Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2011/May

Top importance, Start class articles

Loosely connected to the recent Signpost Interview, I was thinking about the project's aims etc. Taking the article assessment as a first (rough) indicator for where we are, I was looking at the most important, but worst articles. This is the list ("<500" means that the article is among the 500 most viewed math articles, vital articles are also bold).

1. Branches of maths / theories: abstract algebra, commutative algebra, group theory, homological algebra, linear algebra (<500), ring theory, differential calculus (<500), functional analysis, mathematical analysis, real analysis, optimization (<500), combinatorics (<500), discrete mathematics (<500), theoretical computer science, foundations of mathematics, pure mathematics, analytic geometry, applied mathematics (<500), mathematical physics, algebraic number theory, analytic number theory, class field theory, algebraic topology, general topology, topology (<500)
2. (Slightly more) advanced notions: commutative ring, Gaussian elimination (<500), isomorphism (<500), Cauchy's integral formula, differential equation (<500), holomorphic function, limit of a sequence, equation (<500), Markov's principle, sequence (<500), commutative diagram, diophantine equation, expected value (<500), probability (<500), probability distribution (<500), random variable (<500), statistical hypothesis testing (<500), stochastic process (<500), homology theory, open set
3. Misc/basic notions: 1 (number) (<500), equation solving, formula, subtraction, conjecture (<500), mathematical proof, Fields medal (<500), symmetry in mathematics, percentage (<500)
4. Biographies: Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Felix Hausdorff, Henri Lebesgue, Jean-Pierre Serre, Karl Weierstrass, Shiing-Shen Chern, Bernhard Riemann

After the Signpost interview the other day, I was curious where WP:MATH will be going etc. Given this list, I'm wondering whether we might want to identify particular target articles etc. For example, I'm personally most concerned/astonished about the group "branches of maths". I did not check each individual article above for its quality, but most are really crappy (or at least short). Another criterion might be "importance to the general public" (i.e., the <500 ones). Most of them are either basic notions or probability/statistics. What do you guys think about all this? I.e., 1) what aims do we have and 2) how do we get there? Jakob.scholbach (talk) 19:31, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

I like to refer to article that get a lot of views as highly visible; you can check page view stats to get an idea of this when the article isn't on the top 500. There are highly visible articles that are low importance and vice versa, but there is a correlation. For about half the articles on the list I have to disagree with the Top importance rating. For example "commutative diagram" may be an important concept, but it's not not something you can build a curriculum on. So perhaps the reason the article is still so short is that it already has most of what there is so say on the subject, or at least what there is to say that wouldn't be better placed in category theory. You're right in that it's a good idea to keep an eye on these articles and work on them periodically. It sets a bad example when a highly visible article is poorly referenced or badly written. Perhaps we could start by picking out one or two of these and making it a goal to bring up them to at least C standard. We used to have a collaboration of the month for that kind of thing, so maybe we can repurpose that.--RDBury (talk) 02:04, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Optimization should redirect to Mathematical optimization, now called optimization (mathematics).  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 06:23, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

@RDBury: I'm curious what else you consider not top importance. (I agree there is a couple of articles that will be difficult to improve, since their content is not well-delineated.)

Collaboration of the month: how about bringing topology (vital, highly visible) to B or B+ class? (Apparently the list above is slightly out of sync, the article is currently C-class, but clearly deserves attention.) This is a nice topic that might, at least in the long run, showcase both the beauty of mathematics and the performance of WP:MATH. So: who would join this effort (previous collaborations failed because of lack of particpants)? Jakob.scholbach (talk) 14:14, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

To respond to the inquiry: The entries in the Branches of mathematics all seem top importance to me; basically if it could be the title of an undergraduate course then there isn't much doubt that it should be Top priority. Conversely, most of the entries in Advanced/Basic notions I'd change to High rather than Top. Maybe "Probability" should be Top but there seems to be some overlap between that and Probability theory which is also Top. "Limit of a sequence", "Equation Solving", and "Percentage" I'd make Medium. Under biographies I'd at least question all but Cauchy and Riemann. Just my opinion and obviously not one I feel strongly enough about to actually change the ratings and it's not worth the bandwidth to argue about it if someone disagrees.

Topology might make a good article for CotM and it definitely needs work; right now I'd give it a C-. C makes a good standard for "minimum passing" quality, the major aspects of the subject should be covered, references in reasonable shape, understandable enough to make it worthwhile for someone to read it. So to me, getting an article from B to C is not as high a priority as getting an article from Start to C, given the articles have the same visibility/importance.--RDBury (talk) 17:06, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the importance of most of the biographies has been overrated. CRGreathouse (t | c) 18:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the vital articles (bold), a classification new to me: Apparently these 1000 articles have been identified by outsiders while "top importance" articles have been identified within this project. At the moment, Riemann's biography is not vital, merely vital(expanded), and "Equation solving" is not even on that list. On the other hand, the 987 vitals do include 62 "vital" Mathematics articles.

Fully 16 of those are now in Start class. I looked at four of them: Area, Constant, Digit, and Equation. I am not sure whether the latter deserves a Start or a C. It's outlandish that any of the first three is a Start.

Hastily I guess quality classification is so far out of date that its maintenance, rather than improvement of listed articles, may be the only immediately useful application of these lists.

(Btw, it appears that "expansion" of the list of vital articles from about 1000 to 7000 brings only 50% increase in math articles, from 62 to 92.) --P64 (talk) 19:35, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea how the "vital" article list was decided, but I think it should be ignored. The list includes combinatorics, game theory, and chaos theory, while leaving out much more important topics like calculus. Weird attention has been devoted to the most elementary notions of geometry as well, listing 15 articles on things like "line", "point", "shape", "conic section". Sure, these are important topics for understanding geometry. But they aren't vital to an encyclopedia. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:47, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that the vital list is decided by consensus and is limited to 1000 total, of which there are 62 math articles. Because of the limit you can't propose an article be added without specifying which article it will replace. There are similar lists such as Core articles and WP 1.0. WP 1.0 is based on a heuristic formula using article statistics such as page views and number of links, see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Article selection.--RDBury (talk) 15:01, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting we add anything. I'm saying the whole list is suspect. I mean, is "point" an important concept? Sure, we should have an article about it. But from the point of view of building an encyclopedia, it's not near the top of the list. In fact, in some sense the heuristic isn't even being adhered to: "point", "line", etc., all belong to Geometry, which is probably the only article out of those 15-16 that should be on the list. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:54, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I think the idea of having to nominate something to be removed when submitting something is very good. Now if only the government had to do that when it proposed new laws! You could always have a poll about which ones should be included I guess - if so I propose we use Single transferable vote and D'Hondt method to choose them but we probably should have a referendum on the voting method first. :) Dmcq (talk) 17:04, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

As far as I can tell "vital articles" has turned into a forum to discuss why what's important to me is more important than what's important to you. I agree with Sławek that it should be ignored. Any usefulness it ever had is long since past. Ideally it should be marked as "inactive" or some such. --Trovatore (talk) 00:41, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Articles every Wikipedia should have

I agree with what Sławomir is saying about the vital articles list. But as far as I can tell, the list is not used for anything important. A much more important list is at m:List of articles every Wikipedia should have. This seems to be used by those starting Wikipedias in other languages. The current list is:

1. Mathematics
2. Algebra
   1. Group theory
   2. System of linear equations
3. Arithmetic
4. Axiom
5. Mathematical analysis
   1. Differential equation
   2. Numerical analysis
6. Coordinate system
7. Equation
8. Function (mathematics)
9. Geometry
   1. Circle
      1. Pi
   2. Square
   3. Triangle
10. Mathematical proof
11. Number
    1. Complex number
    2. Number theory
12. Infinity
13. Set theory
14. Statistics
15. Trigonometry

Logic and probability appear not under mathematics but under philosophy. Algorithm appears under computers. This list seems okay considering its size, but I think there are improvements we can make. If it were up to me, I would:

1. Replace group theory with symmetry. The fundamental idea underlying group theory is symmetry, so an encyclopedia needs an article on the latter before it needs an article on the former.
2. Replace numerical analysis by calculus. Calculus is fundamental to modern engineering and physics; and as far as I can tell, about half of numerical analysis consists of approximating integrals.
3. Replace complex number by prime number. Both of these are fundamental concepts, but the basics of complex numbers should already be in the number article, whereas there is a lot to say about primes that does not fit well in that article.
4. Replace circle and square with angle, area, and Pythagorean theorem. Specific shapes aren't as interesting as concepts; and the Pythagorean theorem, besides being a classic and the only theorem most people have ever heard of, is at the heart of how we measure distance in the real world. (I'm keeping triangle because you can't have an article on the Pythagorean theorem without triangles. The same could be said of squares, but if I include them I have too many articles.)
5. Remove mathematical analysis and number theory. The list is too short to include fields of math.
6. Remove axiom. This has a lot of overlap with mathematical proof, truth, and logic (all on the list).
7. Add logarithm. Not only is this of great historical importance, but logarithms are extremely practical, even for laymen.
8. Add standard deviation under statistics. Seriously, this is the number 2 most viewed math article on the English Wikipedia (after Einstein, who doesn't really count as math).

Before I propose this change, I'd like some feedback. What would you like to see changed on this list? (Note that the size of the list is fixed; you can't add something without removing something else.) Ozob (talk) 00:34, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

The value of this list: Responses

Basically I think the same as I think about "vital articles". Bluntly, this is a useless exercise, nothing more than an opportunity to argue about what's more important. If you have an article you think is underserved, ask for help on it specifically. --Trovatore (talk) 08:41, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Ozob, I think the project you are undertaking is too broad in scope. How about focusing on a particular issue? Certainly standard deviation, which does carry heavy traffic, should be on the list if we are to take relevance to the public into account. What would one do about this? Tkuvho (talk) 12:11, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Isn't it a bit pretentious to tell other WPs what they should have?--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:15, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

It is advice based on our experience. They can ignore it, if they wish. JRSpriggs (talk) 13:04, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Does doesn't change the fact that it sounds rather pretentious. Of course it can only be a "advice" for structural reasons alone, as the other WPs have their separate administration and portals. Moreover if I understand the original reason of the discussion correctly, the goal is to identify the high priority math articles for en.wp and now we've ended up with that pretentious title above (the page already existed before, but still ...).--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:20, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind that some WP's are really small and the person (there may only be one) they have working on math articles might want a list of articles to give top priority. Anyway, the list is on meta so it's not one specific WP telling the others what to do. I agree with most of Ozob's changes, except I don't think you'd need articles that go beyond a typical high school curriculum so "Standard deviation" is probably not needed. There are some other nit picks as well but I'd say make the proposal there to work out the details.--RDBury (talk) 14:43, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I have no issue with the content and math is rather universal anyhow. I just find the title somewhat unappropriate due to being pretentious.--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:23, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's not my title; the person who originally selected it may have been pretentious, but now that's just the name of a page on meta. And the page does seem to serve a real purpose, because it gives small Wikipedias something to work towards.

Regarding my preference for standard deviation: Even though standard deviation is a more advanced topic than some of the others on the list, it is extremely practical. The same can be said of differential equations, which are already on the list, and of solutions to systems of linear equations, which are also on the list. Practicality isn't the only consideration, but it is important. But that doesn't mean that I've made the right choices, and if someone has other ideas for the list I'd love to hear them. Ozob (talk) 00:01, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm against this project entirely. But if it happens, I certainly disagree with replacing group theory by symmetry. The first is at least about some reasonably well-specified mathematical thing; the latter is more of a broad philosophical concept. Who says the fundamental idea of group theory is symmetry anyway? Not all important groups are most naturally understood as symmetry groups, by any means.

Also, I'm against replacing complex number with prime number. That's a personal thing; I don't care much about number theory, having always been more into infinitary than finitary math. Is there any objective criterion by which one should be included more than the other? I think not, which to my mind just shows the folly of the whole idea. I would like to see it dropped. --Trovatore (talk) 20:07, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

(unindent) I don't consider this question foolish, just difficult. Moreover, I think coming up with the best list of vital topics etc. is not what's most important. It seems that most (all?) people around agree at least that the topics listed above under "Branches/theories" are crucial (in order to use a word that is not "vital", "top importance" etc.). Yet, many of them are in poor state. For example, look at real analysis. I would love to initiate a drive that turns these articles (one by one, obviously) into decent articles. Does not need to be good, but maybe B-ish would be nice. Do(n't) you share this wish? Jakob.scholbach (talk) 20:28, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Probably the list you originally gave is the one that should guide which articles we as a project should focus on. I would like to add, though, that "start" class may not be the best metric for determining which articles need the most urgent work. I just picked at random combinatorics. I agree that this is a "start" class article (maybe "C", I don't know how such things are reckoned), but it really isn't all that bad, and gives basically an outline of the subject and links to other more specific articles. I don't think it's in urgent need of development. Maybe about half of the others are in a similar state, like group theory and Cauchy's integral formula, random variable. Perhaps we need an ad hoc metric to determine which of these articles are really truly dreadful, and make it a priority to work on those. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:54, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I still believe that Meta's list of articles every Wikipedia should have is important, but I agree that it is not so important for the English Wikipedia and for this Wikiproject in particular. Because of that, I think that part of this discussion is better held at m:Talk:List of articles every Wikipedia should have. I'll start a thread there some time soon. Ozob (talk) 01:00, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree, this here is the wrong place for discussing topics affecting all wikipedias.--Kmhkmh (talk) 01:01, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Specific proposals

• Numerical analysis can be generally viewed as computational approximation theory, with an emphasis on the computational representation and solution of problems in mathematical analysis (differential and integral equations, continuous optimization, simulation). See Kantorovich's essay, "Functional analysis and applied mathematics". Scientific computing and applied mathematics are wider areas.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:53, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Vital articles

The preface at Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded (level 4) implies to me that the Wikipedia:Vital articles have a function that others naysay (I don't like hyphens), underlying some cooperative effort across wikipedia editions. Unlike the level 3 list, this list is nowhere near being worked on across the various wikis for other languages.

I don't now have time to read more or to comment.--P64 (talk) 22:48, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Need to update ratings?

Going back to the list at the top of this section: we can see here that most of the ratings are some years old. Although many of the articles aren't in perfect condition, I think the majority have moved beyond start-class. How are the ratings used? Is there any value in going through this list and updating ratings where appropriate? Jowa fan (talk) 07:03, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

We didn't start using C until relatively recently so some of the Starts might actually be C's. Our system is idiosyncratic in other ways and imo gives more inflated ratings than the common standard, but one purpose is to suggest priorities by identifying which articles need the most work. I guess another purpose is to help measure progress in article quality with specific criteria.--RDBury (talk) 14:23, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Cross-classification

For example,

• List articles in Start-class assessed by the Mathematics project that carry the Statistics project banner —not the same as Start-class assessed by Mathematics that have {{maths rating | field=probability and statistics}.
• List articles in Statistics project, not Mathematics project.

Is there any such tool here at Wikipedia? --P64 (talk) 15:05, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

"We" again

Does anyone here think "we" is used improperly at powerset construction? The books cited use pretty much the same tone. Tijfo098 (talk) 23:25, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

The use of we in section Intuition is borderline, but "We will construct" (under Example) is where it gets really bad. None of the books cited is an encyclopedia. Hans Adler 00:04, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I was surprised to see that MOS:FIRSTPERSON seems to allow this, but I prefer not to use first-person here even in that sort of impersonal way. It does say in the MOS that "often such things can be rephrased to avoid the first-person pronoun" and I think it would be appropriate to do so in this case. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:04, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

It's called an 'inclusive we' in linguistics. There's an article about it—clusivity—and some google books searches indicate it's a hot research topic with respect to academic register. [1]. Tijfo098 (talk) 03:53, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

(When the MOS dash warriors take a break and the MOS is un-fully-protected, I'll change MOS:FIRSTPERSON to the use proper lingustic terminology and link to the right article.) Tijfo098 (talk) 03:57, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

This sort of "we" is often better rephrased. But a while ago various strange people were construing it literally as referring to the author of the article, and saying that makes it an expression of personal views, to be tagged as an "essay-like" article. That is absurd. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:24, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Besides the linguistic style issue, I think "we" mostly occurs in a section that doesn't follow the WP:NOTTEXTBOOK guideline. So before rephrasing the sentence it may be worthwhile assess whether the material belongs in an encyclopedia in the first place.--RDBury (talk) 16:10, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I can try taking a look at cleaning it up; I've been working on DFA minimization lately, anyway, and this is very closely related. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:53, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

to prod, perchance to help...

Is there a wiki policy that editors should try to help rather than prod? See generality of algebra. Tkuvho (talk) 20:23, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think a prod is appropriate. A single Google search turned up thousands of results. I've added a reference, and marked the article as a mathematical analysis stub. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:49, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the user that introduced the prod. There are not thousands of Google results associated with "generality of algebra" in the sense used in the article -- just a few. As far as I can tell, the term "generality of algebra" as used in the article is non-contemporary, used only by Cauchy in the 19th century to refer to certain non-rigorous arguments of Euler and Lagrange. As it does not appear to be a term in current usage, it can be described in the currently referencing articles without creating a new article in wikipedia. — Myasuda (talk) 20:58, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Regarding "just a few": how so? Most of the top search results used "generality of algebra" in the sense used here. Same with Google books and scholar search. Obviously, I'm not going to page through hundreds of pages of hits to see if they are all relevant, but my impression is that many are. See also the scholar search: [2]. The first six hits are relevant to the subject of the article. (Then there are some hits with the phrase "generality of algebraic groups".) Then there are some more relevant hits. This is clearly a bona fide notable notion that historians of mathematics are interested in. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:03, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

It looks to me like a reasonable topic and that there's a good chance of forming a reasonable article instead of the one liner definition that's there. Dmcq (talk) 21:09, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

There are probably more articles that are beyond help than ones that only seem to be. But people should be doing due diligence to make sure which is the case before slapping on a PROD tag. On the other hand, an unreferenced stub should probably be fixed by the author rather than relying on other editors to clean it up. It's like walking through a dark alley with a $100 bill sticking out of your pocket, maybe you don't deserve to get mugged but it shouldn't come as a big surprise either.--RDBury (talk) 21:13, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Write a decent article in the first place and it won't be prodded. The artice still doesn't tell us what this mysterious "generality of algebra" principle actually is. Gandalf61 (talk) 22:02, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

There is a further report at my talkpage that the article has been slated for deletion, but I have been unable to find any evidence of this at either generality of algebra or talk:generality of algebra. Tkuvho (talk) 04:07, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Just look at the article history. William M. Connolley (talk · contribs) prodded the article; Slawekb (talk · contribs), who also posts as Sławomir Biały, removed the prod notice (which any editor is allowed to do if they believe an article is worth keeping). Gandalf61 (talk) 08:13, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

π or pi?

What is our opinion of this edit? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:09, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with it very strongly. Doing it for the main article on the number is one thing, but when it appears in a phrase it just gets silly and ugly. If that's the general opinion here, I propose that the move is reverted and the user who did it is asked to use the WP:RM process for this controversial move. Hans Adler 17:49, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

grrr -- "propose that the move be reverted" -- end grrr Note that the main article has been at pi for a long time; this seems to have come out of a proposed move to π, which I wanted to support but in the end couldn't (the screen-reader problem was the deciding factor). Kauffner seems to be on a bit of a tear to generalize the non-result ("leave things as they are") from that proposal.

On another note, I don't like the {{pi}} or {{math}} templates at all. I think we should stop using them. On some screens they make things look better, at least marginally, but messing around with fonts is a hack. If running-text math in articles needs a serif font (why?) then maybe we should look for a way to put entire math articles into a serif font. --Trovatore (talk) 17:59, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

There was an RfC at Talk:Pi in which there was some consensus, based on accessibility concerns, that the article pi should not be moved to π. However, I see that some users have taken this to mean that the symbol π should not appear in any titles. And, moreover, the same editor changed the symbol into the word elsewhere in the text as well. This seems to go against well-established practices. No one writes out "pi" to refer to the mathematical constant. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:56, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

The same editor is lobbying to change this in all of our pi related articles. I agree with Hans: this is a silly idea. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:00, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

So no one writes out "pi"? Let's just look at journal articles, shall we? Any journal article on this subject will have equations with the symbol π, but we want to know how many use "π", but never "pi". proof π irrational -pi gives us 3890 math/engineering hits on Google Scholar compared to 9,230 hits for proof pi irrational. So consistent use of the π symbol is a minority taste even among the writers of journal articles on this subject.

Serif font pi ({{pi}}) is this: π. How many people really want to go back to this: π Kauffner (talk) 20:23, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Ummm, you may want to actually "look" at the journal articles, or at the very least consider that google might (be trying to) be smarter than you. First: Google uses OCR, so it will read in the greek character π and parse it and consider it as "pi". Second: In the first of the 9,230 hits, the "pi" returned is not an occurrence of "pi", nor in fact of π, rather it is a ρ (in ${\text{Proof that }}\rho _{k}^{\prime }>\rho _{k+0.8}$); in the second hit, the "pi" returned is actually p₁; in the third hit, "Pi" actually occurs and refers to the mathematical constant, though the occurrence is in the title of a book ("Pi and the AGM"), a book that uses "Pi" in its title and chapters titles, but not in its section titles nor its prose. In the future, please put a bit more effort into your googling. RobHar (talk) 21:25, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

In the browser I'm currently using, with the settings I'm currently using, the latter actually looks very substantially better. I'm quite willing to believe that the former looks better on your screen. That's part of the problem — font manipulations are incredibly non-robust; they don't give remotely the same experience for different users. --Trovatore (talk) 20:52, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

It does give the majority of readers an improved experience, which is the reason I advocate using serif for math and pi. But to go back to the original issue; I prefer the symbol inline, but not in article titles for reason of accessability. — Edokter (talk) — 21:20, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I would need to see evidence that it "gives the majority of readers an improved experience", and I'm not sure that would be enough even if true. Mixed-font stuff is just bad. That's the first thing any decent typography lesson teaches you to avoid.

Just to clarify what I'm reporting, here's what I see from Kauffner's text:

You can see that the serif-ized version doesn't render nicely at all — the two legs have different thicknesses. The sans version, although we might not be as used to seeing it in mathematics, blends more harmoniously with the surrounding sans text. --Trovatore (talk) 21:33, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

That is just on your display (noting you don't have Times New Roman, and a sans-serif font that strangly does has a serif pi. Also note that Kauffner uses <big> for his examples.) There will always be readers with deviating font- and screen settings. I crafted {{math}} (and by extension {{pi}}), to suit the majority of readers that have default screen and font setting... on multiple platforms. It is those readers we have to accommodate. And while your example may not be the prettiest to look at, it isn't unreadable either. That makes your objection purely one of personal preference, and we simply cannot cater for all personal preferences. (You can however specify your own font for math and pi in your personal CSS.) — Edokter (talk) — 22:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

And for the record, here is how it shows on my screen:

Note the atrocity of the sans-serif pi... just saying. — Edokter (talk) — 22:22, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree that we cannot cater to personal preferences. The simplest way to not cater is to use an unadorned π and leave the rendering up to the user's browser.

In addition, I would like to point out that this discussion has a lot of overlap with WT:MOSMATH#Request for comments: serif vs. sans-serif. While commentators there generally favored serifs, there was no strong consensus either way. It might be more fruitful to renew that discussion rather than focusing specifically on how we should write the ratio of the circumference to the diameter. Ozob (talk) 22:47, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, exactly (to your first paragraph). My main objection is not how it looks on my screen. It's using this ugly font-mixing hack to make it look better on some screens (not at all clear how many). With all due respect for the effort Edokter has put into {{math}} and {{pi}}, I do not think they are helpful, and I do not think we should use them. --Trovatore (talk) 23:08, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Perfect is the enemy of good. I think your argument is meaningless without better understanding of what the quantifier "some" really means. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:12, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Leaving it to the browser has already proven inadequate, hence why {{math}} was created. It is geared towards default font settings, which we can safely asume is > 90% of our reader base. But you point out, this belongs to WT:MOSMATH. — Edokter (talk) — 00:44, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

"Proven" inadequate? What was the proof exactly? --Trovatore (talk) 00:47, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Somehow this discussion has moved on to the merits of serif versus sans. The more immediate problem is whether the ratio of the circumference to the diameter should be represented by the ordinary string of letters "pi" (as some are arguing) or by the Greek symbol. (I don't personally care whether it has serifs). Sławomir Biały (talk) 22:52, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I think we should always use the Greek letter π, even in headings and titles. Provided that search engines and search bars know that if someone types pi then they may mean π. I would hazard a guess that the majority of people backing pi are laymen of the mathematical sciences. (What's next, changing every x to an eks?) — Fly by Night (talk) 23:20, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I suggest we make a list of all the math articles with pi or π in the title and then submit a formal multipart move request. Kauffner (talk) 23:34, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

The List of topics related to pi should have most of them. Note that all but two of the titles use "pi". Also note there are many other uses of pi that have nothing to do with the ratio, not to mention other Greek letters and letters from other alphabets, e.g. λ-calculus and $\aleph _{0}$.--RDBury (talk) 02:09, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Most of these seem to have been only recently changed in that list by Kauffner. Of these, a few of them are redirects to a different article, and Kauffner moved some of the remaining ones to the "pi" version. There were only one or two that used "pi" before all this business started. Sławomir Biały (talk) 07:44, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the screen reader argument mentioned above is a good one: we should be very careful about demanding our article content satisfy some limitations of certain pieces of software. Lots of examples come to mind with that thought, but in the case of the screen reader the solution should be to fix the screen reader so it pronounces π correctly, not change all of our articles so the screen reader pronounces things as expected. Personally I value consistency; in mathematics we overwhelmingly use the symbol π to refer to the constant and in Wikipedia our articles largely use the same symbol. I would prefer to be consistent and use only π (with obvious redirects from the spelling pi), including for the article title of the pi article (a brief note about the usage of pi is of course acceptable). I have no opinion on the choice of font. Cheers, Ben (talk) 03:09, 21 April 2011 (UTC).

