User talk:David Eppstein/2019c

AP record
Hello, why do you reset the AP record ? (my records!) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:cf:6f30:c800:9df1:507d:36:6be8 (talk • contribs)
 * I assume this is about Primes in arithmetic progression? If so see WP:NOR, WP:COI, WP:DENY, and User talk:Xayahrainie. —David Eppstein (talk) 09:00, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Conway polyhedron notation
Would you have any free time to take a crack at Conway polyhedron notation? I tried to fix its WP:OR problems last year or so, but I don't have access to all of the sources so I'm taking some things on faith. Now there's a new editor adding stuff that I think is OR and not helpful, and I don't feel like he's listening to me. But, maybe I'm just too invested in the article. I think having an independent set of eyes on it would help. It's in your area of interest, and you've rooted out OR problems like this before. -Apocheir (talk) 20:40, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Maybe (I don't have time today or tomorrow but might by the weekend). But in general I try to stay away from polyhedron articles (other than really technical ones like Dehn invariant); they're too much of a disaster and we have too many active editors working hard to keep them that way. It just ends up frustrating me. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:47, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
 * That's understandable. Things have escalated a bit: see Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents. At least the issue has turned into something that doesn't take a college education in math to understand... -Apocheir (talk) 02:47, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, that ANI thing was a misunderstanding. However, User:Harry Princeton has started being a pain on Integration by parts and Chain rule, and has stated on his talk page that he's not going to listen to anyone who's not an admin. Still more of a behavior issue than an academic one at this point. Do what you want, I just wanted to follow up on my last note.-Apocheir (talk) 23:09, 19 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Agreed, it may be synthesis. While you're at it, check Tomruen out as well. Harry Princeton (talk) 00:16, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, well I did say something about people working hard to keep our polyhedron articles in a disastrous state. Ruen's illustrations are pretty but he packs way too many of them into articles for which they are way too far off-topic. And his idea of reliable sourcing is to make up tables and tables of claims and then if pressed add a vague citation to a book by Coxeter or Cromwell (or worse an unpublished book manuscript by Johnson) that might briefly mention the subject of the article but probably doesn't mention the claims made about it. He's been reported a couple of times for edit-warring (1, 2) but nothing ever really came of it. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:56, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Capset edit undone
Hi, you've undone an edit I've done - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cap_set&action=history.

Your comment states - "This makes the article a badly-structured mess. What value is there in copying the proof here rather than linking to it?"

I'm not aware of any original proof that appears on wikipedia, but I understand the intention is that the proof I wrote there is very similiar (i.e in the structure, notation) to the one appearing in Tao's blog. I think there is value in "copying" proofs to wikipedia because:

a. It's more convenient for a reader to see the proof on the page instead of going to outer websites (although in this case Tao's blog is very accessible).

b. It puts the freedom to change, give more intuition and such in our hands. This means that if I post the proof, in the future someone who will have an interesting remark will be able to add it, and of course he can't add it to Tao's blog.

I accept that the structure of the page isn't perfect in what I added, but that has to do with me being new and inexperienced, and if this is the sole reason you removed it, you should consider editing the structure to make it good instead of undoing the edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ProveStuff (talk • contribs) 17:17, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

EDIT - I see you're just ignoring this. I wanted to await your opinion but I'll just set up a new page that is specifically about the proof. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ProveStuff (talk • contribs) 21:12, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Please don't do this unless you have evidence that the proof itself is independently notable (the subject of multiple independent publications). —David Eppstein (talk) 21:19, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

You mean the significance of the proof by itself or its originality? I think it's just nice to have it on wikipedia (like we have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoeffding%27s_lemma for instance). — Preceding unsigned comment added by ProveStuff (talk • contribs) 21:42, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Both. If it is to be a separate article it needs to meet Wikipedia's standards for what is notable enough for a separate article. As for Hoeffding's lemma, I'm not convinced that the proofs as presented add any value to the article. They just look like long lines of symbol-manipulation without conveying any intuition about why it's true to the reader. If you just want to convince people that a mathematical fact is true, presenting a proof on Wikipedia is the wrong way to go, because Wikipedia editors are too variable in mathematical ability to trust them to get the proofs right. To convince readers that mathematical facts are true, better to point them to a textbook or journal article with a proof. So my opinion is that a proof should only be presented if either (1) the proof itself significantly adds to reader understanding of the underlying mathematics and not just of the claim's correctness, or (2) the proof itself is independently notable. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:45, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

This is a good point. I'll make sure if I do this that significant intuition is conveyed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ProveStuff (talk • contribs) 10:40, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

 * Thank you! —David Eppstein (talk) 18:17, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

DYK for Xifeng Wu
&mdash; Amakuru (talk) 00:01, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

