Talk:Canada/USA Mathcamp


 * Mathcamp is pretty notable. Math teachers across the United States encourage their best math students to apply for the camp. Though maybe not as notable as the AMC or Mathcounts, it's still up there. &mdash; flamingspinach | (talk) 06:55, 2005 Apr 25 (UTC)

Forgot to log in
64.105.35.205 is me. PlatypeanArchcow 16:53, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Sources for Mathcamp culture
Hey, this is Rob.

The new section for "Mathcamp culture" is cool, but I doubt it will be able to stick on Wikipedia, because there aren't any sources for it. It's all hearsay. Hearsay that over a hundred people will generally agree on, many of whom are on Wikipedia, but that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

There are probably some well-referenced things that can be said about Mathcamp culture - in particular, anything that can be extracted from this article about Mathcamp in the Globe and Mail. Of course, that was Mathcamp 2003, so we'll have to find aspects of culture that are fairly invariant across the years.

I may give this a try soon, because Mathcamp really should have a good Wikipedia article.

 r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  05:10, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Mathcamp culture section 2006-biased?
It seems to me that the "Mathcamp culture" is a bit biased towards more recent developments, particularly those from 2006. I mean, seriously, is Mood Loquacious more deserving of mention than, say, sarongs, or any of the dozen other older traditions that aren't mentioned?

Civman2000 02:58, 19 September 2006 (UTC) (Eric W, 05-06)


 * I haven't taken on the project of tracking down sourced facts about Mathcamp culture yet, but basically -- unless a new published source has shown up that I don't know about -- a properly sourced article will have to be 2003-and-before-biased. I believe Food Tongue is unverifiable, for example (and Moody Loquacious is extremely unverifiable). Sarongs should be easy to verify, though. I bet that Mathcamp even has officially published materials with people in sarongs.  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  23:58, 19 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I assume the yearbook isn't a valid source? If it is, a lot of this stuff can be sourced to that. There is a section on sarongs in the '06 yearbook (or the supplement?) and some section intros were in food tongue and moody loquacious. On the other hand, sarongs doesn't need it (assuming the official MC site is a valid source) --- see Megan and (less clearly) staff in tree. Ealex292 08:55, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The yearbook isn't a reliable source -- a random Wikipedian wouldn't be able to obtain one, and even if they could, they wouldn't be able to understand it, or tell the parts that actually happened from the parts that are just amusing. There is, however, a new article about 2004 in Imagine magazine. (It doesn't mention Food Tongue.)  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  09:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Food Tongue has now been referenced in a printed newspaper! It's a personality profile of Scott Garrabrant, mentioning that Food Tongue is spoken by Scott and his "friends from math camp". It doesn't merit more than a passing mention, as it is just "something made up at Mathcamp one day", but it can be used as an example of the quirkiness of Mathcamp culture.

We have sufficient sources to write a legitimate Mathcamp culture section. I'm going to remove the current one to give the process a push. I'm not trying to reduce Wikipedia's coverage of Mathcamp -- I feel that removing the current Mathcamp culture section will improve the article by making it more encyclopedic, and then people who want to describe Mathcamp culture can work on a new section with real sources. The current section gives Mathcampers who may want to edit the article the mistaken impression that they should add random anecdotes to it and that's enough.  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  22:05, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It's been nearly two years, and there's still no Mathcamp Culture section... I'm not sure that idea worked at all. --Zarel (talk) 11:26, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Mathcamp Culture Revisited
Those of you who have either seen this page as it appeared in 2006, or have read the older discussions on this Talk page will know that there once existed a Mathcamp Culture section. The major problem with it was that, though accurate, it was essentially impossible to verify, and thus not suitable for Wikipedia. Rob intended to start a project collecting material for a legitimate Culture section, but now, some two and a half years later, it appears that didn't happen. Understandable, but unfortunate, and I'd like to remedy it.

