Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2013/May

Space Wars

Poincaré group

[1] Sadly, editing patterns usual for nationalistic (and other) PoV pushers apparently are acceptable even in purely scientific articles. This editor not only summarily undid the edit I made for no less than 30 minutes, not only did not he put any notice to the talk: Poincaré group, but his edit summary did not point to any concrete problem with an edit consisting of a lot of changes. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 04:34, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Y'all seem to be working it out just fine. You can also start the talk section by responding to the revert's comments. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 01:53, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

To where do shapes from Euclidean geometry belong?

The article Euclidean geometry should explain the history and traditional methods. But where should actual things from Euclidean spaces be listed: in Euclidean space #Geometric shapes? Or there are better suggestions?

BTW, there is a list of geometric shapes which, as can be seen in its preamble, is devoted to plane shapes only. I feel that the adjective “geometric” is a misnomer in such case. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:54, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Compounding the problem, there is a List of mathematical shapes which would be better named List of geometric shapes. Perhaps it should be renamed, and the current List of geometric shapes moved to List of planar geometric shapes. RockMagnetist (talk) 17:31, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

BTW neither henagon nor digon are actually “planar”. IMHO list of two-dimensional geometric shapes would be better. I go to create “list of shapes” as a list of list, for both mathematical lists and not so. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:20, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Is Euclidean space relevant to the definition of a manifold?

Two editors object against replacement of “Euclidean space” with “coordinate space” and “real coordinate space” in the Manifold article on pretexts that complex and p-adic manifolds are unheard of, that Euclidean space is a more familiar concept, etc. I do not think that pushing the “Euclidean space” link wherever a reader is expected to be more familiar with this concept is a good practice. See talk: Manifold #"Euclidean space" or "coordinate space"?. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:16, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

“Vector” redirects

I retargeted 10 redirects previously bound to Euclidean vector to other targets. Maybe, hatnotes or some content should be added? Or some of misleading redirects were missed? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 15:15, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I redirected Vector component back to Euclidean vector#Decomposition (a different section than previously). A reader who needs information on what a vector component is probably needs a less abstract and more directly applicable treatment than is found in Basis (linear algebra). I will fix Vector components and Component (vector) to point to the same place for consistency. I added a "more info" link pointing to Basis (linear algebra).--Srleffler (talk) 01:07, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Going over the rest of your list:

• Physical vector and Vector (physics): I'm not sure that Vector (mathematics and physics) is a better choice than Euclidean vector. If someone is linking to "physical vector" they most likely want the article on Euclidean vectors.
• Vectors and Scalars: I don't have a big problem with this change. Neither target is very good.
• Vector addition, Vector subtraction, and Vector sum: I think Vector space#Definition is an inferior target in this case, for the same reason as for vector component: a reader who needs a link to these concepts likely needs a less abstract introduction to the topic.

These changes are typical of a problem I have seen with mathematics articles on Wikipedia: too damn much of the material is written by and for mathematicians, so that concepts that can be explained simply and directly are instead explained with great generality and abstraction, using concepts and methods that are beyond the level of some readers who might be interested in the topic, and who would have the background to understand it if it were approached differently. The most rigorous explanation is not always the best one pedagogically. Vector components, addition and subtraction are suitable topics for a high school senior, and the directly-linked articles should be at that level, with links to more advanced treatments available from the simpler articles.

I haven't changed any of the other links yet, so we can talk this through first.--Srleffler (talk) 01:32, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

These changes are typical of a problem I have seen with scientific articles on Wikipedia: too damn much accommodation to “what a reader wants to see”, at the expense of precision. It is not especially important for Vector addition/Vector sum and Vector subtraction, but it is quite important for “components”, because these redirects suggest that these are namely Euclidean vectors which have components, not any others. I would prefer to see Physical vector and Vector (physics) as red links (if only because 4-vectors exist), although we should consult WP:WikiProject Physics about this two targets. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 05:48, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I've reverted pending consensus. Vector component is definitely not better explained by Euclidean vector#Decomposition than by Basis (linear algebra). When a reader is required to know the technical details of how decompositions are performed before the formalism of an article becomes accessible, the linking of the article is often the only clue of where to go to decipher things. A simplification is also not appropriate as a redirect, because redirecting implies the article that would be about that subject is under another title, and Euclidean vector#Decomposition is not the article about vector components. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 09:48, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Take another look at the two articles. A reader who is encountering vector components for the first time in high school or first year university is going to find the introduction to Basis (linear algebra) completely impenetrable. In an encyclopedia it is important to treat each topic at the simplest level possible (which varies from topic to topic), before moving into more complicated or abstract aspects of the topic. --Srleffler (talk) 02:23, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not important to treat things at the simplest level possible, it's important to treat them comprehensively. Encyclopedias are not textbooks. Basis (linear algebra) may be impenetrable, but some things are impenetrable because they're new concepts that you have to take the time to wrap your head around. Having learned from it at high school age, I would say it's semipermeable. Now that it has that nice picture, it's a lot less work. Now, I would be mentally impoverished if all the Wikipedia articles I read during that time were subject to every editor's idea of the best way to dumb it down, what I don't need to know, and what my purposes for the information should be. I actually didn't need to understand Euclidean vector components and vector decompositions the most, I needed to know what a basis is and linear combination are. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 14:21, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Simplicity and comprehensiveness are not mutually exclusive. We just need to arrange material and links so that a reader is more likely to find simpler material first, if that is appropriate based on the link they clicked. It doesn't make sense to throw a reader looking for information on vector components to an article on a much more general concept, where the first paragraph of the introduction assumes knowledge of half a dozen concepts that may not be familiar. A high school student who has encountered vectors in physics and math class would be immediately put off by Basis (linear algebra). To even get past the first paragraph, you have to understand the concepts of linear independence, linear combination, vector spaces, free modules, and spanning sets. None of these concepts are likely to be familiar. Redirecting vector component to this article is totally crazy.--Srleffler (talk) 22:09, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I changed vector addition and subtraction to simply redirect to vector space because the operations are conceptually motivated throughout, as a function of vector spaces being algebras. I left vector sum because it might get confused with elements of the direct sum. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 09:55, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

It should not be necessary to explain vector spaces in order to explain the concept of vector addition and subtraction. This is a bad redirect.--Srleffler (talk) 02:23, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

What? That's all a vector space is, its addition and scalar multiplication. All those figures in vector space are dedicated to explaining what vector addition and scalar multiplication mean intuitively. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 14:10, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

You're missing the point. Vector space is a more abstract concept than vector addition and multiplication. Start with the simple; move to the abstract later. You probably didn't learn about vector spaces before you learned how to add and subtract vectors. Why would you expect a reader looking for information on vector addition to have to master this much more difficult subject first?--Srleffler (talk) 22:09, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I support all of the original changes. I'm not sure vector component, component (vector), etc. (in the singular) have a perfect redirect target. Does this mean a component of a vector in a basis, or is it the scalar projection of a vector in some direction (as the term "component" is sometimes used)? Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:33, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't at present have a position on the current status of things but I would like to register a preference that all links under discussion are chosen in opposition to the principle "too damn much accommodation to “what a reader wants to see”, at the expense of precision."" -- most of these links should go to the most elementary, and emphatically not the most general, treatment of the subject in question. If we're not presenting material a reader at the appropriate level (say, a bright high school student) can understand then we're doing things wrong. --JBL (talk) 14:05, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I would oppose redirecting Vector component to Basis (linear algebra).. I would prefer a redirect to somewhere within Euclidean vector (per JBL). There is also the article Vector projection (to which Scalar projection should probably redirect). Mark M (talk) 14:33, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

“Vector projection” presently has a strong Euclidean bias. If one can reformulate the definition in purely affine terms, specifying that orthogonal projections are a particular case, then it would be a solution. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:03, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why it should be done in terms of affine geometry. Is there evidence that this notion of vector projection is more common? Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:10, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

It should be done in terms of affine geometry because any orthogonal projection is an affine projection, but any skew (affine) projection is not an orthogonal projection; I believe you knew it yourself. Why should I find evidences that the affine projection “is more common”? Or let us rewrite the percentage article in terms of money on the pretext that this notion of percentage is the most common. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 10:16, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm unaware of any mandate that articles should immediately take the most general perspective possible. A more general notion of projection is already covered at Projection (linear algebra). The article under discussion is about the vector projection in elementary Euclidean geometry. Why is it that you think that readers will expect an article about affine geometry when they type "vector projection" into the search bar? Of the 5000 available on Google books using the term "vector projection", only 36 also include the word "affine". And even in most of those few references, the vector projection is regarded as an Euclidean concept. Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:20, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

It just means that “projection (linear algebra)” is a possible target for redirecting “component (vector)”, but (the present) “vector projection” is not. Bases do exist in spaces which provide no orthogonality. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:29, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I think there's something you're still not understanding. We're meant to be a general encyclopedia, and need to accommodate a wide array of readers, many of whom lack mathematical sophistication but for whom an article on Euclidean vector projection is useful. It is extremely uncommon in the literature to use the exact term "vector projection" to refer to anything but the standard Euclidean notion. I'm not arguing that there aren't more general concepts of projection available; for that there are other articles: projection (linear algebra), projection (mathematics). What I'm asking is, what is the evidence that the exact phrase "vector projection" is used to refer to one of these more general notions? If it is not used in this manner, then clearly we should not take the more general perspective. If there are sources that do use it in ----- WP:WEIGHT to attach to those sources. Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:37, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Another fine example of the problem of too much focus on the needs of mathematicians. It should not be necessary for a reader to figure out what affine geometry is to get some information on vector components. Vector components is a high-school level topic. Affine geometry is not. --Srleffler (talk) 22:09, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I am with Srleffler and JBL. Those redirects should go to the elementary articles.

As for Srleffler's remark that "...too damn much of the material is written by and for mathematicians...", Euclidean vector certainly is not written for mathematicians, neither is vector space for that matter. We just need to figure out how to redirect appropriate audiences to appropriate articles. Mct mht (talk) 10:53, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

As there is clearly no consensus for the recent changes in redirect targets, I have reverted the redirects relating to vector components, vector addition/subtraction, and physical vectors. Of special note is Vector (physics) where I disambiguated all article links to that page and found that every one of them intended Euclidean vector. I left Vector theory and Vectors and Scalars pointing to Vector space. I added a "more info" link to Vector space at Euclidean vector#Addition and subtraction, for readers who are looking for a more thorough treatment of the topic.--Srleffler (talk) 01:58, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

---

Please, contribute to this discussion. In short: a WP:CONCEPTDAB article about vectors could become a long-term compromise. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:42, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Describing vectors simply?

Not related to DABs and all, but there were comments above about basis (linear algebra)/vector space as "impenetrable" or overly abstract... To this end I quickly cobbled two diagrams as you can see on talk:basis (linear algebra)#Diagrams and talk:vector space#Diagrams, if case they're any diagrammatic help... Regards, M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 17:26, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I think change of basis needs that illustration. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 12:02, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I'll take the liberty of adding them (after slight modifications) to that article. Thank you for pointing this out. M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 22:55, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Euclidean space, Euclidean vector, and inner product space

There is some overlap between these topics. For example, all three should consider the concept of angle. To which extent should first two articles rely on each other? To which extent should both rely on “inner product space”? This is also related to the question immediately above. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:49, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

BTW, I just discovered Euclidean subspace, yet another article full of abominations: see talk: Euclidean subspace. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 06:50, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Marilyn's Cross marked with Template:Hoax

An editor has listed Marilyn's Cross in Category:Wikipedia suspected hoax articles. Since this appears to be the relevant WikiProject, someone in this project might want to participate in the discussion (if you have not already done so). Hyacinth (talk) 21:16, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

See the discussion two sections above about this article. It is not clear that it is formally a hoax, but it appears that the author may have given her own name to a common knot and then wrote an article about it. If so, then it would qualify as original research, probably non-notable, and possibly redundant. I am not knowledgeable enough about knot theory to make a definitive call on OR and redundancy, but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of independent reliable sources for this article. --Mark viking (talk) 21:53, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Now renamed to L10a140 link, and the "Marilyn" part greatly de-emphasized. AnonMoos (talk) 13:59, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Hurwitz's theorem and related articles

