User talk:D.Lazard/Archive 4

Do not revert non-vandalism edits without an explanation
Subtract does not have a disambiguation page. Therefore Ed Sheeran's album, a notable topic that is pronounced "subtract", should at the very least be located in a hatnote or on a linked disambiguation page to where that page redirects. Don't revert non-vandalism edits without an explanation or unless you've made it clear elsewhere the reason you've reverted somebody, as you did not do so here. Your nomination of the album article for deletion will probably be a WP:SNOW keep too. Thank you.  Ss  112   14:13, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Coprime integers
Re http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coprime_integers&oldid=prev&diff=1143376966, it's fine if you think the image is too complicated, but I think Euclid's orchard should be mentioned somewhere in that section. Cheers, cm&#610;&#671;ee&#9094;&#964;a&#671;&#954; 13:01, 7 March 2023 (UTC)


 * I do not oppose to add an image similar to the one that I have reverted. But, per WP:LEAST, the coordinates scales must start from 1. In fact, this is only when writing the edit summary of my revert that I remarked that the displayed zeros were outside the orchard. Before, my edit sumary was “wrong image as the pair (0, 0) is never qualified as coprime.
 * I would not oppose strongly to adding a mention of Euclid's orchard. However, it sourced only to Mathworld, which is a tertiary source, and is not a reliable source for the terminology. After a Scholar-Google search, it appears that Euclid’s orchard is not really about coprimality, but about visibility of points of a lattice. More specifically, although is uses coprimality in its definition, it is not about coprimality. So the right place for a mention is in Section "See also". D.Lazard (talk) 13:54, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

18-tuple
Hi D. I'm not sure whether your edit summary here was a joke, but it didn't make a lot of sense to me. The axioms don't vary from Boolean algebra to Boolean algebra, so they are not part of the specification of an individual Boolean algebra. I know you included the smiley, but the comment still didn't make much sense.

That said, I agree that there's no reason to codify that a Boolean algebra is a 6-tuple. It's a mathematical structure, described adequately by the prose in the section; there is no need to belabor, in this particular text, the way that mathematical structures are coded as sets. --Trovatore (talk) 21:09, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Field extensions
I note yiur edit summary "People who encounter this concept in calculus or in cryptography must know that they are in the right article". Are you suggesting that they may not know that algebra is a branch of mathematics? If not, then I don't understand why they have to be told that the article concerns mathematics, granted that they are told that it concerns algebra.JBW (talk) 11:40, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The first phrase of the article is not for categorizing the article (categorization is done at the bottom of the article). It is for saying to readers whether they may be interested in the article. If a reader of a textbook of mathematical analysis reads the sentence “the Puiseux series form a ‘field extension’ of the Laurent series”, he may want to know what is a field extension. If the article begins with “In algebra”, the reader may think “Oh, I am reading a textbook of analysis, and this is an article on algebra, this should be another concept”. So, your edit goes against WP:LEAST.
 * You may be right. Over the years I have had students with pretty astonishing failures to understand mathematical concepts, and so perhaps there may really be people who read textbooks of mathematical analysis and fail to grasp that it makes frequent use of algebra. I wonder, though, whether their having such gross failure to understand basic facts in the subject they are reading about might mean that they won't understand what they are reading about anyway. JBW (talk) 21:25, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It isn't that people don't understand. It's more that they may have to look twice. If a student working on analysis searches field extension and hits a page that says, "Algebra." It would be natural to think, "Oops! Wrong page! Is there a page called field extension (analysis)?" before embarking on a fruitless search. OrewaTel (talk) 00:23, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Speedy deletion declined: Trignonmetric Ratios
Hello D.Lazard. I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of Trignonmetric Ratios, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: Not a recently created redirect - consider WP:RfD. Thank you. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:30, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

In Inverse element, the set of all functions from the integers to the integers with the operations of pointwise addition and multiplication is not an example of a ring in which some elements have more than one left inverse. Probably this is not what is meant anyway since at the beginning of the paragraph one restricts to noncommutative rings, however it is not obvious how to understand it. If it is meant that the ring is the monoid ring $$R[M]$$ of the monoid $$M$$ of all functions from the integers to the integers and the ring $$R$$ being the integers, perhaps it should be written so. Albrts (talk) 17:46, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Dispute arbitration concerning the Dual numbers article
We disagree and I'm impatient for a 3rd opinion. I've started this Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard - Wikipedia. I don't know how the process is going to happen. [edit] The dispute page currently asks us to "keep discussion to a minimum" until someone intervenes. Svennik (talk) 20:20, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Inconsistent markup for Natural numbers
in a recent edit, you changed (rendering as $$\mathbb N$$) inside  to  (rendering as $$\N$$) and  to, which seems reasonable. However, in the same edit you changed to.

Shouldn't it have been in all places for consistency? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:03, 6 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I have not really edited the article, I have only reverted an edit that broke MOS:BBB. About consistency: \mathbb{N}, \mathbb N and \N call the same Latex command and produce exactly the same rendering. So, there is no reason for changing any of them, and MOS:VAR applies. D.Lazard (talk) 15:32, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

changes on Exterior Algebra article

 * Dear Professor, Sir,
 * This article is a good collection of many contributions, pretty different in composition style, also edit style (e.g. type of font used). There is also interference on topics from one section to another. I would take the endeavour to make it better, with minimal changes, but, as you reverse many changes, I do not want to do it unless you agree on what I am going to do, maybe reviewing my changes before publishing. Hoping this initiative is along Wikipedia's main goal, your reply is highly appreciated. 0ctavte0 (talk) 02:40, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The fact that many edits are reverted is a standard process in Wikipedia; see WP:Be bold. The review of changes are normally done after publishing by editors who whatch the edited article; it is the reason for which there are so many reverts. I agree that the article requires many improvements. For easier review, I suggest you to split them in single tasks, and to start with uncontroversial changes, such as reformatting math formulas written in raw html with math or $$ ... $$ . Also if some of your changes may be controversial, it may be more convenient to first discuss them on the talk page of the article.
 * Good edit. D.Lazard (talk) 07:25, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Edit
Apology for the friction in the recent edits. 96.227.223.203 (talk) 15:41, 20 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Nevermind. You are wrong. 96.227.223.203 (talk) 10:22, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

New Topic
Your recent editing history at Juan Branco shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war; read about how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in you being blocked from editing&mdash;especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring&mdash;even if you do not violate the three-revert rule&mdash;should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. Nemov (talk) 19:27, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Stop harassing me
Stop harassing me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.227.223.203 (talk) 10:44, 29 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Why you cancel out my edit in Summation ? Tha is a big bug of Math everyone has the right to know... StefanoMaruelli (talk) 07:23, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Limit of a sequence
Hey! You've reverted my edit on the limit of a sequence article without pointing out what was wrong with it. It was basically a rephrase of the mathematical definition. For example, consider the sequence {3/2, 5/4, 9/8, 17/16...}. Although the limit of the sequence is 1, it also gets closer to (tends to), say, 1.005 up to a certain point. It's just that the limit, 1, is the only number that the sequence can *always* be within an neighbourhood of, as the definition section of the article states. Another example os that the sequence also gets closer to, say, 0.998, but you can't always be within a neighbourhood ε of that. If there is something wrong with my reasoning, please let me know. Thank you. Sunny642 (talk) 00:56, 8 August 2023 (UTC)


