User talk:David Eppstein/2019d

Women in Red's stub contest is starting now
As you have participated keenly in former contests, David, allow me to remind you that our three-month stub contest is starting now and will continue until the end of the year. Each month (October, November and December) recognition will be given to the winners of two different sections: one for new stubs, the other for enhancing existing stubs to start class and beyond. The contest is open to all registered members of Women in Red. Join in now and help us improve women's biographies on Wikipedia. Lot's of opportunities to create or improve biographies of women mathematicians and/or scientists.--Ipigott (talk) 19:53, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

New message from Yael
Hi David, you undid my changes in the page Degeneracy (graph theory). I added a link to the page interdependent networks (here is a link to the edit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Degeneracy_%28graph_theory%29&type=revision&diff=918508128&oldid=918491276) but you wrote "Undid revision 916360623 by YAEL GROSSNASS 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
 * WP:SEEALSO explicitly says not to add "see also" links for topics already discussed in the main text of an article. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:53, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Copyright policy
David, given recent bot editing, do you think that Wikipedia's copyright policy should state explicitly that linking to unauthorised copies of copyrighted works is forbidden? I have no skill in such matters, but perhaps you might wish to propose it. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:23, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

 * Thanks! —David Eppstein (talk) 23:04, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Boyer–Moore majority vote algorithm
David, you have reverted my change for Boyer–Moore majority vote algorithm page with comment that in provided sequence ([1,0,2,1]) there is no majority element. I think that 1 is majority element (counts of 1 eq 2, 0 => 1, 2 => 1). Could you please explain why it is not majority element from your point of view? Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stan Putrya (talk • contribs)
 * Majority means that its number of occurrences is more than half the total, as the article already clearly stated before your change. In this example, the number of occurrences of 1 is 2, and half the total number of occurences is also 2. It is not true that 2 is more than 2. For a list of four items, one of them would have to be present for three out of the four items to be a majority element. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:19, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot for explanation. I was confused with discussion about majority algorithms. Now I reread original doc and I see that my understanding was incorrect. Thanks a lot for fix it! —Stan Putrya (talk) 21:32, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Šarūnas Raudys
Do you think that Šarūnas Raudys's h-index of 23 is high enough to meet WP:PROF? I would say probably not but it seems borderline and of course I don't know nearly as much about (notability in) the field of computer science as you do. IntoThinAir (talk) 13:18, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I think he passes WP:PROF, but not so much because of the h-index (that value could mean a lot of things) but because the higher end of his citation counts is quite high (one paper with over 1000 cites and five others with over 100). —David Eppstein (talk) 16:02, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Maximum subarray problem: citation style
Hi David Eppstein!

I recently tried to improve the article Maximum subarray problem, hoping this will end the "max(0,...)" vs. "max(x,...)" debates edits, and also satisfy the "more footnotes" request.

However, I definitely messed up the citation style mix even more, and I intend to fix that in the near future. Since you were involved in the article right from the beginning and are its main contributor, I feel I should follow your citation style preferences. I guess, they are, aren't they? I'm not yet too familiar with this style.

If you could provide me a representative article using your preferred style, I'd try to adapt Maximum subarray problem to it. I'd like to keep the page-reference information in some form (needn't be, of course); would that be ok?

Best regards - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 14:11, 11 October 2019 (UTC)


 * ✅ unified to citation / sfn / harvtxt; hope it is ok. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 16:25, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Looks ok to me; thanks! —David Eppstein (talk) 19:03, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Number Theory
It was a surprise to me that someone nominated the page at this point. It is clear that there were some minor issues that absolutely had to be addressed first (the section that needs expansion, the errors in citations) and some broader issues that needed more work (sources for the second half of the article -- though that's a bit of a tough issue, since many of the statements are second nature to a professional, and hence hard to source). Still, it is very helpful to have feedback.

Two issues: What do you mean precisely by "one specific and contentious interpretation of the meaning of the tablet"? The :tablet does contain a list of what is conventionally called Pythagorean triples, and they are labelled as such. As :for applications, the field is indeed wide open, but we mention at least two opposing views. We could also include a :more recent response to Robson - is that what you imply is missing? As for why "half of the subfields are grouped into "Main subdivisions" and half into "Recent approaches and :subfields"" - it is more or less clear that some subfields are much newer and well defined than others (the name :"additive combinatorics" is less than 20 years old, though the field has been around since the 1960s, or in some :sense for longer). Does the division seems too arbitrary or unnecessary? If so, we can talk about removing it, but I :am sure I am not the only one who wonders where exactly the problem lies. Also: wouldn't nominating the article for a B-class review be a logical first step, once the issues above are addressed? Garald (talk) 11:15, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
 * What is the context here? Also, there is no such thing as nominating an article for B-class review. B-class is something that can be determined by a single editor or (if disputed) consensus of editors on the article talk page; it has no formal nomination process. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:16, 14 October 2019 (UTC)


 * The context is that someone (who was not a regular editor) nominated the Number Theory page for "Good article" status a few months ago. You kindly left some remarks in the talk page as to why it counted as a quick fail.
 * I would be glad to know what you meant by your remark on that Plimpton tablet. Do you mean we should simply leave most of the discussion of what it is and what it is not to the page on the tablet? I would also like an answer to my other questions.