RE:Alan Jacobs (academic)
Hello. I wanted to let you know that in your recent contributions, you seemed to act as if you were the owner of a page. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to Wikipedia. This means that editors do not own articles, including ones they create, and should respect the work of their fellow contributors. If you create or edit an article, remember that others are free to change its content. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 23:14, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Says the person who insists that someone reverting him is evidence for consensus for his edits?! —David Eppstein (talk) 23:15, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

New message from Shearonink
Shearonink (talk) 06:24, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Request unprotection of Square pyramidal number


May I request unprotection of Square pyramidal number. According to logs, the page has been semi-protected since 23 April 2012. The protection log of the article is too short to warrant indefinite semi-protection. —Jencie Nasino (talk) 07:41, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I'd say at least two short. EEng 07:43, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Ok, done. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:02, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

2601:280:4D00:9DCC:82A:3353:C0A9:F61C
Could you please block user:2601:280:4D00:9DCC:82A:3353:C0A9:F61C because she is persistent right now. CLCStudent (talk) 16:03, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I added another warning first because the warnings you had already added (for vandalism) were off-topic. The actual problems were adding material about religion or ethnicities to BLPs without reliable sources and inappropropriately doing it in the lead, neither of which are vandalism. But they continued their rapid-fire edits without response, so I blocked them. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:11, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

María Guðjónsdóttir
I have been impressed with your thoughtful and well-sourced analyses of academic AfDs. I would like to seek your advice on whether to nominate María Guðjónsdóttir. It seems to me that she has a promising career trajectory which may well end up with her being notable but that she isn't there yet. Haukur (talk) 11:00, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
 * It's kind of a borderline case, one that I would probably not take to AfD myself but in which I would probably end up siding with delete if someone else did. The positive side is that she was promoted to full professor very quickly, suggesting that her colleagues see some kind of star quality in her. The negative side is that, whatever it is, it isn't very visible to the rest of the world. Her citation record is ok but not enough for WP:PROF, her administrative position is ok but not enough for automatic notability that way, etc. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:46, 23 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you for taking the time. I didn't go for an AfD here partially because I know María a little bit (we were classmates back in the day) so maybe it would be weird.


 * I now happened to glance at Amelia McNamara, which I see you fixed a little bit yesterday. Here we have an assistant professor with an h-index of 4. Am I missing something? Haukur (talk) 12:34, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
 * There's at least the AmStat News piece about her going towards WP:GNG rather than WP:PROF. But that's only one source. GS profile is far from WP:PROF. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:19, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

About my self-promotion
Dear David Eppstein,

Thank you for reading my addition to Graph coloring, see.

I was really surprised by the qualification of my small note to this article as a promotion. Being an active pure mathematician, and standing apart from any business, I just wished to inform mathematicians - specialists in graph theory, that there is a new interesting approach to coloring number calculation. This information is much more important for them than for me. Indeed, I have enough advantages for to be far from attempts to increase my reputation, and also far from getting any material income from my publications. Usually I prefer to publish my papers in arxiv, and to read papers only from arxiv or math blogs like mathoverflow, if possible, because I think that the most fruitful is direct interaction between real mathematicians, bypassing the publishers making money on our ideas (peer-reviewing cannot guarantee from errors, I know some examples, and the reviewers absence in arxiv activates the attention of readers only, what is much more better than passive faith in validity of peer-reviewed results). Of course, in computer science, full of important and monetary applications, the situation is rather more complicated. So, the decision to delete my addition leads only to hiding important information (new methods of coloring number calculation) from community of mathematicians. Perhaps, this decision agreed with some very general and undoubtedly useful principles of Wikipedia. However, observing the consequences, I can only get one more confirmation that each wonderful law, being applied for a long time, comes one day to some contradiction and destroys the subject that it was written to support for. Please, look at my message only as on philosophical reflections: I do not want to offend anyone.

Sincerely yours, Alexeytuzhilin (talk) 06:44, 30 July 2019 (UTC)


 * While this is a noble cause, unfortunately this is not in the scope of Wikipedia; Wikipedia is not the place to be sharing your own papers.--Jasper Deng (talk) 06:51, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

I am absolutely agree with you, and let me quote myself: "Perhaps, this decision agreed with some very general and undoubtedly useful principles of Wikipedia. However, observing the consequences, I can only get one more confirmation that each wonderful law, being applied for a long time, comes one day to some contradiction and destroys the subject that it was written to support for." In my opinion, it is a pity lawyers rare learn the reasons this or that law was created. And a modern trend - to teach all people responsible for any control to follow the laws word-by-word. However, the laws are much more simple than the Nature, that is the standard reason of various conflicts. Perhaps, it is better for me to write a separate article in Wikipedia devoted to subject of this kind. :)

Alexeytuzhilin (talk) 07:16, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons
Thanks for addressing the actual issue. I have pretty much given up on hoping these threads will stay on topic. Meters (talk) 07:06, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