 * The problem with your edit is not that it is wrong. It is a nonsensical reformulation of the preceding sentence. In particular, nobody can give an accurate meaning to "the only number that the sequence can always be within any neighborhood of". So, your edit makes the paragraph confusing, and Wikipedia does not need it. D.Lazard (talk) 09:07, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Would it be better if I phrased it as "the limit is the only number that a term (x_n) of the sequence can always be within any neighbourhood of"? That is just a reformulation of the mathematical definition, abs(x_n - x) < ε. I added the sentence because I thought the previous one was a bit misleading; the numbers in the sequence don't just get closer to L. Like I said in the example I provided, the numbers can also keep getting closer to a number other than L, like 0.99999 in my example. But L is the only number the last term of the sequence can always be within any epsilon of the limit. Thank you. Sunny642 (talk) 09:22, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * No, nothing needs to be added to the preceding sentence. D.Lazard (talk) 10:20, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, like I said, the preceding sentence is not entirely correct, is it? The numbers of the sequence can get closer and closer to other numbers, but you cannot get an n such that x_n is within ε of any number other than the limit. If you don't want to discuss this with me, please let me know so I can discuss it on the article's talk page. Thanks again. Sunny642 (talk) 10:26, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Proof 3
Hello. I have tried to add "Proof 3" to the article on the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. With respect to your comments, while original research is generally not allowed on Wikipedia, the results of routine mathematical calculations are allowed, provided editor consensus that they are correct. Did you find a mistake in the proof? I am willing to post it here if you want to discuss potential errors. Otherwise I see no need to take it down. Chipdink69420 (talk) 17:02, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

New matrix polynomial evaluation method
Dear Prof. Lazard, sorry for my inexperience in Wikipedia. I just wanted to inform that more efficient methods than the Paterson-Stockmeyer method have been discovered (relying precisely on multivariate polynomial system solvers, I have seen your work on this subject). Should I start a talk on the Matrix Polynomial page? Or may a shorter text like this work? Thank you for your attention.

proposed methods based on matrix polynomial multiplications and additions allowing to save nonscalar matrix multiplications with respect to the Paterson-Stockmeyer method.

Jorge Sastre Jorge Sastre (talk) 19:35, 3 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia policies are rather clear here. WP:OR implies that for being mentioned in Wikipedia, a new mathematical result must have been discussed in WP:secondary sources. This is needed for evaluating the novelty, the corectness and the importance of the result, since this evaluation is not the role of Wikipedia editors. WP:COI specifies  that in case of a conflict of interest, such as this one, an author who desires the insertion of a result in which he is involved must post an WP:edit request on the talk page of the article, in order that the insertion could be inserted, if convenient, by another author. D.Lazard (talk) 09:34, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much. I will do that. Sincerely,
 * Jorge Sastre Jorge Sastre (talk) 09:44, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Dear Prof. Lazard, the WP:edit request on the talk page of the article has been done. Sorry again for my inexperience. Any suggestions are welcomed. Best regards Jorge Sastre (talk) 08:24, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Please provide a valid response
Hey again. You've reverted my edit to Limit of a sequence again, without responding to my last reply on this talk page or pointing out what is "definitely wrong" with my argument on the article's talk page, like I asked in my edit summary. Please have a discussion with me and tell me the problem. Sunny642 (talk) 15:00, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I am not here for teaching mathematics to you. Specifically, the order of quantifiers in a definition does matter, and it seems that you ignore that. D.Lazard (talk) 16:16, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
 * And you seem to be ignoring the example I provided in my first comment here, so I'll say it again. The sequence generated by the function f(x) = (2^x + 1)/2^x converges to one, yet it gets closer to 0.9999, 0.5, -500 and -17000 as x grows. The paragraph states that the sequence gets closer to the limit and not to any other number, which is clearly incorrect. The limit is the only number that you can always find a term in the sequence such that their difference is within epsilon of L for all epsilon.
 * Why would you want vague definition rather than a rigorous one?
 * Sunny642 (talk) 16:26, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Changing ponctuation when stricking false statements
Hi, could you please be careful when striking out your false statements about other editors' edits and not change the ponctuation? This question mark you added by mistake would have made me look like an idiot if I hadn't noticed it: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Juan_Branco&diff=prev&oldid=1172036605 Neo Trixma (talk) 19:31, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Cartesian / Oblique Coordinate systems
I noticed that you mentioned ‘Oblique is not Cartesian.’ Could you clarify whether or not Cartesian is oblique? Persianwise (talk) 21:57, 27 August 2023 (UTC)


 * By definition of Cartesian coordinates, the axes are pairwise perpendicular. D.Lazard (talk) 08:04, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * So, you are asserting that Cartesian is NOT oblique. Right? Persianwise (talk) 09:02, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Axes ARE Number Lines
Axes are number lines. Are you familiar with the x-axis and y-axis? These are number lines that are denoted by the letters x and y, respectively.

Please stop preventing the article from being improved. Persianwise (talk) 14:10, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Interval (mathematics)
Hello, Lazard. I have started a discussion in Talk:Interval (mathematics) upon your request. Any comment is welcome. 慈居 (talk) 09:40, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

You just introduced errors into the page
Singularity (mathematics)

I implore you with all of my heart, stop being goofy. 96.227.223.203 (talk) 17:42, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

And stop threatening me
Stop threatening me and harassing me. 96.227.223.203 (talk) 17:44, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Anlytic geometry combines geometry and algebra
The phrase ‘systematic link’ between branches of mathematics is not an accurate description when it comes to simultaneously using concepts from different branches. Otherwise, this prompts the question:

what would a ‘non-systematic link’ between mathematical concepts or branches look like?

If you cannot provide a satisfactory answer to this question, supported by an acceptable example, then it would suggest that the term ‘systematic link’ between branches of mathematics is not meaningful and is purely subjective.

It is universally known that analytic geometry is a combination of ‘geometry’ and ‘algebra’. For example, using the Pythagorean theorem in geometry, together with algebraic symbols, the formula for the distance between two points on a plane is found to be $$\sqrt{(x_1-x_2)^2 + (y_1-y_2)^2}.$$. This example clearly proves that analytic geometry combines geometry and algebra. Persianwise (talk) 20:13, 15 September 2023 (UTC)


 * This is not the correct place for this discussion. Discussions on a specific article must be in the talk page of this article. This is required for allowing other editors to give their opinion. In this case, I do not know in which article the phrase 'systematic link' is used, and what is the relevant context. D.Lazard (talk) 21:29, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

A number line is a one-dimentional (Cartesian) coordinate system.
In the same paragraph, it is stated: ‘A line with a chosen Cartesian system is called a number line.’ It should be clarified that any coordinate system, including Cartesian coordinate systems, have axes. A number line is essentially a one-dimensional coordinate system. If the number line isn’t considered an axis, then where would the axis be located? If you answer this question correctly, you would understand that number lines and axes are two different names referring to the same concept. Persianwise (talk) 18:41, 15 September 2023 (UTC)