 * Do you mean we should simply tag the page as B-class? Is there any obvious way in which the page fails to fulfill the criteria for B-class right now? Are the criteria for "good article" in some sense intermediate between those for B-class and A-class? Garald (talk) 13:43, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

About De Bruijn sequence...
Hello, You write about Euler sequence but the sequence continues on the next line and it has another set of 000 so it total there are 3 of them. Kigelim (talk) 02:38, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * In the usual convention I've seen for describing a path or cycle, something like "x, y, z, w" would have three edges, xy, yz, and zw. If you want a fourth edge to make it into a cycle, you should repeat the starting vertex, "x, y, z, w, x" so that you end back where you started with the four edges xy, yz, zw, and wx. Now in the example we're talking about, in De Bruijn sequence, we want the edge that loops from 000 to itself to be covered. So we need two consecutive 000's somewhere in the sequence. Having a 000 at the start and another copy of 000 at the end of the sequence of vertices doesn't count; it needs to be in the middle somewhere. You removed that repetition in the middle, making it wrong. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:20, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Slo-mo EWing IP
Special:Contributions/101.178.163.219 Warned prior. Please take action as you see fit. EEng 07:53, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Humbly requesting you take another look at this. EEng 07:49, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Adding Special:Contributions/101.178.163.208 and Special:Contributions/101.178.163.19 for comparison. There is also Special:Contributions/101.178.163.215. Regards! --T*U (talk) 07:55, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Ok, fine, blocked. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:56, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