PD-USGov academic articles
Because you previously wrote on the topic, I think you may be interested in. Nemo 07:51, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Citation
Re this: when you define a citation, and don't use it, readers like me who have a watch installed get a fat and ugly error message that the citation is not used. Please use it, or don't define as citation. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:42, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Please fix your software so that it doesn't think standard citation styles are a bug, and please don't mess up articles because of bugs in your own locally installed software. —David Eppstein (talk) 13:33, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

whoa
I imported from wikidata - and you can check you attitude at the door. — Ched : ?    —  04:14, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * How about you find something more useful to do than making garbage spread? —David Eppstein (talk) 04:37, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Greg Cohen
Dear Prof. Eppstein, may I request that you kindly allow, at least, just a very short mention of the Hamiltonian cycle polynomial (introduced and studied in "Computing permanents over fields of characteristic 3: where and why it becomes difficult", 37th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS '96), and used by so many graph theorists afterwards) that is a very important function for studying the Hamiltonicity of graphs and directed graphs. I fully realize that no self-promotion can be tolerated in the Wikipedia, but the paper "Some facts on permanents in finite characteristics" I referred to is based on that FOCS-1996 article. Besides, some of the facts mentioned in my recent post on the Hamiltonian path page are easy to prove and should be clear for specialists if published and, hence, at least mentioning the Hamiltonian cycle polynomial as a tool for studying the graph Hamiltonicity would be able to advance research in this area. For instance, the well-known theorem that the number of Hamiltonian cycles through any fixed edge is always even in graphs where all the vertices have odd degrees, traditionally proven by an argument related to the handshaking lemma, can be proven in a much more simple way via representing a graph's number of Hamiltonian cycles through a given edge (i,j) as the Hamiltonian cycle polynomial of the matrix received from the graph's adjacency matrix via removing the i-th row and the j-th column, while the relation between the Hamiltonian cycle polynomials of a matrix and its partial inverse (published in my post on the page) can possibly lead to certain generalizations of this amazing fact. I would be grateful if you could find some time to kindly advise me on the subject. Thank you in advance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Greg Cohen (talk • contribs) 06:22, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
 * The FOCS article could be cited, briefly, by someone without a conflict of interest. It is peer-reviewed and therefore meets Wikipedia's standards for reliable sourcing, although it would be better to cite a survey paper about that work instead of the work. The arXiv preprint is not reliable as a Wikipedia source. And the material you added was far far out of balance to the article and far too technical for a general audience. It should also be made clear that the implications relating algorithms for these polynomials to RP=NP imply that the polynomials are hard to compute, not that this is likely to lead to polynomial-time algorithms. Finally, I wonder why you are adding material about algebraic/polynomial approaches to Hamiltonicity and yet failing to mention Bjorklund's "Determinant sums for undirected hamiltonicity". —David Eppstein (talk) 06:41, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I fully agree that I had to mention Bjorklund's paper first of all, as well as to fully comply with all the regulations of the Wikipedia. In any case, my post on Hamiltonicity doesn't contain a claim like RP = NP or so, it's just purposed to advance the research of Hamiltonicity towards its algebraic issues related to the Hamiltonian cycle polynomial that possesses many useful properties in characterstic 2. Actually, I've just sent a private letter to your academic e-mail address and apologize in case if you deem it any bother... —Greg Cohen —Preceding undated comment added 07:47, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

NPROF
Hi, you were kind enough to offer me some helpful advice at Articles for deletion/Peter Capak, so I wondered if you'd be willing to help me avoid making the same mistake again. I just came across Nic Rawlence while reviewing new pages, and noted that none of the sources in the article are independent. I took a look at his profile on Google scholar, and noted that the h Index and citation counts were significantly lower than Capak's, but I'm not really clear on roughly where the thresholds would lie to sail through WP:PROF in the way that he did. If you'd be willing to offer an opinion in this case, or some rough guidance on what sort of numbers you'd be looking for to establish notability, I'd be very grateful. (Note that I haven't searched for better sourcing yet, so it's possible he might meet WP:GNG or WP:NAUTHOR based on that, but I hoped to use this to help improve my understanding this particular guideline.) Thanks Girth Summit  (blether)  02:09, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * The article is really badly sourced, but the subject has a reasonable case for passing WP:PROF with several well-cited papers . I'd leave a bunch of improvement banners (primary sources and refimproveBLP for a start) rather than pushing to get it deleted outright. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:46, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the advice, I'll bear that in mind for future (I see someone already dealt with that article before I came back to look at this.) Cheers Girth Summit  (blether)  17:15, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, 's draftification looks like a reasonable choice for this one. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:28, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