This is to re-propose an idea that has just been overwhelming voted down. Without some attempt to address the font or accessibility concerns of those who voted against, it would just be going around in circles. Kauffner (talk) 05:44, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I voted against that proposal as well, but I am against unthinking blanket application of the same argument to all articles with π in the title. It's one thing to accommodate screen readers in the main article. It's quite another to set aside all typographical niceties in all of our related articles. Let be add to a point that was already made. The solution here isn't to break our articles, but to fix the wikimedia software so that it supports alt text in titles, I would guess. Or, of course, to fix screen readers to pronounce π correctly, but that is clearly something outside of our controll. Sławomir Biały (talk) 07:35, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I guess I have say something about my motivations at this point since they seem to have been misunderstood. I was disappointed with the outcome of the vote on "pi", so afterward I considered what steps could be taken to lay the groundwork to reverse it. It occurred to me that cutting extraneous use of the pi symbol would show sensitivity to accessibility concerns and would also enhance the case for using the symbol where it is justified. Also, consistent use of the serif font would enhance the aesthetic value a move. Finally, there should be parallel naming of similar math constants. Kauffner (talk) 17:26, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Per Sławomir, please undo the moves. "Unicode, it works" (more and more of the time). I can't think of a time I saw "pi" spelled out in a math book, except in an expository sentence or two in an elementary book before going on to use the Greek letter. Screen-reader vendors should just fix their software; we should not mess up our articles to accomodate their bugs, with possible exceptions for very significant cases like the main π article that's likely to be accessed mostly by less mathematically oriented readers. If more extensive special measures really are needed for screen readers, it should be done by transliteration software (server side filter or client javascript) rather than by spewing "pi" through WP article space. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 09:53, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Added: I now think the buggy screen-reader issue can be handled completely with WP:WPUS. We shouldn't have to make any changes to article for it. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 10:54, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

So, some of the affected articles have been moved back to the versions with π in the title. I can't seem to move Liu Hui's pi algorithm back to Liu Hui's π algorithm, Chronology of computation of pi back to Chronology of computation of π, or List of formulae involving pi back to List of formulae involving π. This requires administrative powers, apparently. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:48, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Titles with special characters are on the page move blacklist because page move vandals used look-alikes of Latin letters to circumvent the page move blacklist. Another matter is cleaning up the articles themselves. I have just looked at Liu Hui's pi algorithm. More has been done there than just the π/pi swapping, and cleaning up after Kauffner's push for eccentric typesetting is going to take a lot of tedious work. Hans Adler 15:48, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I redid the section titles because two had the same heading ("Notes"). LaTeX was used in the running text, making the formulas much bigger than the surrounding text, e.g. there was an enlarged $\pi \approx {\tfrac {142}{45}}\approx 3.156$ (just like that) in the middle of a paragraph. I tried to correct this using either {{math}} or \scriptstyle. Now its π ≈ 142/45 ≈ 3.156. Earlier, the article opened, "Liu Hui's π algorithm is a mathematical algorithm "... I rewrote this sentence to avoid having the word "algorithm" appear twice. Kauffner (talk) 01:42, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that part of the concern here is over the recent wide-scale deployment of the {{math}} template. (I'm neutral to this, but it seems like it makes more work for folks wishing to typeset formulas in html). Also, I think there has been some consensus in the past that scriptstyle should be avoided if possible. Generally speaking, if inline <math> must be used, then just leave it as inline math, even if it looks a little too big in your browser. Support for inline math is getting better, but support for inline \scriptstyle isn't. There are other reasons documented in the archives of this discussion page. (Note that the MOSMATH no longer recommends scriptstyle, largely because of relatively recent discussions about it.) Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:26, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I have gotten rid of the scriptstyle at Liu Hui's π algorithm. In most cases, this was unnecessary, and only caused simple inline formulas to be rendered as a PNG by default, which we typically want to avoid. In other cases, mathematics typesetting like \frac or \tfrac caused the rendering engine also to render the inline formula as PNG by default, but these were most easily corrected by changing something like \frac{22}{7} to 22/7 rather than introducing \scripstyle. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:37, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I have proposed that the remaining articles be moved back at Talk:Liu Hui's pi algorithm#Requested move. Sławomir Biały (talk) 07:13, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

By the way, Kauffner also requested a move at Talk:Proof_that_π_is_irrational#Requested_move several days ago. Sławomir Biały (talk) 07:23, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Math MOS proposal

I propose that we clarify the math MOS to explicitly point out that the symbol π should not be spelled out 'pi' in running text when it is being used to refer to the mathematical constant. I think most people already expected that was the case, but recently there have been articles where the symbol was replaced by the spelled out 'pi'. Article titles are more complicated, and I prefer to handle them on a case by case basis, but in running text we routinely use lots of Greek letters without spelling them out. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

"Pi" is the overwhelming common usage, the way every dictionary gives the word.[3] Even the math symbols everyone understands, like "1" and "2", don't go into running text. Kauffner (talk) 14:25, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

That's not true in my experience. Someone already mentioned that many of the Google hits to "pi" are from OCR issues. I find the other evidence you gave somewhat unconvincing: a New York Times blog post, an Encyclopedia Britannica Online article, and a dictionary entry (which uses the Greek symbol in the actual text). This is less than overwhelming. I can say that, when I am reading a book and see "pi" spelled out, it is the exception rather than the rule. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:42, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Dictionaries also have entries for e.g. aitch. But we shouldn't write "Choose a value for aitch" in running mathematical prose, and neither should we write "We can approximate pi by using polygons". — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:56, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

If you are not convinced that "pi" is indeed common use, check out this ngram. Then type in "pi" on Google Books. Most of the hits on the first few pages are relevant: Pi, a source book, Pi: a biography of the world's most mysterious number, The Joy of Pi, Pi-unleashed: Volume 1, and on and on it goes. Put in "π" and you get equations and Greek text. Only one hit on the first page is a relevant example of the math constant being referred to in running text. Kauffner (talk) 15:25, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I asked you above to please be more careful in the future about incorrect uses of "the google". Now, you've done it again (as explained below by 69.111.194.167). Stop wasting our time with this incompetent argument. RobHar (talk) 22:32, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Kauffner, would you please clarify your view for me using the following examples? First, regarding 'Even the math symbols everyone understands, like "1" and "2", don't go into running text.': You mean that "I bought 2 doughnuts" should be spelled "I bought two doughnuts"? What if we change "2" to "34"? In my youth I was taught that the standard cutoff for spelling out numerals was 10. Do you have a cutoff? Second, in the sentence "The distributive law states that a (b + c) = a b + a c," would you prefer to have "+" and "=" spelled out? Third, please consider this sentence: "In a fiber bundle

$F\longrightarrow E\ {\xrightarrow {\,\ \pi \ }}\ B,$

the map π is called the projection." In your view should the "π" near the end of the sentence be spelled "pi"? Mgnbar (talk) 17:04, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

WP:ORDINAL seems pretty clear that π should normally be used instead of pi. If the normal non-math standard is that I don't see why maths would then go around using Engliah names. Dmcq (talk) 17:30, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Interesting — I learned a different cutoff. You write out twelve but cipher 13. Of course taking care to avoid "outright barbarisms" (i.e. you wouldn't say I think he ran twelve or 13 miles). --Trovatore (talk) 19:47, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm used to 12 as cutoff as well (same in German). But looking at various grammar sites on the web the actual recommensation varies slightly (see for instance [4], [5])--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:16, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I don't know what the general standard is in English, I was just commenting about the Wikipedia MOS which definitely tends towards us using π in running text. There are some other considerations for article titles as they specifically talk about being able to type things out on a keyboard but as with all guidelines circumstances might indicate one should do otherwise so I'll have to declare myself agnostic on the titles.. Dmcq (talk) 22:20, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually I think I was responding to Mgnbar, though I may not have realized that at the time. It's tricky to get these interleaved responses in the right place. --Trovatore (talk) 02:31, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

If you look at the cover photos of "The joy of π"[6] and "π: a biography"[7] they obviously both use π. The Borweins do use pi in book titles, but if you look in the Amazon Preview of the table of contets of "Pi: A Source Book"[8] (it is a collection of math articles), there are 2 articles that use pi in their titles; 3 that use π and 1 about Roger Apéry's proof that ζ(3) is irrational, that uses the greek letter ζ. If you look in the contents of "Pi and the AGM",[9] the Borweins themselves use π in the individual chapter titles, which might be taken as more akin wikipedia's constituent articles. There is also "π unleashed",[10] "π Algorithmen, Computer, Arithmetik",[11] and several movies like "π"[12] and on the other hand "pi Geschichte und Algorithmen einer Zahl" (tr. "pi History and algorithms of the number")[13] which (like Pi and the AGM) also uses π in its chapter titles. I get the impression that book and journal article titles are somewhat inconsistent and that Kauffner is cherry-picking sources, while chapter titles of math books use π more consistently. So I think that we should restore the earlier title and text. Opening an RM or talkpage discussion about article titles is much more acceptable than trying to impose a fait accompli. As for what dictionaries do: WP:NOTDICT. Similarly for other non-math sources. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 19:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Book covers are just art. The official title is the Library of Congress title, which is generally given on the copyright page. For material in English with the symbol π in the official title, there is the self-published edition of Beckmann's A History of π, Blatner's The Joy of π, the 1998 Aronofsky film π, and about half dozen unpublished dissertations. Out of 50,000 works in the English language with pi or π in their titles, that is it. The Boweins are the pi gods, but unfortunately inconsistent on this issue. However, they do use "pi" 35 times in their book. This is a problem with using "math sources" generally; They don't have a consistent style that would allow them to serve as a model. I suggest following the style of the more scientifically oriented encyclopedias such as Britannica or the Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia. I didn't notice anything in WP:ORDINAL that addresses this issue directly. It specifies that we should spell out "zero" to "nine" in running text. The less familiar the symbol, the more compelling the logic for spelling it out. Kauffner (talk) 02:37, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

"The official title is the Library of Congress title"? Why? What if that title disagrees with that registered in the government of another English-speaking country? Maybe the Library of Congress doesn't even like non-English characters in titles (I recently found out Massachusetts doesn't allow diacritics on birth certificates [14], does that mean that no one born in Massachusetts can be claimed to have an accent in their name?). This is silly.RobHar (talk) 03:07, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply that the titles of books have to be registered with any government agency. In the front matter of a book, there is typically a heading that says, "Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data" followed by title and publication information in a standard format for the benefit of librarians and booksellers. But no, the LOC won't register a title with a Greek letter. A π will appear as [pi] in their catalog. Kauffner (talk) 07:39, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

1) The cover (not the copyright record) is what the user sees, so WP article titles should be treated more like the cover. If there's some redirects that say "pi", that's fine and good. 2) Consistency is overrated. If sources are inconsistent, we can accept some inconsistency ourselves. 3) I haven't had a chance to go to the library and look at the actual EB; I'm not convinced that the "online EB" that you linked to is the same thing as the real EB. 4) The symbol π is perfectly familiar to readers of almost all math articles that mention it. The main exception is Pi which is left at that title (a redirect would also handle this perfectly well).

I haven't seen the Van Nostrand encyclopedia but other such books of theirs I've seen haven't been very impressive. The premier "math encyclopedia" whose quality we should IMO be striving towards is the The Princeton Companion to Mathematics. Its π article is called "π" (ironically alphabetized as if it were spelled "pi".)

All in all, things were fine the way they were and there was no reason to mess with them. If you want to open an RM discussion, that's fine, but once again, I think it is proper to undo all the moves first, rather than presenting a fait accompli. (edited) 69.111.194.167 (talk) 05:23, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I notice "π: Algorithmen, Computer, Arithmetik" is also inconsistent. Its cover says π, its title page says pi, and its copyright page says "[Pi] π [Medienkombination]" ("Media combination" since the book comes with a CD-ROM). "π: a biography" says π on the cover, Pi on the copyright page, and [Pi] in the online LOC record.[15] "π Unleashed" appears to be a translation of "π: Algorithmen, Computer, Arithmetik". Its copyright page on Amazon appears to give the German title but not the English one. The LOC record says "Pi-unleashed" with a hyphen. Overall this LOC and copyright info doesn't seem that authoritative. "The Number π" says π on the cover, [pi] on the copyright page, and mentions on the copyright page that it's a translation of a French book "Autour du nombre π" which says π on the cover,[16] doesn't have a preview with a scan of the copyright page, but says [pi] in the LOC.[17] I also notice that two of three books on π-calculus (a computer science topic, not related to the number π=3.14159...) that I found in the LOC say [pi] or [symbol for pi].[18] Anyway, Beckmann's and Blatner's books are obviously not unique. Could you please stop wasting our time with this stuff? 69.111.194.167 (talk) 06:44, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

If they want to raise a proposal then go ahead. Personally I'm against using pi in running text, I see no need to switch to linguistic mode for the maths and it grates as I shift gears. I find the business of even using a in running text and a in formulae causes a delay in my thinking. Dmcq (talk) 07:54, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Unless I've missed something, Kauffner is the only user arguing for "pi" in running text. Kauffner has not responded to my request for clarification of his argument. His argument is contradicted by dozens of math books and hundreds of math articles in my possession, and I'm sure that the other mathematicians here possess similar evidence. So I wholeheartedly endorse Carl's original proposal, that Math MOS be amended to say that "pi" should be "π" in running text. (I prefer "π" in titles for the same reason, but maybe there is a technical issue I'm missing?) Mgnbar (talk) 12:46, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I am not aware of any such technical reasons. I support this proposal. Hans Adler 14:21, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I have to wonder where all this emotion was during the pi move vote. Of course, that was quite an emotional discussion as well, but only those opposed to the symbol seemed to really care. Kauffner (talk) 15:49, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

There are thousands of mathematics articles in Wikipedia, and we can't all get involved with a single one of them. But once you start to edit against standard conventions and established practice on a wider scale, you shouldn't be surprised that you are getting opposition. Hans Adler 16:18, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

The move proposal was just about the title of the article, there was no implication it should be written as pi everywhere in text any more than 'Euler–Mascheroni constant' or gamma should be written instead of γ everywhere in running text. Dmcq (talk) 17:27, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

This is absoluteness ridiculous. We have a single, mathematical layman, trying to change all of the maths articles. There may be books with pi in the title, but they are books aimed at people that don't even know how to pronounce π. Kauffner, you in way above your head here. Give it up, and find a better use for your time. I can't believe you're here arguing with the maths wikiproject regulars that you are right and they are wrong. Like I said in my earlier post: shall we replace x with ecks? Of course not. You're being ridiculous. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you say anyway. Us mathematicians write the maths articles, and we're going to carry on using π. — Fly by Night (talk) 17:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Okay, but Kauffner is trying to be a good Wikipedian and resolve the issue through verifiable sources, so let's be civil about it. Even if math articles were mainly written by mathematicians, there would still be a place for non-mathematicians, to keep us from going off the deep end. Mgnbar (talk) 19:55, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Mgnbar: you're right, and Kauffner: I'm sorry. I didn't want to be uncivil, but I obviously was. I just feel strongly about the issue. Point taken, must try harder. — Fly by Night (talk) 20:47, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I think the stuff about looking at copyright pages is bogus (I shouldn't have spent so much time on it myself). By WP:COMMONNAME if we're writing about a book, we should use the name on the cover, since that's what people see, even if it says something different on the copyright page. Note that some of the books with "pi" in the title are high-level math, like the Borweins' book. But, overall, this is a case of "if it's not broken, don't fix it". I also don't understand Kauffner's post of yesterday[19] which sounds almost like this whole pagemove thing was some kind of pointy reverse psychology (but I doubt that's really what was being expressed). 69.111.194.167 (talk) 05:32, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't see anything about book covers in WP:COMMONNAME. WP:NCB refers to title pages and doesn't mention anything about covers. This article also includes an illustration of a title page, not a cover. You think the cover is more "common" because more people see it? That is not what "common name" means. The common name is the name that something is commonly referred to by other sources. So you don't need to look at the book at all to determine its common name. Just check the listing on WorldCat or Amazon. For our purposes here, the question arises, "Are these sources not using the π symbol simply for a technical reason?" Since the libraries and booksellers get their data from the copyright notice, this notice is the authoritative source. Kauffner (talk) 11:14, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Neither argument seems convincing to me. On the one hand, many library catalogs don't handle even diacritics very well, to say nothing of non-Latin letters. Looking at the WorldCat holdings for "A History of Pi" is not encouraging: one of these is "A History of [pi] (pi)", one is "A History of Pi", one is "A History of pi symbol (pi)" (!). Moreover, the entries seem to have the publishers wrong: the title of the Golem Press edition is very clearly "A History of π (pi)", but this is the one that WorldCat thinks was published by St. Martin's Press (and apparently in the wrong year). Clearly, I don't think we should be relying on library holdings as indicators of the "official" title of a work. Nor should we rely on the book cover either. Even the copyright page seems not to always agree with the library holdings. For instance, "π: A History of the World's Most Mysterious Number" has "Pi" on it's copyright page, "π" on the title page, and according to WorldCat, it is typically cataloged under [pi]. I think this needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis. There doesn't seem to me to be any natural candidate for the "official" title, and nothing that one can confidently say is supported by the MoS to the exclusion of the others. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:07, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

In all the cases you mention, the libraries and booksellers are using "pi", not π, even when the cover or copyright notice says otherwise. Someone must been asleep at the switch when this title got registered though. On Amazon, it's always "pi", never "[pi]" or π. So the common name issue is pretty straightforward. Kauffner (talk) 14:23, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The Amazon statement, does that refer to A History of Pi only, or is it a general statement about titles as they appear on Amazon? Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:30, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I think I have looked up enough books on Amazon to make such a "general statement" and I have not found any π or [pi] books. On the other hand, I did miss the two "[pi]-calculus" books in the LOC catalog, so my track record is less than perfect. Kauffner (talk) 15:52, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

If there are no exceptions, I would consider it a stylistic choice on the part of Amazon, rather than an indication of what the title actually is (let alone how we should treat it). Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:18, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

To summarize and hopefully finish this conversation, only one editor ever objected to π in running text, and he did so only briefly, and he has not argued for that position in 10 (oops --- ten) days. Is it fair to say that we have a consensus for altering Math MoS as proposed by Carl? (N.B. This is a different issue from π in titles, still being argued below.) Mgnbar (talk) 16:43, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Links to the "Gauss" disambiguation page

Something to work on:

Gauss is currently a disambiguation page. A very large number of pages link to it. Either (1) those links should get disambiguated or (2) the page should be moved to Gauss (disambiguation) and Gauss redirected to Carl Friedrich Gauss. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:32, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

(2) has been done, evidently by Michael Hardy. That has gone back and forth.

If I understand correctly, links to the redirect now called Gauss should be checked and many should be resolved, and there is a tool for semiautomation of that task. More than half of the incoming links are from article space; many are not. --P64 (talk) 16:50, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

"Discovered" vs. "invented" math topic

I don't think it's Wikipedia's business to solve that philosophical issue, but perhaps someone with more experience in side-stepping that should probably comment at the FAC for logarithm, which has been open for who knows how long, and seems to attract all sorts of nitpickers. Tijfo098 (talk) 22:04, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Isn't it this sort of thing that keeps people from trying to get math articles to FA status? I especially dislike the "the Google hit count on my version is higher than the Google hit count on your version so my version is correct" argument. Seems like we're wasting a lot of time with proofs and logic if all we have to do is to count Google hits to see if something is true.--RDBury (talk) 15:54, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

The best solution for discovered/invented is to use a neutral term such as "developed". It works every time. Tkuvho (talk) 16:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Reminder: Titles with π

There seemed to be a consensus above that for articles in the scope of this project, there is nothing wrong with "π" in the title and that this should not be replaced by "pi". There was even talk about updating MATHMOS to reflect this. This consensus is currently not reflected byanother requested move discussion, which is going on at Talk:Liu Hui's π algorithm#Requested move. To me this indicates that more (focused) discussion is needed, either in the relevant section above or in the new requested move discussion.

Also, I was going to move List of topics related to pi back to its correct title, but because of the title blacklist only an admin can do it. Hans Adler 08:19, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

This is a neutral notice? See WP:CANVASSING. Kauffner (talk) 16:39, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Done. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:18, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

To be honest this seems like a little inhouse push to ignore a wider consensus. The problem is because of the MoS requiring no symbols in the titles of articles. Should this not have gone for either wider consensus (via RfC) or another such process rather than in-house admins consenting to IAR? Chaosdruid (talk) 16:24, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

First, these were originally moved en masse from the WP:STATUSQUO without first attempting to get consensus. There is clearly no consensus for the original move, as evidenced by the thread at Talk:Liu Hui's π algorithm. Second, the MoS only cautions against using symbols that might render as square boxes because of a lack of browser support. That is a non-issue for Greek letters. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:29, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

No, that is not true, it does not say that. I suggest that is OR on your part.

From MoS: article titles — "* Do not use symbols: Symbols such as "♥", as sometimes found in advertisements or logos, should never be used in titles. This includes non-Latin punctuation such as the characters in Unicode's CJK Symbols and Punctuation block." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chaosdruid (talk • contribs) 16:43, 1 May 2011

As I explained to Kauffner before, and he has chosen to conveniently ignore, this is taken out of context. Greek letters are clearly not symbols in the sense of that rule, as is clear both from the surrounding rules and the talk page discussions from the time when the word "symbol" was introduced here.

In fact it's clear even from the text you quoted yourself: (1) π is less "symbol-like" than ♥. π is not normally found in advertisements or logos, and is much more often found in other contexts. π is not "non-Latin punctuation" because it is not punctuation. π does not appear in the CJK Symbols and Punctuation block and is unlike everything that appears there in that it has a lot less browser support. If this rule had been meant to cover something as common in English text as a Greek letter, there would have been plenty of more appropriate examples than a playing card symbol and CJK characters, both of which are much rarer in English text. Hans Adler 17:08, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

The "wider consensus" was entirely between Kauffner and himself until I made this comment. ("As you may have noticed, you haven't had much, if any, support yet but a lot of opposition. At some point it might be a good idea to just accept reality and disengage.") For some reason you suddenly became intested in this topic 14 hours later. (I am not saying there was any on-wiki canvassing. The only intervening edits by Kauffner were to push a new iteration of the Obama birth conspiracy and to support another of his contrarian page move votes in a different topic.) Hans Adler 17:00, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

This post sounds somewhat unhinged, like something that might not belong on a public forum. The thought that I might be canvassing in secret leads to obsessive behavior, but doesn't discourage you from canvassing openly yourself in the post at the beginning of this section. There is a page called WP:Requested moves that you might want to check out before you allow these conspiratorial thoughts to fester any further. Kauffner (talk) 10:02, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

This is nothing to do with support, the reality is that there is a guideline and you are ignoring it. You are also ignoring the processes to change the MoS and RfC. I have raised the matter for discussion on your behalf at MoS as none of the project members, apart from Kauffner who mentioned modifying MATHMOS, seems willing to try and at least follow any kind of proper procedure.

My interest? Lol - all page move requests are posted to a big list where all Wiki editors can see what are being proposed, your comment about "I am not suggesting canvassing" is exactly that and I find it a little ridiculous that you would imagine such a conspiracy.

Go and comment on the MoS talk page and get consensus to change it, or change the MATHSMOS, and then we can all be singing from the same songbook. It is silly that people are trying to dissuade people from following my posts and my oppose vote when if correct procedure was followed (getting the symbol allowed) my vote would have been Support :¬) Chaosdruid (talk) 17:12, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Greek letters, and other mathematical symbols, are clearly not "symbols" as defined in that section of the MoS. No change is required. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:31, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

E.g. 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + … has both + "symbols" and an ellipsis symbol in the title. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:34, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

It clearly needs to be moved to one plus one plus one plus one plus dot dot dot. </joking> In seriousness, though, from the (recent) discussion at the MoS that precipitated the "Do not use symbols" recommendation, this was clearly intended to refer to the sort of symbols that appear in the unicode symbols character set (a very motley crew of wingdings and other exotic symbols—not including commonplace things like the Greek letters). See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Symbols in article titles, specifically Pi. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:34, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

That should be "What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?" and attributed to the White Queen. Alice quite rightly said "I don't know, I lost count". ;-) Dmcq (talk) 13:06, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Please see also Talk:Leibniz_formula_for_pi#Requested_move. Cheers, Ben (talk) 08:13, 4 May 2011 (UTC).

Default TeX font size too big

Someone also opposed the FAC for logarithm on this. I'm curious if there's an easy way to fix that. I think Wikimedia use dvipng, which can probably be tweaked to make smaller pix by default. Tijfo098 (talk) 22:27, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

The developers have the technical ability to do this. In the recent past they have not given much attention to math display. I'd suggest trying to get a large number of comments on a village pump if you want to convince them that they should tweak the software. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:35, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Whether they can do this and whether they should do it are different issues. WP renders formulas as small PNG files and it's the browser that decides relative sizes based on screen resolution and user settings. Formulas might appear too big on one machine and too small on another. We've had long and intricate discussions here before on what can and should be done and we even have a sub-project for making the best of what we have. We're coming up on 2 years since the last math article was made FA (I just checked and updated the project page) and it seems to me that if this kind of thing can keep an article from being promoted then math articles are pretty much disqualified before the start.--RDBury (talk) 16:56, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

As we have been incessantly discussing since February 2003, there are lots of problems with using TeX in an inline setting on Wikipedia (whereas in a "displayed" setting it seems to work well). One of those is improper alignment, thus:

$a+b,\,$ $a^{b},\,$ $a_{b}\,$

Another is this:

$1+2=3\,$

.

The period at the end of a sentence appears on the next line. The same thing happens with commas. (Of course, this varies with the window geometry.)

Michael Hardy (talk) 03:53, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

MathJax

I recently came across User:Nageh/mathJax which is a wikipedia extension for using the MathJax javascript library for displaying LaTeX expressions. It uses the raw Latex input rather than the Texvc images. All rendering is done via javascript and it does take a couple of seconds to render a page, but this time is comparable to the time it takes to download all the png images. It does require downloading a font pack and setting a user preference to use.