DYK for Dona Strauss
Gatoclass (talk) 00:02, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Dona Strauss
Regarding this, it's just a script. If you have issues then please raise with. Also please restore the DMY tag. GiantSnowman 17:20, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't care whether it's a script, it's inappropriately changing an acceptable date format to a different date format. Also, no, I will not restore the tag, because it will have the same effect — the citation templates use that tag to convert date formats. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:22, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * It's well established through general consensus that South African articles use dmy dates and Commonwealth English. The tagging therefore is entirely appropriate. You don't own the article, so you should allow the tagging, which also has general consensus. If you are unhappy that the use dmy dates tag automatically converts all dates within citation templates, you should take up the issue at I'm not exactly sure where, but you could try Template talk:citation, or with User:Trappist the monk --  Ohc  ¡digame! 19:23, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The article does use dmy dates. For the dates of publications and dates in running text. It is also well-established in MOS:DATEUNIFY that using numeric dates for reference accessdates is one of the acceptable formats, and through MOS:DATEVAR that you should not change article date formats that already meet the MOS. GiantSnowman's attempts to change the date format are in violation of the MOS, and your support of GiantSnowman does you no credit. There are no national-tie based arguments that apply in this case, because the article already uses the dmy format that national ties would suggest. At this point the process is clear: work on the article talk page to establish a consensus for making the change, or don't change it. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:10, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm not changing the date format. There are two formats - DMY and MDY. As you say the article uses DMY and so I tagged it accordingly and appropriately. GiantSnowman 20:50, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * False and false. There are at least four formats allowed by MOS: pure DMY, DMY with numeric accessdates, pure MDY, and MDY with numeric accessdates. You changed one to another. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:52, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * As the primary architect of the presentation (not the content – I stayed out of that) of MOS:DATEFORMAT and its subsections such as MOS:DATEUNIFY – in other words, as someone intimately familiar with its provisions – I will say that David Eppstein is absolutely correct about the variety of formats. EEng 22:40, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * You're really that precious about dates? JHC. GiantSnowman 08:08, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Henry Crapo (mathematician)
I wrote an article on Henry Crapo. It's my first time moving an article directly to mainspace, and I messed up and first moved the talk page to an article. Perhaps you'd be willing to look and make sure that I cleaned up correctly? (Reaching out partly because I think the article will be of some interest for you.) Thanks so much! Russ Woodroofe (talk) 03:54, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, I had seen Oxley's blog post and wondered whether maybe we should have an article on him. I'm sure there are some small cleanups still to be made but it looks mostly ok to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:57, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Style question regarding Gleason's theorem
I've been intermittently working on Gleason's theorem, which I originally found in a state that I could barely understand even knowing what it was supposed to be about, and now I'm wondering: is the block-quoted statement in the lede too technical for that early in the article? That part is mostly a leftover from years ago, which I smoothed out a bit. On this topic, I think the "write one level down" means pitching to a physics or mathematics undergraduate; the amount of popularized writing on this topic is basically nil. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 18:47, 26 October 2019 (UTC)
 * There's a short gloss of this in Andrew M. Gleason that I worked on as part of bringing Gleason's article up to Good Article standard, but as I recall for that I had to ask a local student working in quantum computing to check my work, because I don't understand this subject much myself. Anyway, the quoted paragraph does indeed look unnecessarily technical, but I'm not sure how to make it less so. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:57, 26 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Feedback from someone who isn't deep into quantum information yet who doesn't run in terror from an equation is actually really helpful! I may try to adapt the gloss in Andrew M. Gleason for the lede and replace the overly technical paragraph, since the next section explains the theorem statement in a more decompressed way. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 22:14, 26 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I have finally gotten around to doing this. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 14:31, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Your links to CiteSeerX
Hello, I hope you can help me understand more about the copyright practices you recently asked other users to adopt. I noticed that a few articles created by you link CiteSeerX via Google Scholar, for instance Heidi K. Thornquist links via. Can you elaborate on what you see as the copyright implications of such links? Thanks, Nemo 13:31, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I have gone over this over and over with you, so it is hard to see this as a good faith question rather than as an attempt at a gotcha. But in case you still somehow don't understand:
 * Google scholar does not make copies of publications. It merely collects links to them, some of which might be problematic. They have their own policies on which links to collect, which are different from Wikipedia's policies on which links to collect. In contrast, CiteSeerX is more like archive.org Sci-Hub: it actively makes copies of stuff and keeps it around for other people to use. Among these, archive.org seems to be very careful about copyrights; I have never seen a problematic link there. Sci-hub is explicitly anti-copyright and I think all links there are likely problematic. CiteSeerX is somewhere in between: most links are good, because most copies of scientific papers that can be found online directly are good, but they aren't very careful and also incorporate links that don't meet our standards.
 * Our standards for external links are to only allow links to copies of copyrighted material that are made available by the author or publisher. CiteSeerX provides provenance for its copies that show whether this is true for each copy. When we link to CiteSeerX, we need to check manually whether this is true, and avoid making the link otherwise.
 * In the case you mention, the link goes to Google Scholar (so, not someone who makes copies of papers and re-serves them, but merely a collector of links), but more specifically it goes to a curated page of Google Scholar entries made by the author of the publications, Thornquist herself. So it's doubly unproblematic, first because it's not a source of files and second because it has the approval of the author.
 * —David Eppstein (talk) 16:47, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Computational linguists
Thanks for reverting my edit on Bonnie Dorr. If we follow the path you suggest, then we would also need to delete Category:Computational linguistics researchers from Eduard Hovy, Aravind Joshi, Ronald Kaplan, Lauri Karttunen and Jun'ichi Tsujii. I'm always a bit confused about the hierarchical categories because if you look specifically, for instance, for computational linguists, you are likely to land on the names under Category:Computational linguistics researchers. You don't necessarily see or bother about Category:Fellows of the Association for Computational Linguistics. But I suppose we should be consistent - which means deleting the names above too. Right? I am surprised, btw, that many other notable participants are not included in the category, perhaps also for hierarchical reasons, e.g. Yorick Wilks, Makoto Nagao.--Ipigott (talk) 17:42, 28 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I think you're right. The Fellows category doesn't seem to fall under any of the usual reasons for making categories non-diffusing. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:05, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Anne C. Morel
Hello! Your submission of Anne C. Morel at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 00:13, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Aaron Hawkins
Regarding your infobox edit: Thanks! Sorry for the basic questions. It's fun to see the article shaping up! Russ Woodroofe (talk) 18:34, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
 * On nationality, I agree that it's unsourced so far. But I notice that his Amazon author profile  lists him as born in New Mexico.  Do you think that would suffice?  (Googling "Aaron Hawkins" "New Mexico" gives some other sources, though I didn't see anything so concrete.)  Otherwise, should "American" also be removed from the article lede?
 * Comment that I'd put the infobox header to match the article title, and used the birth name for the fuller form of his name. But since he publishes mainly as Aaron R. Hawkins, perhaps the latter should be the article title.  Anyway, I certainly won't mess with it until clarity on page moves comes down.  Do I have the style right here?
 * To answer my own question, he has a separate homepage as an author.   (For his technical book, and also a children's book.)  That is probably enough to leave him as American.  Will add it back!  Russ Woodroofe (talk) 18:40, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, if we have a source that lists his birthplace, I think we can use it despite it being more-or-less self-sourced. If it's going back into the infobox it should also be stated in the article text. It should not generally be the case that an infobox provides information that does not come from the main article text. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:51, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't see that I have ever touched this article or the disambiguation page. If I had, the incoming links would have been fixed. bd2412  T 16:29, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Sorry, my mistake, it was who failed to fix the incoming links. I'm not sure which history I was looking at to think it was you, but obviously it wasn't. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:44, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Which incoming links? I'm sure I resolved the incoming links for Aaron Hawkins which were leading to the dab instead of Aaron Hawkins (engineer). I assumed that would fix the incoming links to Aaron Hawkins (engineer), but if I missed some please point them out to me. comrade waddie96 ★ (talk) 18:02, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
 * You missed the one in the header of this talk page section, and two on Template:Did you know nominations/Aaron Hawkins, at least. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:20, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Recent edits
There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. --Rupert Loup (talk) 00:43, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Whee! It's Australian throw-toy funtime. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:20, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

List of amateur mathematicians
Are you going to remove Pierre de Fermat from List of amateur mathematicians? --Toploftical (talk) 00:19, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I wasn't planning to. Fermat was, professionally, a lawyer, so he fits the definition of someone who worked outside any mathematical field but made contributions to mathematics on his own time. I probably wouldn't argue strongly if someone else removed him. But your argument is about Martin Gardner. Martin Gardner was, professionally, an author of works aimed at amateur mathematicians. That is, he was a type of professional mathematician, not an amateur. The fact that his audience was largely amateur is irrelevant. Returning to Fermat, one could argue that certain types of lawyers (I'm not sure Fermat was one) largely have criminals as their clientele. But that doesn't make those lawyers themselves criminals. It's the same with Gardner and amateurs. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:26, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Collatz conjecture
One user answered at https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2694/what-is-the-importance-of-the-collatz-conjecture and got 288 votes. Since many people seem to agree on its connections to number theory, wouldn't that be sufficient, at least for the prime factorization claim? There are obviously no absolute connections until a proof of the conjecture arrives. 37KZ (talk) 21:37, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
 * No. See WP:RS. Reddit threads are definitely not reliable sources of anything, and neither are stackexchange posts. And "connections to number theory" is a very different thing than what you wrote on the Collatz conjecture article about connections to prime factorization or the Riemann hypothesis, two very specific pieces of number theory. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:38, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Whatever. The StackExchange thread resulted in an accepted answer connecting the conjecture to how prime factorization of numbers changes with addition that got 288 votes. That was my point. 37KZ (talk) 21:57, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
 * So that doesn't change anything then? 37KZ (talk) 22:07, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
 * No. We don't measure reliability by number of votes on an amateur/student online forum. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:23, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Easy calculations removed from the golden rhombus article
Hi,

you've removed twice my little complements of material from the golden rhombus Wikipedia english article, because they were unsourced: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Golden_rhombus&action=history