 * This is not the correct place for this discussion. Discussions on a specific article must be in the talk page of this article. This is required for allowing other editors to give their opinion. D.Lazard (talk) 21:26, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The reason I have written on your talk page is because you repeatedly reverted the accurate editing I had submitted to the page Cartesian_coordinate_system. For this reason, according to User_talk_page, your talk page is the appropriate place to inform you of your unwarranted reverting. Other editors have access to the history of the relevant page and can use their mathematical knowledge to express their logical thoughts about the topics. This is also the last warning for unwarranted reversion. Persianwise (talk) 22:15, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

You are making unwarranted reversions. STOP!
You will be reported for editing without having proper knowledge about the subject of mathematics. Persianwise (talk) 23:28, 17 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Be care of the WP:BOOMERANG effect. Also, read WP:BRD for learning that the concept of "unwarranted reversion" does not exists in Wikipedia. D.Lazard (talk) 15:55, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
 * D.Lazard, I would find the statement that you don't have "proper knowledge about the subject of mathematics" comical if it weren't for the fact that it's being used as a justification for highly disruptive editing that wastes a lot of editor time. JBW (talk) 20:36, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
 * It’s not comical. Do you know what was the question, and if so, can you provide the answer? Do you have any background in mathematics? To demonstrate that you comply with the good faith policy, please answer the questions. Persianwise (talk) 04:44, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
 * It is apparent that neither you nor the other person has a proper background in mathematics. It has been proved analytically, using the concept of isomorphism, that a number line and an axis are two different names for the same thing.
 * The analytical explanation was far beyond the level of your mathematical ability. For this reason, I also used a geometrical explanation, which is easily understood by even a pupil who encounters number lines and coordinate systems at school for the first time.
 * You are the one involved in disruptive editing by assisting User:D.Lazard, who is participating in a edit war. He claims to be a renowned mathematician on the page, Daniel_Lazard, and yet is unable to understand the basics of mathematics.
 * You will be reported as a person who does not have the merit to be a wikipedia dministrator. Persianwise (talk) 21:26, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Whether or not 'unwarranted reversion' exists in Wikipedia, it is used in every day language. It reflects the unjustified reversion of the corrections I have made, i.e., Edit warring. Instead of playing with words, please answer the questions asked about the mathematical topics, should you have a legitimate answer. You have already inflicted damages to the page Cartesian coordinate system. Fortunately, they are reversible. Persianwise (talk) 07:23, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Persianwise partial block
I have partially blocked this editor from your and my user talk pages. I have posted a report on this at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents, where you may like to comment. JBW (talk) 08:57, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Arbogast's/Euler's notation
Could you please provide any evidence on the edited page that Euler used or popularized the D-notation for derivative, or that it is a "common name" (among who?) Otherwise, could you please restore my edit? Alexey Muranov (talk) 12:07, 2 October 2023 (UTC)


 * A discussion on the content of a page must be done on the talk page of the article. So, I'll answer there. D.Lazard (talk) 13:47, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Regarding your edit war over the Cartesian coordinate system (number lines and axes)
Nearly all mathematics-related websites about the Cartesian coordinate system explicitly and correctly mention that number lines are axes, contrary to your incorrect assertion in the edit war you started. I cited only two of these sites as references. This ends your edit war once and for all. Persianwise (talk) 17:16, 3 October 2023 (UTC)


 * If you don't provide explicit reference, it cannot be verified wether your is assertionis correct, and whether your sites are reliable sources. By the way, it seems that you still not understand the reasons of your block, and that, if you continue this way, you may be blocked for a longer period. D.Lazard (talk) 18:26, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

The wiki page on "non-commutative polynomials" links to free algebras
Free algebras over non-commutative rings are a strict generalisation of polynomial rings over commutative rings. Wikipedia even has a redirect from Non-commutative polynomial ring to Free algebra. Anyway, that's what I meant in my edit. (Apologies for calling you rude in my edit). --Svennik (talk) 10:29, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Actually, Wiki only defines them over commutative rings. I've removed that from the article. --Svennik (talk) 11:10, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Oh yeah, regarding poly eval vs poly composition: I think you're right. The definition allows you to evaluate a polynomial in $$R[X]$$ on any $$x \in S \supset R$$. In particular, $$S$$ can be $$R[X]$$, which gives you composition. --Svennik (talk) 10:39, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I removed that particular remark from the article. I've only reverted your revert concerning "non-commutative polynomials" now. Under 3RR, I can't revert any more of your edits for the next day or two. --Svennik (talk) 10:45, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I've removed non-commutative polynomials now too, because Wiki only defines them over commutative rings. --Svennik (talk) 11:10, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Field extension
At Field extension you recently reverted an edit with the edit summary "Makes the argument confusing". To me it doesn't make the argument any more confusing, in fact if anything it makes the argument less confusing, as it is simpler. Why do you see it as confusing? JBW (talk) 09:53, 29 October 2023 (UTC)


 * The paragraph is here for explaining that a generating set of a purely transcendental extension may contain a transcendence basis which generates a proper subextension. If you consider only $$\Q(\sqrt{x}),$$ the argument becomes vacuous. Moreover, the only way to define $$\Q(\sqrt{x})$$ is as the extension of $$\Q(x)$$ by a square root of $$x;$$ that is, to consider the field $$\Q(x)[y]/\langle y^2-x\rangle.$$ The notation $$\Q(x, \sqrt{x})$$ is a shortcut of this construction where $$\sqrt{x}$$ represents $$y.$$
 * Nevertheless, I agree that the wording can be improved. However, your edit is not a step toward such an improvement. D.Lazard (talk) 13:59, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
 * It wasn't my edit, it was an edit by someone else. However, I confess that I am guilty of looking only superficially at the changes made by that edit and your revert, instead of reading the whole section to see the editing in context. Now that I have gone back and read more of it, I understand your point. JBW (talk) 15:19, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Two sets are equal? Request for an opinion.
The article Set (mathematics) says "Two sets are equal if they have precisely the same elements". I am never happy with that form of words, because in that case there is only one set, not two. Partly my distaste is theoretical, and may be considered pedantry by some, but there is also a more practical consideration. Probably to any mathematician it goes without saying that the sentence is a convenient abbreviation for something like If "A" designates a set and "B" designates a set, and if the set designated by "A" has precisely the same elements as the set designated by "B", then "A" and "B" both designate the same set, but for most people who are not mathematicians, such abus de langage is not understood, and misunderstanding of this point is a significant stumbling block in the way of learning. However, I am not sure how to rephrase it to make it more logically sound without making the sentence cumbersome. Do you have any opinion on whether the wording should be changed or not, and if so how best to do it? JBW (talk) 22:12, 31 October 2023 (UTC)