I've been using this for about a month now and I'm very happy with the results, there are a few snag but the overall rending is good. I find it less jarring than the Texvc. It probably not ready for primetime yet but some more people trying it to spot any bugs. --Salix (talk): 22:36, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Boubaker polynomials

I just declined an AfC from an anon IP wanting to recreate Boubaker polynomials, which appears to have been persistently popping up and being deleted over the last few years. On closer inspection the content came from User:Rirunmot/User:Rirunmot/subpage6, which in turn must have saved from an old version of the deleted article (hence the cleanup tags), and I suspect the AfC was submitted by User:Rirunmot himself. He's apparently been working on several versions of it in his user space recently. Anyway, I have no idea whether the new version of the article is better or if the subject has recently become notable, I just thought there might might be people here who would want to keep an eye on it. —Joseph Roe^Tk•Cb, 13:13, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Previous deletion discussions can be found at: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Boubaker_polynomials, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boubaker polynomials (2nd nomination), and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boubaker polynomials (3rd nomination). Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

However, at this point there seem to be enough hits at Google scholar in decent places that this passes our notability threshold. This is, in some sense "unfortunate", since the article was really a dogged attempt at self-promotion (with all kinds of sockpuppetry, meatpuppetry, and vote-stacking), and I don't personally find the polynomial sequence to be especially notable (as it's a trivial variation of the Chebyshev polynomials IIRC). But I think there is probably no choice but to allow the re-creation of this article in some form. In any event, this will be something we definitely want to keep an eye on. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:25, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Per this slightly odd note on my talk page I would be on the lookout for yet more sockmeatpuppetry. —Joseph Roe^Tk•Cb, 14:37, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Dear Sławomir Biały, I was working on this page among several others, but it seems to me the most controversial among the pages I studied. Its lastly deleted version contained à 'zero' references... the actual one User:Rirunmot/User:Rirunmot/subpage6, is referring to more than 22 third party, independent, verifiable and academic sources, … there is something wrong and abnormal… at the last AFD !! as you said hits at Google scholar yieded thousands of links in decent places.

Your note about link to Chebyshev polynomials could be understood, but specialists say Polynomials are generally linked to each other, and ther are rules for differentiating (i. e; Chebyshev polynomials are linked to Luckas polinomials by a simple mutiplying act, nevertheless they exist separately) ). Please have a look on the references and give your opinionRirunmot (talk) 15:04, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, many polynomials are variants of each other. This one is an especially trivial variant of the Chebyshev polynomials and, in my opinion, doesn't really require its own article. There was some discussion about this eons ago at the now deleted discussion page. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:16, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes , but in one reference of that article , it is stated that a polynomial, in order to have an identity must have 1_ A generating function 2_ A recursive form 3_ an explicit form 4_ a characteristic Differential Equation and finally 5_a field of application.

According to references (from Encyclopedies and Books) the Boubaker Polynomials have these 5 Charecteristic Patterns !! and are applied in tens of scientific fielld (see §the page) . You know, Dickson are simply 2*chebyshev!!! Do one dare saying that Dickson are trivial?? what is your opinion??

Rirunmot (talk) 15:24, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd kill the Nova Publishers "encyclopedia" entry. As for the Dickson polynomials, these are only studied over finite fields, where they aren't related to Chebyshev polynomials. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I want to point out that User:Rirunmot recruited me to chime in on my talk page. I was one of the few people arguing to keep the article in the third nomination, but I wasn't exactly crying when the article was deleted because I am outright disgusted by the use of the page on this topic as a platform for self-promotion. Yes, I personally believe that it's technically well above the notability threshold. In my opinion, it doesn't matter that the only scholars to write about these polynomials are the original author and his friends. In my opinion, it doesn't matter that they're only a small trivial variant of the Chebyshev polynomials. What does concern me here is the use of Wikipedia as a platform for self-promotion. It seems to me that there is a clear conflict of interest here. I'd rather us semiprotect the article and ban any of the offending users from editing it. Then if some more impartial editor wants to re-create it, fine. But I'll say, even though I technically think it's notable, this whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth and I know I'm not going to put in any effort to re-creating this page. Cazort (talk) 16:00, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure why I've been invited to join in here. My only part in the last Afd was to stir things up a bit (now there's a surprise...). I wanted at least part of the discussion to be in English as opposed to Maths, and ended up hosting something on my talk page. Now I'm here, I'll leave the maths to the mathematicians, but as a writer I'm interested in the behind the scenes. What is so all-fired important about getting this stuff onto Wikipedia? Surely it can't lend kudos to the thing in the eyes of the world mathematical community (assuming there is one - no, must be). Is there a profit motive? Something like a book that needs pushing? How many other similar things are there, and what proportion of them is on Wikipedia? And finally, are they any use, or just a bit of mathematical frippery? Peridon (talk) 17:51, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Project Euclid identifier?

I notice that several references link to Project Euclid. A bit like how many reference link to Mathematical Reviews. I think we should give Project Euclid its own identifier (and its own article as well) so references can be tidied up like the others.

For example, a citation with a link to Mathematical Reviews like

{{cite journal
 |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried
 |year=2008
 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics
 |url=http://www.ams.org/mathscinet-getitem?mr=2413003
 |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]]
 |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239
 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828
}}

gets cleaned up to

{{cite journal
 |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried
 |year=2008
 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics
 |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]]
 |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239
 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828
 |mr=2413003
}}

I think that it would be a good thing to clean up

{{cite journal
 |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried
 |year=2008
 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics
 |url=http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.bsl/1208442828
 |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]]
 |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239
 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828
}}

to something like

{{cite journal
 |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried
 |year=2008
 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics
 |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]]
 |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239
 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828
 |euclid=euclid.bsl/1208442828
 |mr=2413003
}}

Which would look something like

• Gottwald, Siegfried (2008). "Mathematical fuzzy logics". Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 14 (2): 210–239. doi:10.2178/bsl/1208442828. MR2413003. PE euclid.bsl/1208442828.

or similar.

I've also made {{Project Euclid}}, similar to {{MR}} and {{doi}}. Appearance can be tweaked since I've no idea how a link to Project Euclid should be presented. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:59, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

See a related discussion at Template talk:Citation#Many things about identifiers. I think the distinction between identifiers like MR and doi that have their own parameters and identifiers like {{ECCC}} that do not is the frequency of usage: how many project Euclid references do we have? In any case, it should work to use your Euclid template within the |id= field of a citation template. But I'm not sure I see the point when the doi goes to exactly the same place. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:52, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah I remember that discussion, I led it :p. But as a point of comparision, There's a bit more than 500 articles with links to the Project Euclid website (524 articles, as of 17 March 2001), well over the threshold for inclusion. However, if these links are truely redundant with DOIs (as in dois will always resolve to the same location), then it would probably be better to convert these urls do DOIs instead of giving them their own identifiers. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:59, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately I don't think the doi does always work. At least, for example, PE euclid.em/1047565447 works, while the corresponding following the syntax of your example, doi:10.2178/em/1047565447, does not. I agree that standardizing the format of our Project Euclid links would be an improvement. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:17, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Link presentation

Any feedback on how to present the link though? Like which of pe:euclid.bsl/1208442828 (as the doi) vs. PE euclid.bsl/1208442828 (as most other identifier, but is PE understood to mean Projet Euclid as MR is understood to mean Mathematical Reviews?) vs Project Euclid: euclid.bsl/1208442828 vs... is best? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:36, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Anyone? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:26, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer the presentation PE for brevity (versus space-hungry "Project Euclid" and for consistency with Mathematical Reviews's MR.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:02, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Alright, since that would be one of my preferred option too (favourite would be "pe:" to match "doi:"), let's go with that. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Minimization of prefix?

Hi! This is a useful template.

• Nordström, Kenneth (1999). "The life and work of Gustav Elfving". Statistical Science. 14 (2): 174–196. doi:10.1214/ss/1009212244. JSTOR 2676737. MR 1722074. PE euclid.ss/1009212244. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1=, |2=, |3=, and |4= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

I would prefer the deletion of the (redundant) prefix "euclid." from the identifier. It would be useful to provide documentation and examples on its use; also, the documentation has 3 levels of parentheses, where I believe 2 are intended.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 13:10, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that "euclid." is part of the identifier, so you can't removed it. You could do something like euclid.ss/1009212244, but that means you input a partial identifier ("ss/1009212244") in the templates, which most people will not do. They will input "euclid.ss/1009212244", and it'll produce euclid.euclid.ss/1009212244, which is both uglier, and gives a bad link to the PE database. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:30, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I first tried "1009212244" (following the MR and JSTOR examples) then "ss/1009212244" and finally "euclid.ss/1009212244", FYI. Thanks for your clarification.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 13:47, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Boubaker Polynomials (Summary)

From the three pages: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Boubaker_polynomials, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boubaker polynomials (2nd nomination), and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boubaker polynomials (3rd nomination) it seems that two facts are admitted by everyone :

• The main criticism was initially about Notabilty and references, nothing more.
• The debate deviated to Editing Wars, some nonsense vandalism and odd behaviour.

Now the matter is neither the correctness; nor the mathematical value, these are problems of specialist as discussed in the accessible and verifiable academic refernces i.e. Meixner-Type Results for Riordan Arrays and Associated Integer Sequences, Chapter 6: The Boubaker polynomials (by Paul Barry, Aoife Hennessy and Modelling Nonlinear Bivariate Dependence Using the Boubaker polynomials (by E. Gargouri-Ellouze, N. Sher Akbar, S. Nadeem)... The real matter is about notability, which is quite admitted by the 3680 hits there [20]adn 163 there Scholar Publications along with the academic and encyclopedic publications. So please give your opinion on this particular question: Notable or Not-Notable. Thanks Rirunmot (talk) 19:03, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

My feeling is that, per WP:NPOV, an accurate article on the Boubaker polynomials would have to start out as saying something like "The Boubaker polynomials are a sequence of polynomials, a trivial variant of the Chebyshev polynomials, which due to relentless self-promotion by Boubaker and his colleagues have taken on an alternative name." Can we find adequate sourcing to support language like that? If not, then perhaps in the interest of primum non nocere we should say nothing at all. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:33, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. We can note that all the references which claim mathematical value are by B, and note that it doesn't have mathematical value. That doesn't mean we can't have an article, but it should note both that there is no established mathematical value and that it's a trivial variant of the Chebyshev polynomials. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:51, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I disagree too. I spent a lot of time on the references... Saying (as per the message of Arthur Rubin) that the refernces are from B or X is quite nonsence because the provided references are REACHABLE, and Simply VERIFIABLE even by a 7-years kid...So the single question is Notable or not Notable, it is not the standard of WP to state on Value or link to Chebyshev, this is up to specialists in the academic arenaRirunmot (talk) 21:07, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

For notability, we would need, at the least, evidence that someone other than B was using the term. No such evidence has been presented. Even if some "evidence" were presented that others were using it, due to B's known use of pseudonyms in publications, we would have difficulty verifying that, unless it was used by a well-known mathematician. But I don't agree that notability is enough. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:06, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I didn't say the references to B or X are nonsense. I said that they are evidence of non-notability, and are not evidence of established mathematical value. If they are published in real peer-reviewed journals, that still doesn't provide evidence of notability or relevance to any real field of mathematics, only of accuracy. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:14, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

There is a terrible error!! In the proposed page there is no mention about any particular relevance to any real field of mathematics  !!! , just the simple (referred) sentence :

The Boubaker polynomials have yielded several integer sequences in the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS). They have been widely used in several applied physics fields as Cryogenics, Biology,System Dynamics ,NonLinear Processes,Approximation Theory ,Thermodynamics, Mechanics,Hydrology , Molecular Dynamics ,Thermo-Physics , Manifolds , Functional Analysis... ,

So they seem to be multi-field items, no problem with relevance ...

About Notability, Arthur Rubin seems not interested in verifying the references,let's help him, i.e. ref 8 [21], The authors, Eminent Professor Paul Barry et al. Website presents as Chapter 6: (p 23): The Boubaker Polynomials... In i.e. Reference 15 [22] , Professor A. Yildirim Homepage presents (page 40) the boubaker polynomials as a tool for solving nonlinear science problems... and so on ...

So, finally, Notable or not Notable ??Rirunmot (talk) 23:01, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I see from Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Boubaker polynomials that someone has recently tried to recreate the page. I also see from User:Rirunmot/User:Rirunmot/subpage10 and User:Rirunmot/User:Rirunmot/subpage11 that you, Rirunmot, have copies of the just created French Wikipedia article fr:Polynômes de boubaker and what is probably an old copy of the Italian article (they've deleted and protected the article so it can't be recreated). And you've started canvassing for support for recreating this article [23].

Surely you know this will not go well. I suggest that you drop the subject. Ozob (talk) 22:48, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Stay cheerful, dear Ozob!!, you do not add so much information... The page exists in [24]since 2007 with no problem with notability or so...

The debate here is about notability of the page [User:Rirunmot/User:Rirunmot/subpage6] , so you can kindly give your opinion about that.Rirunmot (talk) 23:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I attempted to ask the French Math Wikiproject about Boubaker polynomials. It seems however that they loathe them so much that their anti-vandal bot Salebot revert edits with the phrase "Polynômes de Boubaker" on sight. Nevertheless someone noticed my edit, and less than a quarter hour after I posted, fr:Polynômes de boubaker was deleted.

I would like it if we adopted a similar policy: Boubaker polynomials are vandalism and should be treated as such. Ozob (talk) 00:57, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Stay calm dear Ozob!!, wher do you see vandalism? you are here in en:WP, are you just trying to avoid the answer to the question:

Notable or not Notable ?

So kindly answer to that question or wait for other users to answer to, then we will see...

Rirunmot (talk) 01:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Is there any reason not to lump Rirunmot with all the blocked users in Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Mmbmmmbm? —David Eppstein (talk) 06:47, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• Comment a DRV has been started on the page here. Yoenit (talk) 09:12, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Stochastic matrix

In the phase-type representation section, where τ is mysteriously chosen to be (0,1,0,0); am I right to assume that that is the initial condition? In other words, does the system start in state two? The end of the article needs a lot of explanation. It starts off nicely, but then there's jumps to using some scary looking formulas, lots of technical language, and zero explanation. There is a link to another article, but that doesn't help at all. — Fly by Night (talk) 15:19, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

As it says at Stochastic_matrix#Example: the cat and mouse, "...with a cat in the first box and a mouse in the fifth one at time zero". This starting state corresponds to state #2 as described. JRSpriggs (talk) 20:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm sorry, but that's still very convoluted. That state is a 1×5 matrix in the original set-up, and is implicitly carried forward into further subsections without any further mention. That illustrates my comment that the "...article needs a lot of explanation." It doesn't explain the mysterious appearance of a 1×4 matrix called τ. There is a link to another article, but articles should be as self-contained as possible. There is zero explanation. I only knew what τ was because I understood the topic of the article. Isn't the idea of an encyclopaedia to help those that do not already understand? — Fly by Night (talk) 23:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, you know more about this article than I do since I read today it for the first time.

However, it is apparent to me that the fifth position was dropped from the matrices because it was not helpful in the calculation. In particular, if it had been retained then he would have had to use

${\begin{bmatrix}1\\1\\1\\1\\0\\\end{bmatrix}}$

instead of

$\mathbf {1} ={\begin{bmatrix}1\\1\\1\\1\\1\\\end{bmatrix}}$

to represent the event that the mouse is still alive.

Also $(I-T)^{-1}=I+T+T^{2}+T^{3}+T^{4}+...$ is just a short hand to add up the probabilities that the mouse is still alive after 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... time periods. JRSpriggs (talk) 00:34, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Brilliant… now we're getting somewhere. That sort of explanation is what I was hoping for someone cold add to the article. But, how do we know that that det(I−T) ≠ 0? After all, the identity matrix itself is a valid stochastic matrix. That needs some justification. What do the higher order momenta represent? I too read the article for the first time myself today. That last section needs work, that's why I posted here. I'm a mathematician, but that last section lost me. Would you care to add some explanation along the lines of what you have just posted? I remember someone once telling me that the result of mathematical study is that hidden truths become obvious. (That's why "dropping" rows was apparent to you and me.) I'm sure some people working ergodic theory would call that article trivial and obvious; but what about a 13 year old high school maths student that wanted to expand his/her knowledge? The latter are exactly the group that we want to reach out to. We need to make mathematics more accessible. — Fly by Night (talk) 01:51, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

This is a geometric progression for linear operators, the sufficient condition for invertability of $1-A$ is $\|A\|<1$ — Kallikanzarid^talk 03:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Hilbert's eighth problem

Someone spammed my department's list with a link to the article on Hilbert's eighth problem. The claims on the page seem dubious and there are no sources to speak of, but I'm only just dipping my toes into Wikipedia and don't feel comfortable deleting a ton of stuff. Could someone pass definitive judgement? --Dylan Moreland (talk) 03:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I reverted to an older version but it's very stubby and could stand a lot of improvement. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:18, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Hilbert's first problem redirects to Continuum hypothesis; shouldn't this redirect to Riemann hypothesis? CRGreathouse (t | c) 04:45, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

But Hilbert's 8th also included the Goldbach conjecture and the twin prime problem, not just Riemann. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:12, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not clear to me that Hilbert's 1st should redirect to the CH page. If you look at what Hilbert actually said, it's a little ambiguous whether the problem is limited to CH. The first part seems to be about CH (in the weaker, no-intermediate-cardinality form), but the second part is about whether the reals can be wellordered (which of course follows from the stronger form of CH, the $2^{\aleph _{0}}=\aleph _{1}$ version). I kind of think in an ideal world we would have a separate Hilbert's first problem page that discussed these matters. I don't know whether there are any good secondary sources, though. --Trovatore (talk) 05:33, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Such redirects are "historically illiterate", I would feel. As part of upgrading the whole Hilbert problem area, they should certainly be reconsidered. (For one thing, you have to have an axiomatic set theory before CH is meaningful as a conjecture. We have Hilbert to thank, generally, for such clarifications. But I meander ...) Could we have a rating done for all those Hilbert problem pages, so that we know the worst? Charles Matthews (talk) 21:27, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, no, I don't agree with the parenthetical. CH was meaningful in Cantor's framework, which was not axiomatic. --Trovatore (talk) 21:30, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree with "Trovatore" on this one. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:47, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Indian History of calculus

Please help verify an existence claim for Indian derivatives in the 12th century. Tkuvho (talk) 10:55, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I heard David Mumford give a lecture on this once. According to him, they had extremely well developed theories of calculus for trigonometric functions, including Taylor series and the differential equation y′′ + y = 0. They'd done all this so that they could do astronomy, and they did astronomy for religious reasons. But they didn't pursue calculus for any other type of function. Ozob (talk) 11:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd believe even that they constructed the hyperreals if it is properly sourced, but currently the same Jaggedalia sourced in Ian Pearce is being added along with presumably accurate information. Tkuvho (talk) 11:19, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I haven't read it yet but you might begin with "Was Calculus Invented in India?" by David Bressoud, College Mathematics Journal, Vol. 33, No. 1, Jan., 2002. College mathematics journal usually has nice is a nice expository articles and the references in that article should give more details. If it helps is opening sentences are: "No. Calculus was not invented in India. But two hundred years before Newton or Leibniz, Indiana astronomers came very close to creating what we would call calculus." Though he is speaking about a time somewhat after the 12th century. Thenub314 (talk) 19:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

An IP just added a massive diatribe against Bressoud at Talk:Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics. Tkuvho (talk) 20:23, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

MOS and consistency b/w Hilbert space, Inner product space

The articles on Hilbert space and Inner product space use:

• different symbols (F vs. K) for the base field
• different styles (blackboard bold vs. bold)

The first is easy enough to fix (If one agrees that they should be the same symbol for consistency of notation between related articles, which I think they should be) but the Math MOS only states:

"...An article may use either boldface type or blackboard bold for objects traditionally printed in boldface. As with all such choices, the article should be consistent. Editors should not change articles from one choice of typeface to another except for consistency."

which I read to mean it's OK to change for consistency *within* an article, but not strictly OK to change one to the other for the sake of consistency *between* articles. Thoughts? Thanks. BrideOfKripkenstein (talk) 21:01, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the symbols for, say, a field should be made consistent in related articles. Doing this is just error-prone, time-consuming and may also upset those who have to clean up later. The same holds, I believe for consistency of different articles with respect to styles. However, of course, within an article, everything should be consistent, where possible. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 14:06, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

whole number

A new account (not, I think, a new editor) is trying to make whole number something other than a disambig page. My opinion is that there is no content justifying an article. Please comment at talk:whole number. ---Trovatore (talk) 23:58, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I've responded there. Things have gotten kind of heated, so I'm hoping that having an uninvolved party (or a few) explain things calmly and with reference to wikipedia policies and the like, in the spirit of Wikipedia:Third opinion, might at least help him see why he is getting reverted. Kingdon (talk) 01:55, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

The current situation is a little bit clumsy. Whole number refers to integer and natural number; the former doesn't contain the phrase "whole number" anywhere, while the latter lists whole number in the "see also" section as though it should be an article. I think it's appropriate that there are some references somewhere to demonstrate that the phrase "whole number" is indeed used in all three senses mentioned. Where else would such references logically go, if not on the whole number page? Jowa fan (talk) 08:08, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Those things are not really the concern of an encyclopedia. --Trovatore (talk) 20:59, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh wait, I see my comment was a bit unclear in context. Certainly avoiding confusion is a proper concern of an encyclopedia, so editing integer and natural number in such a way that they deal appropriately with the locution whole number is a defensible option. What I mean is that discussion of the phrase whole number in isolation is not an encyclopedic concern. --Trovatore (talk) 21:06, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Two envelopes problem, two children problem

Having fought for two years on the Monty Hall problem, almost getting banned from wikipedia for OR and COI, I am looking for a new brawl, and am getting stuck into the two envelopes problem. Have been accused of gross arrogance and incivility within one day (practice makes perfect! I didn't want to waste time with ritual dances but went straight to the nitty gritty). There is a big problem with that page, that a lot of people have been writing up their own common sense solutions (both sensical and nonsensical) but almost no one actually reads the sources. I just wrote up two mainsteam solutions to two main variants of the two envelopes problem, both "out of my head", ie without reliable sources. (Very evil, very un-wikipedian). After all, I have been talking about these problems with professional friends for close on fourty years now, and setting them as exam questions, talking about them with students, without ever actually carefully reading published literature on the problems.

Maybe some of you folk here can get access to some of those papers in journals where you have to pay a big tax to the publishing company before you can actually read the pdf. That would be useful.

Looks like the two children problem is equally much a mess.

Of course I could be completely wrong that what I think are the solutions to the two main variants of the two envelopes problem are indeed the solutions, or for that matter, are correct at all... Richard Gill (talk) 08:14, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Link? Ozob (talk) 10:36, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Someone made the links. The latest contributions to the Talk page for two envelopes problem are mostly by me. And two of the sections of the page itself were hurriedly and entirely written purely as uncited "own research" by me: [25], [26].

Well: I think I report the accepted wisdom / folklore in my community. What does the community think? What are the good references? Richard Gill (talk) 13:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

It may be useful to compare and contrast the featured article (already seven years ago!) "Infinite monkey theorem". Which articles on puzzles, etc, may accomplish what that one does? and why not ;-)

I have posted some long comments related to Richard Gill's enterprise at Wikipedia talk: WikiProject Statistics#Two envelopes problem, two children problem, where he posted in duplicate this morning, and some more at Talk: Two envelopes problem#Lead thoughts.--P64 (talk) 20:01, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I have collected my thinkings on the two envelopes problem on my Talk page at [27]. This must all be known. References??? Richard Gill (talk) 14:52, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Boubaker Polynomials (to:DRW)

Thanks Yoenit ! The link you provided here allows concentring debates of serious contributors (efforts and time) on the simple question: Sourced or not? --Rirunmot (talk) 09:35, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Sockpuppet investigation

I have opened a sockpuppet investigation at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mmbmmmbm. Ozob (talk) 11:44, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Gill polynomials

How to become a famous mathematician

1. Find a famous family of polynomials (e.g. Hermite, Chebyshev, ...)
2. Replace x by 2x
3. Check if you did not hereby hit another already existing family; if so simply repeat (replace x by 2x, again)
4. Rewrite the differential equation, generating equation, etc, etc, accordingly
5. Look for applications of the old family of polynomials. Every single application of the old polynomials, by appropriate substitution, yields an application of your new family
6. Publish the applications in appropriate hardly refereed electronic journals which provide publishing outlets for those who cannot publish in the serious journals, get yourself a degree and a professorship, if necessary at some only virtual university, get yourself students who write yet more articles about your polynomials
7. Write an article about your polynomials on wikipedia

Seriously, maybe this trick ought to be explained in the appropriate article on wikipedia. Then the article on Boubaker polynomials can simply refer to that article and to the article on Chebyshev polynomials. Similarly the article on Chebyshev polynomials can refer to this trick-article and mention Boubaker polynomials as an example. Richard Gill (talk) 16:22, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

PS the topic is clearly ignotable rather than notable (cf infamous, igNoble, ignominious, ignorable) Richard Gill (talk) 06:08, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Mathematical physics FPC

See Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Quantum Harmonic Oscillator.--RDBury (talk) 23:34, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Multiple mathematicians on AfD

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Karl-Theodor Sturm, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Emil Hilb, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephan Luckhaus, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ernst Hairer, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/K. David Elworthy, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Xue-Mei Li, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abhinav Kumar, and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alison Miller, and please weigh in. Several of these could use more mathematical expertise. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:15, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I've struck from the list those that have been closed already, so people don't waste time clicking on them. Tijfo098 (talk) 10:01, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Another spring FPC

The second one week, see Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Simple harmonic oscillator. It is May after all.--RDBury (talk) 22:25, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Reliability of MacTutor

I'm used to treating MacTutor History of Mathematics Archives (i.e., http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/) as a pretty reliable source for history of mathematics, especially of the biographical kind. But is it? If so, how do we justify that? The context is that William Connolley at Talk:History of calculus asked if it's just some blokes' web page. I am tempted to say, based on our article, that it has won many prestigious awards for online content. But how do historians of mathematics rate it? Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

While I have personally found MacTutor history pages to be valuable, it is hard to rely on it alone as it is not refereed. On the other hand, they tend to provide many sources, and in general it is possible to trace the information. As a rule of thumb, I would say material based on their history pages should not typically be deleted, but a tag should be attached that it would be preferable to have a refereed source. Tkuvho (talk) 14:02, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

As far as the specific link criticized by Connolley, it is indeed by a bloke. It's not their regular history page. Tkuvho (talk) 14:10, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I see. According to Charles Matthews, Connolley's link was to a student paper, so I think clearly not reliable. My overall question about the rest of the site remains, I guess. We even have a template {{MacTutor}} for this site, which is linked on many many biography articles. It seems important to get some clarity on where we stand with the site in general (and which parts of it are reliable, if any). Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Only biographies listed at http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Indexes/Full_Alph.html are reliable, I think. Tkuvho (talk) 14:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

That seems like a reasonable rule of thumb. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

For instance, they do have a biography of Bhaskara II at http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Bhaskara_II.html, which has nothing to do with a bloke named Ian Pearce. Tkuvho (talk) 14:55, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)As it happens I was just thinking about that the other day. According to our article they've won awards from some respectable publications such as Scientific American. It's also associated with the University of St Andrews which has been around for some 600 years, not some fly-by-night diploma mill. Our article does accuse the site of content bias, though I don't know if there is anything to back up that claim. To me, the material linked from their main indices (Biographies, History Topics, Additional material, and Famous curves) should be regarded as reliable. Whether it's encyclopedic or not is a different issue. I would hope we have an article corresponding to each article on the biographies index, but some of their other articles are somewhat essay like and we shouldn't be covering them on WP.

