Template:Did you know nominations/Thomas Kirkman

Thomas Kirkman

 * ... that Thomas Kirkman, later to become one of the leading 19th-century British mathematicians, dropped out of school at age 14 without ever having studied mathematics?
 * Reviewed: Plumalexius

5x expanded by David Eppstein (talk). Self nom at 00:48, 9 October 2011 (UTC)



Good to go. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:50, 9 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I removed the nomination from Queue 5, as we seem to have a dispute over the meaning of "mathematics." User:Kevin McE edited the hook in the prep area to change "mathematics" to "algebra or geometry," leaving an edit summary that said "The source says that he hadn't studied these particular branches. Even this is assuming that these were not addressed in his pre-grammar school education." I saw that edit and checked the article, which still said "mathematics." I checked the sources, finding one that I couldn't access, one that said mathematics, and one that said no mathematics with a specific mention of no algebra and geometry, but also said there was not even any Arithmetic in the upper part of the school. So the hook would match the article, I edited the article to mention algebra and geometry as examples of the "no mathematics". Now David Eppstein has edited the article back to "mathematics." I believe this boils down to a question of whether arithmetic is part of mathematics. I decided to pull the hook from the queue while this is resolved. --Orlady (talk) 15:59, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I checked the three sources cited for that paragraph of the article. One was not accessible to me, another (MacTutor) said "no mathematics," and the third states "...he received good instruction in Latin and Greek, but no instruction in geometry or algebra; even Arithmetic was not then taught in the headmaster’s upper room." Accordingly, I thought it reasonable to add geometry and algebra to the article as examples of what he wasn't taught. --Orlady (talk) 16:27, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Your proposed replacement of "no mathematics" with "no topics such as algebra and geometry" is a gross misrepresentation of the sources. One of them says "no mathematics" and the other, as you've quoted it, says that they didn't even teach arithmetic. Your change would make it appear that he did learn some math but did not get any more advanced special topics, but one source says outright and the other strongly implies that he didn't learn any math at all. (If he hadn't even learned arithmetic, what could he possibly have learned?) For what it's worth, the third source (the Bull. LMS one) doesn't really mention this issue; the only thing it says in this context is "He was sent to Bolton Gr ammar School, where 'the boy showed a decided taste for study and was by far the best scholar in the school'  [12]. Nevertheless, he was forced  to leave school at the age of fourteen..." —David Eppstein (talk) 16:54, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Grammar schools at that time were focussed almost entirely on the learning of Greek and Latin, so not doing any mathematical studies at that stage was not unusual. But a preparatory education would almost certainly have preceded this, in which he would have had some Maths.  That he didn't study Maths at Bolton Grammar does not mean that he hadn't studied it earlier elsewhere.  Kevin McE (talk) 17:21, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Clearly he learned basic arithmetic at some point, or he couldn't have worked in the counting house of his father's business. --Orlady (talk) 17:25, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That seems like an obvious inference, but what the sources actually say is that he didn't study mathematics at school, and that is also what the hook and the article say. Whether he picked it up elsewhere is a matter for speculation. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:29, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, the sources only say that he did not study mathematics in the local grammar school. That does not allow us to say "without ever having studied mathematics." What would you say to the following wording:
 * ALT1 ... that Thomas Kirkman, later to become one of the leading 19th-century British mathematicians, left school at age 14 with a grammar school education that did not include any mathematics? --Orlady (talk) 17:36, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It seems a bit pedantic to me, reminiscent of the joke about sheep that are black on one side. And the repetition of the word "school" is a bit awkward. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:47, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Jumping out to the meta-level, here is my view of the issue. We have a source that says something that to our modern ears sounds very surprising: "He was taught no mathematics", and a second source that corroborates the first by listing all of the kinds of mathematics that he might have been taught and saying that he wasn't taught in any of them. To me something very surprising is something that makes a good hook. But instead, it's so surprising that the other DYK editors are choosing to believe their own predisposed assumptions (but surely he must have learned mathematics? how could he do the accounts?) instead of what the sources say, insisting that it can't really be true, and trying to soften the hook to something less surprising and less interesting. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:16, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm pessimistic that this will be resolved any time soon, since it seems unlikely that anyone will find a source that documents the details of Kirkman's primary education, which is the kind of sourcing that may be needed to resolve it. I'd like to try for a new hook that doesn't have these issues.
 * Kirkman's story is an interesting one, so there are multiple possibilities for hooks. After reading about him, I'd like to replace this hook with one that is more focused on his mathematical contributions. I am not a math expert, so I easily could be misunderstanding things. However, I have the impression that Kirkman did seminal work in an area of mathematics that is extremely significant now. Instead of focusing the hook on the incongruous combination of what he didn't know when he was 14 with his adult work in mathematics, could the focus switch to the incongruity of his adult work in mathematics with other details of his life? For example, ...that a mathematical problem proposed in 1850 by Thomas Kirkman, the Anglican rector of a small village in Lancashire, was one of the founding contributions to the modern field of combinatorial design theory? (Of course, whatever the hook is, it needs to be clearly attributable to reliable sources.)
 * Another option is to trim the existing hook:
 * ALT2 ... that Thomas Kirkman, who is considered one of the leading 19th-century British mathematicians, left school at age 14? --Orlady (talk) 04:11, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I still don't understand in what sense the existing sources are inadequate to document his education, but nevertheless:
 * ALT3 ... that despite leaving school at age 14 and working as a church rector, Thomas Kirkman became one of 19th-century England's leading mathematicians and helped found combinatorial design theory? —David Eppstein (talk) 05:26, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I love it. Moving it to prep 4. --Orlady (talk) 18:01, 20 October 2011 (UTC)