The merge banners have been up for a while. I agree with merging because there is not much point in
Invariant interval and is easily contained within
spacetime or (my rewrite of)
Line element. If there are no objections - I will merge.
F=q(E+v×B)⇄ ∑ici 22:21, 27 June 2012 (UTC)reply
Well, no response: these will be merged now.
F=q(E+v×B)⇄ ∑ici 15:40, 2 July 2012 (UTC)reply
sorry, but I'm very annoyed
I tried to build up the article
Diophantine approximation starting two weeks ago (See its diff-history.) Until then it was a "dead" article no activity on a stub level (called start for politness or motivation I think). After I structured and put MUCH contents to give an overview suddenly
User:D.Lazard sprang in action. He must "destroy" the things I want to build up and my thoughts how to present the topic consistently. Look at its talk-page about his justification and reasoning. Apparently he has insufficient knowledge (he doesn't know how to build up this topic he had self wrote) but could judge the importance of certain contributions by mathematicans to this subject. :-( I have waited two weeks now to see whether he is able to learn and improve the article back (or others spring in action). But it seems he is unwilling to check the material what is missing or he has deleted. :-(
I withdraw from further contribution to this article and also to Mathematics in general if this is allowed/okay on wikipedia-en, you need really no experts. We(or should I say You?) will never get high quality level of contents. I will look what has happened after 1 week and then decide whether I support wikipedia-en seriously with my knowledge again. Regards,
Achim1999 (
talk) 20:04, 28 June 2012 (UTC)reply
Diophantine approximation (
|
talk |
history |
protect |
delete |
links |
watch |
logs |
views), fwiw. I see that when you picked up on the article, it was about 9300 bytes, and now it's 21,209 bytes. Looking through the history, it's clear that you added most of that; well done & thanks. Without doing an edit by edit trawl through, it seems to me that you have been mostly successful in building up the article, and that what issues there are are surely on the margins. I don't see a 12,209 byte edit war going on. Reading the talk page, it does seem to me that you are getting emotional and being somewhat uncivil. So, your frustration comes through very loud and clear; but it's counterproductive. I earnestly suggest that you focus on staying very very calm, and discussing issue by issue with DL. It's almost certain that both of you are acting in good faith; if you avoid personalising the discussion there's a fair probability you'll make headway. --
Tagishsimon(talk) 20:18, 28 June 2012 (UTC)reply
Sorry, you miss the point. I dislike an revision-war, thus no happend, in contrast I with-draw and now after 2 weeks looked what has happend. I will surely not teach and discuss with a person who has too less knowledge (and highly probable know this!) but whom I must/should convince. Sorry, I will not waste again my time with such people! I wonder that people (you?) here judge firstly on "uncivil"/"impolite" than on content/information and this only surficically. Bye. :-(
Achim1999 (
talk) 20:27, 28 June 2012 (UTC)reply
No, I entirely see your point. You know more than him/her, he/she should just stand out of the damned way. And yes, look at what happened: the vast majority of your changes are still there. Cataclysmic. What you seem not to be able to see, from your exulted position, is that he or she may in fact have valid points to make, despite being an intelectual pygmy; and indeed your diagnosis of DL's enfeebled mental prowess with respect to yours may in fact be incorrect. Until you see that those are fundamental problems in your approach, there really can be little progress beyond you flouncing off and wikipedia sinking slowly into the mire. We can only wait and hope. --
Tagishsimon(talk) 20:38, 28 June 2012 (UTC)reply
This is ridiculous. Achim1999 behaved terribly impolite in several German WP discussions and now tries the same here. Back to mathematics: His style is to write “It may be remarked that, instead of the factor b2, a weight-factor of a2 could have been used; this would have led to effectively the same properties and insights about rational approximation.” without either showing that this is clear or giving a reference. Achim1999: why don't you make this point clear now? Thank you. --
KurtSchwitters (
talk) 21:06, 28 June 2012 (UTC)reply
From what I can tell, whether Achim1999 and.or D.Lazard are sufficiently mathematically knowledgeable is a sideline. The problem is that the command of English of the former is insufficient to be able to make coherent sense. --
Matt Westwood 05:24, 29 June 2012 (UTC)reply
Agreed, Achim1999's command of written English is not perfect, and his first drtafts of material can be difficult to understand. This difficulty could be overcome if he were willing to work collaboratively with other editors who could re-draft his contributions. Unfortunately, his abrasive style - as shown in his interactions with D.Lazard - makes this unlikely. It is this combination of imperfect English and confrontational interaction style that is the problem here, IMO.
Gandalf61 (
talk) 08:41, 29 June 2012 (UTC)reply
I want not enter in a discussion about who is the greatest mathematician nor about Achim1099 aggressive style. Let just recall that he has had his disruptive behavior also in
Golden ratio and
Line (geometry).
IMO
Diophantine approximation needs further attention by memberships of the project. Before Achim1999's edit, it was a stub. Achim has introduced in it a number of relevant results, but also a number of sentences that can not reasonably be understood, a number of assertions that are pure
WP:OR and, at least, one mathematical mistake (recently corrected). Moreover, the structure he gave to the article does not give a
due weight to Thue-Siegel-Roth theorem. In particular he emphasizes on the use of 1/b2 to measure the approximation, when other exponents are at least as important (1/b2+ε for Thue-Siegel-Roth theorem).
I have resolved some of these issues, but a lot of work is yet needed, that I am not willing to do alone. Two points are behind my knowledge: I mention applications to Diophantine equations in the lead but I am not able to be more explicit. I believe that there are other applications (to ergodic theory?), but I have not enough information to put anything in the article.
Not commenting on the behavioral issues, the edits to
line (geometry) and
Diophantine approximation over the past weeks have been net improvements. It would be ideal if Lazard and Achim could collaborate amicably, since jointly they benefit the project more than either does individually. I would be sorry to see Achim leave the project over this issue.