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
There are discussions taking place about the article Hurwitz's theorem (normed division algebras) and the redirect Hurwitz algebra. A Hurwitz algebra is synonymous with a composition algebra on which there is an existing article (except that a few authors do not require composition algebras to be unital). However, it is claimed that Hurwitz algebra should not redirect to composition algebra but to the related Hurwitz's theorem (normed division algebras) on the grounds that composition algebra is "inadequate" [2], and "There is no content in the Composition algebra article" [3]. Comments of expert editors would be helpful at Talk:Hurwitz_algebra and Talk:Hurwitz's theorem (normed division algebras). Deltahedron (talk) 17:09, 29 April 2013 (UTC) Update: Hurwitz's theorem (normed division algebras) has just been moved to Hurwitz's theorem (composition algebras). Deltahedron (talk) 18:16, 29 April 2013 (UTC) Further update: anyone looking for the discussions will need to look at both Talk:Hurwitz's theorem (composition algebras) (plural) and Talk:Hurwitz's theorem (composition algebra) (singular) as something odd seems to have happened to the redirections. Deltahedron (talk) 19:35, 29 April 2013 (UTC) As you have noticed, the other editor is a bit prickly, but it is very likely that what they have said is accurate (and he has written a large number of high quality articles). You will get much better results by asking questions and considering the replies. Johnuniq (talk) 03:22, 30 April 2013 (UTC) I cannot see that this complaint will serve any purpose, except that Deltahedron might discover that I am among the main content contributors to mathematics articles on wikipedia. I don't accept his claims, which contradict what can be found in standard textbooks. My own view, after having seen him "in action", is that he is not very much in touch with this subject and is being pedantic, while showing almost no interest in adding any serious content. So far in his relatively short wikipedia existence, he has created several short stubs. He apparently has no experience with extended content. Even professionally trained mathematicians have to use sources, in-line citations, etc. Wikipedia is not a source and cannot invent its own rules for mathematical naming, particularly for interdisciplinary subjects such as this one, which is extensively used in geometry and analysis. On the talk page of the article I mention three sources—Jacobson, Faraut & Koranyi and Springer & Veldkamp. All of these are solid sources. What I have written conforms to those sources. In addition, apart from looking at many other books and articles, I read through the long and fascinating book of Daniel Shapiro, essentially on just this topic. Shapiro gives a very detailed account of the history in the zeroth chapter. What I have written in the article reflects that history quite closely and accurately. In particular in his second posthumous article, which I have read and which was icidentally proofread by L. E. Dickson prior to publiscation, Hurwitz introduces the representation of the real Clifford algebra that appeared in later treatments (e.g. Eckmann, Lee, Chevalley). If I were less busy with symmetric cones, the article that required a detailed account of Euclidean Hurwitz algebras, I would summarise that zeroth chapter in the current article. Much of the material is already there in the main body, but it would do no harm to mention the more general Hurwitz matrix systems and the corresponding problem for composition of forms. I also think that a "further directions" section right at the end could be worthwhile. Shapiro discusses the applications to vector fields on spheres, Bott generators in K-theory, composition of quadratic forms in arbitrary characteristic, generalizations of composition algebras, algebraic K-theory, and so on. A short summary of what can be found in this long and fascinating book would be nice. It also has Conway's treatment of composition algebras (a sort of Archimedeans talk I assume). There are other similar general sources, e.g. the AMS Notices article by Eckmann. Worrying about whether the octonions are a real division algebra or a composition algebra is hardly the point. When Jordan, von Neumann and Wigner used Hurwitz's work in 1934, it was through the system of Clifford matrices that Hurwitz defined. These mathematical physicists did not use the terminology "Jordan algebras", but the quantum mechanics term "r-numbers". I have no idea why Deltahedron has become side-tracked by these minor and trifling MOS-issues. He appears to be making very few substantial content contributions. I have encouraged him to get some experience of writing an extended article so that he has a clearer idea of the relation between the main body of an article and its lede. That would clarify how we rely on sources for writing wikipedia articles, even in mathematics. Bristling, acerbic or whatever you like, those are the rules. A brief look at WP:DTTR might also be an idea. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 11:29, 30 April 2013 (UTC) I don't really care one way or the other. It's particularly hard for a non-expert to get any kind of informed opinion when the discussion is spread over so many different pages. Let me say that both editors involved might do best to step back from the matter of what should redirect where. It simply is not a big issue either way, and it's certainly not worthy of User:Mathsci personalizing it so much. Enough time has been wasted on this trifling question, time that could have been spent far more productively. My perhaps naive view is: Composition algebra should have a link to Hurwitz's theorem (composition algebras) and vice versa. If a reader lands at the "wrong" article via the redirect, then it should be made as easy as possible for the reader to find the "right" article. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:07, 30 April 2013 (UTC) Yes, both articles have been linked to each other since the second one was created. I do object to my time being wasted on these trivial matters, when I am in the middle of editing. Mathsci (talk) 12:51, 30 April 2013 (UTC) After all this it will be obvious why I have decided to retire from the project. Deltahedron (talk) 18:35, 1 May 2013 (UTC) You know, it doesn't have to end like this. (of course, that would apply to many Shakespeare stuff too.) -- Taku (talk) 00:22, 2 May 2013 (UTC) <comments of community banned user redacted - please do not restore per this arbcom motion> I regret Deltahedron decision, and I hope he will reconsider his decision and come back to the project. WP has not enough good editors in mathematics. I particularly regret that this decision is caused by the inadequate behavior and the personal attacks of another experienced editor (auto proclamed "main content contributor in mathematics") that systematically breaks WP rules to push his point of view. The remaining of this post is devoted to clarify my appreciation of Mathsci's behavior. I have just restored Castello Orsini-Odescalchi's post that user:Mathsci has removed with summary edit: "WP:DENY see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Echigo mole". This WP:SPI concerning User:Castello Orsini-Odescalchi has been started by user:Mathsci himself, and, apparently Mathsci considers that this allows him to censure another editor. When I wrote this sentence and I reverted Mathsci's edit, the decision to consider Castello Orsini-Odescalchi's account as a sockpuppet and to block it was not yet taken. D.Lazard (talk) 17:11, 2 May 2013 (UTC) Castello Orsini-Odescalchi's post draws our attention on another break of WP:TALKO by Mathsci, who has removed as personal attack from talk:Deltahedron the explanations by Deltahedron of his decision. The removed text does not contain any personal attack, only a description of Mathsci behavior on WP. On the other hand, above Mathsci's post is full of personal attacks ("he is not very much in touch with this subject and is being pedantic, while showing almost no interest in adding any serious content", "He appears to be making very few substantial content contributions"). About this last attack, Mathsci seems to consider that deep mathematics are more important in WP than encyclopedic content, as I am unable to understand "substantial content" otherwise than "deep mathematics content". About the content of the discussion, I have no opinion, or more exactly, I have an opinion that is similar to that of User:Sławomir Biały. However Mathsci's posts suggest that he want to deny to other editors, less good mathematicians than himself, the right to edit his own articles. WP:OWN is another rule that Mathsci has forgotten. D.Lazard (talk) 10:51, 2 May 2013 (UTC) Castello Orsini-Odescalchi (talk · contribs · logs · block log) is now an indefinitely blocked sockpuppet of the commumity banned user Echigo mole (talk · contribs · logs · block log), a persistent wikihounder who has repeatedly trolled on this page. Because of his disruption (including to mathematics articles and also here), there is an arbcom motion about not restoring or enabling the edits of this particular user. His purpose is to mislead people with malicious comments and that has been going on since 2009 (so about 4 years). It is a case of WP:LTA. Because he socks so persistently, the WP:SPI archives have two separate pages. He has trolled here many times, for example as Southend sofa (talk · contribs · logs · block log) and South Jutland County (talk · contribs · logs · block log). So as far as this sock troll is concerned, please do not feed him. There are no ownership issues involved here. Deltahedron over-reacted and misunderstaood the purpose of a lede. In the case of an extended article, rather than a stub, it should summarise the article in a way that is accessible to the reader. Objections about a trivial naming issue (composition algebra or normed division algebra) were raised even before the initial draft of the article had been completed. Deltahedron then changed the lede so that it bore no relation to the article (a simple redirect that I changed into a fully fledged article). Clifford algebras and representations of finite groups, etc, are almost always first studied or taught over the real or complex numbers. Taking arbitrary coefficients can be done later, but that is rarely done in the first instance. So when the body of an article is about real vector spaces and real quadratic forms, coming from inner products in this case, there is no reason to change the lede to cover fields of arbitrary characteristic. As far as I could tell, Deltahedron's contributions to the lede were unsourced, apart from his own thoughts together with references to other WP articles. However, there were sources, as mentioned above, and it is those that were used (particularly Shapiro) for any kind of historical remarks. Back in 2006 there was a way of writing mathematical articles without sources or inline citations. That is no longer the case. There is no reason to editorialise or make anachronistic remarks in the lede (that's WP:OR and WP:SYNTH), instead of summarising the article. As far as I am aware no content was actually being discussed. I realise that in the world of real or complex semisimple Jordan algebras, R, C, H and O play the same role as division algebras in the classical theory of central simple algebras. Fhis is a tiny part of a much larger theory which I decided to detach when writing it, since it is one of the few self-contained parts of the general theory (it took just 1 or 2 days to write within several weeks for the rest). As TauyaMurata has pointed out, Deltahedron has over-reacted. TakuyaMurata has edited some of the new set of articles, all of them related to Hermitian symmetric spaces. Mathsci (talk) 12:09, 2 May 2013 (UTC) I'm frequently seeing Mathsci's name in places like WP:AN and WP:ANI[4] He seems to have a certain attraction to trouble. I've not paid that much attention to these cases but if his actions result in the loss of a good mathematical editor then that is an overall loss to the project. Some of the discussion at Talk:Hurwitz algebra do show some signs of [{WP:OWN]] "My advice is to wait until I have finished adding the content on Jordan algebras." Our documents are live so anyone can add content at any time. It mathsci wants to work on a draft in userspace that fine. I would not say this is a bad example of WP:OWN but does show a failure of working together. I'm also concern at how rapidly mathsci removes content critical of him, it might be better to let others do this.--Salix (talk): 12:32, 2 May 2013 (UTC) You're "frequently seeing my name"? Really? Go and substantiate things instead of inventing this kind of nonsensical blather. Have you looked at my content editing history? There is no recent block log but a long list of specialist mathematics articles. So we have your wild and inane accusations, which were written without having checked anything, like a small child. Why are you attacking a major content contributor? What is true is that a number of users have been banned or site-banned from wikipedia for reasons unconnected with mathematics article. Many of them have made false accusations concering me. The banned users include all the sockpuppets of Mikemikev and Echigo mole. Others include Captain Occam, TrevelyanL85A2, Zeromus1 and Ferahgo the Assassin. Another recent contributor to this page was the editor Boodlepounce, who now turns out to be a sockpuppet of Echigo mole, a community banned user. Echigo mole, either posing as Algebraic Jordanian or the tongue-tied buffoon Boodlepounce, was out of his depth in these postgraduate mathematics articles. Both sockpuppets are now blocked. That is how the cookie crumbles. Mathsci (talk) 21:04, 5 May 2013 (UTC) The wiki (namely, Wikipedia) is, generally, a rough media. A user (namely, Deltahedron) who apparently collapsed after a couple of personal attacks from another single user, probably, would not live here for long in any other occurrence. But the recent development shows that our community can (and should) deflect Mathsci’s efforts to disregard and shun any criticism of his edits and attitudes, which rises in Wikipedia from time to time. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:35, 2 May 2013 (UTC) What does the community think about this removal of an ambox? Anybody can certify that I tried to discuss the matter (the link is accessible from the complementary ambox at composition algebra), not just pushed my agenda. What should I do: to push [rollback] until the opponent started to explain his position? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:17, 5 May 2013 (UTC) Please read Faraut & Koranyi. It doesn't take a lot of intelligence to work out that Joe Wolf and Adam Koranyi have been among the major contributors to Hermitian symmetric spaces. My impression from the current lamentable state of the article Jordan algebra is that there is a huge lack of expertise in this area on wikipedia. Sad but true. Your own comments are an example of that. As another example, take the quadratic representation of Jordan algebras or even the definition of quadratic Jordan algebra, a redlink. I have added some content on that in symmetric cone#Quadratic representation. But it cannot be found anywhere else on wkipedia. That is the problem. If you can't be bothered to read Faraut & Koranyo, why make any comment at all? All you're doing is making malicious and sneering remarks about a major contributor. Please stop it. Mathsci (talk) 21:19, 5 May 2013 (UTC) Except for unexplained removal of my subsection header (which facilitated editing), proposals to learn so-and-such sources about a dozen of related concepts, and usual personal remarks, will we see something about specifically composition algebra and Hurwitz algebra (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) today? I repeat: the composition algebra article is short of content, while the Hurwitz's theorem (composition algebras) discusses properties of composition algebras unspecific to the real numbers field. I would willingly learn what aforementioned Wolf, Faraut, and Koranyi (or Koranyo?) think about concretely this matter, even in Mathsci’s paraphrase, but I do not see any reason to divert attention to Jordan algebras and related red links to resolve this concrete conflict. It arose about redirecting "Hurwitz algebra" to either "composition algebra" or "Hurwitz's theorem". Incnis Mrsi (talk) 06:57, 6 May 2013 (UTC) Comments by suspected sockpuppetes removed.--Salix (talk): 07:32, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Direct relation

Should the article titled direct relation exist? Or should it redirect to a section of proportionality (mathematics)? Or something else? I imagine some people can think of meanings of this term in mathematics other than direct proportionality. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:01, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Redirect to proportionality (mathematics)#Direct proportionality seems like a simple and effective solution but others are welcome to disagree. M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 00:25, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. Also, what's up with the italicization in the lead of that section? --JBL (talk) 01:38, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

The genesis of this article is interesting; this edit completely changed the topic. Should the old version of the article (about something much vaguer) exist? --JBL (talk) 01:43, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Multiplicative calculus

Multiplicative calculus is the work of a single editor and is essentially a redux of the deleted non-Newtonian calculus. It has recently grown to a whopping 59000 bits. Somebody should keep an eye on this. Tkuvho (talk) 10:30, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

I do wish they would just write that Multiplicative calculus article well instead of having a scrappy intro and justification and turning it into a dumping ground for every reference and trivial fact. That sort of thing is uninformative and deters anyone else from contributing or improving. And sticking in references elsewhere in Wikipedia which are just advocating the methods instead of directly relevant ones cited by people in the field is just annoying too. The article is correctly in Wikipedia and could be made interesting but it is just a dump currently. Dmcq (talk) 12:17, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Smithpith (talk · contribs) is probably hoping that a large-enough pile of references will prevent his article from being deleted again.