We have a page for mathematical referencing resources, it seems to me that the results of this sort of analysis should be added there for future reference. It not just MaxTutor but MathWorld, Springer EoM, Cut-the-Knot, OEIS, etc. For example we have links to OEIS a large number of pages, but I wouldn't regard it as a reliable source because basically anyone with an internet account can add their own entries (somewhat like like WP, we don't regard ourselves as a reliable source either). I started work on this idea (here) but kind of made a wrong turn at the start and am rethinking how to best do it.--RDBury (talk) 15:26, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Sidenote: While it's true that anyone can register for an account, every sequence in the OEIS must be approved by an Editor-in-Chief before appearing on the site. Usually it's reviewed by an Associate Editor as well. So it's not like Wikipedia. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:49, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

On the other hand, the OEIS is never an indication of notability, because it seeks to include sequences that are not appropriate (too narrow) for Wikipedia. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd probably put it [MacTutor] on a par with MathWorld, or maybe slightly more reliable. MathWorld also doesn't have any real oversight as far as I am aware, and its articles on many topics are deeply erroneous. Yet a lot of editors (mostly non-mathematicians) seem to feel like it is reliable. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The errors I've seen are minor, do you have example of "deeply erroneous". Much of the material is taken from a published reference and by WP standards at least those parts are reliable. They do have a form you can fill out to report errors, but though I've used it several times nothing was ever done about them as far as I know. Of course it could have been me that was in error. On OEIS, I'm going by an incident a while ago where, as I recall, there was an editor who was trying to generate references to an article. He submitted the sequence to OEIS and it appeared there a day or two later. So maybe you have to get editor approval but I'm not sure how thoroughly they check the math.--RDBury (talk) 20:31, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

(If anyone is interested, User:CRGreathouse has responded on OEIS here; I defer to the opinion of someone with more direct knowledge.)--RDBury (talk) 03:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

MathWorld's problems are usually omissions rather than errors, but for instance its Lattice article is hopelessly confused. (It seems to be trying to imply that all partial orders are lattices and that all lattices are distributive and modular). And Cubic Lattice links to and is linked from the wrong kind of lattice. My general preference is to link to MathWorld as an external link, and to check the MathWorld article to make sure there aren't important aspects of the problem or important references that we're omitting here, but not to actually use it as a source. On the other hand, I've never encountered any problems with MacTutor, and RDBury's description of the OEIS process makes it sound clearly within what we accept as reliable. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:36, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Check out Ian Pearce's piece on Bhaskara at MacTutor. It is a major problem. Tkuvho (talk) 04:45, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

You mean this? Because that's clearly (even in the title) taking a soapboax position. But when I refer to MacTutor it's primarily in their biography section, e.g. this and this. I don't think their other sections are as good. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Also not that the linked article by Ian Pearce is not part of the MacTutor reference. Although these student projects are hosted on the same domain, they are not link to from within the MacTutor hierarchy.

The MacTutor reference itself is directly linked to from the department of mathematics homepage. This is a reference that is published and thereby endorsed by St. Andrews University. As such, as far as reliability is concerned it is on par with published books on the topic. If this cannot pass a WP:RS, than we should stop using basically any published source.TR 11:01, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

As I already mentioned above, I have personally found MacTutor generally reliable. However, since we are not talking about a refereed publication, there will always be an ambiguity as to which of their pages are legitimate and which, bloky. It is still not clear to me where to draw the line. Why do they post these student projects at the same web address? Tkuvho (talk) 11:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Well I'd assume because they vetted them and found them correct and useful for others to read. Being a scholarly refereed source for WP (or other authors) is not really a primary concern or goal of MacTutor, that's our problem. Clearly we cannot treat those student project as reliable sources, however they still might be useful as external links and their quality probably still matches that of many "popular" math articles being published in newspapers, general interest (non math) journals, and even less prestigious teaching/educational journals/publications. --Kmhkmh (talk) 11:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Well I'm not math historian, but so far I found MacTutor relatively reliable on the topics I've used it for. It is indeed an expert website that has won some rewards and was also reviewed/described in math or science journals. It is definitely not just a website hosted by some bloke, to very least it would be a self published by notable experts (both principal editors/maintainer are math profs at one of UK's top rates universities (St. Andrews), where the project is hosted rather than on some private webspace/account). Most of their articles are carefully sourced and so far I've discovered only minor errors as you might find them in reliable/reputable literature as well (typos, small mistakes with non european dates, small errors in graphics). In particular as far as historic subjects are concerned I'd consider them much more reliable as MathWorld, which however I still consider as a reliable source for WP.

It is might be wortwhile to note however, that both editors are not trained (math) historians afaik. So they primarily compile material (available in English) written by others. In cases where an larger historic context knowledge might be required (in particular being able to read original sources in foreign and ancient languages) that can lead to errors. This might matter in individual biographies for (historic) non European mathematicians and related math topics. But then again this problem exists for many math sources we consider as reliable as well (any historic information in regular math textbooks, normal mathematician writing on historic subjects, etc.).--Kmhkmh (talk) 11:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Peer review is no guarantee of correctness, either. Experts in any field know of journals which largely consists of peer-reviewed rubbish, and journals which largely consist of fairly reliable material. Journals make editorial decisions concerning interest, relevance to the field, etc. Referees sometimes see big errors and hence published papers in reliable journals tend to have smaller errors only, but often plenty, and occasionally fatal errors. Finally the author themself is responsible for the "truth" of what is written in his or her articles.

More or less established mathematicians can easily author books and get them published by very reputable publishers. Such books are only globally reviewed. No one goes through checking every derivation or computation or reference, line by line. The already established reliability of the author is supposed to be enough guarantee of reliability. Fortunately in mathematics we can always in principle check everything, and mistakes get discovered and known and acknowledge and if possible corrected.

Hence whether or not MacTutor is peer-reviewed seems to me to be quite besides the point. I do know many researchers in the history of mathematics who regularly cite the site ;-) and use its resources. I've always found it very useful myself and on those occasional occasions when I had independent historical info, it seemed to be correct. Richard Gill (talk) 15:12, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I challenge you to produce a peer-reviewed book containing the kind of rubbish found in the Ian Pearce piece at MacTutor. Tkuvho (talk) 15:23, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

What parts/content if Pearce's piece do you consider rubbish exactly?--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:18, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Can we just get clear that the Pearce page under criticism is on the domain turnbull.mcs.st-and.ac.uk, not the MacTutor's mcs.st-and.ac.uk? If we are going to have this argument that the MacTutor "brand" is somehow contaminated because of student project work posted at a related domain, which I think is basically not a fair attitude, it should at least be in the context that it is very easy to tell apart the pages that are being used for a different academic purpose. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:04, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Here is another interesting item. The page Bakhshali manuscript contains a footnote, currently number 1, which reads as follows: "Ian Pearce (May 2002). "The Bakhshali manuscript". The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Bakhshali_manuscript.html. Retrieved 2007-07-24." If you follow the link provided, you indeed reach an article on the Bakhshali, but one authored by... J O'Connor and E F Robertson. Tkuvho (talk) 10:13, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Bhaskara's contribution to mathematics is beyond dispute. Pearce's claim that Bahskara's calculus was not inferior to Newton's is unsourced ("rubbish", in fact) and shows that he is interested in ethnomathematics rather than history. There is a large consensus in this thread that MacTutor's student projects are not reliable. Tkuvho (talk) 02:54, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Well going to the thread it seems to me we all agree that student papers hosted on MacTutor are not to be treated as reliable sources, that however the regular MacTutor entries can be treated as such.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:35, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Patrick Billingsley

I've created a new article titled Patrick Billingsley. Billingsley died recently at the age of 85.

The article is imperfect. Work on it! Michael Hardy (talk) 17:14, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Lamé's equation

At Lamé function, we find this:

Lamé's equation is

${\frac {d^{2}y}{dx^{2}}}=(A+B\wp (x))y$

where A and B are constants, and $\wp$ is the Weierstrass elliptic function.

and then:

By changing the independent variable, Lamé's equation can also be rewritten in algebraic form as

${\frac {d^{2}y}{dt^{2}}}+{\frac {1}{2}}\left({\frac {1}{t-e_{1}}}+{\frac {1}{t-e_{2}}}+{\frac {1}{t-e_{3}}}\right){\frac {dy}{dt}}={\frac {A+Bt}{4(t-e_{1})(t-e_{2})(t-e_{3})}}y$

which after a change of variable becomes a special case of Heun's equation.

But it doesn't say specifically what the change of variable is. Can some add that information? Michael Hardy (talk) 15:42, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

How about $t=\wp (x)$? (Just a guess). Richard Gill (talk) 16:24, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Richard Gill appears to be right. Do the substitution, have some fun with the chain rule (and logarithmic derivatives), and use the facts in sections Weierstrass elliptic function#Differential equation and Weierstrass elliptic function#The constants e1, e2 and e3. I have no reference for this though, if that's what you're looking for. RobHar (talk) 02:49, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I already started fiddling with this, and concluded that if it's right then it's probably fairly trivial, even if laborious, and then other things were demanding my attention. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:17, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Exhaustive discussion in Ch. XXIII of Whittaker and Watson; old references at p. 555 in my edition. (What do they teach in schools these days?) Charles Matthews (talk) 11:44, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, Charles, I volunteer you to edit the article accordingly. Click here: Lamé function Michael Hardy (talk) 15:29, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Lists of mathematics topics

Our page titled Lists of mathematics topics (notice that it's plural: lists) is a magnificent thing, unprecedented in all of intellectual history, just as Wikipedia is. It is a former featured list. We should work on returning it to that status. As I recall, all that was needed was references. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:13, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Does this list include itself? This could be a magnificent introduction to a current area of research, as well :) Tkuvho (talk) 10:26, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't tempt me to create List of lists of mathematics topics that do not include themselves. —Tamfang (talk) 15:20, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

It might be more in the spirit of Wikipedia to create a list of lists of lists of lists of articles on a particular topic Michael Hardy (talk) 15:28, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

FYI: Leibniz formula for pi

See Talk:Leibniz formula for pi#Requested move. Hans Adler 15:22, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

It seems that the discussion has been (inappropriately) closed. CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:48, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

That was the point of this notification. I am not sure how to proceed now. Restart? There seems to be no reason to close this discussion so soon, and there seems to be no reason for using the precedent of the pi article but not the precedent of numerous articles that have titles actually similar to the one under discussion. Hans Adler 21:37, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

The standard period is 7 days (Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions) and they can only be closed by no admins if there is clear consensus, which was not the case. I think a reopened request is the best way to proceed.--Salix (talk): 00:01, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I've now reopened the move request.--Salix (talk): 07:07, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Hello, I am the closing administrator of the discussion; it was listed in the backlog of Requested Moves because it was more than 7 days old (8d 6hrs+). There was no consensus to move the page, but if you want another debate that's fine by me. Best, Skomorokh 10:48, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

transclusion

“ Probably the hardest part of writing a mathematical article (actually, any article) is the difficulty of addressing the level of mathematical knowledge on the part of the reader. For example, when writing about a field, do we assume that the reader already knows group theory? A general approach is to start simple, then move toward more abstract and general statements as the article proceeds. The suggestions below are intended to help us achieve this. ”

The above passage is part of the project page. An editor inserted the following comment, which I now move here. —Tamfang (talk) 18:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I do not think, that such transclusions (e.g. explaining groups in an article about fields) improves an article.It may be useful to distinguish clearly between motivation and definition.Stephan Spahn (talk) 14:36, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The advice following that did not suggest explaining the underlying concepts, it mainly talked about doing things simply and linking to required concepts. We certainly need to say why something is notable and expanding on that as motivation is a good idea I think. Dmcq (talk) 19:29, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Musean hypernumber

The article Musean hypernumber is mostly the contribution of editor Koeplinger. A quick google scholar search reveals mainly a text "Modular parts of a function" by K Carmody - Applied Mathematics and Computation, 1990 cited by... one (1). Tkuvho (talk) 14:40, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

"The range of applications envisioned by Musès of his hypernumber concept is grandiose: A full and complete understanding of all laws of physics (in particular quantum mechanics[6][19]), a description of consciousness in terms of physical formulations,[1][4][5] spiritual growth, religious enlightenment, the solution of well-known mathematical problems (including the Riemann hypothesis), and the exploration of para-psychological phenomena (e.g.[20])." Tkuvho (talk) 14:42, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Something immediately fishy is that all of the citations are to the journal Applied Mathematics and Computation. I only seem to get two relevant Google scholar hits for "musean hypernumber", both of which are to Applied Mathematics and Computation, one of which is from Carmody (one of the two sole proponents of this number system). I'd say deletion probably seems appropriate, since these do not really seem to have attracted the attention of mathematicians beyond their two proponents. It would help if we knew that Applied Mathematics and Computation was a rubbish journal. But it's published by Elsevier, and claims a 5-year impact factor of 1.23 [28]. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:07, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Template:Math, Help:Formula, and WP:MOSMATH

I have noticed a recent trend to replace ordinary html formatted equations in articles with the {{math}} template. I noticed that our WP:MOSMATH barely mentions the use of this template (although some editors seem to act as though it is mandatory). Strangely, it does appear in Help:Formula as the only option for properly typesetting mathematics formulas. It seems like there should at least be some degree of accord between the recommendations of these two pages. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:55, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Help:Formula only describes the use of <math> tag, not the {{math}} template. The tag <math> is what's needed for anything complex. The {{math}} template is useful I think for simpler inline formulas and it uses the same fonts as the <math> tag but it is possible to use the <math> tag for everything. Personally I quite dislike having inline html maths not using the {{math}} template as the letters are different, it cause one to refer to a inline and then $a$ in the out of line formulas for instance. Dmcq (talk) 19:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I was referring to the table at the top, where the examples of "proper" formatting in html all use {{math}}. I think either should be regarded as acceptable, but this needs to be clarified somewhere. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:50, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm disagreeing with Dmcq: I consider the rupture between our usual HTML text font and the font used by {{math}} much more disturbing than the difference between the (often: few) complicated formulas which necessitate <math> and the HTML "formulas". I wish we would not use {{math}} at all. If a formula is simple enough to be rendered using HTML, there is no need not to do so, I believe. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 09:32, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

The reason {{math}} exists is because formulas rendered as HTML in the default (sans-serif) font is sorely lacking visual semantics, which are needed to distinguish certain symbols that can otherwise not be told apart; I + l = 1 is a whole lot more meaningfull then I + l = 1. — Edokter (talk) — 11:29, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

In my sans-serif font, I, 1, and l are all different, both in roman and italic. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:45, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Good for you. Wikipedia is however read by millions of people that do not have such a font; most of them use Windows and who cannot be bothered to change their browser font settings, thus pages are displayed using the default Arial font. — Edokter (talk) — 13:21, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I generally agree with Jacob Scholbach that, in general, plain HTML/wikitext is fine, without the additional use of Template:Math. If you edit the help page, you should also edit the original at meta:Help:Displaying_a_formula. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:45, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

This was discussed here a while ago, and while some editors were positive to the idea of encapsulating mathematical typesetting in a template for its semantic value, the consensus was that the template should not be used (there was even some talk of deletion). This was actually shortly after the recommendation was (rather silently) added to Help:Formula by User:Yecril, and this was apparently not noticed by any of the participants in that discussion. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:55, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with your conclusion. In a more recent discussion, there is a consensus in favor of using sans-serif font for formulas, for exactly the reason I pointed out above. Readability supercedes aesthetics, which means plain HTML formulas are basically out the door, so use either TeX or {{math}}, but never plain HTML. — Edokter (talk) — 13:21, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

There was certainly no such consensus in that discussion. There was a majority in favor of that option, but that is not the same as consensus. Ozob (talk) 15:13, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

By that reasoning, not one discussion with an opposing viewpoint ever has 'consensus'. — Edokter (talk) — 15:27, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Given that the discussion extended over a long period of time and that several votes for serifs were cast over a month after all the other discussion, I am not convinced that serifs have anything more than a slight majority. Furthermore, there is a substantial, unified minority position that finds sans-serif more legible. That's not the same as having a dedicated lone objector or a large number of uninformed, poorly-considered votes for sans serif. Ozob (talk) 16:20, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Unified minority position... I have read many ways to weasel around a majority opinion, but this one is new to me. It is already established that serif is more legible then sans-serif. Go read it again, and this time, also read the serif opinions. — Edokter (talk) — 17:50, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Edokter, you are pushing a point which did and does not gain consensus. Some are in favor of serif, others aren't. Both sides have some arguments (better legibility in a few select cases vs. simplicity of editing + aesthetics). We should do what we always do: every article should be consistently formatted, but neither serif nor sans serif should generally be predicted by MOSMATH. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 18:43, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Low-dimensional chaos

Low-dimensional chaos has been prodded for deletion. 65.95.13.213 (talk) 04:58, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Whole number (number theory)

Whole number (number theory) has been prodded for deletion. 65.95.13.213 (talk) 04:20, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Mathematical concepts named after geographic locales

A thread on mathoverflow compiled names of mathematical ideas named after places. I've listed them here: User:Michael Hardy/Named after places

Could this evolve into a Wikipedia article? Michael Hardy (talk) 15:27, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, but I have a feeling this falls under "Non-encyclopedic cross-categorizations" in WP:NOTDIRECTORY. On the other hand there is some precedent: List of minor planets named after places.--RDBury (talk) 20:23, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

My Polish friends assure me that Polish spaces remain Polish spaces in Poland, likewise the three Poles theorem (KKM). The Chinese remainder theorem remains Chinese in China.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:31, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I think this would make more sense as a list rather than as a category, just because "being named after a place" doesn't seem like a defining characteristic of a mathematical concept. But as long as there are sources attesting to the origin of each name (to avoid saying that something is named after a place when it's actually named after a person, as e.g. the Catalan numbers) I think it should be ok as a list. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:45, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it is OR since we don't have reliable sources which have listed maths in this way. Dmcq (talk) 23:16, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I suspect reliable sources can be cited for most of them. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:13, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I would have thought creating lists is precisely the kind of endeavour that encycolpeadists excel at. Although the article List of place names which sound a bit rude was deleted, I don't think it was for OR. Rich Farmbrough, 19:29, 16 May 2011 (UTC).

Usually with lists is not factual accuracy that's a problem unless inclusion may be a matter of opinion. The question is whether the concept is notable, in other words is it significant that a mathematical concept is named after a place or are they two sets with no particular relationship and we're finding the intersection. That's what the guidelines say at least, not that they really prevent anyone from creating a list on anything they want.--RDBury (talk) 19:58, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

And I would think this would qualify, since most bits of mathematics are named after people or other bits of mathematics. (Not counting the rotten banana at infinity.) Rich Farmbrough, 14:41, 17 May 2011 (UTC).

Um should I ask ... but what is this 'rotten banana at infinity' bit about please? Dmcq (talk) 11:36, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree, and would also propose that such a list clarify instances where a concept sounds like it is named after a place, but is actually named after a person, as with the Catalan example above. Having a section or some footnotes to that effect would help prevent well-meaning editors from errantly adding incorrect names to the list. bd2412 T 15:05, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

MOSMATH: This detail is too complicated

WP:MOSMATH tells people to write

<math>\sin x \,\!</math>

where I would have written

<math>\sin x \,</math>.

The purpose of the spacing at the end is to force png rendering. It doesn't actually add space between sin x and whatever follows it on the line, if anything, since nothing follows sin x inside the math tags. Why is the \! there? Doesn't this just complicate the thing pointlessly? I've seen this in lots of articles and wondered why it was there; by hindsight maybe I should have suspected it was in MOSMATH. Michael Hardy (talk) 14:14, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that if a user has set their preferences to render html whenever possible, the \, will not override this, but the \! will. However, it seems to me that we should generally try to respect user preferences, so /! should be used sparingly. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:55, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

David Eppstein and Cellular automaton: Second opinion

User:David Eppstein removed a (new) reference from cellular automata, questioning its notability. The other editor then questioned the notability of the David Eppstein article and has made a lot of comments about Eppstein, as editor and real-world person.

I have written some articles with David, so others should monitor this situation.

Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:08, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree with David Eppstein's removal of the paragraph from Cellular automaton. I have no feelings on the article David Eppstein but will monitor for vandalism. CRGreathouse (t | c) 22:33, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

The article David Eppstein was semi-protected by an adminsitrator, Ruud Koot.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:56, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I wrote most of the section in question and while I don't object to new results being added, it should probably be more of a survey and not single paper whose impact has yet to be evaluated. The four classes are useful heuristically but have somewhat fuzzy boundaries and I doubt there will be general agreement on operational definitions any time soon. So claims that the issue has been resolved should be viewed with a good dose of skepticism.--RDBury (talk) 11:16, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Agree, what is there is a study using compression and a clustering algorithm which managed to classify them with a bit of tweaking in the same way as Wolfram. It is and interesting and a common technique, I've used gzip myself to analyze something, but it is just a starter and a springboard to help with further study rather than any sort of result I think. Dmcq (talk) 11:30, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Update: The IP editor filed a notice about David Eppstein at the COI noticeboard. (For better or for worse, now he seems more angry at this rodeo clown.)  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:55, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

The filled COI has nothing to do with this discussion, it has to do with the fact that David Eppstein has has largely written and conducted his own Wikipedia article as an autobiography. Nothing else. Kieffer wants to mix things up in his own rodeo clown. Wasn't you who recommended me to fill the COI in Eppstein's talk page? Anyway, you only spread the word on the unethical behavior of Eppstein by coming everywhere to make your little show. I even agreed with the suggestion of a secondary source to confirm whether it was worth mentioning my contribution in the CA article, no need to semi protect the article, if I had wanted I would just go ahead an started an editing war, something that didn't happen. Yet you come to claim here and elsewhere that this has something to do with the acknowledged fact (by Eppstein himself) that he has written his long and cared Wikipedia article to push his notability inside and outside Wikipedia. You are not being very successful defending him... The COI is clear and now people will know disregarding whether the complain prospers or not. At least Eppstein will get a warning and people will start wondering whether he is really a Notable Wikipedian as he has been categorized in his own Wikipedia article (again mostly written by himself). 90.46.37.131 (talk) 00:06, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Dude, you should chill out. You seem to like rodeos, so I suggest taking a break and listening to this. Ozob (talk) 02:15, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Looking at the revision history of David Eppstein, it appears to me that he is only responsible for a tiny fraction of the edits; and he did not create the article. So I suspect that the criticism of his contributions to it is unfair. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:28, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Another editor, Johnuniq, has provided an annotated list of Eppstein's contributions to his own articles, noting their conformity to COI standards since his second edit.

(permalink)

He recommends removing further unsubstantiated attacks or chatter unrelated to improving the article. Also, the IP editor has been blocked for personal attacks, etc.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 12:21, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Current activity page

It's been several days since Current activity has been updated; is there reason why the bot might not be working?--RDBury (talk) 04:14, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Seems to be working again.--RDBury (talk) 02:38, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Merger of Tesselation and Honeycomb

We currently have two articles about the general topic of tiling: Tesselation and Honeycomb (geometry). The honeycomb article is rather short, while the tesselation article is, in my opinion, a horrible mess. The article almost completely lacks inline citations. Furthermore there is way too much trivia and a lot of totally inappropriate or unhelpful images. All of this stuff should be rewritten as one single article, either under the title Tiling or Tesselation. Honeycomb should be a seperate section in that new article, because it seems to be an often used term. Some sources:

• Coxeter, H. S. M., Regular Polytopes (Google Books link): uses the term honeycomb frequently for tesselations in three or more dimensions
• Coxeter, H. S. M., Regular Complex Polytopes (Google Books link): again uses the term honeycomb frequently for tesselations in three or more dimensions
• Coxeter, H. S. M., The beauty of geometry: twelve essays (Google Books link): again frequent uses of the term honeycomb
• Inchbald, G., The Archimedean honeycomb duals The Mathematical Gazette 81, July 1997, pp. 213-219: another use of the term honeycomb
• Conway, J. H., Burgiel, H., Goodman-Strauss, C., The Symmetries of Things: uses the term Tiling for the two-dimensional cases and Tesselation for higher-dimensional cases

In the context of aperiodic tilings, I have mostly seen the term Tiling do describe these arrangements (for example, Chaim Goodman-Strauss who is quite active in current research on aperiodic tilings never uses the terms Tesselation or Honeycomb and refers to all arrangements (even to the higher-dimensional ones) as Tiling).