Sławomir Biały (
talk) 13:55, 29 June 2012 (UTC)reply
Contrarily that I have said above, I have further edited
Diophantine approximation. Although I am misplaced to judge, I find decent the present version. I hope you will enjoy to read it. However there is yet many things to do in order to have a good article, in particular in the end of the article (from section "Kintchin" on).
D.Lazard (
talk) 17:47, 2 July 2012 (UTC)reply
History of Math books
This may already be common knowledge, but a fellow librarian drew my attention to the AMS's
History of Mathematics: A Century of Mathematics in America set which they have made available free online -- could be a useful resource for referencing some of the history of math/mathematician articles! --
phoebe / (
talk to me) 17:35, 2 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Recent edits from 32.173.153.198: are they vandalism
The recent edits to mathematics pages by
32.173.153.198 are puzzling. They introduce some subtle errors; most of them have already been reverted. I'd like to
assume good faith here, but I think it's important to watch any further edits from that address.
Jowa fan (
talk) 02:08, 2 July 2012 (UTC)reply
See also
24.18.247.140; I can't see any way to interpret the comments by those two editors, presently at
WT:Vandalism#Convince me to not vandalize as stating that he/she will vandalize unless Wikipedia can find a structural way to prevent it. (And they have now all been reverted.) —
Arthur Rubin(talk) 04:20, 2 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Subtle this. "It is good to put mistakes in encyclopedias because that will encourage people to love their offspring." Dangerous madness that, worse even than (puke) religion. There is a structural way to stop such behaviour: block the IP address as soon as it happens. --
Matt Westwood 05:11, 2 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Check the edit I just reverted on
Fundamental theorem of arithmetic by some guy calling himself Shrohaneinstein. I don't know if it's vandalism or stupidity, nor do I know if it's 32.173.153.198 or 24.18.247.140. -
Virginia-American (
talk) 13:09, 2 July 2012 (UTC)reply
No, not anything like the IP edits; much more likely someone who thinks they understand more than they do. (It reads like a sort of typical proof by someone who doesn't really understand what proofs are yet.) --
JBL (
talk) 14:08, 2 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Similarly incoherent job done by that same user on
Linear congruence theorem which might also need attention. These are the first 2 edits by that user, so I suppose one ought to be gentle. --
Matt Westwood 18:02, 2 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I reverted that. The result is obvious. It doesn't require a cryptic "proof".
Sławomir Biały (
talk) 19:53, 3 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Fernando Revilla
The new article
Fernando Revilla has the interesting sentence "In this lecture [by Fernando Revilla], it is proven that dynamic processes assocciated with natural number characterize the Goldbach's conjecture, a characterization which is lost in an instant of time, obtaining a temporal singularity." This suggests that the article may need some attention. --
Jitse Niesen (
talk) 09:25, 2 July 2012 (UTC)reply
That sentence looks like
WP:FRINGE flakiness to me. When I saw that this had been prodded I tried searching for his pubs in Google scholar but I saw very few citations, so I suspect he doesn't pass
WP:PROF and I'm inclined to leave the prod in place. —
David Eppstein (
talk) 20:51, 3 July 2012 (UTC)reply
What is that article? Should it be trimmed and the non-obvious parts moved to
bicomplex number. I know the article is old, but is there any evidence the term is actually used? I would rather not propose a merge tag before I understand what it is. —
Arthur Rubin(talk) 15:53, 2 July 2012 (UTC)reply
As far as I can tell, at least some of the article concerns analytic functions of
split complex numbers. Presumably this is what the article should be about, although most of it is written in a very obscure way.
Sławomir Biały (
talk) 17:10, 2 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Surely "motor variable" is merely an archaic term for split-complex number? If so, the article should be replaced with a redirect after seeing whether anything should be merged. I imagine the only mention of this term thereof should be under the history section there, which I note is already the case. —
Quondum☏ 20:33, 3 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Proposed GA collaboration
I was browsing
WP:VITAL, and saw that
Area is only start class. Would anyone be interested in collaborating to get this most important mathematical article up to GA status?--GilderienChat|
List of good deeds 19:08, 1 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Ok, it has been re-assessed as B-class, any suggestions on improvements for GA?--GilderienChat|
List of good deeds 11:18, 5 July 2012 (UTC)reply
help requested on merge
Hi, I'm cleaning a backlog of old merge proposals, and one of the oldest was for this article:
Talk:Gödel–Gentzen_negative_translation which was proposed to be merged with
Glivenko's_theorem and renamed to
Double-negation translation. The consensus was to merge, so I closed the discussion and asked the involved editors to perform the merge because my math skills are too rusty to safely do this merge; since they may no longer be active, I'm also asking here if someone who understands the math can do the merge correctly. Thanks. --
KarlB (
talk) 13:01, 4 July 2012 (UTC)reply
now Done.
Hodge Dual
I've been struggling with trying to understand the Hodge dual article for a while. To be honest, I didn't get anything from it at all. I found an on-line text that explained it in a, to me at least, much more natural way. (It actually motivated the definition!) I've added a section to the article:
Hodge_dual#Explanation, to hopefully add that extra clarity which I found useful. But I'm no expert and would appreciate it if someone could take a look at it. Cheers. —
Fly by Night(
talk) 18:31, 1 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Hi, have you looked at some of the posts at math.stackexchange, in particular
this one? If it doesn't address your question, I'd like to encourage you to ask your own there, because I would like to see what answers appear.
Rschwieb (
talk) 17:47, 2 July 2012 (UTC)reply
It seems bizarre to me that someone would understand the
Hodge dual as one questioner at stackexchange claims to do, and yet not understand the much simpler concept of
dual space. Or have I missed something?