First, some notes. The culture section need not have every aspect of Mathcamp culture that ever happened. Not only is this clearly an impossible feat to accomplish, it is not even clear that it's desirable, as it becomes a slippery slope into a sort of blog for Mathcampers where they can dump things like "And on week 3 I played Mao". With this being the case, the particular points we introduce in the section need to be carefully considered.

The foremost filter, of course, is verifiability. It is imperative that we have legitimate sources for everything we say. In particular, I'd like to reiterate a point that was made earlier -- yearbooks are not legitimate sources. Though we do have the '07 and '08 yearbooks online (albeit password-protected), they cannot be used as sources -- not only would it probably count as original research, but there are major privacy issues involved.

The second filter, and one that's a lot more sketchy and subjective, is notability. Since most people go to Mathcamp for only a year or two, there is a slightly skewed perspective of what's significant and what's not. For instance, someone that only went to camp during '06 would think that Moody Loquacious is very significant, even though it effectively never came up in any subsequent camp. Likewise, a camper from exclusively '07 might consider Flip-Flop to be very significant, even though it is (mostly) dead as well.

Luckily, the second, more subjective filter is helped by the first, objective one. If something is in a reliable source, it's probably notable enough to be included. However, the converse is not necessarily true. There are definitely some things that I think should be included that are going to be difficult to verify. Thus, for what it's worth, here is a brief list of what I think we should track down sources for:


 * Sarongs -- sarongs have had a clear role at camp since 2000. Furthermore, MC has published material with people wearing sarongs, so getting the information is pretty trivial.
 * Foodtongue -- though some may disagree, FT has survived since '04, which means that, except for staff, there are no current Mathcamprs who were around when it was created. As far as I know, there exists precisely one legitimate source that in any way mentions Food Tongue -- a newspaper article about a former camper. For what it's worth, there is also a Foodtongue wiki but that is probably not legitimate
 * The IL and Puzzle Hunt -- though not strictly "culture", these are both staples of the Mathcamp experience that are not directly tied with any other category. Those are going to be difficult to get sources for, though.

Lgrinberg (talk) 01:15, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The puzzle hunts are online, cf. here. I do not know well the Wikipedia guidelines for sourcing, so I can imagine it might be inappropriate to use the Mathcamp website itself as a source of information, but the existence of the puzzlehunts I think is appropriately demonstrated by the online archives --- for the past two years, at least, the online component has been most of the hunt. (And I expect this to have been true in the past.) On the other hand, it appears that the article already mentions the hunts. Cyrapas (talk) 00:45, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I believe the Foodtongue Wiki counts as a legitimate source. I don't think the IL is really that important; it's more on the level of 30 Proofs in 30 Minutes and VMCSP - things that are important for one day of camp, but rarely mentioned otherwise.
 * The existence of the yearbook probably deserves to be mentioned, whether or not it's cited. Mira should get some more details. Phantom of the Lecture Hall is iffy... I'd say best leave it off. --Zarel (talk) 17:23, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The Foodtongue wiki is probably not legitimate by itself. However, with the other article, it is probably fine. I am fine with not mentioning the IL, 30 Minutes, VMCSP, and Phantom.
 * As far as the yearbook, I can't think of any good way of mentioning that. I don't know of any sources that mention it. And what more should we say about Mira? Lgrinberg (talk) 03:54, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I have added a section based on the above discussion. I have done my best to keep it as brief and objective as possible. Please expand or shorten it as you see necessary (though please discuss here first, at least mentioning rationale). Lgrinberg (talk) 04:11, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmm. It appears none of us knows how to cite sources. That's kind of silly. :/ I don't either, so I can't help. Justification for why something has been mentioned should not be put in the article itself. I can try to correct some other problems, though.\
 * On second thought, I guess I should get around to learning how to Wikipedia-cite. --Zarel (talk) 13:15, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Ha, Leonid. Next time, when I make an edit to make the article satisfy the Manual of Style, it's probably a bad idea to "fix" it without consulting the MoS first. :P
 * Anyway, everyone else, feel free to add content to the "Mathcamp Culture" section, and leave it to me to edit it to conform to the MoS. --Zarel (talk) 20:53, 25 February 2009 (UTC)