I welcome comments on whether things should be merged and where and what would be the most reasonable title for the article. Thanks. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 16:04, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Coxeter seems to use honeycomb for a polytope space-filling of dimension 3 or higher, and tessellation for 2d polygonal space-fillings, whether spherical, planar, or hyperbolic. And in both cases these are topologically pure, edge-to-edge connections, linear edges, not just any space-filling. It looks like the tessellation article does use this exclusive 2D sense. While Conway uses the term tiling for 2d space-fillings of edge-to-edge polygons, and tessellations for higher dimensional space-fillings. The wiki articles I've worked on mix Coxeter and Conway, using Honeycomb for 3D or higher, and tiling for 2D. Right now tessellation is used in the Coxeter sense (2d). Anyway, so I can't support a merge, given the Coxeter definition. I think there's more material on the 2d surfaces whether called tilings or tessellations.

If anything is merged, I'd consider honeycomb (geometry) being merged as a section of polytope since we have n-polytope, and n-honeycomb as parallel constructions of (n-1)-polytope faceted objects. (And while we're at it, merge some other short articles Vertex (geometry), Edge (geometry), Face (geometry), Cell (geometry), Facet (geometry), Ridge (geometry), Peak (geometry), Vertex-transitive, Edge-transitive, Face-transitive, Cell-transitive? Tom Ruen (talk) 21:15, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Mathbot has been blocked from editing "List of mathematics articles"

Mathbot has recently been blocked from editing List of mathematics articles (actually the {{nobots}} template was added to these lists). There is a discussion about this at User talk:Oleg Alexandrov. Apparently the reason is that Mathbot adds disambiguation links to these lists. Mathbot is essential to the proper working of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity page, which many mathematics editors rely on. What do we think about this? Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:29, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Apparently Mathbot will simply ignore the {{nobots}} tag. Still, if for some reason this is escalated, it seems like a good idea for the project to be aware. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:53, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm concerned how quickly he acted (using AWB to mass edit all the lists first and only posting a talk page notification of his action afterwards) while invoking MOS as "policy"—that kind of attitude ends in front of ArbCom. However, he is only one admin and WP:WHEEL should prevent any real damage should he rush to some other decisions. Tijfo098 (talk) 14:58, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I think he probably just didn't realize the purpose of these lists. It seems like every so often, someone suggests moving the lists to the project namespace, so they're exempt from this kind of trivial nitpicking. The editor in question suggested moving the dab pages to a separate list. This list could even be maintained in project namespace—it seems like a win-win situation. I, for one, think we should be discussing this possibility. Although it could be that there are good reasons against it. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:11, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I dropped a note on the (apparently unmonitored) bot talk page several days ago, and followed up with a similar request on the owner's talk page before I took any action. I indicated that I only placed the nobots tag on the lists as a temporary measure - to avoid the bot undoing the disambiguation work I had done - until a solution could be arrived at in this matter. I think the proposals to keep the maintenence lists in project space, or in any case to keep a maintenance list for {{mathdab}} pages in project space, is eminently sensible, particularly because the maintenance lists as they stand are indiscriminate collections of all links tagged with any kind of math category (therefore containing not only disambig links, but redundant redirects). If other articles need to link to a list of mathematics articles, a separate set of lists could be maintained in article space with a more discriminating set of links. Please look to the methods emplyed by other Wikipedia projects which have conducted bot-assisted maintenence without needing to maintain direct links to disambiguation pages from article space. I'm sure an efficient solution can be found for this problem. Cheers! bd2412 T 13:55, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I am sure we can work something out if everyone makes an effort to be nonconfrontational. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:17, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Seems silly to in effect robot edit the lists because one has the idea another robot is wrong without discussing with the robot owner first. Just stopping the robot is the usual first action if one thinks a robot is going badly wrong. It wasn't even badly wrong by the reasoning. Can we be confrontational, can we can we? Dmcq (talk) 17:47, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I had a look at the discussion and a reasonable suggestion there I think is to keep the list in project space. Also the list should probably include maths categories I think even though categories don't normally include much on the page itself. Dmcq (talk) 17:59, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

That seems reasonable to me. But I know we've had this discussion before, probably more than once. I don't know if there is some arcane reason these pages need to be in mainspace, or if the idea simply got shelved. Someone needs to look in the WT:WPM archives. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:00, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

One of the earlier discussion(s) is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive 20#Suggested move of List of mathematics articles. In any case one possible reason for not performing such a move is that other article-space pages link to it, and would not be allowed to after such a move: these include several other related list articles, but also non-list articles including logic and geometry. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:26, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't really seem appropriate to me for logic and geometry (or really any article, except maybe mathematics itself) to link to this list. RobHar (talk) 00:12, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

The Lists of mathematics topics links to it, at that is as it should be. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:09, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I see that some lists were moved to project space after Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of mathematics articles (J-L) and move discussion (now) recorded at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (A-C) Presumably not all of them?? Tijfo098 (talk) 09:37, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of putting it in the project space. Especially if other article-space pages could not link to it. The list is mainly for browsing, and at most secondarily for navigating. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:08, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

It has been proposed before that two lists be maintained; one for maintenance purposes which could be maintained in project space, and could permissibly have indiscriminate links such as direct disambig links, redundant redirect links, and other things that lists in article space are not supposed to have (under the theory that Wikipedia is not a collection of indiscriminate links); and a second, more user-friendly list maintained in mainspace. bd2412 T 22:03, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer one better-maintained list over two. CRGreathouse (t | c) 23:39, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I went ahead and took care of this:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (0-9)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (A)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (B)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (C)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (D)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (E)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (F)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (G)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (H)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (I)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (J)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (K)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (L)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (M)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (N)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (O)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (P)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (Q)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (R)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (S)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (T)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (U)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (V)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (W)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (X)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (Y)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (Z)

Now all you need to do is direct the maintenance bot to use these indiscriminate lists for its maintenance tasks. I will be glad to improve the organization of the alternate lists remaining in mainspace. I noticed that most of them are about twice as long as the recommended article length, which may make page loading difficult for people with older computers and on older computer networks (particularly our most vulnerable users in third world countries). I'd be glad to attend to that while otherwise restructuring these lists into a user-friendly format. Cheers! bd2412 T 23:48, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

So basically you completely ignored the project discussion above (including the fact that you're breaking other Wikipedia rules by creating links from article space to WP space by this move) and went ahead and did it your way? —David Eppstein (talk) 00:02, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

What move? I didn't move anything, and I created no cross-namespace redirects. Please investigate for yourself, before you accuse others of breaking rules. bd2412 T 00:43, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Ok, you performed a copy-and-paste move instead. Another no-no. And what do you think making two copies of the lists will accomplish? It's not possible to maintain these lists manually; they're too big. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:05, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

[Intellectual property attorney hat on] Cut and paste moves are only inappropriate if they deprive editors of attribution under the GFDL; these lists contain no creative content, and were assembled by a bot, not a person; they are entitled to no protection. [Intellectual property attorney hat off]. Furthermore, as you just pointed out, these lists are too big to maintain manually - there is no way they should be in article space if their existence in article space presents a problem like that. Wikipedia is not a collection of indiscriminate lists, and these lists are exactly that, too big to even be opened in some browser windows. What I would like to see is a more appropriate collection of narrowly targeted lists in article space that would actually be useful to someone looking for something, not just a wall of links. It has been explained to me that the reason all of these links, even the duplicative or deceptive ones that do not lead to math articles, must be kept on the list is that they are being used for maintenance purposes. No one has explained why lists used for maintenance can not be kept in project space, with a more appropriate set of lists in article space. I am very confident that we can come up with a solution that achieves all of this while taking those two or three hundred unnecessary disambig links off of the list of links requiring repair, so we won't have our hard working disambiguators (who I can personally attest are worthy of respect in this project) wasting their time fixing links that will only be made into errors again by a bot. bd2412 T 01:18, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

It is false that these articles were assembled only by a bot; they require occasional manual intervention to remove inappropriate entries. Anyway, you're sidetracking my point above, which is: what gives you the right to ignore any attempt at building consensus in the discussion above, unilaterally declare that we will do things your way, and go ahead and do it? It seems easier to simply ignore wikilinks from these lists while you're busy fixing dabs, rather than declaring them to be errors and going to great lengths to eradicate them. Anyway, the dab policy explicitly says that some links to dabs are ok, so your claim that all such links must be eliminated is also clearly false. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:25, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, David, intentional links to disambiguation pages are ok iff they are piped through a "foo (disambiguation)" redirect, per policy (arrived at by a thoroughly debated community consensus-building process) at WP:INTDABLINK. I have no technical problem with disambig pages being on these lists if they are piped in this way. There is simply no way to remove these from the "what links here" pages that hundreds of disambiguators count on to fix errant links, including errant links in math articles (which I presume you would like to see fixed). Cheers! bd2412 T 01:34, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Let me see if I understand your position: You changed the lists of mathematics articles so that the only links to disambiguation pages were to a page or a redirect ending in (disambiguation). You did this because this is recommended by WP:INTDABLINK. You later added {{nobots}} templates to prevent Mathbot from undoing your changes. Am I correct?

Assuming that I am correct, here is a response: Wikipedia:Disambiguation is an editing guideline, not a policy, and therefore occasional exceptions apply. I believe that the list of mathematics articles is one such exception. The list has a simple format and simple purpose: It lists all of the mathematics articles, with no attention to kind, for users who wish to browse. It furthermore serves some internal purposes. To fulfill both of these purposes, especially the last one, it is necessary that the lists be a faithful representation of what is stored in WP's databases. It's been suggested above that this second purpose should be performed by a second set of lists in project space. However, to facilitate browsing, we would still have to maintain the lists in article space. Therefore we would need to maintain two sets of lists. But having two sets of lists would lead to confusion and error. Our solution is to claim an exception to WP:INTDABLINK and to maintain the lists in article space. We believe that this is the least bad option, even considering the violation of WP:INTDABLINK.

I have the feeling that you aren't satisfied by this, but I'm not quite sure why. I think it has something to do with how disambiguators do their work. I've never done that kind of work, so I'm not sure what the issue is. Can you explain it to me (slowly and carefully, since I think few people here have done that kind of work)? Ozob (talk) 02:26, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

There is indeed more to it. Disambiguators are distributed editors, like everyone else here. They work individually and independently, seeking out and repair bad links (and most disambig links are indeed bad links, taking people to pages like Mercury and Greek when Mercury (planet) and Greek (language) are the intended targets. Usually, a disambiguator will find a disambig page with a number of links and use the "what links here" page to follow and fix all links in mainspace. It's impossible to know whether such a link is one of the rare intentional links unless that link has been piped through a "foo (disambiguation)" redirect, so it shows up on the "what links here" page as coming through such a redirect. For example, see the what links here page for Greek, which has a half dozen intentional incoming links. A random disambiguator is saved the time of chasing down those half-dozen intentional links and trying to figure out how to "fix" them. To put the whole of the problem in perspective, we have a daily report on the number of links to address, which indicates that as of today, there are over 97,000 disambig pages with incoming direct links, and more than three quarter of a million links to be fixed. New disambig pages and new links are added every day, and to be honest, we bust our tails every month and are barely breaking even. If any of our top disambiguators let up for a few days, we fall behind. Nevertheless, through this persistent effort, and in part through our policy of piping intentional disambig links so disambiguators don't waste time looking at them over and over again, we have made progress. So, every little thing we can do to clear away the chaff helps us to avoid wasting time running after intentional links. Going through the history of these pages, other disambiguators have "fixed" some of these links in the past [29], [30], and will continue to do so in the future. We can't just teach disambiguators not to edit these pages because there is no telling who will decide to take up such work. Instead, these pages will continue to show up as direct links on the "what links here" page of every disambig page pointing to them, and will prompt disambiguators to spend time trying to "fix" them by piping them through the "foo (disambiguation)" redirect. A number of proposals have been put forward to address this - teaching Mathbot to ignore disambig articles altogether, keeping the maintenance lists in article space, keeping disambig links on a separate page where they can be attended manually. There must be some alternative in that group, or some variation thereof, that will work for everyone. bd2412 T 03:14, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

I should mention that I'm involved with WikiProject Disambiguation (or at least I watch their Talk page and post there reasonably frequently), so I think that disambiguation is important. But not only do I not see what purpose is served by these changes, I don't see any sort of consensus for them.† The response has been quite universal: the page has a special purpose and should be kept the way it is.

Now there's no agreement on the proper location of the pages, so a bulk move of the pages, although probably not prudent at this point (needs more discussion!), would have been understandable. But reverting and template-blocking the bot seems clearly inappropriate, and creating new pages seems unhelpful -- I assume the purpose was to give yourself (viz., bd2412) carte blanche to alter the existing pages as you prefer.

† No doubt bd2412 would say that the consensus is embodied in INTDABLINK, but of course that is merely a general policy and not a discussion of the particulars of the case at hand. Pointing there is no more productive than pointing at IAR.

CRGreathouse (t | c) 02:54, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

I am trying to explain why it is general policy. Disambiguators fix bad links in math articles too, and I'm sure you don't want to impede them from being able to do that quickly and efficiently. I indicated when I put the nobots template on the pages that it was a temporary measure until we could sort out a solution, because Mathbot kept re-adding the direct disambig links (and mindlessly adding them in addition to the piped redirects that I had already created, so that there were now two sets of links to the same disambig pages). I specifically chose to not block Mathbot entirely, because I can see that it performs other useful tasks, and since it is the only bot that edits the math lists, temporarily restricting those lists to human editors seemed like the least disruptive way to prevent mindless duplication of disambig links while a solution was reached. I have proposed a number of routes which will alleviate this problem, and have offered to do all the work needed to implement them aside from the small task of refining the bot instructions, which other members of the disambiguation project can help with if needed. bd2412 T 03:48, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

This is getting very repetitive. I'm getting a very strong sense of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT from BD2412. Regardless of that, is there some way that the bot could be persuaded to link only to the "(disambiguation)" form of a mathdab page rather than whatever other form might also exist and regardless of which one is primary? That would seem to appease the disambiguators while still allowing the lists to function properly. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:11, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

That would be a fine solution. I find it distressing that you are getting WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, because I have been asked, and had to explain, several times in this conversation why this is useful to disambiguators (because it removes false positives), and why our "tools" can't be adjusted to ignore these links (because our primary tool is the "what links here" page, and intentional disambig redirects are the fix for that). If there is something else you think I didn't hear, please do point me to it, because I have yet to see a reason for not implementing some solution that would be beneficial to everyone here (this project included). I have offered several proposals that would both improve the utility of the lists for encyclopedia users, and preserve their utility for maintenance purposes. All I've been pointed to in return is a prior conversation in this project where it was acknowledged that these lists could be housed in project space, but which fizzled out with no resolution, and similar acknowledgment in this discussion that such a solution is feasible. bd2412 T 04:36, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Well you wouldn't like if somebody from maths went to the disambiguation project and started changing things there just saying that had to be the way and pointing at some guideline here and saying what you did was making work here. If we proposed various ways you could change and you rejected them all and then we just did them regardless of consensus there you'd be annoyed. Dmcq (talk) 07:46, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

You're right. I've long known about the need to do something about Mathbot and its disambiguation links, but put it off for over a year because I didn't want to stomp onto another project's turf and demand changes. Especially at a project that has always been so helpful with fixing those oh-so-difficult mathdab links. (Seriously, this project is the best I've come across in terms of helping fix dablinks.)

Like you say, it's neither sporting nor fair to demand maths to do all the work to accommodate the DPL project. But something does need to be done, and rewriting our scripts is an incomplete solution, since we can't possibly remove the math lists from "what links here". If it's possible for me to do all the technical work, and submit it for a Mathbot maintainer to review, I would be happy to give it a shot. --JaGa^talk 08:57, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Well my favourite solution would be the two separate pages one. I'm not sure how much manual work is involved in keeping the pahge in shape but it would be best if duplication of that effort could be minimised. For instance a number of files in project space could be generated for different things and then the article space version could transclude a selection. So the real question I see is how much and what type manual editing is wanted? As to the complaints from the dab group I'm sure there must be some way of marking links as deliberate and not to be changed. In fact I'd like to see that better described as there certainly have been cases where I've felt it was far more appropriate to point only at a redirect rather than a redirect target because the redirect might be written as a proper article at some stage. Dmcq (talk) 10:13, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

There is a way to mark disambig links as deliberate: WP:INTDABLINK. To implement it, we need to get Mathbot to use, for example, Sampling theory (disambiguation) and not Sampling theory (it currently lists both at List of mathematics articles (S) for some reason). I'm willing to help figure out how to make it work. I don't think it will be difficult. --JaGa^talk 17:52, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Dmcq, I am in complete agreement with you, particularly if the maintenance lists must have direct links to disambig pages to function. I think this would have the added benefit of allowing the mathematics project to present something in article space that would be better for our end-users than the unfriendly wall-of-links lists currently sitting there. As I have indicated before, I'll be glad to do the heavy lifting on this (and JaGa has offered to assist with whatever bot work is necessary. bd2412 T 22:16, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Here is an idea. Perhaps we could put a Wikipedia:Editnotice on each of the list of mathematics articles pages. It could say something like:

That would stop most people from editing the lists. But it wouldn't prevent manual maintenance and it wouldn't require maintaining two lists. Ozob (talk) 12:20, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

I do manual edits on these pages from time to time and I have no intention of altering that practice. Is that a problem? Michael Hardy (talk) 02:25, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Re a comment by David Eppstein: if we link to redirects instead of linking to the pages themselves, it makes the "related changes" tool not work for those pages, because "related changes" only looks at links, it does not bypass redirects. This is one reason the lists need to link directly to the desired pages. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:54, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

My current opinion, by the way, is that the people who go around changing dab links need to find a way to whitelist these lists. In the end: If they are editing manually, it is trivial to just skip these lists. If they are using a script, it is trivial to tell the script to skip them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:56, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Currently, no "whitelist" exists for pages in article space to link directly to a disambiguation page. Creating a whitelist (btw not a trivial task) would not solve our problem due to "what links here", the primary tool used by dab de-linkers to clear dablinks. Further, there doesn't seem to be a reason for an exemption from WP:INTDABLINK; the lists are already littered with redirects, which are intentionally and correctly there, so having redirects in the lists is already an established and accepted practice. I know it's not very nice for one project to demand another make changes, so I'm willing to do all the technical work if possible. I don't know what more I can do. --JaGa^talk 20:33, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Wouldn't an edit notice would solve the problem? A disambiguator would find the list, click "edit" to attempt to fix it, and find the above notice. That would not save them the time it takes to reach the page and click "edit", but it would save them from making a lot of changes. Ozob (talk) 01:39, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

If people are doing this by manually clicking on "what links here" it is trivial for them to just ignore the lists of math articles. Human brains are good at that sort of thing. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:44, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Human brains are also good at programming. Why not just fix the problem? --JaGa^talk 05:31, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Why doesn't an edit notice fix the problem? Ozob (talk) 10:36, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I think an edit notice seems like a fine idea. This is particularly because there is no problem with the lists themselves; they need to link directly to each math page to function correctly. The main problem is finding a way to let disambiguators know to spend their time on other pages. If they are doing the disambiguation manually, the edit notice should point it out. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:22, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

An edit notice is definitely a good idea, but it doesn't solve our problem. Disambiguators live in a tool-assisted world; we couldn't fix thousands of dablinks per month without them. Most dabfixers will use a tool such as Enkidu, WikiCleaner, or AWB to go through a list of pages that link to a disambiguation page. (And these are all based on "what links here" so a whitelist does no good.) Since we are editing pages with a tool and not clicking "edit this page" in many if not all cases the edit notice will go, well, unnoticed. --JaGa^talk 21:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Also, regarding the edit notice, I'd say it's a great step but not enough. Pages in article space that, for all intents and purposes, cannot be edited by humans is non-intuitive. The disambig project won't be the first to have a problem with this, we're just the first to show up. I would suggest a similar warning template on the top of the article itself, and adding each list to a category such as "Bot-maintained articles" so other bot-runners will have something to work with in the future. --JaGa^talk 21:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

They cab be edited by humans: if you add an article, the bot will respect it. What you can't do is remove a link to a math article and expect the bot not to add it back. That's intentional; the list should include every page categorized in one of the List of mathematics categories. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I pointed this out on a user talk page, but I don't know if it has been pointed out there. A key reason that these lists need to link directly to disambiguation pages is that the "related changes" tool does not bypass redirects. So this link [31] shows no changes, even though I did edit the disambiguation page that is indirectly linked from User:CBM/Sandbox. This link [32] does show the changes. We have no control over the "related changes" tool to make it bypass redirects. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:35, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

If the purpose of the lists is to serve project related maintenance and monitoring functions, and it must have this user-unfriendly wall of links to accomplish this, then why does it need to be in article space? A user visiting one of these pages will not know that a large number of links on the page are redirects linking redundantly to pages already linked to, nor will they know that many of the links are unannounced disambig links, that will not take them to the math articles they expect to see. In some cases, those disambig links lead to pages where math-related articles are buried in a pile of other things. As a rule, blocky wall-of-links type pages are ugly and inelegant, and could be maintained in a less visible location while something more logical and orderly could be set up in article space. bd2412 T 15:02, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

The list is also used for browsing, and it seems like the dab page issue is not serious enough to make it worth maintaining two lists instead of one. The criteria for inclusion is that the pages are categorized in a category in List of mathematics categories, or are particularly related to math even though not in one of those categories. The categories include "mathematical disambiguation", which is one reason that so many dab pages are on the lists. This is sensible; we want the lists to have a broad scope rather than a narrow one. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:47, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

If you don't want to do the two-lists solution, then I would like to look at Mathbot's code to see about implementing WP:INTDABLINK. All the work would be on me, so it would cost you nothing. Also, I wouldn't submit changes without review. And hey, maybe I'm not able to code the change, in which case you'd never hear from me again! :) --JaGa^talk 21:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I just explained above why that cannot work - it breaks the related changes tool, at least. This list is intended to link directly to the dab pages, not to bypass them via redirects. In principle it would be possible to make the Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity bypass the redirects, because that code can be edited, but the related changes tool is part of Mediawiki, we can't easily change it. But there is no reason to go to all this trouble; it's much simpler for humans to just ignore the lists when they look for links to dab pages. I have yet to hear a good reason why that would be difficult. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

P.S. even if we do update MathBot we would also have to update Jitse's bot that updates Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity. It's a significant amount of effort, which doesn't seem to have any strong justification. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:22, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Since you asked, the reason why it would be difficult for humans to just ignore the lists when they look for links to dab pages is that there are a large number of people who engage in disambiguation work, some sporadically, and short of altering Wikipedia to make a permanent banner perpetually telling all Wikipedians, "don't edit the lists of mathematics articles", there is no way to keep people from making these fixes. I grant that a banner atop each section would keep people from further wasting their time, but we generally only put banners on articles needing repairs, and it is unseemly to consider a set of articles perpetually signalling the need for repairs that can never actually be made. How significant is the amount of work involved in updating the two bots at issue? We have already offered to do the work, and it is always worthwhile to test out solutions to see if they can be made to work, even if they are ultimately not the solutions implemented. bd2412 T 03:47, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Unless you have access to change the source code of both Mathbot and Jitse's bot, you're not really in a position to "do the work". The suggestion to implement two separate lists seems like work that doesn't have general agreement anyway. Because there are reasons not to change the links to go via redirects, that work also would be premature at this point. Any changes to the system would need to be discussed and most importantly brought to consensus. There does not seem to be a consensus to change the lists at this point.

There was a suggestion to use an edit notice on the lists, which is only visible when editing; I don't think a banner visible to readers would be helpful. We do want people to edit the list of math articles to add math articles that somehow aren't there - we just don't want people to remove links to math articles. They can remove them, of course, but the bot will add the links back if the articles are categorized as math articles, with no permanent harm done. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:59, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Oleg Alexandrov says that he will "be happy to implement whatever consensus solution emerges". This seems to suggest that he does not find a two-list solution to be technically problematic. However, consensus must be developed based on facts, not speculations. If editors oppose a two list solution because they believe that it would cost more in terms of effort than tagging the various sections and letting disambiguators discover the tag once they get to the point of making the edit, then a correct determination as to the efficacy of that belief can not be made unless we test that argument with a trial run of a second list. I really don't see why we wouldn't give it a spin to see how it works, as it can be changed back just ickly. In any case, control of the bots is irrelevant to the question of whether the current situation conforms with policy, and all of the arguments about "exceptions" to the policy against intentional disambig links leave out the fact that the exception is that such links are permitted in mainspace if done through the disambig redirect. Neither the imprimatur of a project nor the inability of administrators to edit the bot's source code legitimize the deliberate introduction of error into the system. bd2412 T 13:56, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The current lists do conform to policy, full stop. There is no error, the links are intentional, and they are one of the forseen exceptions to the general principle not to link to disambiguation pages without the name "disambiguation". There is no unilateral policy that we may never link to disambiguation pages without "disambiguation" in the page name. Moreover, the banner at the very top of every MOS page, guideline, and policy says that there will be exceptions to the general rules laid out.