JRSpriggs (
talk) 07:43, 3 July 2012 (UTC)reply
When the dual space is identified with the vector space through a metric, as for example in
geometric algebra where the dual space is not even mentioned, it seems reasonable that someone might understand the Hodge dual without understanding the concept of the dual space. Those with familiarity of GA might prefer to study the Clifford dual and move from there to the Hodge dual. Lounesto (2001, footnote p39) indicates a subtle distinction between the two in the context of GA. I also find the Hodge dual article difficult to follow properly. —
Quondum☏ 15:55, 3 July 2012 (UTC)reply
@JRSpriggs With the diversity of experience out there, it's highly unsurprising that someone has a viewpoint different from the one you described.
Rschwieb (
talk) 17:00, 3 July 2012 (UTC)reply
On going through the
definition in the article, it seems to me that there is a confusion between k-vectors and k-forms (or at least that the two terms are being used interchangably). This may have contributed to the problem, and should be fixed in the article. In particular, the new explanation does not seem to make this mistake, but my impression is that any reference to dual spaces can be avoided. I think anything further should be on the
talk page. —
Quondum☏ 18:59, 3 July 2012 (UTC)reply
@
Rschwieb — You seem to have misunderstood my question. I was asking for someone to review the new section that I had added. The point was that the article had been insufficient to help me understand the idea, and I had to do elsewhere. —
Fly by Night(
talk) 12:36, 4 July 2012 (UTC)reply
it seems to me that the coefficients are the components of a covariant vector and thus dx, dy, and dz are the basis of a covector space (the
dual space of the
tangent space (vectors) of the manifold at the relevant event). So it seems to me that the W of
Hodge dual#Explanation should be a covector space rather than a vector space.
JRSpriggs (
talk) 13:59, 4 July 2012 (UTC)reply
The W is any vector space. What you term "covector spaces" are examples of vector spaces. —
Fly by Night(
talk) 15:23, 4 July 2012 (UTC)reply
@FlyByNight Sorry yes, I mistook what you wrote as a request for more information. What was the online text you found on the topic, by the way?
Rschwieb (
talk) 23:34, 4 July 2012 (UTC)reply
To Fly by Night: Of course, all these spaces of covectors and tensors of various types are vector spaces in an abstract sense. However, you should realize that the context here is based on the
Tangent space at an point on a manifold; that is THE "vector space". Its dual space (the
Cotangent space) is called THE "covector space" (although it is also a vector space). Tensor products of these spaces are called such rather than referring to them as merely vector spaces.
When speaking in the context of components and indices as at
Ricci calculus, the vectors in THE vector space are also called "contravariant vectors" because their components change contrary to changes in the basis vectors of THE vector space. The covectors in THE covector space are also called "covariant vectors" because their components vary in the same direction as the the basis vectors of THE vector space. (Bear in mind that a change in the basis of THE vector space induces a change in the basis of THE covector space and their various tensor products.)
JRSpriggs (
talk) 04:48, 5 July 2012 (UTC)reply
But the article isn't about the Ricci calculus, it's about the Hodge dual. This applies to any vector space.
Sławomir Biały (
talk) 11:16, 5 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I can't shake the feeling that the added explanation refers to dual spaces unnecessarily.
Tevian Dray (1999) The Hodge Dual Operator has a very similar "abstract definition" (at least its symbol choice overlaps), and it makes no use of the dual space (not counting the metric) thoughout the paper. To avoid confusion, I too agree that the Hodge dual applies to any vector space (with a nondegenerate symmetric bilinear form). —
Quondum☏ 06:27, 5 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I think some of the confusion stems from the fact that "dual" has several meanings in mathematics. To me this page would be clearer if it avoided any mention of the
dual of a vector space. I'm not convinced that the "explanation" section actually helps, sorry to say.
Jowa fan (
talk) 07:17, 5 July 2012 (UTC)reply
@Jowa fan: The explanation is guaranteed to help some people. I know it helped me. I couldn't make head nor tail of the article as it was. Using the dual seemed much more natural and comprehensible to me. The page Quondum links to is the think I found that really helped me. —
Fly by Night(
talk) 12:26, 5 July 2012 (UTC)reply
@Quondum: Dray uses the dual just like I have. The only difference is that he doesn't explicitly name, or denote, any of the duals. You'll see that he mentions linear functions on spaces a few times. —
Fly by Night(
talk) 15:27, 5 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I retract what I said just above about no reference to the dual space in the paper. In the example Fly by Night has correctly made explicit the implicit fact in the paper that the "real-valued function on a vector space W" belongs to the dual space.
How spooky: Fly by Night, I had not read your response before I posted this retraction. I presume it was one of those copyedit phenomena, where your post occurred between my reading it and clicking edit, and I failed notice the changed text in the edit window. Nice to see such similarity in what we said.
—
Quondum☏ 17:49, 5 July 2012 (UTC)reply
For understandability, I prefer the current "formal definition" though (and I invite comment, especially from Fly by Night), as it can be related to the following. The preferred unit n-vector can be decomposed into a (wedge product of) a unit k-vector and its unit "orthogonal" Hodge dual (up to a sign, and orthogonal in the sense that all the vectors in their decompositions are orthogonal). Require linearity (and the correct sign ignored here), and this defines the Hodge dual. So, in a sense, The Hodge dual is the "bit of an n-vector missing from" the k-vector. —
Quondum☏ 15:45, 5 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I really like your last sentence! I agree that the formal definition should stay; I'm in no way challenging that. That's why I created a new section with the aim of explaining the definition in context. I really like Dray's explanation because, instead of simply presenting a definition in abstract isolation, it gives some motivation and explanation for the definition. I realise that it might be superfluous for those that already know and understand the Hodge dual, but I think it's really helpful for those that don't. Maybe we should blend the two sections together. Start with, something similar, to what's in the
Explanation section and build up to the abstract definition? —
Fly by Night(
talk) 17:40, 5 July 2012 (UTC)reply
The impression that I get from Dray is that the "explanation" is actually a fully fledged alternative definition, preferred by some authors. It has the advantage that it is largely by construction, and thus does not need an existence proof in addition to the definition. Perhaps it should be presented in the article as such, rather than as a motivation.