RE: MDPI and Mario Capecchi
I received a warning for over-editing a Wikipedia page from you. I would just like to ask you, where Mario Capecchi is mentioned in this reference https://web.archive.org/web/20140306052944/http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/02/18/chinese-publishner-mdpi-added-to-list-of-questionable-publishers/ and why it is not okay to show Mario Capecchi's CV in which he lists himself to be an editorial board member of an MDPI journal (http://capecchi.genetics.utah.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Capecchi-CV-11.02.18.pdf)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kenji1987 (talk • contribs) 05:57, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * By the way I am fine with addition that "several Nobel Prize Laureates" were unjustly placed on MDPI's editorial boards. The thing that only concerns me is why Mario Capecchi is explicitly mentioned, while there is no single source suggesting that he was unjustly placed. On the contrary, his academic CV states otherwise. So therefore, the suggestion, just remove his name, and keep the wording "several Nobel Laureates" or if you decide to keep his name there, do also show his academic CV, that proves otherwise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kenji1987 (talk • contribs) 06:20, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

DYK for C. Doris Hellman
valereee (talk) 12:02, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

 * Thanks! —David Eppstein (talk) 18:08, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

 * You're welcome! —David Eppstein (talk) 04:49, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Citation style.
Thanks for the feedback! First, WP:CITEVAR states the following about styles: " … avoid: switching between major citation styles, e.g. parenthetical and tags, or replacing the preferred style of one academic discipline with another's". Of course there is this … statement: " … avoid: adding citation templates to an article that already uses a consistent system without templates, or removing citation templates from an article that uses them consistently". (It does not say anything about the inconsistent use of templates.) I did not change the "style". I did implement a consistent "method" {there were three methods used), Citation Style 1 templates. I admit this is an extrapolation of the following: " … standard practice: imposing one style on an article with inconsistent citation styles." Also, citation does not support all the parameters of cite letter and Reuleaux triangle is now listed as Category:Pages with citations using unsupported parameters, etc. which are Category:CS1 errors. Finally, I have read both captions carefully and I believe they say the same thing and both are flawed. English (British or American) is not my forte. User-duck (talk) 18:51, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * No, you changed the style. The article was primarily written using Citation Style 2. You wrote your citations in Citation Style 1. That is a change of style. As for reading both captions carefully, again you are wrong. The original caption implied only that the depicted foam has a Reuleaux triangle at its center. Your changed wording implied that this is a general property of foams. Precise wording is important in mathematics and if you don't understand this, you shouldn't be changing it. If you don't understand it even after it has been explicitly pointed out to you, then you especially shouldn't be changing it. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

DYK for Pandrosion
valereee (talk) 12:01, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Advice on topic ban
Hello, do you perhaps have advice to share on this matter? Thanks, Nemo 16:15, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Vojtěch Jarník
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Vojtěch Jarník you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Bryanrutherford0 -- Bryanrutherford0 (talk) 19:00, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Vojt?ch Jarník
The article Vojt?ch Jarník you nominated as a good article has failed ; see Talk:Vojt?ch Jarník for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Bryanrutherford0 -- Bryanrutherford0 (talk) 19:01, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

A wee note
Thank you for this anecdote, it made the entire thread worth it.-- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 23:43, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * You're welcome! Glad something positive came out of that... —David Eppstein (talk) 00:44, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Ruth Vanita
I used the COI tag because of this edit. Ruth_vanita has only made edits which promote Ruth Vanita on Wikipedia. Dharmalion76 (talk) 01:19, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Ok, but it would have been easier merely to revert. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:46, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Adolf Sturmthal

 * You're welcome! —David Eppstein (talk) 15:46, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

October Events from Women in Red
--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:35, 23 September 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Featured picture candidates/1966 flood of the Arno
Could you have a look at the new Alt? Cheers. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 6.9% of all FPs 06:52, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Undoing Changes
Hi David, you undid my changes in the page Degeneracy (graph theory). I added a link to the page interdependent networks but you wrote "Undid revision 916360623 by YAEL GROSSNASS (talk) Not mentioned in linked article, no obvious reason for link" The thing is that it is mentioned in the article in the paragraph "kCore percolation". i ask the you put the link back. thanx, Yael — Preceding unsigned comment added by YAEL GROSSNASS (talk • contribs) 13:33, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

A new spiky

 * Thanks! —David Eppstein (talk) 04:08, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

DYK for J. J. Stiffler
— Maile (talk) 00:01, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Newton Polytope
Hi. Can you take a look at this new article. It looks okay to me, but you have much more proficiency in math related subjects. Thanks. Onel 5969  TT me 11:47, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Eight circles theorem
5 Sources: Crux, Forum geometricorum, Arxvi, international journal of geometry, International Journal of Computer Discovered Mathematics

https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90%E1%BB%8Bnh_l%C3%BD_t%C3%A1m_%C4%91%C6%B0%E1%BB%9Dng_tr%C3%B2n 14.248.84.234 (talk) 02:17, 30 September 2019 (UTC)