I don't see any strong reason to "give it a spin". It's a waste of effort to develop a new system and then switch back to the old one. You still seem to be ignoring the issue that it's not hard at all for disambiguatiors to just ignore these lists when they edit. There does not seem to be consensus here to change the current system, apart from possibly adding editnotices. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:12, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Our policy states

“ To link to a disambiguation page (rather than to a page whose topic is a specific meaning), link to the title that includes the text "(disambiguation)", even if that's a redirect – for example, link to the redirect America (disambiguation) rather than the target page at "America". ”

That is the ONLY way provided for intentional linking to disambiguation pages, and was arrived at by long-standing community consensus. To intentionally revert corrections conforming to that policy is vandalism. Full stop. bd2412 T 15:33, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

If you scroll to the very top of Wikipedia:Disambiguation, you will see: "This page documents an English Wikipedia editing guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply.". That applies to the entire page, including the part on disambiguation links. There is no policy violation in linking directly to dab pages when there is a good reason to do so, as there is here. We do not have absolute policies on Wikipedia, and "editing guidelines" are particularly far from absolute. As a disambiguator, it's up to you to make reasonable accommodation for the pages that will be the "occasional exceptions" to the dablink section of that page, rather than trying to eliminate all exceptions based on the false premise that every articles must follow every editing guideline to the letter. Wikipedia does not work that way, as admins like you and I should know. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

If we are going to make exceptions to policy, then the wiser route would be to just move all {{mathdab}} pages to their "foo (disambiguation)" titles, as we discussed on Oleg's page. That would be less grievous because (1) we already have many disambig pages which correctly sit at those titles (e.g. George Washington (disambiguation), so it would not appear out of place, (2) the community of disambiguators involved in disambiguation page moves is small and discrete (as a practical matter, since in most cases only admins can actually do the work), making it much easier to keep that community informed, and (3) it would not create confusion for disambiguators. I still think a two-list solution would be the best, as it would not require any exception be made to any policy (however strictly enforced), and the procedural change would only have to be made once. On a side note, whatever solution is arrived at, I still think the lists as they stand are unappealing and unweildy, and could be made much more elegant, but not in ways conducive to continuation of the current bot-editing regime. Also, as I mentioned in that discussion, there are a lot of {{mathdab}} pages that should be eliminated under WP:DABCONCEPT and WP:TWODABS, or for which a primary topic may be identifiable. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Why don't we give it a trial run for a few hours to see if it works? bd2412 T 02:20, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't follow; what are we trying for a few hours? — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

You know, I think we would have found a solution that satisfies everyone long ago except for this vigorous opposition from Carl. I would gladly contribute to update Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity, for instance, but I'm sure Carl has a reason this cannot be done. The disambig problem can be fixed, if only you were willing to work with us instead of against us. --JaGa^talk 16:04, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think such remarks are helpful. Paul August ☎ 02:25, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

You're right. Sorry, moment of frustration. --JaGa^talk 06:25, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

JaGa, would you be okay with the alternative of moving all of the {{mathdab}} pages to their "Foo (disambiguation)" titles? bd2412 T 16:19, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Let me try to explain this again, more clearly, since you seem to have completely missed the point of Carl's objection. It is necessary to include all of the redirects in these lists, because only doing it that way will allow "related changes" to report changes in which someone edits one of the redirect pages (say, turning it into its own separate article). Moving disambiguation pages around will not change this, because it will not change the need to link to the other names. And while we're explaining things, there's something else I still don't understand, so perhaps you can explain it to me again. Exactly why is it impossible for the people working on disambiguation to ignore the math lists? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:26, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Because we work with tools driven why "what links here" which we have no control over. BTW I'm perfectly fine with moving all mathdabs to (disambiguation) pages. --JaGa^talk 06:25, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

If the dab pages were all moved to end with the word "(disambiguation)" that would fix the problem that the disambiguators see, but it would violate the naming convention instead. There are hundreds of these dab pages, so I expect other people from the "name fixing" group would show up to complain about the wrong names being used. We do monitor redirects pages that are categorized as math, and we monitor math disambiguation pages, but not all redirects leading to math pages. Although that would not be difficult to make a list of. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:50, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The naming convention is more flexible than the convention for making intentional links to disambig pages because naming of pages is purely aesthetic, while the linking issue is functional. Linking through a page name including "disambiguation" also serves something of an aesthetic purpose on pages like these lists because it alerts readers who are simply browsing that clicking this link will not take them to a regular article, but to a disambig page. As for 'people from the "name fixing" group' - well, my ears are burning a little, but the "people" you would hear from if it the proposition was objectionable would probably be me, as I am the primary communicator of such concerns to other projects. There are only four other people who regularly work on that aspect of the project (I mentioned before that since it generally involves page moves over existing pages, participation is basically limited to admins), and I can easily communicate a mathdab exception to them. Within the project as a whole, we have had some closely contested discussions of late as to whether all disambig pages should sit at a "Foo (disambiguation)" title, or even be in a "Disambiguation:" namespace, but we've never mustered a consensus for any particular change. bd2412 T 02:47, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

First, if it is necessary to monitor all pages, including redirects, then why are none of the existing "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects in the list, other than the handful I added myself? The rest are currently unmonitored, but adding them will bloat these lists even further. If the whole point of this exercise is being able to monitor "related changes", it seems to me that function is fulfilled just as well by just looking at the page of Changes related to "Category:Mathematical disambiguation" - whatever reports on related changes the bots need to convey, changes relating to disambig pages are there, except for those involving the removal of the disambig tag or the category itself. I have a proposal for the latter problem below.

As to why we can't just ignore these: we are facing the same technical constraints that you are. For the same reason that you can't use a "Related changes" page without having direct links on the page being watched, we can't use a "What links here" page to see which links are intentional. Sure, I could choose to ignore mathematics lists when I see them, as could JaGa. We could tell JustAGal and R'n'B, and our other most consistent participants. We can not control, however, what random editors who are not regular project participants will seek to fix, any more than we can control who will decide to change common spelling errors. There are hundreds of editors who fix disambiguation links whenever they happen to come across them, or who search for patterns of disambig links to fix without coming through our project page. We have no more control over what they see or do, and it does nobody any good if such repairs are automatically undone by a bot.

User:Zundark thoughtfully proposed the solution of maintaining two sets of lists, and Oleg has indicated he would be happy to implement whatever solution we come up with. It occurs to me that it would not even be necessary to replicate the entire lists if we could simply add the "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects to the existing lists in article space (as is necessary if you wish to monitor redirects), and then instruct Mathbot to add direct links to those math-related disambiguation pages to a single list of disambig pages maintained in project space (or perhaps just to use the related changes key for the Category itself). Then you would have all links monitored with no actual duplication, and a minimum of fuss. Would that solution work for you? bd2412 T 19:23, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The reason that "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects shouldn't be in the lists is that they are not categorized as math articles. We don't monitor all redirects to math articles, just pages that are categorized as math. The idea of splitting the lists into little pieces appears excessively complicated and fragile. Simply ignoring the pages when you look at "what links here" is simple. If random people edit the pages and the bot fixes them, no long-term harm is done. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:50, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The list is already split into twenty-seven pieces, alphabetically and numerically, and already needs to be split further to accord with reasonable size constraints. If the fragility of maintaining separate lists was a genuine issue, you'd have one giant page running perhaps 1.5 MB. The long-term harm of bots undoing fixes by random people is that we end up with thousands of wasted edits, when the time and effort spent making those edits could have been spent making changes that would stick. By the way, it is David Eppstein's position, and not mine, that redirects need to be monitored. If you agree that redirects to disambig pages do not need to be included in these lists, then moving the disambig pages would be an acceptable solution. Cheers! bd2412 T 20:09, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

It would really be helpful to get a straight answer to this question, since different people seem to be suggesting that these lists have different strictures. If it is not necessary to include all redirects to disambig pages on these lists (and it would seem that it is not, based on the fact that they are not there already), then moving the disambig pages is a solution that can be effected through the disambig project without troubling this project any further. If redirects must be included as well, then I think we have a bigger problem with the lists themselves indiscriminately including links. For example, must a redirect to a theorem from a common misspelling of its name be included in the list? bd2412 T 00:13, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Just as a side note User:Femto Bot maintains a number of complete lists of pages by project, solely for the purpose of "related changes" checking. Of course it does rely on the WikiProject having and using some kind of banner, which I believe is another of WikiProject Mathematics unique features, doubtless a workaorund could be arrived at. Rich Farmbrough, 19:20, 16 May 2011 (UTC).

Would placing a WikiProject Mathematics banner at Category talk:Mathematical disambiguation work? --JaGa^talk 05:55, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it is necessary to involve another bot. This project already has a bot that maintains lists, and their bot master has indicated that he is able to implement whatever solution we reach. The solutions proposed thus far would require a trivial amount of work to implement anyway. bd2412 T 13:45, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

No, it it not necessary to include all redirects. Only the ones that are categorized as mathematics (see List of mathematics categories) need to be included. Misspellings and alternate capitalizations, for example, will not be categorized that way and won't be included. The reason some redirects are to dab pages are in the lists now is because someone recently added them by hand and I haven't gotten around to removing them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:53, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Straw poll

In light of the broad discussion of this issue, and the many proposals made by various participants, I have initiated a straw poll at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles. Please make your preferred resolution known there. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:46, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Whoever's theorem

Our article titled Miquel's theorem tells us that:

In geometry, Miquel's theorem states that, given any triangle ABC, and

etc.

At the very least, it should say

In geometry, Miquel's theorem, named after ??????? Miquel, states that, given any triangle ABC, and

possibly with a link to the article about ??????? Miquel.

Is there nothing in one of our style manuals that says this sort of omission is an error? There should be something. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:51, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Relatedly, I think grammar like <prepositional phrase x>, <part of sentence>, <prepositional phrase y> <rest of sentence> <prepositional phrase z> is awkward and hard to read. Yes, we should include this information in the lede, but we don't have to write quite so badly to do it. Much clearer would be <whole sentence> <prepositional phrase x>, <prepositional phrase y>, and <prepositional phrase z>. In this case, <prepositional phrase x> is the context ("in geometry"), prepositional phrase 2 is the eponym ("named after August Miquel"), and prepositional phrase 3 is a summary of the content of the theorem. I rearranged the lede sentence accordingly [33]. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:23, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree that either version is readable or that eponymy must be covered in the lede sentence. I agree with MH that it should be covered in the lede section (often in the lede paragraph, probably not often in the lede sentence). I agree with DE that the lede sentence may indicate the scope with a statement of the result to follow; it isn't necessary to pack a statement of the result into the lede sentence.

"Miquel's theorem is a theorem ..." is redundant but we do and should write that way here, when we think the keyword (theorem) needs a wikilink. --P64 (talk) 20:01, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Very often one should not put the statement of the theorem in the initial sentence, since the statement of the theorem can require a lot of prefatory stuff.

In geometry, Xmith's theorem, named after John Xmith, resolved a famous unsolved problem that had perplexed mathematicians ever since 2015.

seems OK to me.

I do think "In geometry" should usually come first, lest the non-mathematician reader fail to realize that it's not about politics, chemistry, mythology, etc. In the early history of the article titled schismatic temperament, I had to read into the second paragraph before I found out that it was not about a psychiatric condition, but rather about musical scales.

But if the article is called Fundamental theorem of geometry, then that context-setting initial phrase is superfluous.

And one should never write "In category theory" or "In representation theory" or anything like that, that will mystify the lay reader who's never heard of those things (a reasonable reader could think that "representation theory" is about politics). Michael Hardy (talk) 23:03, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, I once accidentally confused someone this way. She thought that "group theory" had something to do with how groups of people behave. Ozob (talk) 23:40, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

The person for whom a subject is named should appear somewhere in the lead section but it isn't necessary to put it the first sentence or even the first paragraph. For many articles, especially in math, the story is complicated enough that it should get a paragraph on it's own, e.g. Fibonacci number does this. I've mentioned this before but the habit of starting an article with "In ..." is an idiosyncrasy of this project. It's usually a good way of providing context but there are other alternatives if it becomes awkward.--RDBury (talk) 03:44, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I think usually it should be in about the first or second sentence, but there are cases like Fibonacci or Student where there may be a colorful story. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:30, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

A disagreement at Standard part function

At Standard part function, [PA redacted - WMC: summary: there is a dispute]. The editor does not seem to realize that the standard part was part of Robinson's solution of the paradox of the infinitesimal definition of the derivative by Leibniz, as criticized by Berkeley in 1734. Berkeley's criticism of infinitesimals as inconsistent entities was widely accepted until the 1960s. Certainly neither Weierstrass nor Cantor thought of the limit approach as resolving the paradox of the infinitesimal definition, contrary to what ill-informed editor seems to think. Claiming that the limit approach was a resolution of the paradox amounts to an unsourced, whiggish rewriting of history. The editor in question is pursueing a similar misguided agenda at ghosts of departed quantities, even after having admitted at a talkpage that he is not fully knowledgeable about the infinitesimal approach to the calculus. Tkuvho (talk) 22:02, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Furthermore, editor Connolly seems to be stalking a number of additional pages I have worked on, including a misguided AfC at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Mikhail_Katz. Input would be appreciated. Tkuvho (talk) 22:12, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

You have been escalating the situation unnecessarily. Especially calling William M. Connolley by his first name and then, when he objected to that and directed you to his subpage where he explains why, you outright refused to read it and addressed him as "William" again. Very bad idea. I also had to refactor a section title which was a personal attack, and the title of this section isn't much better, either.

As far as I can see there is some very normal disagreement between the two of you of the kind that should normally result in improvements to the articles that satisfy everybody. I don't understand why that shouldn't be possible. Hans Adler 01:15, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

That's what his page says? Fine, I will call him Connolley from now on. It is a bit odd to choose a user name that... you expect people not to use. As far as the content disagreement, note that I explained the matter at talk a few weeks ago, without getting any reaction from him other than reverting my edits. I recently explained it again, without reaction. Tkuvho (talk) 01:37, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

The page does not say that it's OK to call him just Connolley. Where he lives, and also where I live, that's very rude. In the years that I have been on this project I remember only one user who insisted on addressing me as "Adler", and another who made a point of using "Herr Adler", which I also consider offensive in an English context. I would consider "Hans" or "Mr Adler" fine, but WMC has spent a lot of time fighting with morons who think because they have read a blog they know more about climate science than an expert, so I think it's quite reasonable that he insists on "Dr Connolley" if you insist on using his real world identity to address him. But don't do what I am telling you. Just read the short page that explains how not to be rude. Hans Adler 01:45, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

P.S. Checking the history, I see that I addressed him as "William" two weeks ago here, and he seemed to think that's just fine. The change of heart with regard to William appears to be sudden. Tkuvho (talk) 01:49, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

It is entirely up to WMC to decide who he is on a first name basis with. Maybe he was initially not sure in your case, or maybe he thought it wasn't worth mentioning as you were not likely to interact much, or he wanted to wait whether you were going to see how people who are not his friends usually address WMC around here and adjust your usage. This is all incredibly silly. While part of the silliness is on WMC's side, most of it is on yours. Hans Adler 10:08, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, Hans Adler, how silly of me. Could you please respond to the substance of my remarks concerning unsourced history? Tkuvho (talk) 10:13, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, no. Whether the paradox was resolved or side-stepped is of no particular interest to me. With a bit of good will there should be no problem finding a clear explanation that is acceptable to both of you. Hans Adler 10:22, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

OK well thanks for your input at elementary calculus. Tkuvho (talk) 12:43, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem with both pages ghosts of departed quantities and standard part function still persists. Both pages have been degraded by non-expert edits recently, and my explanations at talk went unheeded. Input by editors familiar with non-standard analysis would be appreciated. Tkuvho (talk) 19:11, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Can't say I much appreciate the section title here, so I've retitled it. Also, I would have expected T to have the bare minimum of courtesy required to have informed me of this discussion. As to the substance: T appears to have appointed himself the expert, and disses everyone else's expertise should they have the temerity to disagree with him. The person with the "agenda" (since he chooses to use that term) is T: and his agenda would appear to be non-standard analysis William M. Connolley (talk) 20:19, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

AfD: Mikhail Katz

There is a discussion about WP:Notability/PROF (for mathematicians), now that the article on Mikhail Katz (a student of Gromov's) is up for deletion.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 00:57, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

One small point to make is that notability is not inherited. It doesn't matter who someone's supervisor was. — Fly by Night (talk) 17:01, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

As an aside, I would encourage as many people as have the time to review the article and the deletion discussion. These kind of discussions set presidents, and it's important for the mathematical community on Wikipedia to have a say. So far the AfD is being discussed by non-reference desk and non-wikiproject editors. We really do need more people from the maths project to give some input. We should be involved in possible mathematical president-making discussions. — Fly by Night (talk) 17:23, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Ray Yang, Tkuvho, Kiefer Wolfiwitz, and Thenub314 are all practicing mathematicians I believe, and are certainly no strangers to the math project. 166.137.141.96 (talk) 17:35, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I haven't noticed them, but that may well be an oversight on my part. If so then please accept my apologises! Either way, that doesn't alter the merit of my point. — Fly by Night (talk) 19:04, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

President-making discussions. Awesome! ;) Nageh (talk) 17:42, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

How does pedantry help the discussion? I mistyped a word… get over it. — Fly by Night (talk) 19:04, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't forget to smile. :) Nageh (talk) 19:35, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I am staying out of the discussion because I have never heard of Mikhail Katz outside Wikipedia and have the impression that he is a borderline case even under WP:ACADEMIC – which is so permissive that I have on occasion not created an article on someone who I felt passes it because there wasn't really much to write about. That's not to say that people who pass it aren't necessarily important, but there just may not be any biographical information available. Hans Adler 18:44, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I mentioned the advisor rather than writing "differential geometry and metric space theory, presented in an engaging mix of seminar talk and formal proofs, with interesting graphics". Nonetheless, being a student of Gromov, like being a student of Garrett Birkhoff, is a predictor of notability, and Katz appears to be performing even better than one would expect from a random student drawn from that elite group, imho.

The following article is worth your attention, on WP and professionally. It appears in Statistical Science (paywall-ed Project Euclid), which has many comments by distinguished mathematical statisticians or bibliometricians.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 18:54, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

• Adler, Robert; Ewing, John; Taylor, Peter (2009). "Citation statistics: A report from the International Mathematical Union (IMU) in cooperation with the International Council of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS)" (PDF). Statistical Science. 24 (1): 1–14. doi:10.1214/09-STS285. MR 2561120. Project Euclid.

I'm not sure how it is a predictor of notability. Looking at Birkoff on the Maths Genealogy Project, only 27 out of 52 students seem to have become notable. (Almost all notable mathematicians have at least one PhD student, while 25 of Birkoff's students don't seem to have had a single student.) But that is beside the point. I was making point about Wikipedia policy: notability is nor inherited. That didn't stop me !voting to keep the article in question. — Fly by Night (talk) 19:11, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Semiregular 4-polytope

Semiregular 4-polytope was prodded for deletion. 65.95.13.213 (talk) 06:00, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Polytope articles

I've raised this issue before, but we have a large number (in the hundreds) of articles on specific polytopes and more are being added all the time. I looked at one of the more dubious ones, Bipentellated 8-simplex, and found no reliable references and it seems to be largely original research. Most of these seem to be the work of a single editor and judging from the red links {e.g. Pentistericated 8-simplex) present on the page it looks like the final tally for these articles could be in the thousands. I find it difficult to believe that the majority of these articles meet the GNG so perhaps there should be a review to decide on a few dozen articles that are worth keeping.--RDBury (talk) 16:42, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

"Bipentellated" doesn't seem to be a term used outside wikipedia. At least, there are no hits on Google scholar or Google books, and most (all?) of the Google hits seem to be Wikipedia mirrors. Maybe it follows some systematic way of naming these polytopes based on compound words formed from the Greek, but sources that address the subject directly are needed. I think most of these articles should be transwikied to wikibooks if sources cannot be found, since it seems to be clear OR. If anything the nomenclature is very non-standard. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:10, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I think some of the glossaries listed in External links section define the terms and the author is applying them to generate the names. If so then these would definitely come under the heading of original research. I'd settle for consolidating the articles since much of their content seems to be boilerplate and the actual information they contain can be summarized in a table entry, assuming that is that the information can be verified.--RDBury (talk) 20:54, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Even if we accepted that glossary as reliable, it doesn't seem to support the nomeclature "bipentellated". This seems made up. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:59, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Fully agree. Also just because something has a name doesn't mean it has independent notability. There's lots of people with different names, that doesn't mean everyone iis notable as far as Wikipedia is concerned. The should only be in some notable topic. Dmcq (talk) 21:05, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Another popular "word" in all of this business is "bicantellated", which also gets zero Google books and Google scholar hits. The naming conventions in these articles, and the overall program, seems to be inspired by the "uniform polychora project" of Norman Johnson (mathematician) and George Olshevsky, but this project no longer seems to exist. I can't seem to find any published materials from the project that these articles can be sourced to. However, I also feel that a lot of work has gone into making these articles, and that we should make every effort to preserve this content. Even if it is original research, it seems like worthwhile and possibly useful original research. So I think that rather than deleting, all of these articles should be transwikied to WikiBooks. (I assume they allow original research.)

If there is consensus that either deletion or transwiki is appropriate, then I think the next order of business would be to make a list of all of these articles. There are various subcategories and subsubcategories of Category:Polytopes that are populated primarily with these sorts of articles. Does anyone (*cough* Carl *cough*) have a script that will unwrap a few levels of a category into a list? We can then go through this list and strike the ones that are either obviously OK, or ones for which there are good references. The remaining ones can be transwikied or deleted by the appropriate process. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:37, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:WikiProject Uniform Polytopes that gives some greater context for these articles. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:46, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Since language and logic seem to be important to this topic, I thought I would point out that there seems to be a conflation of two issues here.

One is the introduction of NOR questionable naming associated with well known mathematical operations on hyperdimensional geometric objects. It would seem too broad a brush to simply eliminate pages from WP for want of more common naming schemes. I suggest due diligence by those interested in taking action to understand and correct the specific issues with finer strokes than a house painter.

The second is the GNG as it pertains to visualizing the many permutations of hyperdimensional geometry. While one might replace all the amazingly beautiful visuals contained herein with a table, I suspect the public would not be well served. Think of the need to stimulate the minds of our youth with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)). Math tables are important, direct, and accurate but tend to be dry. Please consider the right half of the brain when pondering the elimination of these pages - they do provide another way to look at the world to the extent they represent valid geometry.

Jgmoxness (talk) 16:05, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

There is quite an active community of people working on these high dimensional polytopes which seem to be a bit outside the mathematical mainstream. Their main communication channel seems to be the polyhedra mailing list and I think there are some meetings. I would suspect the names reflect those of this community rather than one WP editor. As it seems to be outside the mainstream the work tends not to get published in traditional journal sources. So while not strictly "original research" it would still fall under WP:OR unless there are sources we don't know about. I would say wiki-books would be a good solution for much of this material. Anyway I've notified the main author of these pages User:Tomruen and it would be good to wait until we gat a reply from him.--Salix (talk): 17:15, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

The terminology all comes from Norman Johnson, in the context of uniform polytopes, Coxeter's term for vertex-transitive polytopes with uniform polytope facets. Johnson studied under Coxeter, wrote his dissertation in 1966 on uniform polytopes and honeycombs, and has a long delayed book called Uniform Polytopes on the subject, which has been referenced as an unpublished manuscript, and his terminology used in various polytope sources. The polytopes are named with a prefix notation corresponding to the Coxeter-Dynkin diagram, graphs where each node is a reflection mirror, and each edge is a dihedral angle between the mirrors with a given reflection order. Each Coxeter graph has a set of regular and uniform polytopes by unique permutations of rings around the nodes. So the names are defined by the ring pattern, as well as a t (truncation), notation, like t₀ forms a regular polytope (on the linear graph families), t_0,1 is truncation (named by Kepler), and Norman named bitruncation for t_1,2, Cantellation for t_0,2, runcination for t_0,3, etc, and mixed term like t_0,1,2 is a truncation and a cantellation, so he calls that cantitruncation, etc. So that's where the names come from for uniform polytopes dimension 4 or higher.

Printed references for these higher polytopes are still rare. George Olshevsky claimed to be the first online reference for the uniform 4-polytopes, and the only printed book which I know that uses the terminology is the 2008 The Symmetries of things by Conway et al. Richard Klitzing has the only online source for higher dimension uniform polytopes, so I've used that as my primary, [34]. He uses an inline (ASCII) Coxeter diagram, which are a bit hard to read, and references the polytopes by Jonathan Bowers, so I've included those names as well, but use Johnson's truncation terminology for the article names.

My goal was first to get the basic families, summarized in this table Template:Polytopes, listing families by dimension, and the regular polytopes (or end-ringed quasiregular forms for the bifurcating families). I was hoping to at least get the uniform 5-polytopes completed, and didn't expect to expand articles on all the higher ones, since they approximately double on each higher dimension. I have generated the graphs for each family, orthogonal projections in Coxeter planes for each family which have the nice symmetry, and give a chance for visualization of these polytopes.

Each uniform polytope can be projected in its family Coxeter plane, or any of its subfamilies, so I made tables for each family, and you can see the number of images increases rapidly.

• Simplex: List_of_A5_polytopes, List_of_A6_polytopes, List_of_A7_polytopes, List_of_A8_polytopes
• Hypercube: List_of_B5_polytopes, List_of_B6_polytopes, List_of_B7_polytopes, List_of_B8_polytopes
• Demihypercube: List_of_D5_polytopes, List_of_D6_polytopes, List_of_D7_polytopes, List_of_D8_polytopes
• (subset) E_n: List_of_E6_polytopes, List_of_E7_polytopes, List_of_E8_polytopes

All these shapes are well known by Coxeter even 60 years ago, but it wasn't until Johnson that they were named. These are the easy ones since they are defined by symmetry. Harder ones are called non-wythoffian, like the grand antiprism in 4D, found by Conway, and unknown beyond 4D. Also less known are uniform star polytopes with rational-ordered mirrors, like Coxeter's 3D Uniform_star_polyhedrons and regular Kepler-Poinsot_solids. A list of 2000+ are known for 4D, which wikipedia articles haven't touched, and are not published ANYWHERE, but given in Rob Webb's software Stella_(software). The only listing of those wikipedia has (from Stella images) are the 4D regular forms Schläfli–Hess polychoron.