On the "missing bit of the n-vector", this would need some development; it is very hazily stated here. Where this may be clearest is given by Lounesto for GA, who states in effect (I presume his 3D statement generalizes) that . It would be nice to be able to draw on this simplicity for general metric vector spaces. —
Quondum☏ 08:38, 6 July 2012 (UTC)reply
An editor has been repeatedly adding a very poorly conceived section to
Fano plane; I've tried to engage
User:Nicolae-boicu on the talk page on how to improve the section to make it acceptable, but the editor is being evasive. (Also, someone interested in this sort of procedural detail could probably find a
WP:3RR violation there somewhere.) --
JBL (
talk) 13:10, 5 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Hello, I am here Joel, trying to do my best. Just believe me, I cannot explain in several hours the Theory of Species and the techology of labeling structures. Neither the Fano article is the right place to do this. Also, I ask you to take a more constructive position; accept it as it is, Fano" = X.Klein and to work toward it and not against it. Thank you
Nicolae-boicu (
talk) 15:58, 5 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Fano plane as labeled structure
Fano" = X.Klein
Since two points determine a line, after labeling any two points in the Fano plane another point is settled. The relabeling liberty for the rest of the four remaining points is described by the Klein Group.
The Maple permutation group for Fano plane is 7T5.
The e.g.f. is
hence there are 30 ways to label the plane. Here 6 represents the six distinct ways of labeling the affine (Klein) corresponding plane.
here is the section that has been erased several time. I would compare this section with a Java program. The Java program requiers JRE to run. Without JRE a Java program is only an obscure text. The "JRE" of labeling is the Theory of Species, see
Combinatorial species, that I will not explain inside my section.
Nicolae-boicu (
talk) 16:33, 5 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Please answer these questions, Nicolae-boicu.
1) what does Fano" = X.Klein mean? Is there a reference for it?
2) I'm assuming egf stands for "exponentional generating function." What function is being generated? Why is it an integral rather than a sum? References?
You're a bit late to the party (Nicolae has already been blocked for edit-warring) but the mathematics of what's written is fine, it's just a claim of marginal interest and seems to be designed to be impenetrable. The claim is a claim about exponential generating functions for labelings; "X" is the variable, "." is multiplication, and " " " is a second derivative. It has to do with the theory of
combinatorial species. Why anyone would use this language to express the simple facts that there are 30 distinct labelings and that after one line has been labeled, the group of symmetries of the remaining labelings is the Klein group, is something of a mystery. --
JBL (
talk) 15:05, 6 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Five of seven points answered
Dear Ed, I have already answered to 5/7 "accusations" points. It remains the below two ones. Please be careful and read the talk before clicking an irreversible button. Thank you.
• it is poorly formatted (e.g., the use of "." instead of "\cdot" for multiplication in LaTeX, the unexplained bold text)
• the language could use polishing
Just out of curiosity: where is this cryptic notation (Fano"=X.Klein etc) used? It's certainly not notable enough to be used in articles to explain things.
Rschwieb (
talk) 11:50, 6 July 2012 (UTC)reply
It's the language of
combinatorial species -- it's a kind of categorical-type approach to enumerative combinatorics. While it is definitely used in the combinatorics literature, I would say that it has not widely caught on; in my (admittedly not vast) experience,
Bill Cherowitzo's response at
Talk:Fano plane is common. It's not clear to me what would make a person want to use that notation without mentioning that it's the notation being used, nor why a person would prefer to use that notation than to use the corresponding English sentence when dealing with a single, concrete, finite example. --
JBL (
talk) 13:08, 6 July 2012 (UTC)reply
As a guess, it's so as to appear clever. If you speak in a language which is deliberately obscure, and understood only by a few, then everyone will gasp in awe and hold you in high esteem. (Not.) I've encountered such soi-disant mathematicians before, and one of their techniques is deliberately to replace simple English with gnomic symbology, and equally deliberately remove all reference to its interpretation on the grounds that "If you need to be told what the symbols mean, you're not advanced enough to understand the truth that is being communicated." I think there's some sort of attempt to make mathematics the basis for a secret cabal of some kind, with multiple levels of initiation, to which I would respond as Belbo in "Foucault's Pendulum": "Ma gavte la nata." --
Matt Westwood 16:52, 6 July 2012 (UTC)reply
You are right ! If someone would ask me to choose between the Latin and the language of Species, I would recommend him Latin : there are much much more to read in Latin. The species Theory ends with the syntethic aposteriori description of several multiply transitive groups. As I alse said before, the text is like a Java program, it requiers a JRE software, that is, in this case, some material distributed in one book and several articles. In that context, the text makes a lot of sense. There are not too many "initiated" of this cabalistic language; they are mainly boomers that are aging and they started to pass by. I think it would be a loos for mathematics if the art of writing or reading species equations will die with them.
Nicolae-boicu (
talk) 16:51, 7 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Good news
I continued to work on my section following the expressed requierements. I have now a new form that I cannot imagine how to improve without kidnapp the subject. Thank you all for remarks and your time. The actual variant is on my page. Dear Matt, the argument regarding the redundancy is on my talk user page.
Nicolae-boicu (
talk) 16:11, 7 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Sorry, I won't be reading it. Life's too short. --
Matt Westwood 16:54, 7 July 2012 (UTC)reply
It's OK, I didn't wrote it for you. Thanks for your comment, after all, you help me to get a better picture.
Nicolae-boicu (
talk) 16:59, 7 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Watching edits on
Hilbert's Nullstellensatz, I have reverted edits by
user:Nbarth, which were out of context and not directly related to the subject of the article. Looking on the article which were linked to by these edits, it appeared that the same user has also inserted inappropriate material in
Commuting matrices and
Spectral theory. I have reverted, or in some cases rewritten, these edits. There may be other articles that have been similarly edited by the same editor in a way that may be viewed as some kind of subtle vandalism. Attention of the project members is thus needed. I may add that I'll be away from the net for two weeks, and I will not be able to follow the question.