But these little complements of material are just my "own" easy calculations, which anyone having passed scientific A levels can easily check, all the more so that i write several calculation steps...!

§:-P §:'(

2A01:CB00:8697:8100:E19D:41A2:70F9:586D (talk) 17:02, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
 * They are original research and they need published sources to be included. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:12, 12 November 2019 (UTC)


 * The following equalities already are in this article, with no explanation at all:
 * 2arctan(1/φ) = arctan2 ;
 * 2arctanφ = arctan1 + arctan3 ;
 * Area [of the golden rhombus with diagonal lengths p=φ and q=1] = 1/φ ;
 * i just explained them a bit, with formulas publicly known for centuries and millenniums...!
 * And my last complement was just the missing application of the expressions of the diagonal lengths,
 * already calculated in this article, in the case of the golden rhombus with edge length e=1 :
 * p = 2(1 + √5)/(√(10 + 2√5)), and:
 * q = 4/√(10 + 2√5) ,
 * to calculate the area of the golden rhombus in this case, too...
 * This is not advanced research...!
 * This is not advanced research...!


 * 2A01:CB00:8697:8100:F513:49AE:D751:F3D (talk) 19:41, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
 * The poor state of sourcing of the existing article is not a good reason to expand its unsourced material. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:31, 13 November 2019 (UTC)


 * And now, people can check many calculations with exact expression calculators and litteral calculators...!
 * 2A01:CB00:8697:8100:389D:9DB:7948:1098 (talk) 20:48, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
 * 2A01:CB00:8697:8100:389D:9DB:7948:1098 (talk) 20:48, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
 * 2A01:CB00:8697:8100:389D:9DB:7948:1098 (talk) 20:48, 15 November 2019 (UTC)


 * (You dislike boldface to distinguish paragraph titles, and) you dislike blank lines to separate paragraphs... So, you removed ALL i had added, AGAIN...!?!
 * 2A01:CB00:8697:8100:4805:7B84:DADC:7797 (talk) 15:33, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
 * 2A01:CB00:8697:8100:4805:7B84:DADC:7797 (talk) 15:33, 19 November 2019 (UTC)


 * The helpful triviality you removed [ 2arctan(1/φ) = arctan(1/φ) + arctan(1/φ) ] is not so obvious to many people (outside university)...
 * 2A01:CB00:8697:8100:3531:F012:5113:D6E5 (talk) 21:16, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
 * 2A01:CB00:8697:8100:3531:F012:5113:D6E5 (talk) 21:16, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

I've simplified the area paragraph by hiding the calculation verifications in the code (i didn't know that possibility...). But i still don't know how to invoke the reference to Weisstein's general rhombus page, in an article also referencing Weisstein's golden rhombus page... €:-P RavBol (talk) 16:18, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

DYK for Anne C. Morel
Gatoclass (talk) 00:02, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Decent Contribution
Hi guy,

I appreciate the way you edited and protected the page Peder Mortensen from deletion.

I wanna extend my extreme gratitude for these contributions

Regards,

SHISHIR DUA (talk) 04:57, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
 * You're welcome! —David Eppstein (talk) 05:30, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

A survey to improve the community consultation outreach process
Hello!

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking to improve the community consultation outreach process for Foundation policies, and we are interested in why you didn't participate in a recent consultation that followed a community discussion you’ve been part of.

Please fill out this short survey to help us improve our community consultation process for the future. It should only take about three minutes.

The privacy policy for this survey is here. This survey is a one-off request from us related to this unique topic.

Thank you for your participation, Kbrown (WMF) 10:44, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Rabin-Karp algorithm
I see you're rewriting the article cited. Howdy-doody. You didn't like my rewrite, so you, dear Sir, have inherited the job. And I'm glad to have you do it. Thanks, and keep on it! Sbalfour (talk) 21:50, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Contribution deleted again
You deleted my contribution for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_root_of_2 because it was not "supported by reliable sources". Then I put it back providing a reference to a standard text book of Number Theory. But the contribution was deleted again because "still unsourced". Would you be so kind to explain what is wrong here? Jack Rusell (talk) 23:46, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I missed that a source was added. It is still horribly malformatted. Please fix your addition to use proper &lt;math&gt; ... &lt;/math&gt; formatting. Also, I think that even after my other removals, five proofs is too many. Does each proof have some unique historic or pedagogical value that it brings to the article, or is it just another way of going through the motions of verifying that the result is true? If it doesn't inform the readers, it shouldn't be there. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:58, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Regarding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_root_of_2.