Anyway, I agree it is hard to defend these on wikipedia, or where to draw a line. As far as I know Norman Johnson (and a few collaborators) are the only ones working on the subject. If it wasn't for wikipedia (seeing the original articles I worked from), I wouldn't have even bothered trying to learn about any of this, since it seemed too hard, and too few resources to help explain what they are. I saw Magnus_Wenninger polyhedron models in the 1990's at a math convention and thought they were beautiful but had no idea before wikipedia before I found out they are mostly "simple things" that look complex! Tom Ruen (talk) 19:00, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the 'list of' articles could possibly be defended but the individual ones just lack notability. They really should all have been in a wiki of their own. What could possibly be done for the moment is to move the pages to commons and reference them from Wikipedia with 'Wikimedia Commons has media related to: xxx' for each of them. Probably not really a proper long-term solution but it would avoid deleting everything till someone decides they deserve their own place elsewhere along with all the various knots and all the various graphs etc. Dmcq (talk) 19:10, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

The primary reason I support individual articles for a subset of forms (possibly complete up to 5 or 6 dimensional, and single-ringed forms for 7 or 8), is because of the recursive definition, higher dimensional polytopes are constructed from lower dimensional facets. They might be linked to family tables, but pages load slower and harder to find. Also no singular table can contain all the information. And on notability, many of these polytopes are related to sphere-packings, and kissing numbers of densest packings. So all the uniform polytopes with circumradii as equal to edge lengths are the vertex figures of uniform lattices (or as root systems of infinite Lie groups). I hope to expand those relations at some point. Tom Ruen (talk) 22:35, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Well just taking a fairly simple one at random Truncated 5-simplex I'm afraid I just cannot see the notability of that article never mind getting up to the Bipentellated 8-simplex. Lets start with general notability guideline "Significant coverage" means that sources address the subject directly in detail, so no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source materia" So where is the truncated 5-simplex mentioned in respect to anything else except being just one in a list? Is there something saying it specifically occurs in sphere packings or a kissing number of densest packings or a root system of infinite Lie grpoups like yous said they were? Dmcq (talk) 23:48, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Nope, you're right on that random example, and no more important than one of its facets, truncated 5-cell, or one of its cells, truncated tetrahedron. (The Stericated_5-simplex#Root_vectors in contrast vertices represent the root vectors of A5, but just a quick reference there.) Probably all but a handful of the uniform polyhedra and polytopes are not defendably notable if you apply strict standards. The Uniform polyhedron compound (which another editor compiled) is largely just a list as well, possibly just overlapping other lists as being stellations as well as compounds. Tom Ruen (talk) 00:11, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

My initial thought when I saw this was that someone, somewhere on Wikipedia must have dealt with this somehow before. With a little work I found Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects, which has topical archives on tables of asteroids. With more effort I found that Wikipedia:WikiProject Algae has a large number of articles which seem to have been created by importing parts of AlgaeBase (see for instance Category:Algae genera and Category:Algae stubs). It's not clear to me whether there is a community consensus for articles which can be created essentially by rote and in some cases by machine.

I think the present situation is partway between the asteroids (where almost all articles were expected to be hard-to-maintain database dumps) and the algae (where I think the long term goal is to eventually add real content to every article). Some of the polytopes are notable and should be kept, but I'm not sure which ones. Ozob (talk) 01:21, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

There has been an effort to maintain statistical information by "template databases" (idea started by another user, and continued by me), for example the regular polyhedra at Template:Reg_polyhedra_db (can be converted to/from Excel spreadsheets), and used for stat tables: Template:Reg_polyhedron_stat_table. The databases can be used for different table formats and allow new fields to be added. I did an initial tests for 6-polytopes at Template:Uniform_polypeton_db and tested on Rectified_6-simplex. The main reason I delayed from expanding is deciding how much information to include, so far only included basic summary counts and symbols. I've done the same thing for the solar eclipse articles for 1900-2100, which I hoped would allow a framework for notable past and future eclipses to be expanded. So the same is true for these uniform polytopes. The less notable ones can just have basic information, and the full lists (of the lower dimensional families) allows browsing cross-linked exploration of these beautifully symmetric objects. So far we have mostly Coxeter plane projections which have a number of graphs per polytope, but there's also perspective and stereographic projections that can be added, and too much to be summarized in a single table or article. Tom Ruen (talk) 01:47, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Maybe we can borrow from Wikipedia:Notability (numbers)#Notability of specific individual numbers? If a polytope has three or more unrelated and distinctive properties (e.g. its skeleton is a Cayley graph, it has a record-high genus for its number of faces, stuff like that, not "it is the teratopentellation of the dodecadodecahedron"), if it has obvious cultural significance, or if it is treated individually and nontrivially in published works such as Wells Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry, then we can include it, otherwise not. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Expressions of notability can end up as original research as much as anything, like the the n-permutohedra (described atTalk:Permutohedron) being clearly related to the omnitruncated n-simplex polytopes, BUT I have no sources that state the connection. Similarly the root vectors of the simple lie groups are drawn in lower dimensions as related to uniform polyhedra, but to my sources its inductive OR to state the uniform polytope connection to higher dimensions. I have limited ability to express these connections, although I have some book sources like Conway's Sphere packing, lattices, and groups, its tough reading. So anyway, for me my strength is merely to express the uniform polytopes as defined by Coxeter and Johnson, construct them computationally, and draw their symmetry projections. I do hope I can understand more in time, but for now their amazing symmetry is what attracts me to showing them. My interest would suppport (1-done) All convex and star uniform polyheda (~75) (2-done) All convex uniform 4-polytopes (~55), (3-done) All nonprismatic uniform 5-polytopes (~105), (4) A subset of convex uniform polytopes from 6,7,8, mainly the smaller ones 1-2 active mirrors, and summary tables of all convex forms. (5) Summary tables for 1-2 ringed forms for 9D, 10D. 9D is a good place to stop with the E8 lattice and the highest uniform hyperbolic honeycomb, and 10D and higher have no new special symmetries. (Although Conway and others would claim still more interest up to 24D!) Tom Ruen (talk) 02:04, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

p.s. Documentable notability within the field of uniform polytopes would mainly come from Coxeter himself, and his historical references of previous discovers, like Ludwig Schläfli and Edmund Hess who identified the (full) list of regular polytopes, and Thorold_Gosset and E._L._Elte who independently described semiregular polytopes by different definitions that eventually Coxeter expanded to the uniform polytope defintion that was complete. Tom Ruen (talk) 02:15, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I like David Eppstein's suggestion. I have no objection to keeping lists of polytopes up to 9D; you gave a good reason above why 9D is a good place to stop (namely, that's the dimension where E₈ appears). I think we should have articles on all the uniform polytopes of dimension less than or equal to 3 (regardless of whether interesting properties can be found), and I could possibly be convinced push that to dimension 4. But all the other polytopes are going to need some interesting properties. (You mentioned Johnson's manuscript Uniform polytopes above. Maybe that has some interesting facts about these objects?) Ozob (talk) 11:13, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I couldn't disagree more with Ozob. Stopping at 3 is like burning geometry books after Euclid. 4D polychora are merely the beginning of modern geometry. Visualizing as much modern geometry up to E8 is needed to show the public how to percieve something they probably thought was impossible - but there it is! While I understand the debate over OR & GNG as potentially interesting - what POSITIVE purpose is being served by moving these particular articles? Reorganize and rename - YES! Move'em out - NO! Jgmoxness (talk) 13:42, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, if I recall correctly, we require evidence of notability for numbers outside the range −1 to 101. The first positive integer that doesn't have its own article, however, is 218. All I'm saying is that three or four dimensions should be the limit of where we should accept notability without justification, just like the number 101. I'm confident that there are good reasons to keep most of the polytope articles that have already been created; I just think that those reasons need to be added to the articles. Ozob (talk) 23:57, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I UNDERSTAND your logic, but disagree with the analogy. It is precisely the value of undersanding how to visualize dimensions greater than 3 (or 4) that MUST be incorporated into the human knowledge base (not relegated to the trash heap of just another number or dimension). Indeed, all of physics may depend on this type of information (up to some dimension much greater than 4 or even 8). So there is your justification! Jgmoxness (talk) 00:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I still disagree. I would like to hear more opinions. Ozob (talk) 01:39, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm with Ozob on this one. I agree that dimensions greater than 3 or 4 are important. So are numbers greater than 101. But we have to draw the line somewhere—we don't want to see millions of separate articles appearing on either topic. I think Ozob is proposing a reasonable compromise here. We're not proposing mass deletion of a lot of articles, only that each case past a certain point needs to have some individual merit. Jowa fan (talk) 06:53, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Here's an analogy. The multiplicative inverse is an important operation on numbers, important enough to have its own article. And many small integers are important enough to have their own articles. But we do not have articles on the multiplicative inverses of very many integers — many fewer than the articles on integers. So, truncation is important, and simplices are important, but that doesn't mean we need a separate article on seven dimensional truncated simplices. There just isn't that much to say about them that is different from six dimensional truncated simplices or whatever. The parts that are different (the f-vectors, for instance) can probably just be summarized in a table. I can't think of any justification for having an article on this particular polytope and not having an article on the number 1/21. And I am perfectly happy not having an article on the number 1/21 — there's not much to say about it that wouldn't be in the article 21 (number) — but I think that Truncated 7-simplex is even less worthy. And that's one of the less baroque ones. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:34, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Agree completely. If somebody wants all that they should set up a separate wiki where they can be looked after properly. If you're willing to have ads Jimbo will give you space free for anything like that at wikia.com for instance. It's the thing to do for knots and graphs and groups and suchlike which can be listed out but aren't in themselves of much note. Want the Alexander polynomial of your knot with 12 crossings?, I don't think Wikipedia is the right place really. Dmcq (talk) 07:20, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

While DMcq might find it difficult to find "much to SAY" about seven dimensional truncated simplices, that doesn't mean there isn't value in showing the patterns emerging from it's geometric permutations (treated together on a page). These are unique and interesting (even to those outside of the math community - the main customer of Wikipedia BTW). I suggest we stop at 8, but using the integer analogy we could stop at 218. For the life of me I can't understand how anyone can see value in a position in a decimal table as more significant for a page than a beautiful set of geometric permutations resulting from hyperdimensional objects. Before proceeding with removing pages, I encourage you to suffer through reading EACH of the integer pages up to 218 - they have a LOT to SAY on those pages!

Wait- maybe you're right - thus we PROD all the integer pages that don't provide salient info that can't be put in a table. I think above 21 decimal would do it.

You've (tried) to make a point about GNG, but I suspect there's another bur in your saddles here. Anyone care to talk about it? To quote HAL in 2001 - "What seems to be the problem Dave?"

BTW - among MANY others who have tried to make legitimate arguments on these math pages, I fully understand that attempts to change the opinions of this collusive gang are hopeless, I just think someone on the planet needs to at least try to right a wrong so at least it is on record what is happening here).Jgmoxness (talk) 13:49, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

What have you got against setting up a separate wiki where the notability guidelines don't matter and where there can be more control so the pages don't just become a burden in the fight against vandalism? There could be any amount of original research and provided it looks reasonable and is mainly okay I'd still be perfectly happy to have pointers to it from Wikipedia. What is this wrong you are talking about? And what kind of a burr do you suspect? Dmcq (talk) 14:19, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it sounds like an excellent idea. I know that this is our default attitude when someone posts "junk" to Wikipedia, but in this case I genuinely believe that this is a worthwhile project that should be continued. However, it just doesn't seem to be a project consistent with our mission here. I'd help in any way I can to make this a viable project elsewhere, perhaps on another Wikimedia site. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:44, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Ugh. I can defend facts, but not value. I did consider putting content on higher polytopes on Wikia or Citizendium, but immediately felt frustrated that hundreds of wiki hyperlinks suddenly go nowhere, or have to be converted to web links, or have article contents completely duplicated in the other wiki, and then have two independent, nearly identical copies to be kept updated. The BEST solution from my side would be if a large set of geometry articles and images from wikipedia could be copied to wikia. At least then I'm at ground zero on a parallel source. But then there's still the question what should stay. And as soon as you draw a line, you're taking out something someone cares about, and blocking interest in future improvement, and reducing the number of eyes to keep the vandalism out. Tom Ruen (talk) 21:33, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Tom, this is not about the burden of vandalism. I doubt there will ever be undue burden on anyone interested in polytopes WRT vandalism (unless you try to add a visual to the tesseract page that Dmcq doesn't like). What I don't understand is how the logic defending moving these articles based on integer pages up to 218 defends the original premise that these need to be moved at dimension 3 or 4. In fact, this analog supplied to defend removal is in fact an argument that supports MY argument. I would like someone to actually address my questions rather than ignore them.

No one on this forum is arguing for PROD of 218_(number) (which if you notice is misdirected to 210_(number) - now THERE is a mess that we should WORRY about. But NOooo! We are worrying about polytopes and not integer pages!). Why NOT? Please read it and tell me why this polytope movement is more important to act on than that! The info is certainly able to be put into a table (except I see NO interesting visuals WRT the number 218 decimal or any other for that matter). I don't get it. Why this? Why now? Even IF the GNG argument were valid (which I don't concede), it can't explain this prejudicial analog with integer pages. Call me cynical - but somebody has a bone to pick with new and interesting polytope visualizations. Jealousy?, NIH?, academic arrogance or pride?, not sure.... it sure isn't embedded in any logic being provided thus far. I hope this answers Dmcq's questions on what is wrong and what the possible bur is - I can't make it any clearer than that (sorry, I don't have an equation for it). Jgmoxness (talk) 01:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I see you were trying to stick some animations into the tesseract article and I objected. People can read Talk:Tesseract#New Animations themselves and have a look at what you were trying to do and judge for themselves. The number 218 redirects to 210 because 210 has a short bit about 218, 218 was not judged to have enough in it to justify having its own article. The online encyclopaedia of integer sequences is a good example of a site that provides a good service but Wikipedia should only have that tiny proportion of the sequences described there that pass notability guidelines. Dmcq (talk) 08:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think we are all successfully communicating. Let me ask a question: Can anyone name one higher-dimensional polytope with one property that is not shared by other polytopes of the same dimension? For example, "This polytope has the smallest number of vertices of any polytope with this symmetry group," or "This polytope has the largest number of cells of any self-dual polytope of this dimension." These are the kinds of properties I'm talking about. The existence of interesting properties is why we keep the numbers 102–217. We don't have a separate article on 218 because there isn't much to say about it. I am sure there are interesting things to say about regular and uniform polytopes. Before continuing this discussion I would like to know what some of those interesting things are. Ozob (talk) 10:43, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Ozob, most of the integer properties you suggest are valid GNG are not mathematical properties. They are mostly rather meaningless correlations (which could be found via search). That is a very low bar for the precedent of GNG. I would imagine it should be easy to find similar (rather meaningless but true) idiosynchracies in polytopes up to order 8. Let's try. If not, each removal shoud follow proper procedure and get consensus individually before moving or removal. Have fun! As for the opinion of Dmcq and his meat puppet minions, you can see I tried and failed to sway their consensus OPINION. You can find the animation living on the 24-cell page (as the Tesseract is embedded in it). Jgmoxness (talk) 13:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I would like time given for the articles to be given a proper home and I do not intend to immediately stick AfD's on them. I would have already done so if I had though that was best. However if there is no intention of moving them and just this idea that each deletion will be resisted then I will start sticking AfDs onto them. What is it to be? Dmcq (talk) 15:45, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that this is a low bar. It ought to be a low bar. Honestly, I want most of the polytope articles to stay, but notability is policy. It is not something we can forget about when we find a topic interesting. So yes, please find similar meaningless but true idiosyncrasies about each of the polytopes up to dimension eight. Then they will meet the GNG. If there is a polytope where nobody is able to do that, then that polytope would appear to be not notable and its article ought to be deleted. Ozob (talk) 22:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I can't support any deletion (or moving) unless all the polyhedral geometry articles are treated as a whole and clear standards are defined for which are allowed individual articles. You can say "things that are a part of a class" should be listed in collective articles. That might be easy, but ultimately there's no easy "notability" for any specific polyhedron/polytope to have its own article. Take for example, Coxeter's icosidodecadodecahedron - the only thing in this article that's not in the larger list List of uniform polyhedra is the related polyhedron section which cross links to other polyhedra and compounds which share the same vertex arrangement. If you take away the individual articles, there's no space for comparisons. I just don't see any clear distinction to say 27 of 76 uniform polytopes are notable and the other 49 are not. For me, they are a set, and if ONE of the set is not notable, then none of them are notable individually. Tom Ruen (talk) 20:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It is in the list List of uniform polyhedra. You can sort the tables by clicking the title at the top of a column and that will bring all the entries with an attribute the same together so if there is something that collects a bunch of things together they can have the same identifier in some column. Dmcq (talk) 20:50, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

A singular table is insufficient, sorting or not, is insufficient to show relations like vertex arrangements, especially when they cross-categories, some are polyhedra and some are compounds. Tom Ruen (talk) 03:44, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

If we're going to start deleting/moving, let's start from the bottom and plan comprehensively! Here's a bunch of categories on polyhedra alone: Some are "finite sets" and some are open-ended sets. Should all 75 of the uniform compounds, compiled from a single paper be included? Should all 92 Johnson solids have their own articles, again, compiled from a single paper that enumerated them. Should all 53 nonregular star uniform polyhedra be included?

• Category:Polyhedra ~189 articles, mixed polyhedra and related articles
  • Category:Catalan_solids - 13 of 13 models
  • Category:Archimedean_solids - 13 of 13 models
  • Category:Johnson_solids - 92 of 92 polyhedra
  • Category:Polyhedral_stellation - 15 of ??? stellations
  • Category:Polyhedral_compounds - 75 of 75 uniform models
  • Category:Uniform_polyhedra ~50(?) of 53 star uniform polyhedra (Cat not used on all apparently)

How about adding a Category:Polytopes to be moved? Maybe a bot can be created that can download them for moving before deleting? Tom Ruen (talk) 03:44, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

At this stage I would leave the three dimensional ones its more the higher dimensional polytopes which are in question.

• Category:Polychora (3 C, 101 P)
  • Category:Honeycombs (geometry) (1 C, 57 P)
    • Category:Space-filling polyhedra (15 P) - 3D models again so keep
  • Category:Polychoral image (83 F) - keep if used
  • Category:Polychora stubs (66 P) - all of these exist in parent categories
• Category:5-polytopes (67 P)
• Category:6-polytopes (60 P)
• Category:7-polytopes (91 P)
• Category:8-polytopes (43 P)
• Category:9-polytopes (11 P)
• Category:10-polytopes (6 P)

From these the definite keeps are the various lists

• Polychoron - Schläfli–Hess polychoron - Convex regular 4-polytope - Uniform polychoron
• 5-polytope - List of A5 polytopes - List of B5 polytopes - List of D5 polytopes - Uniform polyteron
• 6-polytope - List of A6 polytopes - List of B6 polytopes - List of D6 polytopes - List of E6 polytopes - Uniform polypeton
• List of A7 polytopes - List of B7 polytopes - List of D7 polytopes - List of E7 polytopes - Uniform polyexon
• List of A8 polytopes - List of B8 polytopes - List of D8 polytopes - List of E8 polytopes - Uniform polyzetton
• Uniform polyyotton
• Uniform polyxennon (someone above suggested we stop at 9D)

Also of greater significance seem to be those mentioned in Template:Polytopes which are the "Fundamental convex regular and uniform polytopes in dimensions 2–10"

• 5-cell - 16-cell - Tesseract - Demitesseract - 24-cell - 120-cell - 600-cell
• 5-simplex - 5-orthoplex - 5-cube - 5-demicube
• 6-simplex - 6-orthoplex - 6-cube - 6-demicube - 1_22_polytope - 1_22_polytope - 2_21_polytope
• 7-simplex - 7-orthoplex - 7-cube - 7-demicube - 1_32_polytope - 2_31_polytope - 3_21_polytope
• 8-simplex - 8-orthoplex - 8-cube - 8-demicube -1_42_polytope - 2_41_polytope - 4_21_polytope
• 9-simplex - 9-orthoplex - 9-cube - 9-demicube
• Uniform 10-polytope - 10-simplex - 10-orthoplex - 10-cube - 10-demicube
• n-simplex

The various honeycombs seem to be of some significance including:

• 3D/4D: cubic honeycomb, alternated cubic honeycomb, quarter cubic honeycomb...
• 4D/5D: tesseractic honeycomb, demitesseractic honeycomb, pentachoric-dispentachoric honeycomb
• 5D/6D: penteractic honeycomb, demipenteractic honeycomb, Hexateric-dishexateric honeycomb
• 6D/7D: hexeractic honeycomb, demihexeractic honeycomb, 2 22 honeycomb
• 7D/8D: hepteractic honeycomb, demihepteractic honeycomb, 3 31 honeycomb, 1 33 honeycomb
• 8D/9D: octeractic honeycomb - demiocteractic honeycomb - 5_21_honeycomb - 2_51_honeycomb - 1_52_honeycomb
• 9D/10D: 6_21_honeycomb - 2_61_honeycomb - 1_62_honeycomb

Beyond that I don't know enough about the subject to know which ones deserve special pleading.--Salix (talk): 06:45, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

(I added most the other primary honeycombs above.) Tom Ruen (talk) 07:20, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Here's another question. One of the ways we establish notability of a number is if there have been published papers about it. Which of the polytopes (or classes of polytopes) not listed above has gotten a lot of research interest? Ozob (talk) 11:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Ozob, that should probably read "any research interest". I would ask it differently- what pages contain ANY references in ANY published research. Upon finding those pages that don't meet that criteria, look for unique statistical or coincidental correlations that relate to unique patterns. (e.g. ...is the only xxx to contain yy vertices with zz overlaps in the bb projection basis). This answer is certainly above the low bar precedent example in the 213_number where the only notability is listed below:

• Area code 213 is one of the first three area codes created in California. This was the primary telephone area code for Los Angeles County, California during the 1960s and 1970s. Eventually it would be reduced in size mostly to cover the downtown area of the city of Los Angeles. See also 818, 714.
• 213 Lilaea is a main belt asteroid.
• 213 was the name of a hip hop group, active 1990-2004.

...

If no unique correlations such as these can be found to exist - then move it out. Jgmoxness (talk) 15:16, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

OK then, any research interest. Please, show me even a coincidence involving these objects. Ozob (talk) 17:56, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

As in the 213_number example, where its GNG stems from the number showing up as a unique and verifiable enumerated NAME of a member of a set- the main asteroid belt (or is a verifiable member of the set of first LA area codes). So taking Dmcq's proposed example for lack of notability using the same low bar, the Truncated 5-simplex, one can easily demonstrate it as being a unique and verifiable member of a set:

a truncated 5-simplex is THE ONLY uniform 5-polytope with 30 vertices,...

Even more interesting, it shows up in the abstract of published research [35]

Jgmoxness (talk) 18:48, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

p.s. On that paper, and a similar one,[36], looks a truncated k-simplex lattice is like the quarter cubic honeycomb of 3D (k=3), with cyclic A~_k-1 Coxeter group symmetry, with two adjacent rings, a honeycomb with k-simplex, truncated k-simplex, and bitruncated k-simplex facets. (Not currently listed!) Note: I'm not 100% sure how a lattice is defined, but it seems to be more a set of points in space, while a honeycomb is defined by the convex regions (as polytopes) between the lattice points. Tom Ruen (talk) 19:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

WP:OTHERSTUFF is no argument for keeping something, that would just lead to Wikipedia being a dumping ground for the most useless of trivia as everyone thinks theirs is more interesting. If somebody wants to stick an AfD on 213 please feel free to go ahead, I'll just sit on the sideline for that as for instance I can see that 213 is the 9th entry in Levine's sequence which grows especially fast and is mentioned in My Favorite Integer Sequences by Sloane [www2.research.att.com/~njas/doc/sg.pdf]. And for the numerologists 213 is one of the six different permutations of 1 2 3 which also sums to six and multiplies to six so giving the number of the beast :) Personally I feel it should just have been stuck into 210 like 218 was and there should be citations anyway. What should be done is what Tom Ruen is trying to do which is to find some decent reason for keeping separate articles complete with citations. Personally I'm happy with all the list of type article for starters. Dmcq (talk) 09:44, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

What about merging rather than deleting? For example merge the content of Bipentellated 8-simplex into 8-simplex, rather than simply deleting it. In order to prevent the article from becoming too long, tables such as Bipentellated 8-simplex#Related polytopes could be made collapsible. Of course citations directly describing these polytopes would be needed such that no original research is required to extract the presented information. For example, there should be a source that calls the Bipentellated 8-simplex by this name, otherwise the most common name used by the sources should be used I think. As I don't have access to most of the references used in the Polytope articles, unfortunately I could not help with that. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 14:48, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

There is already a partial merge, List of A8 polytopes does contain some details of Bipentellated 8-simplex which shows its Coxeter diagram and orthogonal projections. The only information which is not in the list are the number of faces and edges and the coordinates of the vertices, an a couple of lines in the intro which state a few properties.--Salix (talk): 15:24, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I also considered merging, but as the 8D families show, the amount of uniformation, numbers and images, becomes too large. You could make groups B8 uniform polytopes (quasiregular), B8 uniform polytopes (truncations), B8 uniform polytopes (cantellations), B8 uniform polytopes (runcinations), B8 uniform polytopes (sterications), and have one section per polytope, each of which could have tables and larger images, BUT it only reduces the number of articles, but a huge cost of making it slower to download articles AND loading images that won't even be looked at.

On the issue of notability per article, that's why I went down to polyhedra for consideration. Like the 75 uniform compounds, from ONE paper, with no other references and individual articles for all. Like Compound_of_twelve_pentagrammic_crossed_antiprisms_with_rotational_freedom. That's a nice descriptive article title, but is it notable? Most are tiny stub articles. A few have interesting information that relates them to others, and some have coordinates.

I suppose one measure for notability is cross-referencability. If an article is only linked to the source list (like most or all of the uniform compounds), then its not defendable. BUT then we have shared properties between the compounds and stars, and they ARE cross referenced, and its annoying to cross reference from one huge table to another huge table, and just see tiny images in each. An

Similarly for the Johnson solids, 92 polyhedra, again, all compiled from a single paper, and all have individual articles. Perhaps 20% of them might be cross-linked, and the other 80% are only referenced from the original list. But some articles have unique information (like coordinates) that can't be put into a simple table, so that might be "appended" to sections after a summary table, with an anchor link in the table. BUT if this approach is done, if the "nonnotable 80%" are deleted, some one in the future is going to get the great idea to expand them all back out as articles, or one favorite that looks pretty, so how is this process managed?