D.Lazard (
talk) 13:31, 6 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I've also noticed in the past that Barth's edits can tend to go off in directions not related to the subject of the article. I think he's trying to grow the Wikipedia graph by interconnecting different mathematical ideas. However, even if ideas tend to be linked from time to time in the real world, that doesn't mean that they should be so linked in encyclopedia articles about the topics. We should try to encapsulate topics. That said, I don't think there was any harm done per se in Barth's edits. I certainly wouldn't consider them to be vandalism.
Sławomir Biały (
talk) 18:39, 7 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Forum of Mathematics, Pi and Forum of Mathematics, Sigma are
open-accesspeer-reviewed journals for
mathematics licensed under
creative commons which will be open to submissions from 1st October 2012 for initial publishing on 1st January 2013, published by
Cambridge University Press.[1] It is currently intended to be funded by an author-pays model with fee-waivers for those that can't afford the fees, and no fees at all for any author for the journals' first three years.
Fields MedalistsTerrence Tao and
Tim Gowers are among the editors. Gowers is the mathematician whose blog post led to the
Cost of Knowledge boycott of commercial publisher Elsevier.
An argument is that as a new journal it has not yet had time to achieve notability. Another is that it's
getting mentioned in the new media in connection with the boycott and with the broader purposes of that movement and is therefore notable for other reasons.
The article titled
Cox–Zucker machine suddenly showed up in our "new articles" list although it's several years old and hasn't been edited since June 30th of this year.
It is an orphan i.e. no other articles link to it.
The algorithm was first published in the 1979 paper "Intersection numbers of sections of
elliptic surfaces" by Cox and Zucker and it was later named the "Cox–Zucker machine" by Charles Schwartz in 1984.
Am I the only one who noticed the funny title? Maybe we should try to get this in shape for an April 1 DYK...
Sławomir Biały (
talk) 18:22, 8 July 2012 (UTC)reply
How do you pronounce the vowel in the second surname? It's a German name. In German, it would be something like "tsooker" (rhymes with "hooker").
Michael Hardy (
talk) 19:15, 8 July 2012 (UTC)reply
A new editor recently submitted a new article trough
article's for creation on
Nagao's theorem. The article itself looks fine, but mathematics is most definitely not a subject that i am to knowledgeable about, which means i have some difficulty reviewing it. On a sidenote i would mention that we did receive some bogus math article's as of late so i wondered if someone could glance over it and check two things:
If what is written sounds decent and logical.
If the article isn't a duplicate of some other topic.
If you are familiar with the
article's for creation area, feel free to handle the entire page. If not, I'll happily take care of those matters. Also - Thanks in advance for the assistance!
Excirial (
Contact me,
Contribs) 19:14, 9 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I'm not familiar with the process. Go ahead and create it, though. It's a worthy article, and there are some edits I would like to make.
Sławomir Biały (
talk) 19:31, 9 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Thanks for the quick check - the article has been created and is now available at
Nagao's theorem for your editing and reading pleasure.
Excirial (
Contact me,
Contribs) 19:54, 9 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I just came across another mathematics article, so i fear i have to ask the same as i did above. If anyone could glance over it I'd be grateful.
Excirial (
Contact me,
Contribs) 21:05, 9 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I did some editing of it and then noticed there's a notice saying not to edit it while that notice appears. My edits move it into something approximating compliance with
WP:MOS and
WP:MOSMATH, starting with the fact that the first sentence should be a complete sentence rather than a dictionary-style definition, and the title phrase should be set in bold at its first appearance.
Michael Hardy (
talk) 21:58, 9 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Thanks Michael, got to admit i am rather impressed with Wikiproject Mathematics response times to questions such as these two. As a sidenote; the message you saw was my own "Being reviewed" template which i added to ensure that people were aware that someone was looking into the article (Even if that someone - me - was just asking for other people's assistance over here)
Excirial (
Contact me,
Contribs) 23:07, 9 July 2012 (UTC)reply
A lot of mathematics related article's lately - at this rate i fear i am going to have to resort to asking assistance on a regular basis. The above article is another submission, and on first glance it looks very decent for a new article. Anyone spare a moment to confirm this? Thanks in advance, as usual.
Excirial (
Contact me,
Contribs) 18:21, 11 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Though the title here makes the situation seem resolved with no doubt, let's let a little more time pass and look at the evidence another time before we write F=... off for sure.
Rschwieb (
talk) 13:18, 11 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Whitehead Professorship
We are informed that:
Martin Bridson is the Whitehead Professor of Pure Mathematics at Magdalen College, University of Oxford.
Is this professorship named after
Alfred North Whitehead, or
J. H. C. Whitehead, or someone else? The article about A. N. Whitehead doesn't mention his having a professorship named after him. Can the information be added to the articles with appropriate links among them?
Michael Hardy (
talk) 18:31, 13 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I notice the use of the term notion in a number of articles where I would have used the term concept. The former seems to have semantics of vagueness associated with it, apparently corroborated by several dictionary definitions, whereas the latter seems more appropriate for use in the mathematical context where the thing described is usually precise. Would there be any objections to me replacing notion with concept in articles when this seems to apply? —
Quondum☏ 15:33, 15 July 2012 (UTC)reply
To me, notion suggests a proposition (sentence) while concept could refer to a term (noun phrase).
JRSpriggs (
talk) 16:07, 15 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Excellent point. One would thus expect to see a distinction in the grammar: the notion that ... and the concept of .... I concur. —
Quondum☏ 17:05, 15 July 2012 (UTC)reply
The terms notion and concept are synonymous. However, the preferred term among those who study them formally is "
concept".
