User talk:FactSpewer

Welcome
I noticed nobody has welcomed you properly yet. It's great to have another mathematics-inclined editor. The mathematics wikiproject and its talk page are very helpful resources.

One counter-intuitive fact about wikipedia is that the more esoteric a topic is, the less contentious editing will typically be. So articles like function (mathematics) or complex number require much more discussion and negotiation with other editors to edit than articles like Diagonal lemma. It takes a little experience to get a sense of which sorts of edits are likely to be controversial (since they may not actually be controversial in the real world).

If you need help or answers about Wikipedia policies, please feel free to ask on my talk page. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 01:39, 31 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you, FactSpewer (talk) 03:41, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Natural number
You added a fact tag to that article about the claim that number theorists often start the natural numbers at 1. That tag, on its own, just asks for a citation. I did a google books search for "number theory natural number" and checked 3 number theory texts from the first page of search results. All three texts start the natural numbers at 1. So if I were to be pedantic I could just use any of those three books as a citation, but obviously that isn't very satisfying.

I think you added the tag with the impression that some number theory texts start the natural numbers at 0. Do you have examples of that? If there really are a significant number of texts that do that, it would be better to rephrase the article somehow.

As a general principle, it's best to avoid using the fact tag for sentences that you think are misphrased or inaccurate, because the tag rarely results in issues like that getting fixed. It's better to just explain your concerns in detail on the talk page, and then edit the article if nobody disagrees with what you're saying. The main reasonable use of the fact tag is for sentences that you actually believe are correct, when you think that a reference for that particular point would be helpful, but don't have any way of finding that reference yourself. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 14:11, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Generalisation of binomial theorem for complex numbers
Hi. Would you mind giving me a reference for the conditions for convergence of the binomial theorem: (x+y)^r where x,y and r are complex numbers? Thanks! HowiAuckland (talk) 23:23, 4 October 2009 (UTC)