To my way of thinking, it is merely annoying and unnecessary, but probably not harmful. JRSpriggs (talk) 14:18, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

I wish we could just delete this garbage and ban User:Smithpith. His only contribution is his endless self-promotion of this trivial, useless idea, and I'm tired of it. Ozob (talk) 01:24, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually I don't recall this aspect of it. Is User:Smithpith identifiable with one of the authors of "non-Newtonian calculus"? Tkuvho (talk) 08:49, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Now I see that he signed his name "Michael Grossman" on his talkpage. Tkuvho (talk) 08:51, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Note that "non-Newtonian calculus", by M. Grossman and R. Katz, earned a whopping 4 citations at MathSciNet since 1972. Tkuvho (talk) 08:53, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm surprised they got that as it looks self published to me, and the editions for sale have a single review by... wait for it... Smithpith. The topic multiplicative calculus is I believe notable enough for inclusion, it is the mess there like a magpies nest that is annoying. Dmcq (talk) 12:23, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree that it's a notable topic. I don't think the Grossman and Katz source should be assigned much weight in that article. Unfortunately, the primary editor of that article has a clear conflict of interests. Someone should root out the dubious references there, eliminate the non-encyclopedic "reception" section, and keep only what can be attributed to reliable secondary sources. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

A few months ago the page was a redirect to Product integral where Volterra's work is discussed. Does multiplicative calculus have notability beyond that? Tkuvho (talk) 13:34, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

speaking of product integrals . . .

Can someone add something on product integrals of matrix-valued functions to that article? If it's only about real-valued functions, isn't it essentially instantly reducible to familiar integrals? Michael Hardy (talk) 15:48, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

"Great Feuds in Mathematics" (book)

Would anyone in this WikiProject like to write a Wikipedia article about this book?

• Great Feuds in Mathematics: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever: Hal Hellman: 9780471648772: Amazon.com: Books

—Wavelength (talk) 20:58, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

There's no obvious indication that this book passes WP:Notability (books). Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:25, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Here are two independent reviews of the book.

• Loci: Convergence | Great Feuds in Mathematics
• Great Feuds in Mathematics: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever | ScienceWriters (www.nasw.org)

—Wavelength (talk) 00:04, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

The NASW review doesn't look very substantial, but there's a also third review at MR2248901, a fourth (behind a paywall that I don't have access to) at Vinculum, a fifth at Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics, and a sixth at Science News.—David Eppstein (talk) 00:38, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Associative algebra #Representations

Such section could be topical without any doubt, but its current content appears to be, at best, misplaced. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:47, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

It's a duplicate of Algebra representation and, as usual, should be merged with it except leaving a short paragraph or two. -- Taku (talk) 18:51, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

What does your "duplicate" denote? I do not capture your thought. BTW, the content IMHO can be moved into representation theory. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:58, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

English grammar is tricky, isn't it? I meant that section and the article Algebra representation, at first glance, seem like the same topic. The section is about the compatibility conditions; for example, an associate algebra has a natural structure of Lie algebra (i.e., commutator) and so we can look at how two structures are related. I don't know why the discussion is limited to representations (an expert would know), but I don't think it should be merged with representation theory. Perhaps we need tensor product of representations. (the solution is always more stuff.) -- Taku (talk) 13:20, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Symbol Definitions

A lot of articles use mathematical symbols that I don't remember, or have never seen before. Since they're special characters, they can't be searched. It would be nice if every such symbol was automatically a hyperlink to the page defining it. --70.199.133.145 (talk) 01:38, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

There is List of mathematical symbols and Mathematical operators and symbols in Unicode. Many unicode characters are linked to the corresponding article, is there a specific one your interested in?--Salix (talk): 03:30, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Salix has provided some useful resources for looking up symbols. But those sources suggest an important point--that any given symbol can represent different things in different contexts. As much as possible, we should strive to explain at first use any notation we use in the math articles that isn't completely obvious. --Mark viking (talk) 03:44, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Anon: if you copy and paste an unknown symbol into the Wikipedia search box, you can search on it just fine. Many symbols will have an article that explains their meaning. But, I agree with Mark that unobvious symbols should be explained and linked on first use in any given article.--Srleffler (talk) 05:34, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia’s use of the goddamned lucene-search already created a local myth that “special characters can't be searched”. Happily, MediaWiki’s search dialog itself does not depend on lucene with its blatant discrimination against non-letter characters, and may retrieve titles containing whatever characters: even U+0085. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:19, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Vector Manifold

Dear mathemeticians:

There is an article Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Vector Manifold in the Afc just now that could use some attention from someone with mathematical knowledge. —Anne Delong (talk) 01:40, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Kerala fundamental contributions to calculus

It would be interesting to determine whether http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_calculus&diff=551937571&oldid=546717260 is a helpful edit. Tkuvho (talk) 12:26, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd not give much weight to the source cited there. I have nothing in principle against including mention of the Kerala school there, but adequate sources are needed to give a sense of historical perspective. It's never been clear from more mainstream sources what weight should be assigned to the Indian mathematicians. It doesn't bode well that the source in question claims "imperialist suppression". True or not, this is a classic red flag of fringe science. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:49, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

1. I agree. The point is that fringe science is worse than the original problem of Eurocentrism (which is what they allege.)
2. We need to challenge the claim that the Kerala school invented calculus in the articles Madhava of Sangamagrama, Mathematical analysis and History of calculus.
3. The primary work cited is : C. T. Rajagopal and M. S. Rangachari (June 1978). "On an untapped source of medieval Keralese Mathematics" and this is a paid article on Springer which I can't see.
4. The claims are based on the astronomy treatise Yuktibhāṣā which has some ingenious and useful infinite series. From this it is claimed that the Kerala school invented calculus. However, infinite series is not calculus. In this case, infinite series is a method of approximating the value of pi etc. to a high degree. It is intended to be used for astronomical computations and is not a systematic mathematical theory.

• Thanks, Anand ^{(talk page)} 12:28, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

The article in question is Rajagopal, C. T.; Rangachari, M. S. On an untapped source of medieval Keralese mathematics. Arch. History Exact Sci. 18 (1977/78), no. 2, 89–102. The article is actually not about Yuktibhāṣā but a newly published text entitled Tantrasaṅgraha-vyākhyā ("Commentary to Tantrasaṅgraha") apparently containing some material in addition to the series for sine and cosine. Tkuvho (talk) 13:27, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

And that article is here - http://math.mit.edu/classes/18.01/F2011/school-of-kerala.pdf ... imagine describing infinite series without modern notation! No wonder someone had to explain to the authors how to interpret the formulae. Still, we find a just bunch of infinite series with no systematic treatment. Thanks, Anand ^{(talk page)} 14:06, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor is coming

The WP:VisualEditor is designed to let people edit without needing to learn wikitext syntax. The articles will look (nearly) the same in the new edit "window" as when you read them (aka WYSIWYG), and changes will show up as you type them, very much like writing a document in a modern word processor. The devs currently expect to deploy the VisualEditor as the new site-wide default editing system in early July 2013.

About 2,000 editors have tried out this early test version so far, and feedback overall has been positive. Right now, the VisualEditor is available only to registered users who opt-in, and it's a bit slow and limited in features. You can do all the basic things like writing or changing sentences, creating or changing section headings, and editing simple bulleted lists. It currently can't either add or remove templates (like fact tags), ref tags, images, categories, or tables (and it will not be turned on for new users until common reference styles and citation templates are supported). These more complex features are being worked on, and the code will be updated as things are worked out. Also, right now you can only use it for articles and user pages. When it's deployed in July, the old editor will still be available and, in fact, the old edit window will be the only option for talk pages (WP:Notifications (aka Echo) is supposed to deal with talk pages).

The developers are asking editors like you to join the alpha testing for the VisualEditor. Please go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing and tick the box at the end of the page, where it says "Enable VisualEditor (only in the main namespace and the User namespace)". Save the preferences, and then try fixing a few typos or copyediting a few articles by using the new "Edit" tab instead of the section [Edit] buttons or the old editing window (which will still be present and still work for you, but which will be renamed "Edit source"). Fix a typo or make some changes, and then click the 'save and review' button (at the top of the page). See what works and what doesn't. We really need people who will try this out on 10 or 15 pages and then leave a note Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback about their experiences, especially if something mission-critical isn't working and doesn't seem to be on anyone's radar.

Also, if any of you are involved in template maintenance or documentation about how to edit pages, the VisualEditor will require some extra attention. The devs want to incorporate things like citation templates directly into the editor, which means that they need to know what information goes in which fields. Obviously, the screenshots and instructions for basic editing will need to be completely updated. The old edit window is not going away, so help pages will likely need to cover both the old and the new.

If you have questions and can't find a better place to ask them, then please feel free to leave a message on [[User talk:WhatamIdoing|my user talk page, and perhaps together we'll be able to figure it out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:55, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

This appears to be unusable for articles with mathematical equations, due to no support for <math> formulas, no support for superscripts, and no support for entities like &nbsp; and &minus; that are necessary for proper equation formatting. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:09, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

(Regardless of the original question) &nbsp; and &minus; are useful (and I employ them from time to time), but are they necessary, really? Did you ever encounter "texhtml" templates in the code? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:15, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

At least in the near term, I suspect that we'll need to use the "Edit Source" button to deal with those things. In the long term, I believe that providing support for mathematical equations is planned. I don't personally expect that to happen before the general rollout, though. We'll see. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:30, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Correction: Talk pages are being replaced by mw:Flow, not by Notifications/Echo. This may happen even sooner than the VisualEditor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:30, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Gyrovector space

This is all nonsense, surely? 94.116.38.81 (talk) 14:25, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Why do you say that? M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 14:26, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Any article on a subject which hardly appears in the literature except for arxiv preprints, and has Florentin Smarandache as an authority, looks like WP:FRINGE. But it was a question. Is it sense or nonsense? Does anyone vouch for it? 94.116.38.81 (talk) 14:31, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

For this IP, please see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Echigo mole. Mathsci (talk) 14:46, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Still??... The sockpuppetry lately on this talk page and the other pages you've been writing is ludicrous... Anyway, to answer the initial equation, "gyrovectors" definitely are in the literature: see google books. M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 14:54, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Rewrite of Quadratic equation

A significant rewrite of Quadratic equation has occurred over the last two weeks. I don't have the time to look into this in any detail, but at first glance there seem to be some problems. Most odd to me is the removal the section titled "Quadratic formula", as well as any mention of the Quadratic formula from the lead. Also note the non-encyclopedic tone in "For most students, factoring by inspection is the first method of solving quadratic equations ..." What do others think? Paul August ☎ 19:01, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

On the whole, I think we can work with the article in its present form. However, one thing I disagree strongly with is the apparent ghettoization of certain important topics to an "Advanced topics" section. This clearly violates some of our basic principles. Also, obviously the article should state the quadratic formula clearly before deriving it. I think that all of the derivations of this formula should be collected into the same section. If the objective is for earlier sections to be more of an elementary reference, then the earlier sections should not contain derivations. And language specific to the field of education should be confined to a section on education, I think. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:20, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Lol "ghettorization". Mct mht (talk) 19:53, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I think it should be "ghettoization". (I know I should go back to work.) -- Taku (talk) 01:37, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Tauism rearing its head again