Greg Bard (
talk) 18:30, 15 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I don't think that the distinction is particularly important in the vast majority of our articles. For example, if I write about the notion of Lebesgue measure or the concept of Lebesgue measure I mean the same thing in either case, and if there is any philosophical distinction it will not matter for the subject of Lebesgue measure. I don't see a reason to go through replacing one with the other just for the sake of it. — Carl (
CBM ·
talk) 18:35, 15 July 2012 (UTC)reply
This probably arose because of some squabble over whether "concept" or "conceit" should be used in a particular place, and in order to defuse the situation whereby the protagonists were about to start beating each other over the head with their teddy-bears, someone suggested to replace it with "notion". I think that was earlier today, but I lose track of time, and I have no idea where. My own view is to use the word "concept", as "conceit" has emotional overtones and "notion" smacks of imprecision. --
Matt Westwood 23:40, 15 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Okay, this general perception was what I was trying to gauge. My own perception is that the use of notion as a direct synonym for concept is moderately recent and regional. If this sense has gained enough mainstream global usage, its use in WP would be reasonable. And as Carl says: it is not actually important (there is no ambiguity), and wholesale replacement for its own sake is not warranted. I may still be unable to resist replacing it in text I'm copyediting for other reasons, when it feels particularly out of place to me. —
Quondum☏ 05:30, 16 July 2012 (UTC)reply
A classical subject of dissertation for French
agregation of philosophy was "the notion of concept and the concept of notion". I do not remember if it was an actual subject or a joke.
D.Lazard (
talk) 08:46, 16 July 2012 (UTC)reply
dominant functor
Dominant functor is a orphaned article (i.e. no others link to it) and lacks references. It's also very very short. Do what you can.
Michael Hardy (
talk) 20:06, 15 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Category theory is out of my area, but it seems to me that the key word "retract" should not be linked to
deformation retract (a topological concept). Perhaps it should link to
retract (category theory). Although even then, I do not know how the objects in category D can be considered as morphisms (which such a retract is supposed to be).
In any case, I suspect that the "dominant functor" concept is supposed to be similar to a
cofinal function.
JRSpriggs (
talk) 05:59, 16 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Presumably what is intended here is the definition of J. Adámek; Jiří Rosický C; E. M. Vitale (2010).
Algebraic Theories: A Categorical Introduction to General Algebra. Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics. Vol. 184. Cambridge University Press. p. 8.
ISBN0-521-11922-7. Here a retract is defined as the target of a split epimorphism: B is a retract if e:A → B, s:B → A with e epi and e.s = 1B. In other words, a retract is the object at the end of a retraction. Single-sentence definitions like the article in question should probably be in
Glossary of category theory.
Spectral sequence (
talk) 12:15, 16 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I don't know if Fn means n-fold composition of functions, or n-fold multiplication of the value of the function. Also, if it's supposed to be evaluated at the same point h, it wouldn't hurt to be clear about that, and if it's not, then what is meant is not clear. Then it says "where h is an analytic function with[ . . . etc . . . ]". Does that mean for every analytic function with that property, or for some analytic function with that property, or does it mean for some special analytic function with that property? Does "with n ≥ 0" mean for somen ≥ 0 (so that as long as there is some such value of n, this is an instance of the Böttcher equation, or for everyn ≥ 0, or what?
Michael Hardy (
talk) 18:31, 17 July 2012 (UTC)reply
This is just a guess, so you would have to check the sources to be sure, but I think the conclusion means
for all z. In words, ordinary multiplication, not composition.
For every n≥2, for every analytic h satisfying the hypothesis, there is an analytic F satisfying the conclusion.
JRSpriggs (
talk) 11:29, 18 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Since the article says F(a)=0, composition does not make sense (since a≠0 in general).
However, it occurs to me that just using the constant function 0 for F would work. Being thus trivial, this is unlikely to be right. I think that the intention is for
The fifth result for my Google search of "Böttcher equation" was this article: Carl C. Cowen (1982).
"Analytic solutions of Böttcher's functional equation in the unit disk"(PDF). Aeq. Math. 24: 187–194.
Zbl0526.30033. This reference makes it clear that you start with an analytic function h with an n-fold zero at zero [the wiki article considers the trivial variation h(z-a)+a] and look for a function F such that F(h(z)) = F(z)n where the RHS is indeed the n-th power of F(z). In fact the reference observes that if n is fixed by the condition on h having an n-fold zero at zero, then the only value of k in an equation F(h(z)) = F(z)k that gives an interesting result is k=n.
Spectral sequence (
talk) 13:59, 18 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Property of equivalence in gaussian primes
Property of equivalence in gaussian primes has been around for most of a year, but with a bad category that prevented it from showing up in our new article lists. It needs either a lot of help, or deletion, I'm not sure which. Please do what you can. —
David Eppstein (
talk) 23:40, 17 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I looked at it and did a few edits and moved it to
Equivalence of Gaussian prime numbers. It's one of the worst-written articles I've seen in a while. I might have cleaned it up quite a lot more if I were sure I understood what it says.
Michael Hardy (
talk) 04:15, 18 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Indeed. "equivalence" is never defined or used. -
Virginia-American (
talk) 10:55, 18 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Probably makes sense to discuss with
the author? (At least as far as the goal is to understand what the article is about.) I note that s/he failed twice to get this through Articles for Creation, without apparently improving it in the process. --
JBL (
talk) 12:46, 18 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Surely the discussion should take place at
the article talk page? I have commented there and notified the author, which strangely nobody else has done yet.
Spectral sequence (
talk) 13:33, 18 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Without noticing this discussion I noticed the article myself on the daily new maths articles update, and also being unable to identify any notable or even comprehensible content
nominated it for deletion.--
JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 17:37, 19 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Merge help: Club filter
There is a slow-moving discussion at
Talk:Club filter involving a series of merges. I was hoping some math folks could head over there and continue the discussion, and merge the article, as I know nothing of these topics. Thanks,
Ego White Tray (
talk) 03:39, 19 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I terminated the merger.
