Talk:Outline of discrete mathematics

Major rename proposal of certain "lists" to "outlines"
See Village pump (proposals).

The Transhumanist 01:28, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Rename proposal for this page and all the pages of the set this page belongs to
See the proposal at the Village pump

The Transhumanist 09:14, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Was there a decision on this proposal? Radagast3 (talk) 08:35, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Two main subject naming conventions
There is actually some competition between the names "discrete mathematics" and "combinatorics" for largely overlapping fields. This is reflected in names of textbooks and academic curricula worldwide. The proponents of the term "discrete mathematics" often tend to consider "combinatorics" as the proper name of the subfield which 'the other side' would call "enumerative combinatorics".

As an example: The article Discrete mathematics presently begins
 * Discrete mathematics, also called finite mathematics, is the study of mathematical structures that are fundamentally discrete

and later defines "combinatorics" as "a study of counting".

Similarly, the article Combinatorics begins:
 * Combinatorics is a branch of pure mathematics concerning the study of discrete (and usually finite) objects.

This article doesn't mention "discrete mathematics" at all, as far as I can see. ("The word "discrete" supra is linked to Countable set.)

Both articles claim that Graph theory is one of the subfields of its respective subject; and you may note that right now the Category:Graph theory is included as a direct subcategory of both

This is no great matter; I know of no serious disagreements between combinatorists and/or "discrete mathematicians" over this. However, I think our articles should recognise and pinpoint the existence of somewhat different conventions. This could benefit wp readers, who meet the therms with slightly different meanings in different contexts. There might also be an idea to merge the pages Discrete mathematics and Combinatorics -- provided the merged article has the correct title, whatever that is:-). There may also be reasons against; some people tend to include subjects like the full theory of finite groups into "Discrete mathematics", but very few would include it in "Combinatorics", I think. JoergenB (talk) 23:26, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I would suggest that combinatorics is a subfield of discrete mathematics. Discrete mathematics includes logic and fields related to computing which are not part of combinatorics.  Graph theory is also split as a result of this -- computer scientists pay particular attention to algorithmic graph theory, which is of less interest to combinatorists. Radagast3 (talk) 08:28, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I see no benefit in trying to merge combinatorics and discrete mathematics. Radagast3 (talk) 08:30, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Relationship to Discrete mathematics article
What is (or should be) the relationship of this page to Discrete mathematics? Radagast3 (talk) 08:28, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Rename proposal defeated, three "Outline of" titles restored
Due to a number of undiscussed moves, a proposal was made to rename outlines to "List of ... topics".

The proposal failed.

Therefore, based on the outcome of that discussion (which lasted from Sept 6 to Oct 12), I'm restoring the title of this article to "Outline of discrete mathematics". I have waited for that discussion to be completed to revert the undiscussed move of this page that occurred on Sept 6th.

Note that this article has been named "Outline of discrete mathematics" since June 11, 2009, having been renamed from "Topical outline of discrete mathematics" which it was named since January 8, 2009. All the articles named "Topical outline of" were renamed from "List of basic ... topics" on January 8, 2009 or thereabouts. The entire basic topics department was renamed at that time because the lists had grown beyond the scope of "basic".

Recently, there were a number of mathematics-related lists renamed to outlines by a new editor who rampaged through several departments. Outline of discrete mathematics was not one of them. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2011/Sep.

Apparently during the repair of that mass move, 3 outlines were named to "List of" that were not part of the mass move. This outline was one of the 3.

Sincerely, The Transhumanist 03:15, 21 October 2011 (UTC)


 * See comments at Talk:Outline of arithmetic. Jowa fan (talk) 07:08, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Quick explanation of Wikipedia outlines
"Outline" is short for "hierarchical outline". There are two types of outlines: sentence outlines (like those you made in school to plan a paper), and topic outlines (like the topical synopses that professors hand out at the beginning of a college course). Outlines on Wikipedia are primarily topic outlines that serve 2 main purposes: they provide taxonomical classification of subjects showing what topics belong to a subject and how they are related to each other (via their placement in the tree structure), and as subject-based tables of contents linked to topics in the encyclopedia. The hierarchy is maintained through the use of heading levels and indented bullets. See Outlines for a more in-depth explanation. The Transhumanist 00:05, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

The section on discrete mathematicians is very small. I'd like to nominate Polya for inclusion here. 96.236.44.134 (talk) 23:34, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Trouble when expanding the section on mathematicians
After making a spreadsheet of mathematicians cited in discrete math textbooks (Rosen and Epp), the list is fairly long. It spans Aristotle, Archimedes, and Eratosthenes, up to Adi Shamir, Andrew Wiles, Terrence Tao.

Discrete is such a broad categorization that areas this outline covers are themselves covered in other outlines:


 * Outline of combinatorics
 * Outline of logic
 * Outline of probability
 * List of graph theory topics
 * List of set theory topics
 * List of number theory topics

and has some overlaps with:


 * Outline of computer science
 * Index of cryptography articles

Any changes made to this page would need to be compared or checked with these other pages, and discrete is a way of categorizing the work people do within a long list of areas of mathematics. Someone is rarely called a "discrete mathematician", they are instead called a logician, combinatorialist, number theorist, set theorist, statistician, graph theorist, computer scientist, cryptographer, etc.

In trying to check my own list of people who've contributed to discrete mathematics, I came across all these other lists which contain lists of people who would hypothetically be considered "discrete mathematicians":


 * Category:Number theorists
 * Category:Combinatorialists and Persons influential in the field of combinatorics
 * Category:Mathematical logicians and List of logicians
 * Category:Probability theorists and List of mathematical probabilists
 * Category:Set theorists and List of set theory topics
 * Category:Graph theorists
 * Category:Theoretical computer scientists and List of pioneers in computer science

I suppose all this is to say: would it make sense to include this list of articles above somewhere in the outline?

Or, perhaps, aim to include mathematicians whose names already appear on the original articles? For example, Aristotle is reasonable to add to the list of mathematicians here because they're referenced within the article on logic. Leonhard Euler is fair game because their name is mentioned on the article for graph theory. Jacob Bernoulli is fair to add because his name was mentioned in the article on combinatorics, etc. MorningSciFi (talk) 19:08, 21 November 2023 (UTC)


 * It sounds like the best approach is to provide the links to lists of the various types of discrete mathematicians, rather than combine all those lists here. I hope this advice helps.  &mdash; The Transhumanist   08:43, 23 November 2023 (UTC)