Instead of responding to my comments here, User:Tazerdadog added massive amounts of material here. Attention is required. Tkuvho (talk) 15:21, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Please note that my actions were in accordance with the discussion here (see the close at the bottom) Tazerdadog (talk) 15:27, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Should the article exist or not, but the redirect to Pi#In_popular_culture, which does not contain any information on the topic, was certainly an unsatisfactory solution. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 15:30, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

The subsection Pi#In_popular_culture contains precisely the appropriate amount of information (including 4 footnotes) on the "topic" in question. That redirect was the outcome of an earlier RfC. Tkuvho (talk) 15:33, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Correct me if I am wrong, but more recent RFC's supercede earlier RFC's, no? Tazerdadog (talk) 15:51, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

The RfC has been properly closed now, with the conclusion that the article should not exist, or more precisely that it's not yet ready for mainspace. So the two recent RfCs are in agreement, and given that and the effort expended in the most recent one I hope that editors can accept that and move on. Consensus can change but that's been tested once recently; we don't need to test it again any time soon.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 23:40, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/May 2013

I would like to thank the members of this project for your help with mathematics-related disambiguation pages. The list of top-linked pages for May is up, and other than Normed division algebra (with only 19 links), I don't see anything off the bat that is a clear math dab. Still, I would appreciate if some members of this project would glance over the disambig project page and see if there are any other math-related disambig pages to be addressed. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:55, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Looking at the first 500 or so, terms that I noticed that have some mathematical significance are Likelihood ratio, Singularity, Fitting, Density (disambiguation), Dilation, Rectilinear, Recurrence, Rigidity, Transfinite, and Transition function. --Mark viking (talk) 03:16, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

It seems I missed quite a few. Thank you for checking! bd2412 T 04:13, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Normed division algebra has been redirected to Normed algebra, also a disambiguation page, with a combined 24 incoming links, making this the most linked-to math disambiguation page. Any assistance in fixing these would be appreciated. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:17, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

‎Conjugation and real inner product on the quaternions

An amazing argument over the so named lengthy in-depth article: see talk: Hurwitz's theorem (composition algebras) #L(a*) = L(a)* and similar. Ironically, the editor who recently removed my ambox as per sources is himself found to distort the notation of Faraut & Koranyi beyond recognition. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:14, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Why post this nonsense when (a) you just made a stupid undergraduate/highschool mistake (poor guesswork) (b) you didn't lift a finger to check the source (b) you did not read what the article said (d) you did not look at my reply. Since you cannot be bothered to read my replies here is the explanation again. The inner product on quaternions is Re ab*= Re b*a. So (L(a)b,c) = Re c*ab= Re (a*c)*b = (b,L(a*)c). So L(a)* = L(a)* by the definition of adjoint on a finite dimensional real inner product space. Why are you wasting time like this and making such silly errors? I meanwhile created Jordan operator algebras. If you make a stupid error, please don't come running here blaming it on others. Mathsci (talk) 13:28, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

And what is this claim about notation? The involution on the quaternions H is standard notation in mathematics. Although I didn't look, it's unsurprisingly the same notation a* as used in the wikipedia article: Quaternion#Conjugation, the_norm, and reciprocal. (Four alternative notations are listed.) Equally well the adjoint on a real inner product space is usually denoted by T* (e.g. in the source). Go ask R.e.b. if you're confused. (The argument in general is as in the text of the article as in the original source, which apparently Icnis Mrsi did not read.) Is there a WP:COMPETENCE problem? Mathsci (talk) 13:35, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

There is anything wrong with * notation for an algebra involution. But there is something seriously wrong in the use of this symbol both for this involution and for adjoint (or, if you prefer, in two different involutive algebras), especially if the latter use was not declared anywhere. I tried to find a reference to adjoint operators in Faraut & Koranyi, but did not find any. IMHO it is their serious shortcoming. But in any case, there were not Faraut & Koranyi who used the raised asterisk in the same formula for two different involutions: they used overline for algebra involution on page 82. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:19, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

There is nothing seriously wrong at all. For example exactly the same thing occurs in the article on Hilbert algebras and can be read here. There is an underlying *-algebra with an inner product coming from a trace. Left and right muliplication operators are denoted λ(a) and ρ(a) and satisfy λ(a*) = λ(a)* and ρ(a*) = ρ(a)*, where the second *'s denote the adjoint. All of this is standard notation from the articles of Godement or the standard textbooks of Dixmier (C* algebras and von Neumann algebras) and Dieudonnĕ (Chapter V of his treatise on analysis). The notation actually goes back to Murray & von Neumann in the 1930s. And of couse all of the current notation was invented for another article of Jordan, von Neumann and Wigner from exactly the same period. There they used Hurwitz's work in their classification of formally real Jordan algebras. (At that stage Freudenthal's elementary argument for constructing the exceptional 27 dimensional Jordan algebra was not available.) This is standard bread-and-butter mathematics in operator algebras, the subject started by von Neumann. What I don't understand is that people don't add much mathematical content to wikipedia and when it happens they appear with pitchforks. I wrote almost all the material on Hilbert algebras back in 2008; it was a link in zonal spherical functions, which Godement and Dixmier helped develop. It's also a fairly basic part of von Neumann algebras. Mathsci (talk) 14:56, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Mathsci, please stop your WP:personal attacks like "you just made a stupid undergraduate/highschool mistake (poor guesswork)" and several others in almost every of your posts. About your argument behind your attacks: WP is not aimed for experts who have read and understood all the literature. For such a mathematical subject, the natural audience is "stupid undergraduate students", or non-mathematicians that want understand the subject, or even use it elsewhere (I think of researchers in mechanics who use quaternions to parameterize the position of a body). Therefore a WP article must be self contained and a reader should not need to read references, except for getting more details, not for understanding the body. If an experienced editor misunderstand something, this is never by incompetence (competence must not be a prerequisite), always because the article is badly written. In fact, if an experienced editor misunderstand something, then almost every reader will do the same. Again, stop to blame other editors and try to use their remarks to correct what is wrongly presented (even if mathematically correct) in your edits: Incnis Mrsi remark shows that, although formally correct, your edits are, in this case, ambiguous, and some edits are required to either change the notation or giving explanations for avoiding misreading. D.Lazard (talk) 15:55, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

There are not personal attacks. The OP simply made an error, probably by accident. I have been busy adding mathematical content. Symmetric cone is a hard article; so to some extent is the filling out of Hermitian symmetric space; Jordan operator algebra is marginally less so. The related article Jordan algebra has no proofs and there are huge gaps in the content, many of which I am adding elsewhere. The objection of the OP was about a proof for nonassociative composition algebras (in particular octonions). In the article this is what appeared:

these properties are proved starting from the polarized version of the identity (a b, a b) = (a, a)(b, b):

$\displaystyle {2(a,b)(c,d)=(ac,bd)+(ad,bc).}$

Setting b = 1 or d = 1 yields L(a*) = L(a)* and R(c*) = R(c)*.

That is the brief summary in the text of the article. To complete the proof, set b = 1 as indicated. Then 2(a,1) (c,d) = (ac,d) + (c,ad). So (L(a),cd) = (ac,d) = (c,(a – 2(a,1)1)d) = (c,L(a*)d). Hence L(a)* = L(a*).

That is quite elementary . In case of doubt there are inline citations to check Faraut & Koranyi's argument. I don't see the purpose of not following the method suggested and instead inventing a flawed definition [5][6] with the edit summary, "Something is apparently bad with the article." Mathsci (talk) 20:20, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Let's examine your second reply. Here you are mostly providing a lot of information to back up the notation. Providing a lot of information is a good thing, because you're talking to someone who doesn't understand something. Waxing about the woes of Wikipedia is not useful. Consider if Incnis Mrsi were laying out these misunderstandings in the form of a math.stackexchange question. Would your response be appropriate? You don't need to ask why someone's making silly errors and undergraduate mistakes if you're willing to recognize that some people come across things on Wikipedia before they understand them and don't know what not understanding something looks like yet. Now, of course it's not your duty to teach these things to people who are trying to fix something that isn't broken, but it would be much more productive, because it stops them from arguing with you, and it contributes to the overall level of participant WP:COMPETENCE. In that light, the history of the notation is meaningless to someone who expects mathematics to be intelligible on its own merits - you're using the wrong kind of information in your argument. You could instead describe what motivates the notation, what semantics are missing due to the perspective one takes with the objects. Reflect on why you would use the notation yourself, other than the sanctity of tradition. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 03:01, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Why did you post this rubbish about my misunderstandings? I perfectly understand what is adjoint operator in a Hilbert space, and know that * is (one of) its standard notation, along ^†, and the preferred one in real analysis. The problem is not my poor erudition, but poorly written articles without appropriate declarations of notation and with clumsy typography. This one initially contained not only "minus signs" made of dashes (–), but also barely readable sequences like a*b*c* (until I inserted thin spaces to indicate priority of operations). The article said that * is the so-and-such concrete operator on the algebra, period. One should not guess about possibly relevant structures in the algebra of all such linear operators, but should read explicit declarations of them. We should educate certain major contributors how articles should be written and how to maintain consistency and legibility of notation. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 06:08, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I read into Mathsci's point of view, rather than the situation at hand. I'm sure it's meaningless. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 02:34, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Whoops… not only I missed this implicit associativity bug, but ported it to composition algebra myself. I am unable not find corresponding piece in Faraut & Koranyi. We certainly observe so named #poor guesswork but in an article this time, which is also known as an WP:original research. My guess is that, although (b* a*) c* and b* (a* c*) have different values, their real part is the same. But it is not here where a real mistake can be found. When I inserted thin spaces, I naïvely expanded Mathsci’s ab* as a b*, but(a (b*), c) = (b* a*, c) is not an identity even for complex numbers! One can check that for a := i, b := 1, c := i : (a (b*), c) = (i, i) = 1, (b* a*, c) = (1 i*, i) = (−i, i) = −1. If Mathsci’s ab* means conjugate of the product ab (which would be a jarring notation), then it is an identity which trivially follows from (ab)* = b* a*. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:21, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

You introduced the mistake (Re a)bc with this edit.[7] I have changed the layout now and corrected a typo. The associativity under the trace has to be proved prior to establishing (ab)*=b*a*. The notation for the involution is standard, for example it's in the textbook of Størmer and Hanche-Olsen on Jordan operator algebras or equally well in the various sets of lecture notes of Koecher, Loos et al on Jordan algebras, triple systems and Jordan pairs. It cannot be avoided when discussing the complexification of the Albert algebra, which is needed for the construction of the exceptional bounded symmetric domain. Mathsci (talk) 07:46, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Me, Incnis Mrsi? Yes, in one instance I replaced an ambiguous expression ab* with misplaced a b*. Do you see how many changes I made with aforementioned edit? Do you really expect that there are users willing to repair articles consisting of loathsome formatting and typography, missing definitions, etc., without making a single mistake? Few users like me exist, who can do such a job and absorb its “social” consequences. I can easily deflect or discard a flame and personal attacks, an ability which many others (such as user:Deltahedron and, probably, user:Echigo mole) do not have. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:33, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Please look down the page for the diff I gave to where (Re a)bc occurs. Mathsci (talk) 08:50, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I made yet another mistake when tried to disambiguate your cryptic stuff to relieve a reader from the necessity to stop at every inch and guess what exactly did Mathsci attempt to express. You collected as many as two my mistakes, so what? It would be more viable strategy for you to use parentheses in a hope that somebody accurate enough will eventually replace parentheses which a more appealing form of expressing priority of operations, rather than imitate formatting of books and papers lacking an ability (or willingness) to format a parentheses-deficient formula properly. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 10:06, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Associativity under the trace ((ab)c,1) = (a(bc),1) is a trivial consequence L(a)* = L(a*) and R(a)* = R(a*). It's a way of streamlining a proof and hardly original research. In composition algebra, Icnis Mrsi has introduced content by copy pasting without citing the sources (Faraut & Koranyi or the Roos nots from 1988) and without providing any context or notation. The source has a real inner product and yet Icnis Mrsi proceeds nevertheess with their own generalization to arbitrary characteristic ≠ 2.Icnis Mrsi is perfectly aware that there is a textbook by Daniel Shapiro solely on composition algebras. Why are they not using that? The source of Faraut & Koranyi only discussed real positive definite forms as a tool for classifying simple totally real Jordan algebras. If Icnis Mrsi wants to add content to wikipedia, I suggest that go and read the relevant sources instead of plagiarizing content written by me for another purpose and deciding they can generalize from the reals to any characteristic ≠ 2. Wow, what a way to write wikipedia. I've never done that nor would I even think of doing that. Mathsci (talk) 08:28, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Give a link to the book, please. I’ll read it. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:33, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

You can find it at this link. http://en.bookfi.org/ Mathsci (talk) 08:36, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I am not interested enough to undertake searches if you are not interested enough to give me a link to the book, for neglecting which you blame me publicly. If you wish me to read the book, then give a link or upload a file to ftp://qq.irccity.ru/incoming/ , please. All Wikipedia content is licensed under GFDL. I have full rights to reuse it if attribution is correctly specified. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 10:06, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

In my humble opinion, there is too much unnecessarily drama here. Can we just move onto a more productive activity?