Section "Proof by infinite descent" should be deleted for the reason I gave on the talk page. Section "Constructive proof" needs a thorough revision: Obviously it is aimed to prove the statement by some kind of intuitionistic logic, but I did not understand how the truth of the statement follows from the presented calculations. I doubt that anyone else does, unless familiar with intuitionistic logic. Sections "Geometric proof" and "Proof by Diophantine equations" use completely different mathematical approaches (also different to "Proof by induction") which are interesting on their own and should be kept. Jack Rusell (talk) 13:17, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

yuval peres reverts
Please do not revert my edits. I was extremely careful and followed all of the rules for self published sources. Which of them do you think my edits failed on. The statements you reverted to clearly do not follow wikipedia guidelines. You reverted to a statement that says Yuval was "a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington." This statement is totally unsourced. How do we know that Yuval used to work as a principal researcher but no longer does? No source is given. The way we know this is that his web page says that he used to work there and now no longer says that. I don't see any way to justify the past tense without seeing that his website no longer lists employment at MSR. If we are allowed to conclude this from his website then we can just as easily conclude that he was the manager of the theory group and no longer is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.134.98.50 (talk • contribs)
 * See WP:SYN and WP:BLP. You appear to be inferring events from information that does not describe the events, but merely describes the states before and after the events (he was listed by a conference and now is not, so he must have been disinvited; his web page listed his job title and now does not, so he must have lost his job). That sort of inference is not allowed on Wikipedia, especially not on a biography of someone living, and even more not on one that is already controversial. And your placement of the supposed change of employment in the section on sexual harassment appears designed to lead readers to infer a causal relationship between the two, another violation of WP:SYN. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:33, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Some of the edits make sense. But I complained about the removal of the statement that Yuval used to be the manager of the theory group at MSR. I did this in accordance with the policy on self published sources (I hardly consider claiming a title on a company page to be a self published source.) And this was replaced by an unreferenced claim. Being a manager of a group at Microsoft research (even for a few years) is clearly relevant information and should be included in this article. The only thing that will be gained by eliminating my "original research" is making the article read very poorly. I added more references to show that his position as theory group manager and affiliation with the University of Washington ended. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Uwhoff (talk • contribs)

Talk:Alessandro Strumia
I've been conversing with a rather single-purpose editor at Talk:Alessandro Strumia who has gotten a bit confrontational, and I wouldn't mind a third opinion on whether I'm going about it in the right way. The article topic is, one might say, controversial after all. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 14:22, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Edit reversed "british flag theorem similar to the Orthodiagonal quadrilateral formula"
Hi David I'm coming because of this reversed edit (sorry for the bad formatting this might cause, I should learn more wikipedia, but I try to "be bold" and add stuff to articles that I think it's helpful for others). Thank you also for following my Edit Summary and reading that, and you confirming that "algebraically they are the same but geometrically they look quite different". I don't want to be a annoyance, so I won't revert your edit at all, however I urge you to see if indeed they look quite different. Each rectangle has 2 diagonals, identical in lenght. The way I see both figures, is that the british flag and the Orthodiagonal quadrilateral are using the opposite set of 4 diagonals. I thought this was very related and very close relationship to not be mentioned. Another bad stuff I did: I think my edit probably messed up that paragraph, maybe it wasn't inserted with care to not ruin the consistency of the sentences, also putting at the beggining of the paragraph has high risk of changing the paragraph intentions. So, If you want to provide me feedback you are welcome, I won't annoy more about this, I'm new and probably I should have informed this in another channel, I also apologize for that. Eventually I'll try to read how Wikipedia edition works. Santropedro (talk) 13:58, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

New glasses
Sorry about adding Nancy Texeira to the academics sort. I really have no idea how that happened! I must need new glasses.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 23:14, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
 * No problem; it was easily fixed. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:44, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Elizabeth Wilmer


A tag has been placed on Elizabeth Wilmer requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a person, a group of people, an individual animal, an organization (band, club, company, etc.), web content, or an organized event that does not credibly indicate how or why the subject is important or significant: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such articles may be deleted at any time. Please read more about what is generally accepted as notable.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the. Mhym (talk) 04:52, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Grumble grumble shoot-first-look-at-the-relevant-notability-guidelines-second page reviewers grumble grumble this is how Donna Strickland was shut out of having an article until she got a Nobel and the people trying to keep women out had no choice grumble grumble page creators not allowed to remove even the most inane of speedy tags grumble grumble A7 is a very low bar and even the most struggling academics usually pass it; she walks over it without even breaking stride. If you care about my opinion of you you'll undo this before another shoot-first-look-second admin acts on the tag without checking whether it was even appropriate. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:58, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree and removed the speedy. I added a couple of sources but am not highly skilled in the sort of referencing in use on that page, so that might need a check.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 06:39, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks! —David Eppstein (talk) 06:41, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I did it because I laughed when I read your reply. And also because you are right.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 06:42, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Prime number
If there are no new discoveries (since 2018) it can be stated "as of November 2019"!? AndrejJ (talk) 08:35, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Expanded details about discoveries on largest primes do not belong in the lead of the article. The lead is supposed to provide a concise summary of the article, the prime number article is quite long, and summarizing it all does not leave room for details. And if there are no new sources documenting changes to our knowledge or even documenting that there has been no change, why do you want to change what we say? We need sources and we don't have them. The place for updating what is known and adding more details (but only if there are more details to be added, with sources) is the "Special-purpose algorithms and the largest known prime" section of the article. If that section changes in a substantive way, the lead can be changed to match. Otherwise leave the lead alone because you are making it out of synch with what it is supposed to be summarizing. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:37, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

X
If you look at the contributions and block log of the IP who made this edit you will find it familiar. --JBL (talk) 18:09, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I thought that looked vaguely familiar... —David Eppstein (talk) 19:08, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

December events with WIR
--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:42, 25 November 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging

DYK for Aaron Hawkins (engineer)
--valereee (talk) 00:03, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

LGM-30 Minuteman and Template:Unreliable source?
Greetings! In LGM-30 Minuteman, you had added Template:Unreliable source? to the citations that I had discovered were self-published by vanity publishers.

