanatory note at his userpage explaining notation such as POV, as well as the idea that a wiki article is not seeking the ultimate truth but rather documenting what reliable sources said about the topic? His edits go in the direction of enforcing a single interpretation (which happens to be his own) and show an insufficient awareness of wiki rules. Tkuvho (talk) 09:02, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Some further comments by the new editor at Talk:Adequality are a bit disappointing, since he describes the work of both Enrico Giusti and Fermat historian Michael Sean Mahoney as "absurd". On the other hand, this is a rare historian of mathematics that actually volunteered to work on a wiki article. If someone has an effective way of explaining wiki policy this may be helpful in the long run. Tkuvho (talk) 14:13, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

The size of adequality more than quadrupled in the past few minutes. An extra pair of eyes would be helpful. Tkuvho (talk) 17:31, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

The new section Adequality#Analysis of "adequality" meaning in Fermat's work smells like a copyright violation to me. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:58, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Yet another controversial edit here. Tkuvho (talk) 15:07, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

There is a further deletion of sourced material here. I would appreciate input from other editors. Tkuvho (talk) 09:50, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

WP 1.0

The titles in tables for the individual subject area ratings (Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Table) link to historical pages (e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Algebra) Where would be a better place to send the link in the titles? Regards, Illia Connell (talk) 21:59, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I think that just removing the links would work, there is no natural place to link the tables to. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:50, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Is this something I can just go ahead and do, or will the bot overwrite the change next time it updates the table? Illia Connell (talk) 21:08, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

an "arguments" page for pi?

There is a lot of activity at Talk:Pi not really related to improving the page; see for example an anti-pi song post here. At 0.999... we have a special "arguments" page where entries not relating to improving the page can be moved. Should this be created for pi, as well? Tkuvho (talk) 15:43, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

That anti-pi song post actually was relevant to something that had been talked about to improve the page. Sorry I didn't get around to elaborating on it. Some people had suggested, during the discussions about tau and pi, that it would be good to add a section explaining how there was nothing special mathematically about pi specifically as opposed to some other variant on the number, like 2pi, or pi/2. If you listened to the song, it addressed other misconceptions people have about pi. Like that pi is very unique in not having a finite decimal representation. The song doesn't bash pi. It expresses some of the same things I've heard editors here express. That's why I said it was pretty good and thought I'd share it. A section on "Popular Misconceptions About Pi" might make a great addition to the article. --Joseph Lindenberg (talk) 08:01, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

I guess it would be okay to have such a subpage. Another option is to to just collapse the section like this:

{{Collapse top|title=This section is not related to improving the pi article}}

.... discussion not related to improving article

{{Collapse bottom}}

--Noleander (talk) 15:58, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Collapsing is recommended in WP:TPO. There is probably a policy against having a page for off-topic posts. RockMagnetist (talk) 20:33, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Pythagorean triple

There's a big pile of edits going on at Pythagorean triple (after a big pile of similar tldr at the talk page) by C. W. Vugs that could probably use attention by other mathematics editors. I'm not sure whether or not it's original research but it's written in a telegraphic notation-heavy style that I'm not convinced is appropriate for the article. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:56, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Reversion was definitely the way to go -- I didn't see anything in those edits that looked like an improvement to the article. --JBL (talk) 21:50, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

The Pythagorean triple#Proof of Euclid's formula does not seem to deal correctly with the possibility that a and b are both odd (and c is even). No proof is given that this cannot be true for a Pythagorean triple, as far as I can see. JRSpriggs (talk) 21:57, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Variational method

The usage of "Variational method" is up for discussion, see talk:Variational method -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 01:06, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Eyes needed at FLT

Eyes needed at Fermat's Last Theorem where IP contributor 37.190.220.127 (talk · contribs) is repeatedly adding and re-adding crackpot material. Maybe a case can be made for semi-protection of the article ? Gandalf61 (talk) 10:48, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I semiprotected it for three days. —David Eppstein (talk) 14:56, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Excellent - thank you. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:34, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Wilf–Zeilberger pair

I can't make sense of the example in the article on Wilf–Zeilberger pairs. Even if I suspend disbelief for a moment and accept that the two given functions are a pair, I don't see how that pair would verify the given identity. AxelBoldt (talk) 01:30, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree, I cannot see it either. The example looks incomplete as well and the equation for the proof certificate is different than that of the Tefera article. I added the Tefera definition of the proof certificate to the preceding section, but the example needs work. MathWorld has a nice example using the binomial theorem, but I wouldn't know how to use it without committing plagiarism. --Mark viking (talk) 03:54, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

math template cat hierarchy

Category:Mathematics source templates and Category:Mathematics referencing resources are sub-cats of each other. Could someone from this project figure out the correct hierarchy? Thanks, Illia Connell (talk) 04:15, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

They appear to be equivalent, and should probably be merged. I'm not crazy about either name - "source templates" is a little unclear while a "resource" is a vague alternative to "template". I suggest Category:Mathematics referencing templates. RockMagnetist (talk) 14:51, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

On second thought, I notice that Category:Mathematics source templates is one of many similarly named cats in Category:Specific-source templates. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:53, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

The best "simple" fix I see is to remove the "resources" category from the "templates" category and leave the "templates" category in the "resources" category. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:04, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

That would leave several files in both the parent cat and subcat. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:54, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I've now listed this at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 March 29 as a proposed merge of source templates into referencing resources.--Salix (talk): 09:08, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

LaTeX style & web software

Somewhere on the web there is software intended to provide to people who don't know how to code math notation in TeX the TeX code for things that they create by pointing-and-clicking. The TeX code that they get involves things like this:

\left( {{{x}_{0}}}^{{2}} \right)

where one could just write this:

(x_0^2)

This shows up a lot on math.stackexchange.com, but this morning I found some of it in a Wikipedia article. This kind of thing is a disservice to (1) people editing Wikipedia articles in which this appears, and (2) anyone getting impressions of how to write this sort of code from what they find in Wikipedia articles that they edit. Could one create a bot that would identify suspected instances of this sort of thing and compile a list of them to be looked at? Michael Hardy (talk) 14:35, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

New tessellation article

I created a new article, Catoptric tessellation. I am not very familiar with the rating process for mathematical articles though. Any help in rating and improving the article is welcome. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 14:17, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Also, that article could really use some images. I already asked at the illustration workshop, but I understand that this might be a difficult request for people unfamiliar with the topic. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 14:38, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Nice start - I added the {{maths rating}} banner to the talk page, anyone is welcome to change the settings. I could produce images, feel free to detail on that article's/mine/your talk page, but they would be pseudo-3d only, like this --->

and I'm short of time right now (exams in a month)... will try and draw some as and when. M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 18:17, 30 March 2013 (UTC)