• The article "was" not badly written. Sure, some notational change could have been made for readability. But so are countless other math articles in Wikipedia. (In fact, many other articles can use more attention.)
• Yes, it would make some people happier if Mathsci is "nicer". Personally, I don't care.

-- Taku (talk) 12:50, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

What means they can use more attention? Taku, I experience a trouble with your English again. Do you want to say that such articles deserve more attention, that they can be improved (or could be made more useful) and this requires an attention, or what? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:15, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I meant. Some notational choice confused an editor, rightly or not: it only takes some "minor" adjustments to make the notation clearer (which has happened.) I was asking why we can't just move on: fixing problems in other articles or adding fresh new content. -- Taku (talk) 19:08, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Position paper on tauism?

Recent developments indicate that the τ issue needs to be dealt with. We have a number of questions at the top of this page that deal with FAQ-type issues, so as not to have to give the same answers many times over. Perhaps developing a "position paper" on τ may save editor time in the future. If such a "position paper" is to be developed, I would suggest including at least the following items:

• Both π/2 and 2π are frequently used in math formulas. Thus, replacing π/2 by a single letter would simplify formulas like $\cos({\frac {\pi }{2}}-x)=\sin x$ and the like. Having a single symbol for 2π would similarly simplify certain formulas, as we have been frequently reminded frequently. However, this is very little as far as establishing notability (beyond sensationalist press reports) is concerned. Moreover, π/2 has the additional advantage of corresponding to a meaningful geometric angle explainable to beginners, which is not the case for either π or 2π.
• WPM participants of a variety of interests have opposed the creation of a separate tau page. This is in striking contrast to the uniformity of the tauists' single-minded devotion to a single cause, and the paucity of their contributions to wiki outside tauism.

Feel free to suggest additional items to be included. Tkuvho (talk) 12:11, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

If you write such a paper, please include links to our previous discussions on this topic. And mention that

• any such change in notation would create a larger barrier to learning mathematics for people trained in the new notation since virtually all papers written to date use π instead. JRSpriggs (talk) 12:45, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a good point to mention. Tkuvho (talk) 12:47, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Another point is the cost of such a change of notation, due to communication problems between people using π in their professional activities (recalling that a satellite has been lost because of a confusion between measures in meters and feets, or something like that). D.Lazard (talk) 13:39, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

To Lazard: I believe you are thinking of the Mars Climate Orbiter. That is a very good point. JRSpriggs (talk) 14:34, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

• Possibly also worth mentioning Eagle, Albert (1958). The elliptic functions as they should be. An account, with applications, of the functions in a new canonical form. Cambridge: Galloway and Porter, Ltd. pp. XXVIII, 508. Zbl 0083.07401.. This excellent work argues forcefully that the fundamental constant is π/2, denoted τ and pronounced hi (for Half pI). F.J.C. Loomis (talk) 16:17, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

The review you linked to is in German, but it does mention his use of "hi". As far as Albert Eagle is concerned, his wikipedia page has enough information about his views. Thanks, Anand ^{(talk page)} 16:55, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

• I'm a bit puzzled by this discussion. You seem to be trying to decide whether the public should switch to tau or continue using pi. That's a bit ambitious, isn't it? If the question is whether to create an article on tau, shouldn't you be discussing notability or criteria relevant to merging? RockMagnetist (talk) 21:33, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

• There seems little doubt that the number $\tau =2\pi$ is not notable in itself, only in that there may be a notable tauist movement. I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that the movement is notable, although the assertion (that τ is better than π) is not. However, there I'm sure there isn't a Wikipedia consensus for any of this. Do you (collectively) want to try writing essays on the relevance of the tauist movement to Wikipedia, and see if we can reach consensus? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:25, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
• I think there is space for an article about the movement. Old versions of the Tau (2π) [8] have most of the relevant content. As far as the guideline goes simply saying we use pi and most references outside the tau article are undue weight.--Salix (talk): 22:53, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
• I have the impression that most of the newspaper reports about τ are from 2011/12 when this first came up and not that much since, and as with any sensationalist story. For example, many of the references cited in the recent RfC (now closed) give 2013 dates, but these are dates for retrieval of information, whereas the original article often turns out to date from 2011 inspite of appearances. So I don't think the "tau movement" is notable, either, at this time. Of course, if someone like Khan (of the Khan Academy) writes a bestseller about τ, the situation may change. I mentioned another point here. Tkuvho (talk) 07:23, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
• Another point that could be mentioned in the hypothetical position paper is that there has not been any notable reaction to the τ proposal in either the mathematical community or the math education community. Tkuvho (talk) 07:52, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I propose we add a question to the FAQ at the top of this page, of the following sort. Question: Why is wikipedia lagging behind the rest of the world in not creating an article on τ (2π)? Answer: The proposed new constant lacks notability at this stage. (1) comment on π/2 and 2π. (2) students trained in the new notation would face a barrier in their learning since virtually all of the existing literature uses π. (3) Don't fix it if it ain't broke: introducing alternative units may lead to costly errors, cf. Mars Climate Orbiter. (4) Albert Eagle and π/2. (5) no notable reaction to the τ proposal in either the math community or the math education community. Comments? Tkuvho (talk) 12:36, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

If there is an FAQ entry, I think that the main points are that the notability of τ is not yet established, and the fact that all but a miniscule number of sources use π, so it would make little sense for us to unilaterally change our mathematics articles to use τ instead. The other factors are relevant to mathematics in general (perhaps) but they are not very relevant to Wikipedia. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:08, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

The last point you made seems to be an answer to a slightly different question: Why hasn't wikipedia switched to τ? That particular question does not seem to be asked that frequently yet :-) If we to stick to the question "why there is no tau article", then perhaps we can just mention that the notability of tau is not yet established, and add in explanation that neither math nor math ed crowd has responded in any notable way. What about mentioning also the notability of τ=π/2 since it appeared in Eagle's book? Tkuvho (talk) 14:15, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I added a tentative question here. Feel free to add relevant material to the answer. Tkuvho (talk) 15:25, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Looks good. The pi manifesto which tries to counter the tau manifesto gives some more reasons. E.g. "Any publicity is good publicity" and "They pinpoint formulas that contain 2π while ignoring other formulas that do not." By the way, Albert Eagle was an idiosyncratic author and has tried to redefine quite a few things. Finally τ doesn't seem to be notable at this point of time. Thanks, Anand ^{(talk page)} 16:21, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Feel free to edit the question, but keep in mind the comment (by User:RockMagnetist and User:CBM) that the question should focus on why τ is not notable, rather than whether or not it is a good idea. Tkuvho (talk) 16:41, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Combinatorial identity

Should we do something to remedy the red-link status of these two items?:

• Combinatorial identity
• List of combinatorial identities

Michael Hardy (talk) 22:45, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Could be useful. The combinatorial identities we have are spread out over a number of articles such as Combination, Binomial coefficient, Bernoulli number, Bell polynomials, etc. A fairly good, if eclectic, resource for combinatorial identities is Gould's collected notes, a series of eight PDF documents. --Mark viking (talk) 23:24, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Universal geometric algebra

This is a relatively new article created a couple of weeks ago, but strikes me as very dubious: I've never come across infinite dimensional geometric algebras before, and they make little sense within the rules of the algebra. The sources are all standard sources which deal with the usual finite dimension GAs, except the last which I don't recognise. A search for "Universal geometric algebra" finds nothing like this, except this article. It could be something very new I've just not encountered and which can be found with a better search, but it looks like mostly original research to me.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 00:07, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Did you try to search for vector manifold? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 01:31, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

If the contents are referencing the references faithfully, the contents are probably OK. I can say that the names in the references are "big" within the field (geometric algebra).

@JohnBlackburne Actually I'm a little surprised your search wasn't fruitful. Searching "universal geometric algebra" at googlebooks produces an entire first page of relevant hits. I did not check to see if all 100+ were relevant, but the authors in the first page are also "big" names in the field. Rschwieb (talk) 02:00, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

introduction to statistics

Do we have an article on this topic? I notice that we have Introduction to Statistics, but that's about a TV episode. -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 04:02, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't think we should have articles like "Introduction to something" because we try to avoid purely expository articles on Wikipedia. What exactly are you looking for? You might want to look at existing stuff on Portal:Statistics or on Wikibooks - wikibooks:Category:Statistics. Thanks, Anand ^{(talk page)} 10:18, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, we do have many "introduction to" articles under physics on Wikipedia, so I was thinking that perhaps something should exist for stats. (or perhaps, some "introduction to" articles should be written in a manner that would be accessible to middle school students with dyscalculia). -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 03:37, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I noticed they have created one article each for the approx. 100 episodes of the TV series "Community" and most of the names sound like some standard topic or subject. So not surprising that there is this clash. Thanks, Anand ^{(talk page)} 10:42, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, those clashes are quite something. -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 03:37, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Eagle on tau

I added a comment on Eagle and tau at pi but it was removed by User:Noleander in this edit. I have the impression that tauists still have not learned to cooperate with WPM. Keep an eye on the page. Tkuvho (talk) 07:15, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

new material at philosophy of mathematics

New material was recently added to the page philosophy of mathematics, under the heading "Platonism Interpreted Through Eastern Thought": Although not a part of the contemporary dialogue in the philosophy of mathematics, the contentions of Eastern thought bear on some of the central questions, in particular, the question: if mathematical objects are real, then where do they reside? The Western philosopher is confused by this question for they envision some world of time and space external to the human mind in which mathematical, and (since it is arbitrary to divide mathematical abstractions from all other abstractions) other abstract objects exist. However, teachings dating possibly as far as the second millennium BC, attributed to the Samkhya philosophy associated with yoga indicate that the "worlds" containing abstract objects such as mathematical entities, exist in the depths of human consciousness. Yoga provides empirical means for "peeling back" or "diving into" (for lack of more precise Western terms) these depths of consciousness, the main technique being samadhi. The contention being that "levels" or "worlds" (lokas) are present in the depths of human consciousness where abstract entities are real objects. These objects are not made of physical matter, but real nonetheless. At these levels, the abstract objects serve central roles in the construction of the reality humans perceive as "the physical world", and hence the intimate connection between mathematics and physics. Moreover, that these objects are buried deep in the inner recesses of human consciousness explains the intuitions of the realist schools of mathematical philosophy. These abstract objects, via a process analogous to reflection, find their way into the imagination of waking human minds and give rise to mathematical insight and intuition, precisely Kant's "a priori" knowledge. In the West, relatively rigid intellectual categories demarcate different forms of abstract understanding, but the abstract objects themselves are not so partitioned in their intrinsic spaces but instead form complex networks of abstractions. Hence, through human history, mathematical, scientific, religious and philosophical insights emerge from the imaginations of different people, and each person's insights provide some legitimate perspective on the subtle relationships existing amongst abstract objects at their own intrinsic levels. However, the verbal and intellectual expressions generated by humans awake in the physical world, even those abstracted into the formal deductive language of mathematics, are but pale, highly distorted versions of the deeper realities they reflect. The abstract entities can be directly experienced in the state of samadhi where their true relationships and relative proportions are directly perceived. When seen in their correct proportions, the depth of shallowness, arbitrariness, and complete lack of perspective of current Western intellectual conceptions in mathematics, science, philosophy and religion becomes apparent. Is this properly sourced? Tkuvho (talk) 09:30, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

This is an essay not relevant to the subject. Samkhya and Yoga are standard schools of Indian philosophy. Thanks, Anand ^{(talk page)} 09:56, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

I can't see the relevance and no citation was supplied so I'll go and remove it. Dmcq (talk) 10:01, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

This looks like original research. There has been work on connecting Eastern philosophies and quantum physics, but the above is not the same thing. An interesting synthesis, but unless there is a reliable source for it, I agree with Dmcq's proposed action. --Mark viking (talk) 16:21, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

zeteo - a database for mathematical references

A few years ago, I set up the website zeteo.info which contains a database of about 20.000 (mostly) mathematical referenes. Its main features are: 1) search for an author and comfortably copy the code of a wiki citation template etc. 2) add new references based on either manual input or bibtex pieces. (See here for a short reference.)

Currently, this site is down because the database is not optimally configured (so the provider shut it down). Moreover, someone keeps adding nonsense to the database (which I filtered out every once in a while).