On uniform polytopes, if the Johnson truncation prefixed names are not notable like, Bipentellated 8-simplex, we could use Coxeter's truncation notation t1,6 8-simplex, or Conway's ambo notation 1,6-ambo 8-simplex. At least the number notations make it clear they are apart of a numeric sequence. Whatever the naming convention, they all map back to ringed Coxeter diagrams which are graphical in nature and can't easily be made as names. Tom Ruen (talk) 20:57, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I've completed a first pass merge, moving polytope article contents into shared groupings under a single operator. I converted 5D-8D into shared articles, so birectified X, trirectified X, etc, are given as sequential sections of rectified X. This makes the number of articles much smaller, and puts less demand on exact names for all the permutations generated by Johnson's prefixes. I've retained the single-operator articles like pentellated 8-simplex, but it could be renamed as "t0,5 8-simplex" if Coxeter's truncation notation is more acceptable. I give a graphical summary on each article with the Coxeter diagram so that's the fundamental identification, so readers who know about uniform polytopes have an immediate visual symbolic identication of each. The list of potential articles are given temporarily at User:Tomruen/testxx. Tom Ruen (talk) 21:35, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

While I'm still not fully convinced of the noteworthiness of all of these polytopes, I think this is a good solution for the moment. I am not currently planning to object to any of these articles (or any of the potential articles given in your list). Ozob (talk) 01:36, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Can you help the newcomers with some easy tasks?

Hello,

I am working with the Account Creation Improvement Project (my latest report is here). Now I need your help to find some easy things for newcomers to do.

To guide the new users into working on the articles, we have created a step-by-step process that starts right after the new user has provided a username and a password. Here is the first step. If you click on "mathematics", for instance, you go to a page where you are asked to state your skills. And based on your choice there, you go to a page that combines these two choices. Here is what it looks like if you choose copyediting.

Right now, that list of articles that needs copyediting in the field of mathematics, has been created manually by a rather small set of users. That is not a scalable solution. Especially considering that these articles could very well be edited by the time we have created all the lists.

That's why my question to you in WikiProject mathematics is if you could create four templates for each of the four skillsets: Copyediting, Research & Writing, Fact checking, and Organizing - and keep them updated? We could then transclude those templates in the account creation process.

This is probably one of the most efficient things you can do in this project. Yes, really! There are roughly 5-7000 new users - each day. Around 30% of them start to edit. So if only a sixth of them sees the mathematics templates, that's around 250 potential new editors in your field - each day. Possibly more. And they want and need something easy to do. Some of them will continue to edit if they think that the tasks are fun and they are welcomed into the project.

So, what do you say about those templates?

I will gladly answer any questions you may have about this question or the project. Best wishes//Hannibal (talk) 16:42, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I became an editor because there was a specific article that I wanted to improve, to wit Ordinal number. I think having someone thrust an agenda upon me when I had just registered would have caused me to quit immediately. I hope that is not what you are doing. JRSpriggs (talk) 17:41, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. No, we are not forcing anyone to do anything. These are only suggested ways forward. We know that many who come to Wikipedia feel that they don't have anything to contribute, that it's almost finished. This is a strategy to get them to notice that there are plenty of work left. And industrious and knowledgeable new users will probably just skip these suggestions and go wherever they feel. We cannot think of them only, though :-) Best wishes//Hannibal (talk) 18:11, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity might be of some use. This lists the articles which have recently had a tag added to them. --Salix (talk): 07:56, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Mathematics/Lists certainly has raw material. A certain scepticism is in order about "easy tasks", where graduate knowledge is a prerequisite. But can we show willing, by moving from those lists some way towards the requested templates? It will probably not be harmful. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:57, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah, that was a good source, Charles Matthews. I'll take a longer look at it.//Hannibal (talk) 11:21, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach: the AfD

AfD for Elementary_Calculus:_An_Infinitesimal_Approach. Please comment here.--Kmhkmh (talk) 21:15, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't need to be here

Yet another tiresome AfD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_Calculus:_An_Infinitesimal_Approach Tkuvho (talk) 00:55, 22 May 2011 (UTC) Tagging of articles? Tkhuvho has been writing a paper today on Gromov's famous book, and it's already being slapped with cn and unreferenced tags, by what looks to be the same group of editors. If there is a problem with Tkuvho's contributions (and I don't believe there is), then it should be discussed here, rather than by such edits, which I hope don't start to constitute harassment.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:41, 23 May 2011 (UTC) The article was tagged (not by me) as unref'd, because... it had no refs. What exactly is the problem that you see with that? OTOH, the problem I see with your edits is a false claim of witch hunting William M. Connolley (talk) 20:49, 23 May 2011 (UTC) Given your conflicts, you are imprudently escalating things by tagging his article on its day of creation. Look at my articles if you want to tag something! ;)  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:00, 23 May 2011 (UTC) I don't accept that. As I said, I didn't add the unref'd tag, and given that the article was indeed unref'd when it was added, you shouldn't be complaining about it. As for complaining when uncited statements get cn tags: that doesn't seem reasonable either. The problem was the article itself. If T wants to work on an article in his own userspace, then he can. Once he has added it to mainspace, it can be and should be commented on William M. Connolley (talk) 21:09, 23 May 2011 (UTC) Listen, you have been in a conflict, and now you are appearing at Tkuvho's articles, not to drop off another pint of the milk of human kindness. Give it a rest for a while, please.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:16, 23 May 2011 (UTC) I don't see anything here that can't be resolved on the talk page of the relevant article (although the tone there is less civil than it could be). How many more of "Tkuvho's articles" (cf WP:OWN) related articles have been tagged? Jowa fan (talk) 01:37, 24 May 2011 (UTC) ETA: since the section heading above has changed since I commented, I wish to make it clear that Tkuvho has not actually claimed ownership of any articles. Jowa fan (talk) 04:08, 24 May 2011 (UTC) Let's avoid a tempest in a kettle. I don't mind other editors' interest in page I work on obviously. They are not my WP:OWN. What I find disappointing is when editors ignore the explanations I provide on talk, for instance at ghosts of departed quantities and standard part function. Tkuvho (talk) 03:47, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikilink for term "boundary" in article Klein bottle?

Klein bottle says:

Whereas a Möbius strip is a surface with boundary, a Klein bottle has no boundary.

(For comparison, a sphere is an orientable surface with no boundary.)

I'd like to Wikilink "boundary", but I'm not sure what article we want.

The obvious choice seems to be Boundary (topology), but I'm not sure. (Also see the disamb page Boundary.)

Does anybody know for certain on this?

-- 186.221.141.36 (talk) 21:58, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

You were right to be unsure. The correct link is Topological_manifold#Manifolds_with_boundary. I've added that to the article. Ozob (talk) 22:10, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

(ec) The most appropriate link seems to be manifold with boundary, which is a section link. However please do not pipe that link to the single word boundary; that violates the principle of least surprise. Instead, you should either reword the sentence to include the phrase manifold with boundary, or create a redirect (if it isn't there) from surface with boundary, or (third, or maybe fourth or fifth, choice), pipe it to an entire phrase, so no one will expect the target to be an article. An example of the last possibility would be

Whereas a Möbius strip is a surface with boundary, a Klein bottle has no boundary.

HTH --Trovatore (talk) 22:14, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Please don't link the whole clause!

Whereas a Möbius strip is a surface with boundary, a Klein bottle has no boundary.

would be more appropriate.

CRGreathouse (t | c) 21:21, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Better than the pipe is to make the redirect point to the right place, which is what I did. Well, at least it's arguably the right place. Redirects in general are better than pipes. But if you must pipe, at least pipe something that the reader will not expect to be a standalone article, per WP:EGG. --Trovatore (talk) 23:24, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Scratchiness on this page

Could we go back to assuming good faith, and all that stuff? This project is not alone in facing notability issues that are on the margin, and other contentious matters that can generate lengthy debate. But there is a fairly good consensus about what we should be doing, in general. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:32, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes. Paul August ☎ 20:03, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

New page on Canadian mathematician

Help at Larry Guth would be appreciated. Tkuvho (talk) 04:17, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

RfC for Combination

This RfC discussion could use a another viewpoint or two. At issue is the use of notation such as $52^{\underline {5}}.$--RDBury (talk) 19:00, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Relisted AfD: Relation reduction

The AfD discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Relation reduction as been relisted to get more participation.--RDBury (talk) 02:30, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Cyclic permutations: need to consolidate multiple articles?

There is currently what looks to me like a mess of duplicated content between the five pages cycle (mathematics), cyclic permutation, cycle notation, transposition (mathematics) and cycles and fixed points. I'm not sure where to begin dealing with this, but I think it could use some attention. Suggestions welcome. Jowa fan (talk) 08:47, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

The first two seem to be a merge. I'd leave the others for the moment. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:49, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Tangent vector question

The page Tangent vector currently is a disambiguation page with two entries; both of these entries discuss tangent vectors but neither one is an article about tangent vectors as such. It is not clear to me whether tangent vector really has two distinct meanings, or whether it is a single concept with one meaning but with applications in multiple areas of mathematics. If the latter is true, then this should be an article, possibly listing the relevant fields in which tangent vectors are used, rather than being tagged as a disambiguation page. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 12:06, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

It's a single concept. A tangent vector is simply an element of a tangent space. (But to confuse things a little, there are at least three different but equivalent ways of defining "tangent space".) The discussion at differential_geometry_of_curves#Tangent_vector is a special case of the definition given at tangent_space#Definition_as_directions_of_curves. My feeling is that "tangent vector" should just be a redirect to "tangent space". Disambiguation sends the wrong message: there is actually no ambiguity here. Jowa fan (talk) 13:11, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

But saying a vector is an element of a vector space is probably unhelpful, pedagogically speaking. On the other hand, isn't a tangent vector essentially the same as derivative at a point? -- Taku (talk) 14:27, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, there are arguably two notions, one extrinsic and one intrinsic. When a manifold is embedded, there is a mapping from intrinsic tangent vectors (in the tangent bundle) to extrinsic ones. This isn't really an excuse for that disambiguation, but a way of explaining how to speak about the geometry. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:50, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

There is a certain amount of trade off between having the most general definition possible and having articles that are understandable to their intended audience. There is a definition of tangent vector that's taught in undergraduate calculus and a definition that taught in a course in smooth manifolds, and one could argue that one is a special case of the other. But if an undergraduate calculus student is looking up the term I would hope they could find some help without having to know what a second countable Hausdorff space is.--RDBury (talk) 16:50, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

It feels to me like tangent vector should be a real article, but tangent space already covers most of what would go in that article. Maybe it would be better if tangent space were moved to tangent vector and made more elementary? Ozob (talk) 20:09, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

"elementary calculus"

Currently Elementary Calculus (with a capital "C") and elementary calculus (with a lower-case "c") both redirect to Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach, the article about Jerome Keisler's book. Lots of pages link to the lower-case version. I think possibly the lower-case version should become a disambiguation page, with the capital version redirecting to it, and then the ones that should link to the book's title should link there directly. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:28, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea to me. I don't think that sending people who are looking for a general article on elementary calculus to the article on a specific and controversial text is consistent with the principle of least surprise. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:50, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

A dab page is a bit excessive for two items: on the same principal it might be better to send the redirects to Calculus then add a hat note to that page, e.g.

"Elementary Calculus" redirects here. For the book, see Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach.

--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:04, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I like JohnBlackburne's idea, but I am fine with a disambig as well. Thenub314 (talk) 18:57, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I prefer the disambiguation page, as I don't much like this particular hatnote (almost as bad as the one at Axiom of choice). But I'm fine with either version. CRGreathouse (t | c) 01:44, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, I've

• created the elementary calculus disambiguation page;
• redirected Elementary Calculus (with a capital "C") to it;
• directed the one link to Elementary Calculus (with a capital "C") to Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach, the article about Keisler's book.

Still to be done:

• Go through the list of (currently 9) articles that link to elementary calculus. Figure out which ones should link to Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach and link them directly to that article. Figure out which ones should link elsewhere, or nowhere, and edit accordingly. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:36, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

....and now I've edited the one at logarithm so that instead of

[[elementary calculus]]

it says

elementary [[calculus]].

Maybe the others should link to the book........ Michael Hardy (talk) 02:39, 28 May 2011 (UTC) ...and remember: book titles are italicized. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:42, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Done. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:50, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Ghosts of departed quantities

At ghosts of departed quantities, a few editors are attempting a whiggish rewriting of the history of the calculus. George Berkeley criticized both the infinitesimal and fluxional procedures of the calculus, which he claimed amounted to the same thing. Weierstrass and his followers in the 1870s did 3 things: (1) they largely accepted Berkeley's critique of infinitesimal procedures; (2) they sought to eliminate infinitesimals; and (3) they developed infinitesimal-free foundations for analysis, namely foundations based on the real numbers and epsilontics. Then in the 1960s, Robinson came along and restored infinitesimals to respectability, in particular removing whatever logical inconsistencies were present in dy/dx style definition of derivative. He was thus the first one to resolve the paradox of the infinitesimal procedures criticized by Berkeley.

The paragraph above is agreed to by all the historians I have read. Now a few editors have come along and rewritten history. The page ghosts of departed quantities no longer mentions Robinson. Instead, it claims that Weierstrass resolved Berkeley's paradoxes. This does not compare favorably with Jagged's efforts, to the extent that Jagged at least left the old material in while adding his new material. Some input would be appreciated. Tkuvho (talk) 13:39, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

This is nothing to do with Jagged85, thank goodness William M. Connolley (talk) 14:01, 25 May 2011 (UTC) [Wondering why I said that, when no-one is mentioning it? Because the section got re-titled [37] William M. Connolley (talk) 22:39, 25 May 2011 (UTC)]

This seems to be a disagreement over language/semantics - did Weierstrass "resolve" the problem highlighted by Berkeley, or did he "avoid/sidetstep/bypass" it. We all know what Weierstrass did - the issue is over how to describe it. Tkuvho - can't you work with the other editors to find a compromise form of words that you are all happy with ? Gandalf61 (talk) 15:27, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree it primarily seems to be an argument over the "best" wording, rather than a "real" factual or mathematical dispute. However apparently it has escalated into a personal conflict between the involved authors, that seems to impair a rational discussion or an agreement. Maybe all involved should take a step and rethink what they are doing or simply leave it to a 3rd party to come up with an appropriate formulation.--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:03, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

It is a "real" factual disagreement about history. User Thenub claimed in a recent edit that the phrase "ghosts of departed quantities" was not meant to refer to infinitesimals. Tkuvho (talk) 16:42, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Facts in the matter is that Bishop George Berkeley's criticism was 100% correct. This was an embarrassment for mathematics for a long time. Weierstrass removed the embarrassment. What Robinson did was to somewhat restore the honor of the mathematicians that had thought in terms of infinitesimals by showing that it is possible, after all, to make a consistent logical model including infinitesimals. This undoubtedly casts new light on the history but it doesn't make the old calculations involving infinitesimals more correct. They are still 100% wrong. So in my opinion Weierstrass was the first one to solve the problem by simply removing the troublemakers. Robinson solved the problem in another way by reshaping the troublemakers and make them respectable. So they both solved the problem posed by Berkley but in different ways. Weierstrass solved it first. iNic (talk) 17:03, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

The prize-winning popular book The Mathematical Experience has a chapter on the history and math of infinitesimals vs. epsilon-delta. Weierstrass "resolves the paradox" by sidestepping it entirely; Robinson "resolves the paradox" without sidestepping it. You might take a look, to see how good writers handle the topic for a general audience. Mgnbar (talk) 17:06, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Exactly right. The Mathematical Experience is a remarkable book. Weierstrass solved the problem of providing rigorous foundations acceptable to the mathematicians of his time. Meanwhile, Robinson solved the paradox of the infinitesimal procedures of the calculus. This is roughly what the page used to say, namely both Robinson's solution of the paradox, and the traditional solution of rigorous foundations. This is not at all what the page says now. Tkuvho (talk) 17:58, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

(outdent) (@Tkuvho: Oy! Why is this linked to from every place except the talk page of the article, and if I am the one who made the controversial edits, why hasn't this tread been pointed out to me. Also I have no idea what Jaggedalia is supposed to mean, could you explain?) Anyways, it was I who removed Robinson from the article on Ghosts of departed quantities. I should explain, I noticed there was alot of activity at this page on my watchlist, so I went by to read what was going on. I decided to try to help, so I got out Boyer to refersh my memory. According to him the phrase was not about infinitesimal quantities, but rather Newton's ultimate ratios (aka limits of the form 0/0). Since the page was about this specific phrase, and the reference said it was not infinitesimals, and no other references were given to support statements. I tried to rewrite the article in as verifiable form as I could. The was no attempt to re-write history and I resent the accusation. I specifically supplied a reference to a math history textbook. How exactly is that writting history? Thenub314 (talk) 18:22, 25 May 2011 (UTC) (PS: I also don't know what whiggish means, but I will leave that one alone. My blood pressure probably couldn't handle it.) PPS: Also I did explain this on the talk page immediately after making my edits.

I have renamed this section, as the old title was nondescript. I would like this discussion to be calm and peaceful, so please, everyone, take a deep breath before posting. Ozob (talk) 21:03, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

For Jagged 85 see Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Jagged 85 if you can bear it. But you don't need to bother, as it is completely irrelevant William M. Connolley (talk) 22:37, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

One thing to keep in mind is that infinitesimals were still in common use as late as the 1890's, see e.g. [38]. So, as with many paradigm shifts, it took a generation or so for it to become universally accepted. I also would not say calculations were "100% wrong"; the real paradox is that the method of infinitesimals gave correct answers even though there wasn't a firm logical basis for it. People would not have kept using it if it wasn't useful.--RDBury (talk) 01:31, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Of course the methods were 100% wrong. This fact is very central here and the key to be able to understand this old debate at all: A method can be wrong and yet yield the correct results. This was what Berkley's critique was all about. He never for a second doubted that the results the method produced was correct. But the method in itself was contradictory and thus unacceptable at a philosophical/rigorous mathematical level. And of course everyone involved at the time knew that this was the case. The only difference between Berkley and the mathematicians in this respect was that the mathematicians kept silent about it because it was embarrassing to them. They, Newton for example, tried eagerly to solve it instead. Berkeley, on the other hand, used this predicament for the mathematicians in order to attack mathematicians in general, and Edmund Halley in particular. (Berkeley's religious beliefs had previously been hurt by some comments by Halley, why his book The Analyst was dedicated to him, an "infidel mathematician.") iNic (talk) 21:14, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree. An editor above suggested following the presentation in The Mathematical Experience, and I think that's a good idea. Part of the problem is that some of the editors at ghosts of departed quantities are relying on hopelessly outdated history books such as Carl Boyer's. Boyer wrote his book half a century ago! The recent re-printing seems to be a commercial venture trying to cash in on name recognition of Boyer, but that hasn't improved his history. Relying on Boyer amounts to re-inforcing silly cliches that have been thoroughly discredited both by mathematical developments and recent historical studies, such as Jesseph's that has long been cited at the page. I would like to ask the participants here to express themselves as to the apprpopriateness of basing the presentation at ghosts of departed quantities on The Mathematical Experience, so as to resolve this unnecessary and uninformed conflict. Tkuvho (talk) 03:52, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that Boyer's book is not very good, but not simply because it's old. There are newly written books that are not good either. iNic (talk) 21:17, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Good, we agree then. It would be helpful to try to agree upon a text to base the page on. Can we go with The Mathematical Experience? An editor at ghosts of departed quantities is still pursuing what seems to be his novel way of interpreting the expression as not referring to infinitesimals, and unless we can base the page on a specific published source, it will be difficult to come to an agreement. Tkuvho (talk) 03:45, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but you shouldn't cherry-pick one source as the sole basis for an article - that would breach WP:NPOV. If Boyer is discredited then there ought to be reliable sources that say so, and the correct approach is to present both Boyer's position and the opposing arguments, with sources. Gandalf61 (talk) 08:39, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

That's fine in theory, but currently the page is based on Boyer's viewpoint almost exclusively, with the currently active editor asking incredulously if I really think Boyer is unreliable. Boyer's book was written well before the hyperreals were developed, at a time when "historians believed uniformly that infinitesimals have been proven to be inconsistent". We needn't use The Mathematical Experience exclusively, but it would be helpful if we could agree on a primary reference, as a way of moving forward. Tkuvho (talk) 09:11, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I have to say that I have a problem with the post facto style of argument here. I don't much like the advocacy. If there are different historical accounts, then I don't think it is ultimately helpful to have anachronisms of any sort. If you are talking about people who were neither doing Weierstrassian analysis nor model theory, then it is bad history to read either of those things into the mathematics they wrote. One way to deal with "historians believed uniformly that infinitesimals have been proven to be inconsistent" is to name names, reference facts, and state clearly what historians' accounts consisted of. The "uniformly" there should be setting off all sorts of alarm bells. In any case we have a perfectly good set of protocols for dealing with different accounts of the same history, under NPOV. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:59, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Exactly right. Right now we have an old page that has been essentially deleted, and a new pages replacing it that's based on an erroneous notion that the phrase "ghosts of departed quantities" refers to derivatives. I have cited a number of authors rejecting this at the talkpage of the article. Now that Thenub has cited the relevant passage from The Mathematical Experience at the talkpage, perhaps we can again discuss the possibility of starting from there, without of course limiting the sources to that particular book. Tkuvho (talk) 20:24, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the best way to move forward is to simply merge the ghosts of departed quantities page into the page about The Analyst. The expression "ghosts of departed quantities" might deserve a section of its own at that page, but that's all. I don't think that this expression is of such importance, neither historical or otherwise, that it deserves a wikipedia page of its own. If you disagree please speak out now. In addition, to explain what the expression is all about from scratch, which is what we need to do if the expression has a page of its own, becomes a huge task. But placed in the correct context the expression is a very simple thing to explain. iNic (talk) 17:01, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree fully and had mentioned so at the talk page a day or so ago. Thenub314 (talk) 18:50, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

In reference to comment "Boyer's book was written well before [..] inconsistent". I fail to see how putting infinitesimals on solid grounds has any impact on a historian writing that the passage was about limits. Also Edwards and the other references used cited were written after the Robinson's work, and Edwards discusses Robinson's work in the context of its impact on the way we view history. On another note, for anyone following along, I got a hold of The mathematical experience mentioned here. It didn't seem to say anything different from the other references about this particular phrase. I have typed up the passage from it at Talk:Ghosts of departed quantities for anyone interested. Thenub314 (talk) 19:55, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Category:Mathematics articles with no comments

The category Category:Mathematics articles with no comments was recently deleted; see the discussion here. Unfortunately this has left a lot of article talk pages with red links in the category: 8,587 precisely. The category Category:Mathematics articles with comments still exists, though with only 544 members.

So, is the comment mechanism actually deprecated? I've not come across any discussion on it though I've never seen the pages used or referred to. The only time I've had to look at them is to fix a talk page TOC problem caused by headers in a comments subpage. If it's deprecated both categories should be removed from Template:Maths rating which is inserting them, and Category:Mathematics articles with comments should probably also be deleted. Otherwise the deleted category should be reinstated, perhaps via deletion review.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:22, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

As I recall there was a lot of fuss about this last year, the archives are here. Many articles had a comment page that consisted only of a sig and many editors (including myself) did not know what would go on a comment page that would not just well be put in the talk page. On the other hand there was already a number of pages with comments and people objected to that information being lost to posterity. I think the compromise was that for pages with existing comments they would still be visible, but the red link would not be shown for pages that don't have comments. I'd say leave the category since the comment pages themselves will probably not be going away (soon, at least).--RDBury (talk) 20:28, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

There is a page, Wikipedia:Discontinuation of comments subpages, which outlines the process that was supposed to be followed, which, as it appears, was not followed in this particular CfD (since the deletion should have been preceded by a discussion at the talk page of the affected wikiproject). I am not sure what is the best thing to do now, but something needs to be done to remove the redlinks to a nonexistent category - or else the category needs to be re-created for the time being. Nsk92 (talk) 20:35, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

We probably just need to adjust the maths rating template. Someone with some template editing skills could probably do it in a few minutes.--RDBury (talk) 20:59, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

I have removed the category from {{maths rating}}. The category is now empty. Algebraist 21:23, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

A novel interpretation of Berkeley's criticisms

According to this edit, Berkeley wasn't criticizing discarded error terms in his famous criticism of the calculus. A quick check at the French and other wikis reveals that they have not yet caught up with this novel insight. Seriously, we are going to be the laughingstock of the whole of internet if we let him get away with this. Tkuvho (talk) 14:08, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

I thought Bishop Berkeley was criticizing the use of infinitesimals and in particular dividing one infinitesimal by another where one got a definite result rather than an undefined one. I didn't think he was talking about error terms. And I wouldn't worry about being the laughing stock of the internet and wouldn't care either. Dmcq (talk) 20:19, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

The editor removed and unsourced statement which is perfectly acceptable. If the statement can be verified then find a reference and add it back in. As for being a laughingstock, try watching Stephen Colbert sometime, he regularly pokes fun at WP and the Elephant article was protected after he got viewers to put bogus information in it. What can be done to counter this is to maintain standards of verifiability by, for example, removing unsourced statements.--RDBury (talk) 20:50, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Our custom is to label statements as unsourced before deleting them. Tkuvho (talk) 14:18, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Buddhabrot at PotY

One of the finalist images at the current Picture of the Year contest is one of the Buddhabrot: File:Buddhabrot-W1000000-B100000-L20000-2000.jpg. A similar image File:Buddhabrot-deep.jpg was formerly a featured picture but was delisted due to low resolution. The English WP is not currently using the current candidate; the article already has a number of of good images. One concern I have with images such as these is that while they make pretty pictures, they may be of questionable mathematical significance and it is difficult to verify correctness. Also, it may be worthwhile to take a critical look at the article itself since it may be getting more attention in the immediate future.--RDBury (talk) 14:23, 30 May 2011 (UTC)