 * This has been lenghty discussed five years ago at Talk:Equality (mathematics). This resulted into the current lead of this article.
 * In the case of Set (mathematics), the confusion comes from a formulation that appears as a definition of set equality when it should be a formulation of the axiom of extensionality. So, I suggest the formulation . Possibly, one may add after "equal": . D.Lazard (talk) 10:17, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for pointing me to that discussion, which is very interesting in a number of ways. Some comments there reminded me of Wittgenstein's statement that there is no need for the concept of equality at all. You may already know more about it than I do, but in case you don't, his argument was essentially that if we say that x=y, then if x and y are names for the same thing then there is no justification for having two names for it instead of one, and if they are different things then they can't be equal. However, both that and the discussion you linked to are taking things more deeply than what I had in mind, which was just avoiding giving a misleading impression to fairly ordinary readers of the encyclopaedia about the ordinary understanding of how sets are considered, at a very naive level.
 * (Incidentally, this kind of problem with understanding the concept of equality is by no means confined to set theory. One of the major causes of problems in learning elementary algebra is the fact that the substantial majority of people go through high school algebra without ever grasping the fact that in something such as "8x + 3 = x - 5", the two expressions "8x + 3" and "x - 5" each represents a number, and the "=" means that they both represent the same number. As for what they do think it means, that is a very confused and complex matter.) JBW (talk) 14:58, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I have implemented an improved version of the above suggestion, with an explanation of the importance of this property of sets. D.Lazard (talk) 15:30, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Difinition of function
sir, you reverted my edit two times before,first time you didn't give a reason to revert it but second time there was a reason given but, I don't understand the reason properly. Can you please help me to understand where I'm wrong in order to defining function. AryanpateI (talk) 13:46, 3 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Firstly, you must know that the beginning of this article has been discussed many times on the talk page of this article. So, a change such as your edit must get a consensus on the talk page of the article before been accepted. Per WP:BRD, my first revert did not require an edit summary since my revert was sufficient to show that there is no consensus on your edit.
 * Your version of the first sentence is.
 * Here are several reasons that motivate my revert:
 * You use "relation" in a confusing way, since the reader do not know whether you use the common definition of the word, of the mathematical one, as given in binary relation.
 * If this is the common meaning that is intended, this adds nothing to the sentence.
 * If this is the mathematical meaning that is intended, this adds nothing either, since a function and a relation are formally defined as sets of ordered pair, and the definitions differ by constraints on accepted pairs that are provided by the end of the sentence.
 * Your version makes the end of the sentence incorrect, since the phrase "a relation which assigns" is never defined. The sentence would be correct if you has used "operation" or "processus" instead, but there are good reasons to not use these words in the first sentence.
 * Emphasizing that a function is a special case of a relation hides the reason for which functions are much more used than relations in all parts of mathematics. Such important concepts such as continuity, differentiation, integration are not naturally definied on relations.
 * D.Lazard (talk) 15:36, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Reverted edits to the talk page
Please un-delete my edits to the "function" talk page. There is nothing wrong with replying to comments that are years old; that is why each comment has a date. The comments do not "change the meaning of the posts that follow" since the indentation clearly shows which comment each reply refers to.

It is OK to delete things on the article page that you believe are wrong, bad, irrelevant, etc. But it is not OK to delete comments on the Talk page merely because you do not agree with them, or were badly edited. Especially when they raise points that have not been answered in the talk page.

Are you unhappy with the placement of my replies? Feel free to move them to where you think they should have been (or ask me to do it). Jorge Stolfi (talk) 19:54, 15 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Another user has restored your posts in a new section. D.Lazard (talk) 21:20, 15 November 2023 (UTC)


 * In this post you placed a comment inside another editor's message. This has two unhelpful effects: it makes it difficult for a reader to know who wrote the passage above your message, as it is divorced from its signature, and it breaks up what the writer of the original comment meant as a single coherent message into fragments, thus giving a misleading impression of their intention. It is really not helpful to take the line that a reader can study clues such as the indentation pattern and work out who wrote what: they should be able to just read the discussion and see who wrote what, without having to figure it out. JBW (talk) 23:12, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I did not notice that the two "::" were continuation of the same post, sorry. I thought that they were two separate replies to the same ":" post. To avoid such confusion, you can use "   " to break a paragraph inside the same post. Like here. Jorge Stolfi (talk) 20:31, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Yo Ho Ho


JBL (talk) is wishing a foaming mug of Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Christmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding to your friends' talk pages.


 * Sorry again. I thought I was on the Talk page of the article, not on your personal Talk page. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 20:36, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Punctuation MUST be inside mathtags
Hi, I saw your reverted my edit. Please enlighten me with the guide link on this? Thanks JuguangXiao (talk) 08:34, 19 November 2023 (UTC)


 * See MOS:MATH. D.Lazard (talk) 09:24, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅. Thanks JuguangXiao (talk) 09:31, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, I have the same question. Especially since in the second alinea of MOS:BBB they do exactly the opposite of what is stated in MOS:MATH. Also, the issue adressed in MOS:MATH could just as well apply to the use of brackets such as in the last alinea of Equivalence_class.
 * In other words, I think the reasoning behind MOS:MATH is a bit inconsistent. Roffaduft (talk) 09:46, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * It is true that closing brackets after a formula may render badly, especially when the opening bracket is not in a formula. It is the reason for suggesting the use of [nowrap in MOS:PUNC. I do not see any incoherency in the links you provide. But, if any, you may be bold and fixing it yourself. If some editors disagree, a discussion may start on concrete examples D.Lazard (talk) 10:46, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your reply.
 * I was referring to:
 * ...for certain other mathematical objects, including affine space $\mathbb{A}^n$, projective space...
 * in MOS:BBB and:
 * ...equivalence relation $\sim_Y$ on $Y$). Such a function...
 * in Equivalence_class
 * I think MOS:MATH solves an issue that might occur 0,0001% of the time, by reducing the aesthetics 100% of the time. If the goal is to increase the readability, the "cure" seems worse than the "disease" IMO.
 * I do understand your motivation behind reverting my edit, as it was just about the punctuation. However, I am not inclined to "fix" things I don't consider to be a problem in the first place (such as the above examples). Roffaduft (talk) 11:14, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

"Unneeded badly formulated repetition of the last sentence"
I see you have reverted my edit on Extended real number line. However, could you please elaborate or expand on this revert? How was I repeating the previous sentence? PicoMath (talk) 23:14, 7 December 2023 (UTC)