Since I am busy with other commitments, I personally can unfortunately not take the time to fix these things. I am therefore seeking a way of handing over the (small) burden of maintaining this site to the Wikipedia community, most of all this WikiProject. If anyone has an idea of how this might be accomplished, please let me know. I am happy to share the database and/or source code with anyone who is genuinely interested in this matter. Thanks! Jakob.scholbach (talk) 04:48, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I will ask around and see if the IT people at some universities I know can take over maintaining this very valuable resource. In the meantime, however, is it possible to get the source code for parsing BibTeX entries and putting it into a Wikipedia citation template? Ray^Talk 18:30, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Who are the namesakes of Evans–Hudson flow

I created a new page Robin Lyth Hudson two days back. Who is the other namesake of Evans–Hudson flow i.e the Evans one. I googled it tried Google Scholar but I cannot figure out the other namesake. Any help appreciated. Solomon7968 (talk) 16:53, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I guess it should be MP Evans - see for example - http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2FBFb0078055 or http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00367298 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anand QED (talk • contribs) 17:15, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Dynamic Dictionary of Mathematical Functions

I want to draw the attention of the community (specially those that re concerned by special functions) on the Dynamic Dictionary of Mathematical Functions. It provide formulas, "properties, truncated expansions, numerical evaluations, plots, and more" for many elementary elementary and special functions. It should be emphasized that everything is automatically computed at the loading time from the differential equation that defines the function. The order of series expansions and the number of digits of the numerical evaluations may be chosen by the reader. All the digits of the numerical evaluations but the last one are certified. By clicking on a formula, one gets the corresponding latex code (allowing to include the formula in WP). Everything is based on the recent theory of D-finite functions. IMO, this has to be linked as external links in the articles about the functions that are covered by the DDMF. This may also be helpful to expand these articles. D.Lazard (talk) 19:05, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Nice, thanks for finding! M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 19:38, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, this looks like a great resource. From the DynaMoW page it looks like the engine also supports the Encyclopedia of Combinatorial Structures. Thanks, --Mark viking (talk) 20:30, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Temporary new name

Look at this talk-page comment. Hyperbola has be temporarily renamed Hyperbola (mathematics) in order to deal with some weird thing that Google does when people search for "hyperbola". Is it possible to contact Google about this? Would there be any hope of a reply from a responsible and competent person as opposed to someone skilled in public relations? Michael Hardy (talk) 12:13, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

There is also a comment about this four sections up on this page. --JBL (talk) 12:21, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't see how pageview statistics could possibly be construed as a justification for renaming articles. The tail is wagging the dog if that's the case. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:28, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. This user's brief history with math articles also does not inspire confidence. --JBL (talk) 12:34, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Misunderstood what they were up to at first but sill think the page should be moved back and pretty sharpish. There is a big bit about it all at WP:VPT#Relinking Google for SSL https Dmcq (talk) 15:24, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

The article has been returned to its rightful home. --JBL (talk) 04:12, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

COI editor

I'm concerned that there is a mathematics editor Zsoftua (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) who, for the past few months, has been editing Wikipedia with the apparent intent of including links to the publications of Dmitry Zaitsev. In some cases, these publications appear in rather questionable places, either being self-published or published by rather shady open access journals, and would most likely not pass muster as reliable sources even if there weren't an obvious COI issue. Some of them seem to be in better journals (such as journals maintained by the IEEE), but are being used as primary, rather than secondary sources, against our WP:NOR policy. The affected articles relevant to this project are:

• Matrix decomposition into clans — a new article whose only source that is not self-published appears in a journal of the notorious Scientific Research Publishing outfit.
• Graph theory diff
• Matrix decomposition diff (this was reverted by User:Jitse Niesen with a discussion on the talk page that echoes some of my own concerns)
• Turing completeness diff
• Fuzzy logic diff
• Petri net diff

Should some or all of these edits be reversed? What should be done with Matrix decomposition into clans? Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:43, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I think so okay, thy're link spamming except for that article. I think though Mathgen which created the fake maths for the paper Scientific Research Publishing accepted has probably enough notability now for an article. Dmcq (talk) 15:09, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Integral → Definite integral?

Our current article Integral is only about the definite integral. As a result, there is a hatnote linking both to integers and to indefinite integral (and omitting the obviously needed link to integral (disambiguation)). Since the article only deals with the definite integral, wouldn't a more logical configuration be to move this to definite integral and then redirect integral to the disambiguation page? I would do all of this myself, but the move requires administrator powers. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:55, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can see integral does deal with indefinite integration as well just not in depth, and the better change would be to turn indefinite integration into a proper subtopic by removing bits which are just to do with integration in general. I don't think people will look up integral just meaning number often enough to warrant turning it into a disambiguation page. I think pointing definite integral to integral is fine. Dmcq (talk) 13:35, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Ok, if the main article integral is meant to deal also with the indefinite integral, then I think it's not appropriate for the hatnote to point to antiderivative (as it currently does). In particular, the lead already contains a link to that article. I will undo the recent changes to the hatnote, unless there are objections. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:16, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Convolution

An editor seems to be arguing at Talk:Convolution#Discrete convolution that the mathematical definition of the discrete convolution is wrong. Please comment there. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:24, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

There is now an edit war going on there, with the editor in question now at 4RR. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:54, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

The edit war is still going on. A third opinion seems to be needed again. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:34, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Fixing Google https links to major math articles

As many of you might know, during April/May 2013, even more articles have gained secure-server prefix "https:" in Google links (see essay listing 500 pages: "wp:Google https links"), an unusual feature which Google Search has supported since before 2009. In late March 2013, article "Parabola" switched to Google https-protocol links, and pageviews dropped over 75% (2500 to 620/day) because stats.grok.se no longer was counting https page requests, at the end of March (see: Parabola-views-201303). Also, many other articles, including "Geometry" or "Cone" or "Hexagon" (etc.), switched to Google https, and then "Hyperbola" and in early May, even "Catenary" gained https-prefix in Google. However, Yahoo Search and Bing.com are not affected, and pageviews from them are still counted by stats.grok.se (see: wp:Pageview statistics). Currently there are 2 plans to remove the https-protocol prefix from Google articles:

1. Reset the link-tag for rel="canonical", inside https-protocol pages, such as:
            <link rel="canonical" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenary">
   That link-tag would be placed inside the generated HTML markup, along with the other link-tags (such as for "edit" or "copyright" or "stylesheet"), and once Google re-indexed each article, then the Google https-protocol link should return to "http:" after a while.
2. Rename each article, temporarily, where the new title would be indexed into Google with typical http-prefix link, and then change each old title to a "soft redirect" linking to the new http title, and once re-indexed, then set the redirect as "__NOINDEX__" to allow Google to "forget" the old title, and then rename back, where the double-renamed title would drop the https-protocol prefix.

Hopefully, the first option, to embed the link-tag for rel="canonical" can be applied soon, by the developers, and there will be less need for double-renaming of pages. However, where accuracy of pageview counts is crucial, then those articles can be renamed, immediately, to begin logging accurate entries (under the new titles) for the actual pageviews being requested by readers. The Google https-protocol prefixes have been trouble for over 7 weeks, since around 25 March 2013, and nothing had been done during the initial 2 months to fix the problems. The developers were certain they had fixed entries of https requests (not omitted all counts), and the low pageviews were a puzzlement (not seen as a warning that all https-prefix views were omitted for 2 months). However, now the reality is becoming clearer. But, remember, once fixes are applied, it might take Google several days, or over a week, to re-index the affected pages. That is the status, so far, and I just wanted people to know that workable solutions are being planned. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:42, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

" where accuracy of pageview counts is crucial," -- what could this possibly mean? --JBL (talk) 00:40, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Pageview counts matter to some editors who write for reader feedback, rather than just pontificate, and can measure the readership base. Because relatively few people read math articles, the pageviews are more of a concern for important articles, such as the Top 1000 most-viewed pages, including "DNA" or "Oxygen" or "Shakira" or "Albert Einstein". However, some math articles could be expanded to be more interesting, such as "Calculus" which had almost 3,900 views/day. In such cases, inviting general readers to view the page "Calculus" (rewritten with more practical substance) could be measured by clever editors to get that page read among the top 1000 most-viewed pages. The pageview counts are a tool which intelligent, inventive editors can use to focus reader interest. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:57, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

This is altogether the wrong way of going around things I think. We should ask Google to have a facility to refer to the pages on the domain using http: always like they have the facility to always refer to them with www. or not according to the web owners preference. This would get rid of anything like this and probably help people elsewhere too. They can always use canonical for ones which don't follow the standard. I think our messing trying to flush the caches is a waste of our time, we should just leave the problem till it is fixed properly. Dmcq (talk) 13:52, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Thinking about it more Google would really like such a facility I believe as it would improve their statistics. They would probably also like the option of sites saying they can support https even though they marked everything as normally http so logged in users could have an option to automatically use https as often as possible when using google. Dmcq (talk) 14:08, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

• Attempts to double-rename were reverted and https-prefix returned: The pageview and security-certificate issues were too complex to explain to some admins, and they insisted that temporarily redirecting the titles, even for a few days, was unacceptable, and forced the re-rename of article "Hyperbola" within 2.5 days, which was not long enough for Google to re-index without the https-protocol link. All those math articles have retained the https prefix and lowered the pageviews of wikilinked pages. However, we were able to contact some developers who have fixed the page-request software (at 18:44, 14 May 2013) to again log https-type views as counted by stats.grok.se, returning pageview counts, 2x-3.5x times higher, to the March-2013 levels. At this point, the Google-https links remain, but users can be told to insert "http:" prefix (replace "https"), if they wish to view pages but not via secure-server protocols. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:57, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

• Confirmed https pageviews resumed 14 May 2013: I have run tests (on 15 May 2013) to verify exact pageview counts for either http or https-protocol, pages or images, on both enwiki and dewiki (German WP also fixed). The pageview data logs, such as for stats.grok.se, have been fixed (at 18:44, 14 May 2013) to re-enable the https/ip6 stream to webstatscollector, where Google https-protocol links, for over 300 major enwiki articles (see stats: 201305/Email or 201305/Parabola or 201305/Shakira, and thousands of wikilinked pages), had been 55%-80% under-reported during late March, April and early May (see essay: wp:Google https links). The typical pageview counts, from March 2013, have resumed in pageviews, as 2x-3.5x times higher for https-prefix pages/images, during 15 May 2013. German WP pageviews were also fixed for different pages (see stats: /de/201305/Euklidischer Raum "Euclidean Space" or /de/201305/Oval). All https page requests had been omitted during 26 March 2013 to 18:44, 14 May 2013, and so there will be permanent low spots in the pageview stats of some pages during those 50 days (~7 weeks), for various articles, images, talk-pages, templates or categories which were viewed mostly via https-protocol links on some of those 50 days. Many thousands of pages/images were not affected, and those pageviews will seem relatively stable during that 50-day period. As of 15 May 2013, the http/https pageviews have been re-confirmed to log exactly "to the penny" and so, if a page/image was viewed 7x times during a day, it will show a total of exactly 7 pageviews for that day. -Wikid77 07:57, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not in favour of messy solutions for temporary problems unless it is really absolutely necessary. If it will be fixed tomorrow anyway without messing around it should just be left. Dmcq (talk) 10:52, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

New Square Matrix article?