JRSpriggs (
talk) 14:53, 19 July 2012 (UTC)reply
ambiguity of "any"
Another reminder of the hazards of the word "any". This is from a new article titled
Tsen rank:
We say that F is a Ti-field if any such system, of degrees d1, ..., dm has a common non-zero solution whenever[...etc...]
Does this mean "[...]if there is any system of degrees that has a common non-zero solution whenever[...etc...]", or does it mean "[...]if it is the case that _any_ such system, no matter which one, has a common non-zero solution whenever[...etc...]"? A reasonable person might read it either way. In the first case, changing "any" to "some" would resolve the ambiguity; in the second case, changing "any" to "every" would do it. "Any" is sometimes a hazardous word. I've changed it to "every" in the article.
Michael Hardy (
talk) 20:23, 15 July 2012 (UTC)reply
This seems to me to be a grammatical parsing ambiguity rather than any ambiguity of the word. Not being familiar with the context, I can't judge this instance, but my suggestion would be to try to solve this type of problem by using grammatically unambiguous sentence structures. Simply replacing the word does not technically resolve the grammatical ambiguity. —
Quondum☏ 05:09, 16 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I disagree. In mathematical usage, "... any X has property P" can mean either "for all X, P is true" or "there exists an X such that P is true". Changing "any" to "every" removes the ambiguity: the first meaning is indicated. For the case under discussion, this seems to be the only interpretation that makes sense. (I'm not a specialist in this area, but it seems clear that if the other interpretation is followed then every field would have Tsen rank zero.)
Jowa fan (
talk) 05:33, 16 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Nicely explained. I stand corrected. —
Quondum☏ 06:35, 16 July 2012 (UTC)reply
If the whole sentence just says "Any A is B", I would take it to mean "every". But if it says "If any A is B, then...", then it could reasonably be construed as meaning "If there is any A that is B, then...", which would be the same as "If there is some A that is B". So in that case it's ambiguous.
Michael Hardy (
talk) 23:05, 16 July 2012 (UTC)reply
("Any" is often used where
free-logic pussyfooting is not intended, and where "every" or "some" should have been specified. Thus Halmos thinks that "any" should be avoided by mathematicians writing it gooder.)
Jaakko Hintikka has a nice article on "any" and ordinary English.
I forget whether
Charles Sanders Peirce and his students considered free logical quantification. I think Mitchell has a paper on quantification in the 1878 Johns Hopkins Studies. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 17:13, 24 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Members of the Mathematics WikiProject are cordially invited to chime-in in the
on-going discussion of the pro and con of placing
Mizar system external deep links on mathematical articles.
Yaniv256 (
talk) 16:19, 24 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Professor Griewank is one of the principal architects of
automatic differentiation, a co-founder of the theory of partially separable functions (the usage of which is an important part of the success of AMPL's modeling language and the large-scale optimization packages Lancelot and Galahad), an initiate of the mysteries of semi-analytic geometry, and an amateur guitarist:
Help! We're getting another drive-by deletion being pushed bynon-physicists of a physics topic. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2012 July 13#Category:Introductory physics. To express my frustration: the drive-by deletion process brings out the very worst in wikipedia behavior, and creates a huge amount of damage (remember the deletion of
Category:Proof, carefully nurtured for years, here, and shot dead with only three votes?) Please help get these hooligans under control.
linas (
talk) 01:35, 21 July 2012 (UTC)reply
At least some ongoing/old CfDs are listed at
Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity. But it is not clear how any given category is counted as part of the project. There may be several layers of bots involved, which I can't follow.
Melcombe (
talk) 07:38, 25 July 2012 (UTC)reply
It looks like the bug fixes in MathJax implementation are now working so we can have less than signs and matrices .--
Salix (
talk): 07:03, 26 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Good news! I'm trying the switch from Nageh's version to the built in support. So far it seems a little slower to render but no appearance glitches. —
David Eppstein (
talk) 07:39, 26 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Yep seems good. I just had a look at
Help:Math and there are a few square boxes instead of characters for special characters and when doing \limsup and \liminf but the Nageh version does the same. Overall I'm very pleased and will use the system version of MathJax as default.
Dmcq (
talk) 08:36, 26 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Well it all depends on what renderer I've switch on. Seemingly that was with the SVG one. With the HTML-CSS they all come out okay though the special characters are half the size. And with MathML it warns me not all the features are supported by the browser. It's a hard choice, I think I'll try the HTML-CSS for a while.
Dmcq (
talk) 09:01, 26 July 2012 (UTC)reply
MathJax is excellent, but expensive. Sadly, nobody cares about such cheapie as class="texhtml", the font in which should match MathJax's one.
Incnis Mrsi (
talk) 09:05, 26 July 2012 (UTC)reply
You get that automatically if you use {{math}} and there's some ancillary templates that go with it e.g. {{mvar}} to just format a variable quickly. However some people here have a very strong dislike of serif font in the middle of non-serif. Not that MathJax will satisfy them immediately. There's also a couple of gotchas like having to put 1= in if one uses equal signs so it is another language again. As for me I'll be putting less effort into trying to use the math tempate in future and will use <math> more even if it is a little slower.
Dmcq (
talk) 11:43, 26 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Maybe we do not understand each other. I see x or x1 markedly different from MathJax equivalents (). I suppose, although not completely sure, than this can be cheaply fixed by altering texhtml's font-family to those used by MathJax. I hope, sysops just are not aware about the problem. But if someone is aware, but deliberately keeps a substandard appearance of {{math}}, then it is definitely an unfair trick to mount a prejudice against "texhtml" typesetting.