 * With your edit, $$+\infty$$ and $$-\infty,$$ are defined twice and differently in the same paragraph. Your addition is badly formulated because you use $$\infty$$ instead of $$+\infty.$$ Moreover, your "we call" is a formulation that is not acceptable in Wikipedia, since the reader does not have any way to know whether "we" refers to you, to this specific article, to some group of people or to the mainstream mathematics. D.Lazard (talk) 08:37, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Derivative
Derivative has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:42, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Euclidean group/rigid motion
Hi. I've seen you have reverted my edit on the page Euclidean group. I have only added the adjective "proper" - which you referred to as an undefined pleonasm - from my reading the page introduction of the article Rigid transformation, to which one is redirected when clicking the ocurrence of the expression "rigid motion" on the Euclidean group page. Quoting from the Rigid transformation page: "(A reflection would not preserve handedness; for instance, it would transform a left hand into a right hand.) To avoid ambiguity, a transformation that preserves handedness is known as a proper rigid transformation, or rototranslation." That excerpt also lead me to add the term "rototranslation" to the article. Shouldn't something be written concerning this ambiguity with the term "rigid motion"? This expression does not appear in the other page BTW. Perhaps some edit there is also in order, since the expression redirects there but is not present in the article. TeraSibune (talk) 19:19, 18 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Per WP:USERGENERATED, it is always a bad idea to use a Wikipedia article as a source for another Wikipedia article, especially when the source article is tagged as badly sourced (citation needed) or confusing. In this case, "rototranslation" is an ambiguous term whose definition is unclear, and "rigid motion" was not defined in Rigid transformation. I have changed Rigid transformation by removing "rototranslation" and defining "rigid motion". This change shows clearly that your edit was badly sourced. D.Lazard (talk) 22:30, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * That is true, basing an edition exclusively on another Wikipedia article is not a good thing. I hadn't soly looked at that other article though, I went to check elsewhere how such terms are defined (for instance, Michéle Audin's book, where she uses "rigid motions" for elements of SE(n)). What the Rigid transformation page did to me was just prompt me to try and remove a perceived ambiguity, since I found conflicting uses of the term "rigid motion". I saw there is a discussion about merging the pages, perhaps it would indeed be wise.
 * I think removing the term "rototranslation" altogether would be a poor decision because it is a term used in many places to refer to that kind of transformations (and not just some term a single editor coined, which should surely be removed) and one would like to find a common term for an object mentioned in its page, even if that term is not of uniform definition, but, of course, acompanied by a explanation of the uses. It seems that the term rigid motion is in the same footing regarding ambiguity, since in many places it is used to refer also to arbitrary elements of E(n) and not only elements of SE(n). Simply defining it with one of its many senses, is probably misleading. Perhaps, some lines commenting on these other terms and explaining alternative uses (even if not the ones adopted throughout the article) may be wise. What do you think?
 * As an example of how one can be confused, check the page on Congruence and how rigid motion is used there. Of course, one could get rid of all the ocurrences of "rigid motion" which refer to general elements of E(n) instead of elments of SE(n), but that would not be a good solution because there is indeed this varying use of the term. TeraSibune (talk) 23:23, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * This page and the related ones are a mess, with incoherent terminology, improper formulation and some kind of pedantry (why using systematically "proper rigid transformation" when "rigid motion" is correct, simpler, and closer to the intuition of the concept?). I have fixed the lead of rigid transformation, but the mess remains in the remaining of the article, and many of the related ones.
 * If you have further concerns, or if you disagree with some of my edits, please, do not discuss them here. Instead, use the talk page of the concerned article, or, if several articles are involved, use WT:WPM. D.Lazard (talk) 15:16, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * > If you have further concerns, or if you disagree with some of my edits, please, do not discuss them here.
 * I'll do that if it comes to be the case.
 * And thank you for bringing to my notice the "WikiProject Mathematics" page. TeraSibune (talk) 15:39, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

"Complicated Formula"
Hello D.Lazard.

I know my formula seems complicated and useless. I created it before I knew of the simpler formula involving the floor function. However, I think it is still interesting and useful. Mods have two main interpretations: the remainder or a clock. My formula imagines mods like a clock. I am not aware of any other formula that does that. Also, I believe my formula works for negative numbers as well as positive, with that clock definition.

Kind regards, Anonymous Maths Fan 2520. AnonymousMathsFan2520 (talk) 21:34, 22 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Per WP:NOR, a formula is not allowed in Wikipedia, if it is not published in WP:reliable sources. Moreover, being published in reliable sources is not sufficient for being included in Wikipedia; the reliable sources must also provide some evidence of the importance, interest or usefulness of the formula. D.Lazard (talk) 09:18, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Hello D.Lazard.

Thank you for explaining.

Kind regards, Anonymous Maths Fan 2520. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2407:E400:8000:8800:ECFF:D98D:C7EF:DA40 (talk) 09:34, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Exponentiation table
To a page on exponentiation I added a graphic image of a table that had a couple of problems: 1) images of tables are not allowed and 2) the numbers suggest precision rather than rounding. I think the page would benefit from information that shows how exponentiation gives actual numbers. Do you have suggestions about how we might show the information? Lee De Cola (talk) 18:42, 28 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Images of tables are allowed in wikipedia, but they must agree with the manual of style MOS:IMAGES. Also, before adding information, you must verify that it is not already in Wikipedia. Here, there are examples. If they are not sufficient for some readers, they can follow the links "main article" where there are tables that are much more readable than yours. So, you did not add any new information. D.Lazard (talk) 22:30, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

I'd be happy if someone took [] and adapted it. The page on Exponentiation is very long and might be helped with some graphical/tabular interest.Lee De Cola (talk) 23:07, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for E (mathematical constant)
E (mathematical constant) has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:14, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Why the revert on Pythagorean theorem?
Per title. (Hohum @ ) 21:59, 15 January 2024 (UTC)


 * The addition in the lead of an obsolescent terminology does not add anything, and may confuse readers who do not know this term. D.Lazard (talk) 22:28, 15 January 2024 (UTC)


 * This IS an encyclopedia...., and the term was linked. (Hohum @ ) 22:30, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Care
Before noting the incident to an WP:Administrator, consider terminology at Binary relation. You presumed Functional relation is a valid term for a binary relation whereas as a web-search would have revealed that the term is not used in reliable sources. Then reversion was made so the term continues in the article. The redirect has been proposed for deletion and it is expected that editors will eventually see the need to remove the term. Perpetuation of misinformation and misnomers is not in harmony with the Project. Your condescending ways are not appreciated. Rgdboer (talk) 22:54, 31 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Do you pretend that the following is not a reliable source?
 * Friedli, Fabien. "A functional relation for L-functions of graphs equivalent to the Riemann Hypothesis for Dirichlet L-functions." Journal of Number Theory 169 (2016): 342-352.
 * This is the first example in pure mathematics provided by Scholar Google when searching for "functional relation" function. Not all results are about mathematics, but many are in applied mathematics. D.Lazard (talk) 23:18, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

The usage here pertains to Binary relations. Friedli may or may not have our context. A notice of the incident has been made: There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.. — Rgdboer (talk) 23:27, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Another user has found a reference for Functional relation in the sense required at this line of Binary relations. However, usage of functional later in the paragraph persists per your revert. Since univalent is the standard term in relation literature, it should be used instead of functional in the later statements. — Rgdboer (talk) 02:05, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Modular arithmetic
Dear colleague, can you pls tell me exactly which of the listed basic properties listed below become nonsensical, if n=1 (and NOT n=0) is allowed ??? Nomen4Omen (talk) 18:30, 3 February 2024 (UTC)


 * For a discussion on edits of a specific article, please use the talk page of the article. D.Lazard (talk) 20:12, 3 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Done.
 * Sorry, that I tried to keep your nonsensical statement out of the public.-Nomen4Omen (talk) 08:39, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Oops^2
An oops by you, followed by an oops by me - DVdm (talk) 20:19, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Homeomorphism
On the homeomorphism page, I edited the page changing the terminology for "a homeomorphism that is a continuous deformation" from homotopy to isotopy, because while "f is a homeomorphism that is a continuous deformation" does imply "f is a homotopy", the other direction is not always true; "f is a homotopy" does not imply "f is a homeomorphism that is a continuous deformation". Homotopies are often continuous deformations where there is no homeomorphism between f0 and f1.