I was digging around this morning, and discovered Template:Self-published source and added it to the self-published citations,  . I did not remove the Template:Unreliable source? you had added.

When you can, please review the changes I made in Special:Diff/928491500. If you concur, great! If not, then use your discretion and make the appropriate changes. Thanks! KD5TVI (talk) 16:27, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Again contribution deleted again
I just saw that you removed my contribution from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_root_of_2 again because "two weeks with no attempt to fix the broken math formatting and no attempt to justify why it differs from the other proof". Regarding the "the broken math formatting" I prefered not vaste my time on beautifying the math for meeting your esthetic standards until I am sure that you will not push the remove button again. The question why my proof differs from the other proof is hard to answer. But I can state what is different in both proofs and why the difference matters. I did this already two weeks ago on the talk page of the article (in response to your question and a comment made by "XOR'easter" as well), so I made an attempt (at least). Jack Rusell (talk) 23:30, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

DYK for Chikako Mese
Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:02, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

DYK for William Chapple (surveyor)
Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:02, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Template:Did you know nominations/Carissa Yip
Please see note on your DYK review. Yoninah (talk) 20:56, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

DYK for Hoffman's packing puzzle
Gatoclass (talk) 01:02, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Just had a look at this as a result of the DYK; what an interesting article! Thank you very much for creating it. Yunshui <sup style="font-size:90%">雲 <sub style="font-size:90%">水 08:11, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * You're welcome! You should find a physical copy of the puzzle (if you like your puzzles difficult). It's one of my favorites. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:12, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * My long-retired dad needs a new woodworking project to occupy himself... might point him to the article, it's the sort of thing he'd enjoy. Yunshui <sup style="font-size:90%">雲 <sub style="font-size:90%">水 08:28, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * That's how I got mine. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:33, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Message on Irvine
Hello Eppstein! I would just like to let you know that Europeans colonized America even before Columbus when Vikings settled in North America in what is now known as Canada. They referred to the locals as "skraelings." So European Americans do indeed exist and they are represented as it is politically correct. Thank you very much for your understanding. I hope that I can use correct terminology here on this article (Irvine) if that is ok. If not, please state why in my talk page message 68.167.155.102 (talk) 00:52, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Please do not make up terminology here. See WP:NEO and WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:01, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Please do not plot white supremacism against minorities. See African Americans and European Americans
 * Your assumptions of bad faith are likely to get you blocked. Also, your focus on African vs European in Irvine specifically is very odd. It's the main racial dichotomy for a lot of other parts of the US but not for Irvine. Irvine is quite racially diverse, but its ethnic minorities are primarily of East Asian or Persian descent (I've never been sure whether the Persians count as Asian or European — perhaps this should be taken as a sign that these categorizations are not very meaningful). And UCI has many Latin-American students. But African-Americans are a tiny fraction of Irvine's population and the ones who live here are indistinguishable socially and economically from everyone else. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:17, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Kasia Rejzner
Hi Can you please give me an opionion on whether this lady Kasia Rejzner is notable. GS. Thanks.  scope_creep Talk  08:38, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Borderline. Her Google Scholar citation counts are not bad for pure mathematics (which is a very low citation field) but it's hard to get excited about them. There are two independent sources about her personally (unlike a lot of academics), the Women in Mathematics throughout Europe and People of Pi footnotes, but unless there is more content elsewhere the first of the two doesn't have a lot of detail. And she's been listed for quite a while among the pages for which creation has been suggested at WikiProject Women in Red/Mathematics but of course that's not a reason by itself for notability. I wouldn't have created the article myself without a more clear-cut case for notability. And the editor who moved the article from draft space to article space, TakuyaMurata, has been moving a lot of dubious drafts to articles after previously getting in repeated trouble at WP:ANI for incubating too many dubious drafts without actually taking the effort to bring them up to article quality. I think my comment on the initial draft creation of 2018, "Starting as draft, some good press but not yet sufficiently convincing of academic notability for me", still stands. If I thought the case was clearer I would have just created as an article rather than as draft. My preferred outcome would be that this be returned to draft space rather than trying to get it deleted outright, which could end up kicking up drama (because deletion of borderline-notable women) without leading to any better result. And if no additional improvement happens in six months as a draft, it can be deleted altogether, as happens with drafts. It's that six-month deletion that TakuyaMurata is trying to evade by turning maybe-notable drafts into articles. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:49, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Update: I have re-draftified this. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:31, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I have just sent another article of his, or rather promoted, Draft:Confucianism in Japan to draft, as it's out of tense and needs a line by line copyedit. In parts its unreadable   scope_creep Talk  20:47, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