Incnis Mrsi (
talk) 13:07, 26 July 2012 (UTC)reply
You need italics as in {{math|''x''<sub>1</sub>}} which gives x1. I think it is fairly close but it depends on what method MathJax uses for rendering and your browser. By the way MathJax uses the STIX fonts and MathJax will run a bit faster if you install them instead of using web fonts. I guess texhtml could put the STIX fonts as the first ones to check for but they are close enough to the usual Times one for most purposes I believe, possibly the size needs to be tweaked slightly as currently it is set to match the old png render program.
Dmcq (
talk) 19:17, 26 July 2012 (UTC)reply
It was just a typo in x1, sorry.
Incnis Mrsi (
talk) 09:17, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
The font of the {{math}} template could be made compatible with MathJax by adding the CSS rule span.texhtml { font-family: MathJax_Math, serif; }. You can try this in your
skin.css and if we are happy with it roll it out to
MediaWiki:Common.css or ask a dev to change
skins/common/shared.css. I'm not sure quite how the MathJax_Math font is loaded so the font might only change if MathJax is enabled.--
Salix (
talk): 06:29, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Thanks for explanations, Salix. I have MathJax's fonts locally. I will be completely satisfied if "texhtml" had to switch to MathJax's fonts if these fonts are currently available in the browser. So, do you recommend to proceed with
bugzilla: and not wait for further conclusions in this discussion?
Incnis Mrsi (
talk) 09:17, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
P.S. apart of the problem of font-family, there is another problem with font-size in <sup>s and <sub>s. I'm afraid that, due to CSS limitation, the best solution is to supersede that explicit HTML elements by {{ssup}}s and {{ssub}}s respectively, such as x1. Yeah, it is another language again, Dmcq is right.
Incnis Mrsi (
talk) 10:09, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
After yet some meditation I realized that, since class="texhtml" is defined in templates, not by the engine itself, it would be unwise to request changes to MediaWiki. So, I
started small.
Incnis Mrsi (
talk) 11:30, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Should we also ask for "font-size:larger" to be added. At least for me the following two match x. (across multiple display settings). Not sure if this is true for all configurations of browsers/system.
TR 12:36, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I agree. Even in a browser without font-family:MathJax_Math this produces a serif text which does not looks too large.
Incnis Mrsi (
talk) 12:53, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Just checked IE8 and Opera, neither of which actually pick up the mathjax font.
TR 12:42, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Did you install these fonts locally? It is useful also for the MathJax proper.
Incnis Mrsi (
talk) 12:53, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Now I am in doubt again. Should font-size be better placed to {{math}} rather than to CSS?
Incnis Mrsi (
talk) 13:20, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
No, because then it cannot be customized by user CSS.—
EmilJ. 13:28, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I see no difference between increasing font-size in CSS and doing the same in all <span>s which use the class. Both are subject to user customization. Actually, there are two templates, {{math}} and {{bigmath}}. What do you propose: To merge (effectively) these two presentations? Or to make {{bigmath}} even larger?
Incnis Mrsi (
talk) 13:43, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
What (I think) Emil was getting at, is that if it is conrtolled through the CSS a user/reader can specify a custom css style which changes the way math output looks. So, for example, if you detest seeing a serif font inline, you can load your own css style that set the texhtml class to a sans-serif font. As a user, you cannot load a custom version of a template.
TR 15:33, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
With a bit of messing around the closes set of styles I've managed to come to is
Using those styles in
skin.css the following two are virtually indistinguishable.
MathJax
−3 sin(x2i)+e3t Using {{math}}{{math|3 sin(<var>x</var><sub>2<var>i</var></sub>) e<sup>3<var>t</var></sup>}}
MathJax uses a different font for variables, MathJax_Math, than for other content, MathJax_Main, and slightly different sizes 123% as opposed to 118%. The code is dynamically generated so it might be different in other browsers.--
Salix (
talk): 21:34, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
It was deleted by
WP:PROD in March with the rationale "Poorly-sourced BLP with questionable notability". I can undelete it for you, if you want. —
David Eppstein (
talk) 17:08, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I've un-deleted it for now. I'll try to notify interested parties.
Michael Hardy (
talk) 17:16, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
I was the one who proposed the article for deletion. I'm not a mathematician, but at the time I found it frustrating that there was next-to-no information about the person. Havel still appears to fail
WP:BLP1E and the
WP:GNG, but if the article was fixed, a date of birth mentioned, and some external links offered to confirm any notability, of course I wouldn't mind if the article stayed.
Jared Preston (
talk) 18:42, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
He also appears to fail
WP:PROF. Although I think unprodding was the right thing to do, unless more evidence comes up I'd support deletion in an AfD. —
David Eppstein (
talk) 22:29, 27 July 2012 (UTC)reply
The first one was linked to the second one through a redirect. I have replaced it by a direct link. However the subjects are distinct: the first article consider a subalgebra in a quaternion algebra, while the second one consider only usual quaternions. As a non specialist of non commutative algebra, I have the impression that both articles concern the
integral elements in a quaternion algebra, but none of the articles make clear if the notion of integer element make sense here. I have no opinion about a merger or not.
D.Lazard (
talk) 19:57, 28 July 2012 (UTC)reply
If I recall correctly, a function is holomorphic in a neighbourhood of if . There is no mention of this in the article. I'm assuming that this is a well known fact. Should we add something to the article? —
Fly by Night(
talk) 21:33, 29 July 2012 (UTC)reply
It is not sufficient that the
Wirtinger derivative vanish at, rather it should be zero in a neighborhood. Vanishing of the Wirtinger derivative is equivalent to the
Cauchy-Riemann equations (and is mentioned in that article).
Sławomir Biały (
talk) 22:31, 29 July 2012 (UTC)reply
Elementary Algebra GA candidate
If anyone is interested, I've recently made what I consider to be a number of improvements throughout the article on
Elementary algebra, and submitted it as a Good Article nominee (see the article Talk page template for details). --
Iantresman (
talk) 16:29, 30 July 2012 (UTC)reply