This statement on the page reads as a definition, and definitions should always be if AND only if, so using the term "isotopy" would be better.

I also changed the caption of the coffee mug to donut illustration for essentially the same reason; while a coffee mug and a donut ARE homeomorphic, the deformation being shown actually illustrates the stronger statement that they are isotopy equivalent or isotopic. I agree the caption is too long. Really I think the best option is to remove that illustration and find a better one for the specific notion of homeomorphism.

50.207.106.34 (talk) 17:53, 9 February 2024 (UTC)


 * A homotopy is a homeomorphism that results from a continuous deformation. An isotopy is a continuous deformation inside an embedding space. So, one can talk of an isotopy only when an embedding space is defined. It is true that the mug and the donuts are isotopic in the three dimensional space, but these subtilities are too WP:TECHNICAL for the caption of a figure "embedded" in the lead; a fortiori when the caption is already too long. Your second change at the end of the lead is simply wrong, since no ambient space is defined. For example, the interval [–1, 1] is homeomorphic and homotopic with the reverse interval [1, –1] (endpoints exchanged) by a rotation of $\pi$ around 0; but these intervals are not isotopic inside the real line. Similarly, a trefoil knot is not isotopic to a circle inside the tridimensional space, but the two curves are isotopic inside a four-dimensional space. D.Lazard (talk) 18:57, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Edit-warring warning
Your recent editing history at Determinant shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war; read about how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in you being blocked from editing&mdash;especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring&mdash;even if you do not violate the three-revert rule&mdash;should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. D.Lazard (talk) 18:26, 28 February 2024 (UTC) Thatwhichislearnt (talk) 18:38, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

L#Forms and variants
If you have a moment, would you check L, please? Specifically the paragraph, "Another means of reducing such confusion is to use symbol ℓ, which is a cursive, handwriting-style lowercase form of the letter 'ell'; this form is seen in mathematics, European road signs and advertisements. In Japan, for example, this is the symbol for the liter. (The International Committee for Weights and Measures recommends using or for the liter, without specifying a typeface.) In Unicode, the cursive form is encoded as  from the 'letter-like symbols' block.  A similar symbol, 𝓁, is used in more detailed mathematical contexts; this symbol is  in Unicode." as this "MATHEMATICAL SCRIPT SMALL L" is completely new to me. The preceding editor removed mathematics from the list of users of ℓ when adding 𝓁, but I reverted since it doesn't match my [now antediluvian] experience. [As an aside, I wonder who considered such a tiny glyph form to be useful? It seems indistinguishable from an italic dotless i.) 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:26, 11 March 2024 (UTC)


 * I am not very interested in typography, and this is typography. As far as I understand, MATHEMATICAL SCRIPT SMALL L stands for ITALIC SCRIPT SMALL L. Indeed, in mathematical formulas, such a character must be italicized, and this is badly done by many browser, and the rendering may vary dramatically. Therefore, for mathematical articles, it is strongly recommended to not use special Unicode symbols, and to use $$\ell$$, which renders as $$\ell$$ (I do not remember where this is explicitly stated). D.Lazard (talk) 12:10, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you, that makes a lot of sense (and your "this is badly done by many browsers" is demonstrated perfectly in my case, Chrome on ChromeOS, where the rendering is a joke). So I will copy your response to the L article with a cn tag; if you happen to come across the source, perhaps you might add it but I can't see anyone making a fuss as it is so obviously true. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:37, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The para now reads
 * "Another means of reducing such confusion is to use symbol ℓ, which is a cursive, handwriting-style lowercase form of the letter 'ell'; this form is seen in European road signs and advertisements. In Japan, for example, this is the symbol for the liter. (The International Committee for Weights and Measures recommends using or for the liter, without specifying a typeface.) In Unicode, the cursive form is encoded as  from the 'letter-like symbols' block.  In mathematical formulas, an italic form (ℓ) of the script ℓ  is the norm. In addition, Unicode encodes an explicit symbol as . In practice, since rendering in computer fonts may vary dramatically, it is strongly recommended not to use the special Unicode symbols but rather to use the TeX syntax $\ell$, which renders as $\ell$."
 * Thank you for your help. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Content dispute at Function (mathematics)
Hi D.Lazard! I noticed that you have reverted to restore your preferred version of an article several times. The impulse to undo an edit you disagree with is understandable, but I wanted to make sure you're aware that the edit warring policy disallows repeated reversions even if they are justifiable.

All editors are expected to discuss content disputes on article talk pages to try to reach consensus. If you are unable to agree, please use one of the dispute resolution options to seek input from others. Using this approach instead of reverting can help you avoid getting drawn into an edit war. Thank you. Regarding Function_(mathematics) Thatwhichislearnt (talk) 13:51, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

About the Cubic equation article
You have twice reverted a valid correction I made to this article, for no justifiable reason. The notations v and $X$ and $$v$$ produce different fonts for what is supposed to be the same symbol, and all three of these were being used previously, depending on where the symbol was appearing: in the text, in an inline expression, or in an offset equation. And the same occurred for several other math symbols. This is confusing for the reader, and obscures what is being stated. I made the effort to carefully correct these in order to make the notation consistent. But for no justifiable reason, you have reverted these edits, twice, and also incorrectly stated that there was an identification made between the symbols "A", "B" and "C", when there was not (at least, not by me in this correction).