A new article has been created at Square matrix, which had previously been a redirect to Matrix (mathematics)#Square matrices. It seems to me like an unnecessary duplication of content.. see the discussion here. Mark M (talk) 08:53, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

House with two rooms

Surely we can do better than this? (e.g., a picture). -- Taku (talk) 11:43, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Simple proofs for geometric progressions

8.25.32.37 (talk · contribs · 8.25.32.37 WHOIS) has been adding pretty much illegible "simple proof"s for the value of 1/4 + 1/16 + 1/64 + 1/256 + ⋯, 1/2 − 1/4 + 1/8 − 1/16 + ⋯. and 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + ⋯ for some time. I've been removing it, and sometimes pointing to the actual simple proof at geometric series. I would appreciate a second opinion as to whether the "simple" "proof"s should be included in the articles. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:46, 17 May 2013 (UTC) ‎

The purported proofs are just variants of the derivation of the formula for the geometric series given in the main article. Of course, these proofs do not establish the convergence of the series. So they're a bit misleading as written. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:08, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Template:Unsolved

{{unsolved}}, a template that is used in some mathematics articles to highlight open questions concerning their subject and link to unsolved problems in mathematics, is being proposed for deletion. Please contribute to the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2013 May 18. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:18, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Pioriginal.gif

file:Pioriginal.gif has been nominated for deletion. There are various issues concerning this illustration in the nomination. -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 06:51, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Bugs with new notification feature

I am clueless when it comes to reporting buggy behavior with wikipedia stuff. The recent addition of that notification digit into the console (mine is a zero in a grey box when I have no notifications, and it becomes a red box if there are nonzero notifications) behaves poorly for me, quite possibly because I'm using a different skin than standard. (I'm using "modern".) I would like to be able to report this, but I would appreciate a pointer to the correct place. Thanks! Rschwieb (talk) 13:15, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

The general place for all things related to behaviour of the site’s software is WP:VPT, though for issues with the notification system you can go directly to Wikipedia talk:Notifications.—Emil J. 13:25, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

And check the FAQ there before you decide it is a bug. I am using "modern" too and don't see anything unexpected. Thanks, Anand ^{(talk page)} 14:09, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. As I expected, it is a known bug. Apparently it's been fixed for Modern users using anything but IE. Rschwieb (talk) 12:09, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

File:Plot of number of primes between consecutive squares.png

File:Plot of number of primes between consecutive squares.png has been nominated for deletion. -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 07:15, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Probably a good idea. The license provided is inadequate. PD (ineligible for copyright due to lack of creativity) is a possibility.... — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:30, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Category:Hyperdimensional physics

I nominated the above category for deletion but it seems to have gotten no attention so far and could perhaps benefit from attention from other project participants. The discussion is here:

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 May 17#Category:Hyperdimensional physics

Thanks. --JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 20:07, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

DISPLAYTITLE

I've added a DISPLAYTITLE template to the top of Kalai's 3^d conjecture, and it has no effect. What's wrong? Obviously it would be barbaric to leave the title as it is. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:21, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Possibly the superscript? M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 18:35, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

No, I think it's the caret in the article title that isn't present in the displaytitle. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:41, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I think it's because the HTML code won't convert to canonical form (note the first line in Template:DISPLAYTITLE#Examples). RockMagnetist (talk) 18:44, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Considering your post here maybe the page needs to be moved to remove the caret ^ and then the superscripts would function? M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 18:45, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

user:Ucucha seems to have fixed it. M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 18:47, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

The problem is discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#DISPLAYTITLE is not working. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Minimum chi-square estimation

I've just created Minimum chi-square estimation. It needs further work, including references and links from other articles to it. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:21, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

"Shannon capacity" does not define Shannon capacity of a graph.

The article Shannon capacity does not mention graphs at all.

However, the article Lovász number immediately refers to Shannon capacity. In the former article, there is also a subsection Lovasz_number#Shannon_capacity_of_a_graph, and only there can one find the definition of the Shannon capacity of a graph.

Shouldn't that subsection be included in Shannon capacity, or is this concept too distinct from the usual notion of Shannon capacity?

Evilbu (talk) 07:22, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

It seems reasonable to include the definition of Shannon capacity for graphs in the Shannon capacity article. Shannon capacity seems to only discuss single link examples, but there are interesting results in network information theory that should be mentioned, too. --Mark viking (talk) 18:42, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Template "Library resources about"

The template {{library resources about}} has been added to Number theory by User:SakeUPenn. I do not clearly understand if this external link passes the criteria of WP: external links. This user intends explicitly to add this template to a "multitude of articles" and does not refer in his user page to any official approval by WP. A quick decision is thus necessary to know if this template is convenient for math articles. (I see that the template has been proposed for deletion, that the result was keep, but there is no clear decision about its inclusion in math articles) D.Lazard (talk) 16:14, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Since the user in question gives the real name "Sarah Kemp", presumably the correct pronoun is "she."--JBL (talk) 16:32, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

My understanding of the outcome of that TfD discussion is that there was to be some RfC about the use of this template before its widespread deployment. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:18, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

To clarify: I've been instructed to add this template to various mathematics and physics articles as part of a Library internship project. "Multitudes" was a poor word choice on my part, as the scope was never so enormous. The intent was to choose a few specific articles related to faculty or departmental fields of study, this is by no means the entire body of math or physics subject articles. I'm aware I'm using a template that has been the subject of discussion before, not least because of my use of it. My understanding is that after review it is an acceptable template but that the use of it must be modified and downscaled. As concerns have been expressed, I've communicated with my supervisor and I'm putting this project on hiatus until the community reaches conclusions about both the scope of the project and the use of the {{library resources about}} template. I've removed all of the recent edits I made to Mathematics pages and have edited my userpage to better reflect my purpose here. Going forward, I'm happy to address your concerns as best I can. SakeUPenn (talk) 18:32, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

MathOverflow question

Today I asked a question on MathOverflow about Wikipedia, and it's generating several interesting answers that editors here might be interested in: Why don’t more mathematicians improve Wikipedia articles?. Mark M (talk) 19:54, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

To me, the most astonishing thing in the “question” is a mention of WP: Teahouse. I would not like to see that venue razed to the ground, but it should be least recommended to any editor capable to a content work. The “Teahouse” IMHO should stay ahead of only WP:AN/I. The main reason of existence of both aforementioned sectors of Wikipedia is to drain content-incapable and work-unwilling users out of articles, talk pages, and projects, where they could otherwise mess around and disrupt a legitimate communication. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:26, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, we clearly disagree about why the Teahouse exists. It is easy to underestimate how daunting the whole Wikipedia-editing world is to new users (especially to experts who are used to having their authority respected), and the Teahouse is intended to be a place where new users get helpful, friendly, and non-bitey advice.. and, as far as I'm aware, it's (unfortunately) one of the few places that reliably does so. Mark M (talk) 09:08, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I understand your point--if an editor spends most of their time at the Teahouse, they aren't creating useful encyclopedia content. But as a clueless new editor, I found it invaluable for answering my clueless questions in a patient and kindly manner. As you have said in the past, Wikipedia is a rough neighborhood. The Teahouse is a rare sanctuary of civility for editors trying to get their bearings for the first time. --Mark viking (talk) 15:22, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Polynomial Surface Rotation images useful to the project?

I have made polynomial surface rotations as animated GIF files and released them under a Creative Commons Attribution license, one lower resolution and one higher resolution image of the same rotation. These should be useful illustrations for the project. The URL with license is:

zunzun.com/rotations/

James Phillips, email zunzun@zunzun.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.81.189.144 (talk) 10:26, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Posting by D.Lazard

Note this thread was originally titled Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#D.Lazard and relates to that discussion.--Salix (talk): 10:51, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I am the object of a request of enforcement submitted to arbitration committee. This request is related to some discussions in this page and the retirement from WP of User:Deltahedron. Some of you may want to comment there. D.Lazard (talk) 14:20, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

@all: Predictably, the complaint already seems to be falling flat. Still, don't let that stop you from dropping by and chipping in. Your contribution may help discourage future spurious complaints from that user in the future. (After all, you might be the target.) Rschwieb (talk) 21:21, 21 May 2013 (UTC

The tribe made its judgement. I do not think that Mathsci now has even 1% chance of ultimately winning something in his crusade against the unrewarding Wikipedia which edited so many “his” articles without “authorisation”. Now it is the time for Mathsci’s friends (I think about Sławomir Biały, but possibly there are others) to persuade him to stop attacking people who aim to improve articles. If the author of an article is a good mathematician, it does not imply that his content is perfect and his exposition is always balanced. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 06:37, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Its clear from the sockpuppet investigations 1 2 that there has been a good number of sockpuppets attacking Mathsci. When a users first edit is a post here critical of Mathsci then its clearly a case of someone with some history under another name. Whether all the sockpuppets are the same I can't say, its very difficult to tell in sockpuppet cases. I'm not convinced that the endless round of socks and blocks is the best way to deal with the situation. There may be an editor with some mathematical knowledge but little knowledge of the wikipedia system who has managed to get on the wrong side of that system. No one has really take the time to treat the user with a bit of respect explain why constant hounding of Mathsci is bad for the project and what a productive editor would do. There might be a case for a Wikipedia:Clean start but under certain conditions such as non-engagement with mathsci, and admission about alternative usernames used. Its the only way I can think of of ending this drama for good.--Salix (talk): 09:12, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I tried my best to convince this apparent Echigo_mole/A.K.Nole that when he harasses a legitimate contributor, he becomes at war with the Tribe, and that he must stop it. Unfortunately, he and some other contributors were lost. Indeed, the problem is that Mathsci may become lost for productive editing, too. Someone should convince him that his contributions to articles are appreciated, but not his interaction patterns observed for last four years. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:46, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

It was completely inappropriate to start a section with the previous title on this noticeboard per WP:CANVASS. Echigo mole is a long term problem. But discussing one small aspect of his trolling here is not the way to go, Salix alba. It's not appropriate to respond to this trolling by suggesting what I should do as one of the more active mathematical (or classical music) editors on wikipedia. What were you thinking of? As you know, D.Lazard should have informed me about this posting. But courtesy does not seem to be his strong suit at the moment. I think that D.Lazard, author of the BLP Daniel Lazard and seemingly the same person, should probably stick to the subjects that he knows about instead of fraternizing with and lobbying for banned editors. Operator algebras, Jordan operator algebras, Hermitian symmetric spaces, symmetric cones are areas outside his expertise or interests, or so it would seem. I have no idea why he should claim otherwise. Likewise Incnis Mrsi.

Echigo mole is a community banned editor who has engaged in WP:LTA for over 4 years. His latest "creations" Tautological tau (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki) and Gongfermor (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki) will be soon be dealt with by checkusers/administrators. Echigo mole barely understands the syntax of graduate level mathematics. His editing is creepy. In the case of abusive editors like him, where lying is fairly common, the appropriate response is WP:DENY. We do not feed the troll. He has edited through more than 250 sockpuppets and ipsocks. This noticeboard is not an appropriate place to discuss this disruptive user. I have been making mathematical edits since 2006. In 2009 User:A.K.Nole, the first account of Echigo mole, trolled on Butcher group. Very little has changed then. His knowledge of mathematics has not increased. Mathsci (talk) 09:50, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

So named “trolling of A.K.Nole in Butcher group” involved such revelations as

“ This edit [9] will be reverted because you copied and pasted material from one article into another. The problem with this edit is that it is not relevant to the stub and the material is completely out of context in this article. You are unwittingly using the notation of Hopf algebras but don't seem to have a clue that you're doing so. If you continue editing tendentiously like this you are probably heading for quite a long block. ” — Mathsci (talk) 07:01, 30 June 2009 (UTC), (full discussion)

It is so similar to the infamous conflict of 2013 that one can note: some things really “very little changed then”. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 10:42, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

From what I remember, in 2009 five mathematical administrators, including three arbitrators or former arbitrators, Charles Matthews, Paul August and YellowMonkey, commented on the ineptness and naivity of Echigo mole/A.K.Nole's attempted edits to mathematical articles. Little has changed since then except that he is a now a community banned sockpuppeteer with a history of lying on-wiki and attempted outing. A.K.Nole's edits to Minimal subtraction scheme were rather typical of the way he edits. Those edits were the usual copy-pasting using text by me with no intermediate understanding. The nature of his disruption was clear enough to administrators then and, after over 250 sockpuppets/ipsocks, it is not in dispute now. His edits related to Jordan algebras are uniformly poor. But per WP:BAN he cannot edit. You could argue with the checkusers, I suppose. I cannot guarantee that they or any administrators would take it seriously. Mathsci (talk) 11:46, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Anyhow, back to the point. Even though the original posting was inappropriate, we hope you have learned something about the community's evaluation of your behavior. Continuing to pretend that throwing a CANVASS flag invalidates any recommendation toward you would be a transparently antisocial thing to do. We all want a cooperative, productive environment, and not chronicles of your epic feud mixed with wikilawyering. Rschwieb (talk) 17:49, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

J-structure

This article has been effectively blanked by being redirected to Jordan algebra, which fails to explain the (close) connection, and indeed does not currently even mention "J-structure". It is not quite clear whether the article was deemed to be "trolling" because it was already known for some other reason that Gongfermor (talk · contribs) as a banned user: or whether the article as assessed as defective in itself: or indeed whether the article is good but must be deleted as being by a banned user. In any event there seems to be a risk that good content may be lost. Are members of the Mathematics Project able to assess the content as composed by Gongfermor and rescue anything worth preserving? Tautological tau (talk) 17:14, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Now we have a problem here. As you are the same person as a previously banned user, Echigo mole (see [10]) the policy laid down in WP:BAN applies. In particular the ban applies to all alternative usernames that is sockpuppets. Further Bans apply to all editing, good or bad and Anyone is free to revert any edits made in defiance of a ban, but note This does not mean that edits must be reverted just because they were made by a banned editor.