 * Thanks! —David Eppstein (talk) 21:03, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Advice to solve an edit war
Hello Sir, you posted a message on my talk page to tell me that I was engaged in an edit war against Deacon Vorbis. Could you please give me some advice to resolve the conflict in which I am involved ? The page concerned is the following one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_problem. I added a paragraph about Euler's second proof and it was deleted by Deacon Vorbis : https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Basel_problem&oldid=931845920. Deacon Vorbis did not answer to my last message on the talk page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Basel_problem for two weeks. He said that the proof that I added was not directly due to Euler but he did not mention any reference to prove this statement. I did not say on the article that the proof was directly due to Euler. I on the page of the article I said that Euler published it and I mentioned two references that prove this statement. Deacon Vorbis also said that the proof that I wrote was not Euler's proof. If one reads correctly the references that I mention they will notice easily that the proof that I wrote is due to Euler. Finally Deacon Vorbis said there were lots of formating issues. I can't fix them since I am not sure what issues he was talking about. I wish he helped me to fix them instead of deleting my paragraph. I am not talking directly to Deacon Vorbis since he refuses to discuss with me about those details on the talk page. Thank you in advance for your help. Best regards, Contribute.Math (talk) 23:50, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
 * The standard advice here (see WP:BRD) is to discuss it on the article talk page, and work there towards a consensus of other editors, rather than continuing to try to get your way by editing the article into your preferred form. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:48, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank your for you answer. 2A01:E34:EC06:49C0:C84F:7CF9:81DF:BCDD (talk) 09:17, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

197.251.178.126
user:197.251.178.126 just made a threat of violence against me on her talkpage. CLCStudent (talk) 23:09, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Blocked for a week (the short duration is because this could easily be a shared IP address for multiple unrelated people). Please let me know if the problem recurs. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:13, 24 December 2019 (UTC)


 * She is now abusing her talkpage and coming back as user:41.66.227.140. CLCStudent (talk) 23:15, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Already blocked by . —David Eppstein (talk) 23:16, 24 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Could you revoke user:197.251.178.126's talkpage acess? CLCStudent (talk) 23:17, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Done for both. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:18, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Good luck
<div style="border-style:solid; border-color:blue; background-color:#fff; border-width:2px; text-align:left; padding:8px; " class="plainlinks"> 豊かな十年へようこそ/WELCOME TO THE D20s Miraclepine wishes you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and a prosperous decade of change and fortune. このミラPはDavid Eppsteinたちのメリークリスマスも新年も変革と幸運の豊かな十年をおめでとうございます！ フレフレ、みんなの未来！/GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR FUTURE! ミラP 04:14, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Unable to understand the reason of an added section being removed from Graph Coloring
Dear Dr. Eppstein,

I fail to understand the ground behind not considering the following section in the Graph Coloring wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_coloring).

I received your note. I was not really into an edit-war. It's just that after consuming comments like "heavily promotional" or "overlong description", I had to review the section and make necessary language modifications to make the text aligned with the rest of the page. So it was a language edit while the content was virtually the same. The added new section takes the opportunity to discuss 'sequential coloring' through the 'trailing path' algorithm. The approach is novel, special and unmistakably leads to a significant advancement in the subject. It should, therefore, be part of a 'first reading' article about graph coloring.

I would further like to add that the 'trailing path' algorithm was published in Soft Computing (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00500-019-04278-8), a decades-long, well-praised journal in the field (current IF: 2.78), covered by most major available citation indexes. So, I am not really sure nor am I convinced about the rational basis of editorial comments like "underwhelming heuristic published in a bad journal"! Rather, it would be of much help to have more constructive elaborative and precise criticism giving a scope to identify and rectify flaws (if applicable).

-

Sequential coloring: The trailing path algorithm

There have been many attempts to solve the Graph coloring Problem through a couple of centuries now (from Francis Guthrie, 1852) wherein many combinatorial optimization algorithms have been invoked. However, no algorithm was found to procure an exact solution of the chromatic number comprehensively for any and all graphs within the polynomial (P) time domain. Recently a novel heuristic, namely the ‘trailing path’ [30] could reset this state of the art. The 'trailing path' algorithm has shown to return an approximate solution of the chromatic number within P time with a better accuracy than existing algorithms, working unanimously irrespective of the graph-size and topology, working particularly well for the most difficult k-regular graphs (k>2). In its design, ‘trailing path’ effectively turns out to be a subtle combination of the search patterns of two existing heuristics (DSATUR [31] and largest first (LF) [32]) with contrasting approaches; and operates along a trailing path of consecutively connected nodes. LF colors nodes in the descending order of their degrees while DSATUR opts to color nodes in the descending order of their color saturation (i.e., the number of colors that can NOT be used to color a node - as has been found at a certain step of coloring). It naturally follows that both approaches effectively implement discontinuous coloring schemes (i.e., there is no guarantee that two nodes colored one after the other would remain connected in the original graph). The 'trailing path' approach meticulously amalgamates the two aforementioned search patterns of LF and DSATUR and furthermore operates through a trailing path of consecutively connected nodes (i.e., a sequential coloring scheme) in contrast to the earlier approaches. It thereby also effectively maps to the problem of finding spanning tree(s) of the graph during the entire course of coloring - where essentially lies both the novelty and the apt of this approach. Adaptation of sequential coloring is an interesting new addition to the state of the art in Graph Coloring and has the potential to serve other partitioning / compartmentalization problems in combinatorics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nemo8130 (talk • contribs) 19:49, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

---

Nemo8130 (talk) 19:55, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Sankar Basu

Assistant Professor, Asutosh College (Under Calcutta University, Kolkata, India)