It is not a matter of preferring one "style" over another, but of making the article more clearly readable by not using different fonts, in different locations, for the same symbol. Please undo your reversions, and be more careful about undoing valid revisions made by others, who are only trying to improve the article by correcting notational inconsistencies. You have twice reverted to previous, erroneous versions that need to be corrected all over again. KarlJacobi (talk) 21:16, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
 * You changed 3 times the third line of the article into "in which is nonzero. $$a$$:". This is certainly not a "valid correction".
 * You changed 3 times "Let $$W=-\frac q 2\pm\sqrt{\frac{p^3}{27}} + \frac {q^2} 4$$ be any nonzero root of this quadratic equation." into "Let $$W:=w^3=-\frac q 2\pm\sqrt{\frac{p^3}{27} + \frac {q^2} 4}$$ be any nonzero root of this quadratic equation." This is mathematically wrong for at least two reasons. Firstly, no mathematical text describes how a formula must be read when it contains simultaneously "=" and ":=". Secondly, $$w^3$$ is here a unknown quantity, and cannot therefore be a root of a quadratic equation.
 * About your systematic change from $Y$ to $$⋅$$ : this is discouraged by MOS:VAR as explained in my edit summaries. This is also enforced by MOS:FORMULA that states . One of the reason of this consensus among the members of the WikiProject Mathematics is that such a systematic change is error prone, and makes difficult for other editors to detect errors. Indeed, as quoted above, you did at least one error in this change; I am not willing to spent time for checking whether this is the only error. D.Lazard (talk) 08:27, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I did not edit the line " "in which Template:A is nonzero. :";
 * this seems to be a misperception on your part.
 * Regarding the edits that I did make:
 * You clearly have no interest in seeing the article's inconsistent use of various
 * fonts for the same symbols corrected, nor allowing any constructive edits by
 * other editors. You apparently wish to "guard" the editing of this article as though
 * it were your own private territory, and view contributions by other editors,
 * however well founded, as "alien incursions". There were no "blatant errors" in any
 * of the revisions I made; they were all valid corrections of inconsistencies in notation or
 * improvements of unclearly worded passages. I am not prepared to waste more time pursuing
 * this sort of trivial quarrel in the face of such absurd territoriality. Let the article
 * remain as you insist it remain - with all its errors, inconsistencies, imprecision
 * and poor English well guarded. KarlJacobi (talk) 15:39, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * wrote: Sorry, but the diff of your edit says exactly the opposite. D.Lazard (talk) 16:01, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * If there was any change made in the line ""in which Template:A is nonzero. :", it was inadvertent, and may be safely reverted.
 * The notational problems I was trying to correct were primarily in the section "Derivation of the roots", where the letter "v" appears in three different fonts, though referring to the same symbol. There were numerous other instances of the same letters appearing with different fonts, depending on where they occurred in the text, inline equations or offset ones (e.g., the letters  "u" and "w"). But "v" was the most conspicuous one, and can lead to confusion. KarlJacobi (talk) 16:33, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Also, the same edit changed the rendering of a section heading in the table of content into . You are not responsible of bugs of the Wikipedia system, but you are responsible of verifying that your edits render as you hope, especially when the rendering errors result of your refusal to follow Wikipedia guidelines and you are reverted for this reason. D.Lazard (talk) 16:32, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Added property of Metallic Means without proper citation or permission
Mr. D.Lazard, I noticed that you have just added a property of Metallic Ratios on the METALLIC MEAN page : "The odd powers of metallic mean are themselves metallic mean"

You have added it without proper citation or author's permission. Hence either remove the property or use proper citation : PAPER (2021) : "Metallic Ratios : Beyond the Golden Ratio: The Mathematical Relationships between different Metallic Means" Link: https://rajpub.com/index.php/jam/article/view/9023 152.57.18.10 (talk) 17:49, 11 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I did not added any new property to the article, I have only restated in prose some existing formulas, and added a proof of them. Also, since the proof provides WP:verifiability, I moved the citation needed tag to the formula for which I does not have a simple proof.
 * I had a look on the reference that you provide. Firstly, I did not find in it the formulas for odd powers of metallic means. Secondly, this is certainly not a proper citation for Wikipedia, since it did not pass any serious peer review proccess (for example, every serious referee would have asked to clarify the difference between "metallic mean" and "metallic ratio", which occur sometimes in the same sentence). D.Lazard (talk) 09:12, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Sir, PLAGIARISM is the most serious academic malpractice. In your opinion, whether the journal is predatory or advance, whether the paper is peer reviewed or not, under no circumstances the illegitimate use of anyone else's contribution without proper citation is just and it is an academic fraud. Hence, you are requested to address this serious issue of PLAGIARISM. Otherwise, the said property would be removed from the page. 106.221.221.43 (talk) 12:11, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I would be happy to provide a source for any assertion given in the article, and this is the reason for which the section is tagged as unsourced, and I have tagged with all formulas that I am unable to verify.
 * About your article: it contains a section named "Odd Powers of a Metallic Ratio", but nothing in its content resemble to any of the formulas and proofs given in the Wikipedia article. So, your article cannot be used as a source for the present state of the Wikipedia article, and you cannot talk of plagiarism. D.Lazard (talk) 13:15, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Sir, the odd powers section in the cited paper precisely mentions for the first time ever the formula which is published on the Wikipedia page. The only minor variation is that the concerned paper describes the exactly same formula in terms of Lucas sequence and, the Wikipedia page describes it in form of recurrence stuff. Such mere algebraic maneuver is nothing but plagiarism. I don't insist for the citation, my only point is that if Wikipedia is reluctant to add the reference, then anybody else's contribution cannot be exploited without proper citation. Hence, consider the plea and do the needful. 106.220.164.143 (talk) 14:09, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Instead accusing others of plagiarism, you should better to check whether you are clean on this aspect: in your paper you do not cite the 1999 paper by Vera de Spinadel (ref. 4 of the article), although she has noted a long time before you the special properties of the odd powers of metallic means, and has provided the same formula as you for the odd powers of the golden ratio (formula 5.3 in her article). As the case of odd powers of other metallic means is a trivial generalization, providing the generalization without mentioning the special case already proved may be viewed as plagiarism. Moreover, I have not checked all de Spinadel's articles and the articles that cite her, but I suspect that the result for the odd powers of metallic means was published before your article. In any case, the explicit formulas given in the article have certainly been published elsewhere. D.Lazard (talk) 14:02, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * So now you would certify my contributions, right?
 * How dare you to certify someone else's work clean or unclean?
 * It was my fault to address you as SIR respectfully, I thought showing some modesty would make you think impartially, and you may get above your personal grudges and act for real betterment of the page. I thought this could end the Edit War. Unfortunately, what I thought was completely wrong.
 * And what did you say? "YOU SUSPECT"? about my contributions? Who the hell do you think you are?
 * And please don't tell me about Madam Vera de Spinadel. She is the Mother of Metallic Ratios.
 * And I also know myself. My each and every contribution is 1000% mine.
 * I am curious to know who is this guy called D.Lazard and what are his contributions in the realm of Metallic Means?
 * Hence, watch your words and mind your language while commenting on someone else's work.
 * Mr. D.Lazard, kindly ask any artificial intelligence like Bing's co-pilot which provides the most learned form of independent opinion, about the "correlation between metallic ratios and Pythagorean triples". You removed this section from the page just out of some personal issues. I hereby challenge you to invite opinions from any leading mathematicians and number theorists across the globe whether or not it is the most important aspect of metallic means.
 * Your vindictive acts categorically highlight how your personal agenda, grudges and rivalries are overshadowing the pure mathematics and the betterment of the Wikipedia page. 152.58.21.0 (talk) 15:09, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Reverted edit over at determinant
Hello! I saw you reverted my edit over at determinant with the reason WP:NOTBROKEN. I understand your reasoning and after reading the NOTBROKEN guidelines I have decide to edit the linear isomorphism redirect to achieve the same result as my edit did before it was reverted. I just thought I'd leave a message here to check that this is OK. Cheers. AlexGallon (talk) 19:02, 18 April 2024 (UTC)


 * this is not OK: a reader who search for "linear isomorphism" is probably not aware of the technical details referred to in the considered section, which begins with a symbol not definied in the section. So, it is definitively more helpful to redirect the reader to the lead of the article where "linear isomorphism" is defined and bolded. So, there is no reason for changing the target of the link. My reference to WP:NOTBROKEN meant that the previous link was perfectly convenient, and did not be fixed by linking elsewhere. Sorry if this does not correspond to the text of WP:NOTBROKEN, but only to its spirit: a link that is not broken must not be changed, unless this provides a clear improvement. D.Lazard (talk) 08:59, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Apologies, I had not noticed that "linear isomorphism" was defined and bolded in the lead section of the linear map article. Thank you for pointing this out. Given this, I agree that it does seem reasonable for the link to be to the top of the article rather than the specific section. AlexGallon (talk) 09:11, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Stop Pagiarism
Idiot D.Lazard, someone else's contribution is not your wife's *** that anybody can nail it without proper reference. Stop PLAGIARISM, you fu***** idiot. 2409:4081:2B14:293D:0:0:4309:9504 (talk) 23:05, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Undo of category changes
Hi, I saw that you had reverted a number of category revisions due to unexplained changes. Apologies if the intentions weren't clear. I had mistakenly assumed it would be evident looking at the categories.