So as things stand all your edits are in breach of a ban and carry very little weight. Your edits will most probably be reverted, entirely within wikipedia policy. In essence your fighting a loosing battle. Options available: carry on as before, with a continuing round of alternate usernames swiftly blocked and edits swiftly reverted. Or you could walk away find another venue where your contribution will be greeted with more respect, perhaps mathoverflow. The third option is the hardest - a modification of the ban allowing some editing of wikipedia. This would involve discussion on the admin noticeboard WP:AN which might not be very friendly and would probably involve an interaction ban with mathsci and a topic ban on Jordan algebra and related articles. Due to the long history of sockpuppets I'm not very optimistic it would suceed.

As to the mathematical content of J-structure I don't know enough on the topic to judge, only that they do exist and are closely linked to Jordan Algebra. As I can verify the article and the edits are from a banned user a redirect seems an acceptable solution.--Salix (talk): 20:46, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Is there any reason to believe that User:Gongfermor is a banned user other than one editor's private opinion, based on the unsupported assertion that his work on J-structure is "nonsense"? An authoritative opinion on the value of that article would be useful. Coal scuttle (talk) 21:32, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Above user now added to SPI.--Salix (talk): 22:18, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I am surprised that Salix alba is able to be so positive that User:Gongfermor is a ssockpuppet of a bnned user, if he is unable to judge the value of his only contribution. I have stated elsewere why I believe that Mathsci's crtitique of the article was over-hasty. However, these games with puppets and bans are not as important as the mathematical content of the encylopedia, so let us return to the question as posed above, which seems to be worth discussing. Irrespective of the status of the author, are members of the Mathematics Project able to assess the content as composed by Gongfermor [11] and rescue anything worth preserving? Coal scuttle (talk) 06:10, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I believe WP:DENY is best, but WP:ROPE is also good, so let me violate the former to offer the latter. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia—there is no promise of fairness. Pursuing agendas against other editors is not tolerated because it causes too much disruption to the encyclopedia. If you want to contribute at Wikipedia, you must follow what Salix said—undertake to never mention the other editor and completely avoid all articles where the other editor contributes. User:Elen of the Roads (when an arbitrator) offered to hear your side of the story (search here for "23:35, 10 November 2012"). People are willing to consider any situation providing there is a potential for benefit to the encyclopedia (hint: pursuing another editor would not benefit the encyclopedia). The purpose of this message is to determine whether there is an interest in the encyclopedia, or whether editing is directed towards a particular editor. Johnuniq (talk) 10:45, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

On reflection, this is the right way to go. Apologies to all for the disruption. A.K.Nole (talk) 16:29, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

A discussion on the standard offer is underway at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Standard offer for User:A.K.Nole. Input regarding the precise topic areas to be covered is particularly welcome.--Salix (talk): 20:28, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Protection of this talk page

A good move, but the person in question probably has several sleeper accounts, which are able to pass through. This technical solution is insufficient: we now have eliminate all his accounts one by one, which will not leave him other options but to negotiate unban or to cease activity. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 06:48, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with the protection of this page. As the recent edit by the now blocked Coal scuttle shows, protection is likely to have little effect on sockpuppets, while preventing legitimate use of this talk page by accounts that are not autoconfirmed. Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:52, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to let it stand for a couple more days. Johnuniq has explained the WP:Standard offer on his talk page. Should the person wish to accept he can comment there and normal service can be resumed. But we do need to make it clear banned users are banned from editing and technical means will be used to enforce the ban.--Salix (talk): 05:55, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty certain the page protection is useless against this one. I fully agree that for sockpuppets like this they should be checked by checkuser and banned as soon as encountered. There is no point standing up for them because they do something that looks okay. Their overall effect is malign, they are a cancer on Wikipedia. Standard offer is a good because people do grow up, but as to this one whatever about their own idea of their competence I'd sooner use the results of predictive text statistics from maths books or text from my latest favorite site Mathgen. Dmcq (talk) 10:09, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Awesome link :) If you have any passing interest in Python programming language, then I should also let you know about the Kant Python generator which produces similarly amusing bits of Kantian prose... Rschwieb (talk) 14:50, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Protection now removed. If the user is willing a thread to discuss the WP:Standard offer on WP:AN will start soon. I'll let people know when it does.--Salix (talk): 19:21, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately there has been so much abuse, including the problems around WP:ARBR&I where Echigo mole/A.K.Nole inserted themselves to manufacture disputes on wikipedia, that any attempt to reverse a community ban for WP:LTA is unlikely to have approval from the arbitration committee. People commenting here are unaware of the disruption created by this user. With the account A.K.Nole they have reported a small number of sockpuppets that have already been identified, some not necessarily so far connected with this user (who signed himself "Alex" at one stage when using the shared account The Wiki House). The account Junior Wrangler was tagged as him (he admits to it now). The creators of hoax articles on Aix-en-Provence were identified as him (Silver starfish, Nellie Seamonster, etc.). Just this week he claimed as Ultra snozbarg that he was not Echigo mole but a good faith mathematics editor. But this article in gestation tells a different story.User:Euston arch/sandbox There he mentions "snozbarg" and has links to two of the now deleted hoax articles. A few years back he had email discussions as Quotient group with Shell Kinney, who was on the arbitration committee at the time. He similarly committed himself to not following my edits. But that did not last very long. He has no mathematical skills at a post-graduate level. Recently he simply copied formulas mindlessly from Springer's book on Jordan algebras into an "I want to show that I can edit like Mathsci" article. He did the same thing in the subject of Jordan operator algebras. Not even capable of copying one formula properly because he lacks the intellectual capacity to understand the subject. That kind of "mathematical trolling" is of no benefit to this encyclopedia at all. A normal editor, for example a graduate student doing a Ph.D. in pure mathematics, might have added a sentence written by a known expert (e.g. Kevin McCrimmond) to the main article Jordan algebra. But in this case Echigo mole was not bright enough to figure out that Springer had used Hua's identity (Jordan algebra) as his own personal way of developing the subject, etc, as part of the theory of algebraic groups. But that and the advantages/limitations of Springer's approach are all spelled out in great detail in McCrimmond's writing.

But more seriously Echigo mole has created accounts with my street address Rue Cardinale and has inserted information identifying me in RL on user talk pages, in some cases to users that are now site-banned. Those outing edits are inexcusable. Echigo mole has now admitted to sock trolling in a 2009 arbcom case in which I commented (Abd & WMC). That was first of many such interventions.

So A.K.Nole was given the benefit of the doubt by Shell Kinney and almost immediately abused that. He has caused too much disruption to get a third or fourth chance. His edits to articles on Jordan algebras were senseless: editing completely outside his level of WP:COMPETENCE. His intention just recently was to create a malaise on wikipedia, i.e. a toxic editing environment. The arbcom-related edits are very serious and cannot really be discussed here. They were purely malicious and inflammatory. That is why any attempt to undo a community ban of Echigo mole cannot be at the initiative of this small WikiProject. There are arbcom motions concerning Echigo mole, so a clean start is not possible. The correct place to ask is Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment.

BTW from 22-25 May I was in intensive care in the cardiology unit of my local hospital, so could not comment until now. Mathsci (talk) 05:57, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Get better soon. It is shocking how much disruption a single Mole can create. His abuse of the personal physical address of a fellow editor, if confirmed, is intolerable, and may even be of interest to the police. I invite all WPM participants to express solidarity with User:Mathsci and appreciation of his efforts to contain the said Mole. Tkuvho (talk) 07:43, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Solidarity with a user talking of anything but the A.K.Nole peril and actively disrupting attempts to negotiate a solution as recently as 5 hours ago, against a (former) puppeteer who apologized for his disruption and is not engaged in any disruption for more than two days? It would be better to wait for a further development of this drama, rather that to express a unilateral support while the situation remains strongly ambiguous. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:30, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Seemingly it was yet another sockpuppet of Echigo Mole raised the sockpuppet investigation against A.K.Nole so that was dismissed. A.K.Nole has accepted an offer which includes staying away from Wikipedia for six months before trying again. Whether they are or are not related and whether I have got that right or wrong, I really think it is best to let the appropriate admins check the possibilities and get on with the process rather than standing up for people identified as having caused disruption. Dmcq (talk) 12:17, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) His cumulative conduct is unacceptable. Any kind of "apology" at this stage is meaningless: there is no wikipedia code of "apologies," particularly from users known to lie, as is the case with Echigo mole. The account A.K.Nole (talk · contribs · logs · block log) has now been blocked indefinitely by a checkuser. His sockpuppets created the now-deleted hoax articles Baldock Beer Disaster, Letchworth Corset Riot, Robert de Baldoque, La Maison du Guozbongleur, Guozbongleur, John Bargel and Gustave de Zarbouble. His sockpuppets, 20 or more of them, put nonsense into the article The Bulldog. As Keystone Crow (talk · contribs · logs · block log) he cobbled together this idiotic RfAr, immediately nuked by an arbitrator.[12] His agenda has been malicious and he has told blatant lies just in the last few days. He has pretended to have a knowledge of advanced mathematics. What he actually knows goes little beyond service mathematics courses for an undergraduate degree in computer science. Classic WP:NOTHERE. Incnis Mrsi should make his arguments directly to the arbitration committee or other checkusers, not here. Nothing stated by Echigo mole can be taken seriously after what he claimed as Ultra snozbarg (talk · contribs · logs · block log). No different from his dishonesty as Quotient group (talk · contribs · logs · block log). Empty promises. Mathsci (talk) 12:40, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

I think only time will tell if the user has reformed. We should wait six months and review the situation then. The WP:AN discussion was perhaps a bit premature as it should really happen after the six month break, but I felt it appropriate to tell the community what had happened. There are signs that the user is serious, the apologies, the revealing of past socks and the use of the original account which has gone unused since 2009. I hope the user respects the six month break and we have a quite size months, without edits from A.K.Nole or sockpuppets. --Salix (talk): 13:01, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

I cannot see anything happening this year or any time soon. Perhaps in 2015. Here is another hoax article connected with towns between Cambridge and London: Hitchin Signpost Case. Why campaign for a disruption-only community banned user who has his very own arbcom motion related to that disruption. And all these hoax articles. Many sockpuppet accounts remain undeclared (e.g. for 2010). The earliest known edits by Echigo mole using an IP are here.[13] Mathsci (talk) 13:17, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

I think it's best just to report them when you notice. The aim of a troll is to annoy and disrupt so one just has to try and avoid getting worked up. Any more use of Wikipedia by them in that time automatically restarts the period at the very least even if not disruptive. Dmcq (talk) 13:28, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Help with an issue at Articles for Creation

Please take a look at WT:WikiProject Articles for creation#Optimum strategy for dealing with the backlog - can it be mathematically analysed and could such analysis give a meaningful/useful answer? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:23, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

From the replies in that section, it seems that any mathematical model of the process one would create, probably based on queueing theory, would give different answers depending on what you are trying to optimize. If you are trying to minimize number of backlogged articles, filtering obvious cases at the front will reduce numbers quickly. If you are trying minimize the wait that users endure, is that the average wait time or the maximum wait time? If maximum, then concentrating on the oldest articles makes sense. The strategy used in hospitals and airline counters is a triage stage, followed by first come, first served for the more difficult cases. --Mark viking (talk) 16:22, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Partial recursive functions are recursively enumerable : true or false ?

More details here: Talk:PR (complexity). --Gzorg (talk) 14:45, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

"Dassund analysis of time series"

Should this new section be a whole section of this relatively short article? Michael Hardy (talk) 04:20, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Surely not. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 05:07, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I removed it. There are no relevant google hits for Dassund and "time series". It seems to have been made up. The new section also completely lacked sources, and bore some of the earmarks of original research (such as an irrelevant bio of Joseph Dassund, assuming that this is even a real person). Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:14, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Stack (mathematics)

In this edit, an article got moved to Stack (mathematicis), with a typo in the last word, which was made to end with "-cis". So I tried to move it to Stack (mathematics) and found that that redirected to a section in another article. I deleted that and did the move; then I restored the edit history of the deleted article, so the two edit histories are now merged. If you look at the edit history of the one that was a redirect, you see that at one point it was a disambiguation page. So if this article is kept under its present title, should we have some disambiguating hatnotes at the top? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:39, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

....and now I've added one disambiguating hatnote. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:14, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Translations from German

I just did some copy-editing on the new article titled Gerhard Huisken.

New articles created by translating articles from German Wikipedia are not infrequent. Here's a strange thing about them: It seems as if in almost every such case, one thing left untranslated looks like this:

Bd. 45 S. 311–402

It could be translated thus:

volume 45, pages 311–402

I've seen this even in numerous cases where articles written in English were cited.

Something a bit less strange is things like this:

John Smith (* 1950) was a mathematician who . . . . .

I wonder how many readers of English Wikipedia would know immediately what the asterisk means? In an article about a deceased person it would say

Leonhard Euler (* 1707 † 1783) was a Swiss mathematician . . . . .

The seeming near universality of the non-translation of volumes and pages seems a bit puzzling. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:13, 30 May 2013 (UTC)