PhD: Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, India

Post Docs: FfAME, FL, USA; Linkoping University, Sweden; University of Calcutta, India; University of Delhi, India; Clemson University, USA; ULB, Brussels, Belgium

Core Area: Computational Biophysics and Bioinformatics

--


 * It's a newly published paper, in a bad journal, with no citations and hence no reliable sourcing for its impact. It does not solve the graph coloring problem exactly (or if it claims to, it's pure crankery) so the overblown history about how nobody has ever solved it before is just pure promotion and is misleading. It does not yet stand out from the other 45000 or so papers on graph coloring listed by Google Scholar, so there is no justification for including it. And your edits appear to be motivated by an undeclared conflict of interest. The correct solution is to not add it, not to keep arguing. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:02, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

---

1. >> "It's a newly published paper, in a bad journal"

- Your excellency, here is this bad journal's website: https://www.springer.com/journal/500 and its editporial board page: https://www.springer.com/journal/500/editors. We would appriciate if you could kindly care to justify your comment with some facts and figures, or else, such loose comments really sound childish!

2. >> "with no citations and hence no reliable sourcing for its impact"

- Your excellency, the online-first version of the paper was published in the web, little more than two months back. The off-line regular article is scheduled to be printed and included in the journal's first issue of January 2020. So I am not sure whether the number of citations at this stage could be a correct and just yardstick to assess its merit.

3. >> "overblown history about how nobody has ever solved it before "

- The 'graph coloring' wiki-page discusses about different strategies adopted to develop Combinatorial Optimization algorithms wherein a key approach ('sequential coloring') is found missing. To aid this void, we intended to compare between discontinuous (LF, DSATUR) and continuous coloring schemes ('trailing path') and suggested intuitively as to why continuous coloring schemes have been found to be performing better (for this one has to read the paper). Kindly note with care, the sentence: "It thereby also effectively maps to the problem of finding spanning tree(s) of the graph during the entire course of coloring". This is key point in Graph Coloring and even if his excellency denies I regret I would beg to differ. There were no promotional intentions otherwise.

3. >> "It does not yet stand out from the other 45000 or so papers on graph coloring listed by Google Scholar" - We shall be grateful if his excellency could kindly bring to our site, one paper among the "45000 or so papers on graph coloring listed by Google Scholar" that procures an exact solution of chromatic number unanimously for all graphs. We shall be grateful to unlearn and relearn.

4. >> "It does not solve the graph coloring problem exactly" - Let me quote from the above text drafted for the section.

"Recently a novel heuristic, namely the ‘trailing path’ [30] could reset this state of the art. The 'trailing path' algorithm have shown to return an approximate solution of the chromatic number within P time with a better accuracy than existing algorithms, working unanimously irrespective of the graph-size and topology, working particularly well for the most difficult k-regular graphs (k>2)."

My understanding of the English language does not reflect any claim to output an exact solution, rather, it says 'an approximate solution with better accuracy'. I don't think the two are the same.

5. >> "not to keep arguing" We had the idea that Wikipedia was a global educational forum that appreciates scholastic excellence. We were not aware of this practice of new editorial 'monopoly' here.

-- Nemo8130 (talk) 05:45, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Ok, so amid your walls of text you're now clearly claiming that your paper gives an "exact solution of chromatic number unanimously for all graphs"? In polynomial time? At least that makes it clear that it's crankery and not merely weakly-justified new heuristics. For this sort of claim, I have a very clear answer to when it can go into Wikipedia: when it wins the Clay Millenium Prize for proving P=NP.
 * You should probably also read Copying text from other sources, by the way, as copying material from non-freely-licensed copyrighted material into Wikipedia is very much forbidden. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:16, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

-- >> you're now clearly claiming that your paper gives an "exact solution of chromatic number unanimously for all graphs"? In polynomial time?

No sir. That is something that you are making out of the text. It appears that you are too much obsessed to falsify our claim without actually realizing what the claim is! I would humbly request you to kindly take care to read the text. If I may know your email id, I can send you the pdf of the paper (also available here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00500-019-04278-8 - if you have access to download).

Let me again quote from the text and try to clarify:

1. "The trailing path algorithm has shown to return an approximate solution of the chromatic number within P time with a better accuracy than existing algorithms, working unanimously irrespective of the graph-size and topology, working particularly well for the most difficult k-regular graphs (k>2)."

And, furthermore,

2. To address your point on "45000 or so papers on graph coloring from Google Scholar", I said that we do not yet know of a method that procures and exact solution of the chromatic number unanimously for all graphs (within P time, of course)Italic text.

So the point we are trying to make in this drafted section (and also in the paper) is that 'trailing path' performs better than the state-of-the-art before and we further try to highlight the importance of opting for 'sequential coloring'/* for this improved performance.

/* the term is mentioned just once in the Graph Coloring wiki page under 'greedy algorithms'

Nemo8130 (talk) 15:58, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Erdos-de Bruijn (graphs)
Dear David: Fred Galvin warnd me of a misleading sentence in the text: for j<k finite the proof that any k-chromatic graph contains a j-chromatic does not needd E-dB, simply take a good coloring with k colors and take the union of j classes. Sorry, this was my fault as you followed a remark in my 2011 paper. Happy New Year, Peter Komjath. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.114.105.254 (talk) 10:16, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Ok, removed. Thanks for the correction. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:33, 30 December 2019 (UTC)