The pages that I removed from the category Algebra were removed because they were specific to subtopics of Algebra and in many cases were already part of a subcategory. As such, they did not seem to belong at the top level of the Algebra category with general algebra topics. Chrisdmiddleton (talk) 20:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)


 * In many cases, you have replaced category:algebra with category:abstract algebra. In most of them, the article does not belong to abstract algebra ("abstact algebra" is either the study of algebraic structures for themselves or the name of college courses). As there are specific subcategories for the main algebraic structures, very few articles should belong directly to category:abstract algebra. The same is true for category:abstract algebra, and this mean, that, if you want a more accurate categorization, you must not replace category:algebra with category:abstract algebra, but with a more specific category.
 * "Unexplained change" is a polite way to say that I disagree with the change. In any case, if you disagree with the reverts, per WP:BRD, you must not discuss them here, but either on the talk page of the edited article or at WT:WPM. D.Lazard (talk) 21:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Foundations of mathematics & mathematical logic
I have just been reading your recent edits to the article Foundations of mathematics. Most of it is fine, but I'm not happy about one of your statements. The section Foundations of mathematics starts out by telling us that the foundational crisis of mathematics arose at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and a little later it tells us (in your words) that "These problems were also studied by mathematicians, and this led to a new area of mathematics, mathematical logic". Certainly it led to radically new approaches to mathematical logic, but mathematical logic existed before then; the works of George Boole and then Augustus De Morgan come to mind, for example. JBW (talk) 21:16, 31 May 2024 (UTC)


 * You are right. My point was that, while general logic belongs to philosophy, mathematical logic in no more philosophy. As far as understand, Boole and de Morgan introduced the use of mathematics in classical logic, while "mathemathical logic" is about the logic of mathematics. Nevertheless, the distinction is subtle, and I am not certain that it is pertinent. So, if you agree, I'll change the sentence into "These problems were also studied by mathematicians, and this led to establish mathematical logic as a new area of mathematics". D.Lazard (talk) 10:07, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I see what you mean. Boole and de Morgan's work was "mathemathical logic" in the sense of using mathematics in the study of logic, whereas the work relevant here was "mathemathical logic" in the sense of using logic in the study of mathematics: a very different matter. The one antecedent that I know of for the concept of "mathemathical logic" in the sense relevant here is the work that Leibnitz wrote on the subject, but since it wasn't published until the twentieth century, it had no influence on the history of the subject. On the whole I suppose we may as well keep it the way you wrote it. It might be possible to find a better form of words, but it's doubtful whether it's important enough to be worth bothering. JBW (talk) 12:48, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Throwing in a sound bite here: "Mathematical logic" is not the logic of mathematics, but rather the mathematics of logic.  I'm speaking here about the way the term "mathematical logic" is actually used in practice as opposed to etymology.  Most of the research categorized as "mathematical logic" is solidly mathematics and is really not logic at all, and may not even be very closely related to logic; it gets called "logic" because it comes out of investigations that historically were connected with logic.
 * If you doubt it, pick up any issue of the JSL and look at the article abstracts, and tell me what percentage of them are really about the study of making valid inferences. --Trovatore (talk) 18:56, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Nevertheless, I'll change the sentence as suggested above.
 * By the way, the controversy between Berkeley and Newton about infinitesimals can be viewed as a first foundational crisis, which was not resolved before the 19th century with proper definitions of real numbers, limits and functions. This is still reflected in several history sections of Wikipedia that accuse Newton of a lack of rigor, when it is only a lack of proper foundations. D.Lazard (talk) 13:29, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're absolutely right. I have also seen accounts which represent Berkeley's criticisms as simply a matter of his not having enough understanding of mathematics to realise that there was in fact no problem, which is of course a total misunderstanding. JBW (talk) 18:26, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Perhaps an even earlier foundational crisis was the discovery of irrational quantities by the Pythagoreans. JBW (talk) 18:28, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I've taken a look at the new text, and most of it is pretty good sentence-by-sentence, though I might copyedit to make (for example) the treatment of articles more idiomatic. I'm still a bit worried about the thrust of it, though.  It's possible to read it and come away with the idea that the "foundational crisis" was resolved by just saying, OK, we have these arbitrary propositions constituting ZFC, and we're just going to decide that the propositions formally derivable from those are what mathematics is.  That probably is what a lot of mathematicians think they think, if they don't want to think about it too much and just want to dispense with the question and get back to the problem they're currently working on.  But it's such an absurd position that I don't think it's what they would find out they think, if they really think about it.
 * To be fair, "really thinking about it" can take a long time. There was a significant amount of time when I didn't find this view quite so absurd.  But it is absurd.  What then would you say mathematicians were doing for the thousands of years prior to the formulation of ZFC?. --Trovatore (talk) 18:49, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Modified "primorial" method, called nabla-deltorial
A modification of the "primorial" method was created, called nabla-deltorial, symbolically designated as ∇Δ(pₙ), and although the initial measurements of the "primorial" were ambitiously aimed at breaking (among other things) also cipher codes, it is still far from that. However, factoring large numbers with divisors of "intermediate" size, i.e. not too high - is supposed to go "surprisingly" smoothly.

The "paper" is available here: https://www.1universe.gpe.pl/prime/deltorial.html

I will soon start writing an entry about it on Wikipedia, its name will be nabla-deltorial ∇Δ      - I recommend it to your attention, and greetings to the titans of work...

BaSzRafael (talk) 10:58, 27 June 2024 (UTC)


 * It seems that you have not understood the main reason of the deletion of your Wikipedia article. Per policy WP:OR, for being mentioned in Wikipedia, a mathematical result or method must have been published in a regular mathematical journal. This is not sufficient, the subject must having been discussed in a independent WP:secondary source. Also, the secondary soure muust clarify whether the result or method is important or notable.
 * The "paper" that is linked above is far to be ready for a publication in a journal. So, mentioning it in a Wikipedia article would go against the basic policies of Wikipedia. D.Lazard (talk) 13:13, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Regarding 0.999...
Hi. Please use smaller edits when an article is under considerable discussion. Please sign your Talk page additions, that is policy WP:SIGN. Please use the Talk page Reply feature not direct edit. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:43, 27 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Just to be clear, I reverted your edits primarily because a version of the lede had just been agreed. You are welcome to join the conversation and convince us on a different version. Other aspects of you edit got reverted because they were bundled with the change to the lede. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:56, 27 June 2024 (UTC)