User talk:Gandalf61/Archive1

Hello Gandalf, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;


 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Angela 18:36, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)

Howdy. I also thought I'd pop by to say hi and welcome (and luckily the tireless Angela has already put in the "hello" boilerplate, so I don't have to). No, we don't have an automated welcome system, but she's so fast that I'm beginning to think she might be a python script :)  I read your Abstract structure article - it's very good (although it made my teensy brain hurt a bit), and it's nice to see a new wikipedian produce an article with all the markup right and the links valid.   If you're at a loss for something to do, pop by Cleanup - there's always some scary math page needing fixed.  If nothing else, you'll see how bad a page can be :) ttfn Finlay McWalter 03:21, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

A high five on Farey sequence :) Dysprosia 22:19, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hi Gandalf. Nice rewrite on Fractal, much more readable now. Chopchopwhitey 16:32, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Continued fractions

Thanks! I am glad you liked my extra sections, and it was kind of you to say so.

Now I think someone needs to write an article about continuants and their relation to continued fractions. -- Dominus 13:53, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi Gandlaf, I see a scintifc publication as such that are part of the academic work. An important publication should be one that contirbuted to science. See List of publications in computer science to see the kind of publications I talking about.

I removed the publications due to that reason. I'm aware that the importance of publication is very subjective. We can open a new category of popular popular writing or educational books. These publications will fit into these categories. APH 07:49, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree with you. I should have discussed their removal first. Sorry - I'll remember it in the future. APH 10:34, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure that should be in the list. I didn't read it so I have a problem judging it but according to the article content it doesn't seem to be too important. APH 11:44, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Euclid and his Modern Rivals by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson a.k.a. Lewis Carroll

Coast of Britain
(moved from my User page User:Gandalf61) Did the paper's title really have a space between Britain and the question-mark? If not, I'd like to move the article to get rid of that superfluous space, which conflicts with standard usage. If so, there should be a redirect page without the space. Michael Hardy 21:42, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Julia set
Hello Gandalf61! (did not know there was that many =) I replyed your message at my page (guess you read it) Now I also added a couple of images of the Julia set rendered from my own code to the page. Do you like them? there is also another image of a revese julia + linear IFS at the page Iterated function system and also "the BOWL" image at my swedish nickpage sv:Användare:Solkoll is from a similar set. Cheers Solkoll 21:25, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Definitely not Brittany then
Thanks. I assumed that Mandelbrot being somewhat French (even only by adoption) he used the coast of Brittany (which I assure you is Bretagne :-) and not Britain.

Let's assume the French mis-translated on purpose. They will never change :-) And no, I'm not French myself.

--Stephan Leclercq 14:43, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The business and economics forum
Anouncing the introduction of The Business and Economics Forum. It is a "place" where those of us with an interest in the business and economics section of Wikipedia can "meet" and discuss issues. Please drop by: the more contributors, the greater its usefulness. If you know of other Wikipedians who might be interested, please send this to them.

mydogategodshat 19:01, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Newton's Law
Thank you for your copyedition of the addon I have made to Newton's law article. I am not a native English speaker, so I appreciate your contribution. I'll add other comments to this page and some other related, like the one on apparent weight --Nicop 19:08, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Response to Hilbert's Problems
User_talk:Chalst Charles Stewart 09:44, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hilbert's 1st Problem
Hi, I have changed the status of Hilbert's 1st problem to solved as I believe that is the commonly accepted state of the problem in the mathematical community. I know you were in a discussion of what the status would be and so I would appreciate your input on my reasons. I have given them in more detail Talk:Hilbert's problems. Thanks a lot Aleph0 02:45, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm not an expert on the topic, so I don't have a well-informed view. I only intervened when Charles Stewart put a disputed notice on the Hilbert's problems page, to suggest that he should fix what he saw as errors in the description of the status of the 1st problem, and then remove the disputed notice. I just felt that calling the accuracy of the whole article into question because of a disagreement with a few words was not the best approach. Sorry, I know that's not much help to you ! Gandalf61 08:53, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Surreal number vs Wiki table close
Hi Gandalf61, Just about the List of publications in mathematics, and the surreal number in that. I agree this is correct, but the problem is that the syntax it uses (validly) looks like a wiki table close (" |} "). For this reason it's likely to keep turning up in the Wiki Syntax list as a problem with unopened/unclosed tables. To overcome this impasse, would it be acceptable to enclose this in nowiki tags? The appearance to the reader is identical, but the nowiki tags just make it explicit that the author knew what they were doing. I've made this change now, and I'm hoping that this will be acceptable to you. All the best, -- Nickj 23:51, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Zeckendorf's theorem
Thanks! (and .. whoops, my mistake. Next time I have a sudden inspiration like that and am in a hurry before I can implement it properly I'll remember my tmp pages yes! :) ) Schissel - bowl listen 21:08, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

Lévy flight
Hi - You're right, the statement "the direction of each step follows a Lévy distribution" is wrong, but the direction of each step is not uniform, either. I think the direction is just a binary thing, up or down, each equally likely, and a uniform distribution is a number that is evenly distributed between 0 and 1. I think that whole 2-sentence paragraph needs to be carefully rewritten. I will do that, and if you do too, I'm sure we can fix it. Paul Reiser 17:49, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree about the uniform distribution in direction for higher dimensional spaces. The page looks good, but it needs a diagram of a 2-D levy flight, I think. Paul Reiser 21:50, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Lévy curves
Hello Gandalf! About the Lévy curves: I'm not really sure where I read about the curves, (and maybe the source was wrong), it was some years ago now. But as far as I know there are three diffrent, closly related curves. At the moment I'm uploading images of IFS fractals I'm creating to "Commons". There I uploaded these three images the recent day or so, (doing this I also made some changes to the wikipedia articles about the curves, as you know =) Here you can see the diffrence between the "Harter-Heighways dragon curve" and the "Lévy dragon curve". Using IFS (random game), the construction of these curves are almost the same.

Lévy C curve:
 * two points in a plane, (two "rules")
 * scale factor; 1:sqrt(2) for both rules
 * rotation angles; rule [0] = 45º, rule[1] = -45º

Lévy dragon curve:
 * two points in a plane
 * scale factor; 1:sqrt(2) for both rules
 * rotation angle; 45º for both rules

Harter-Heighways dragon curve: I'm not 100% sure I got it all correct, but it's close =)
 * two points in a plane
 * scale factors; rule [0] = 1:sqrt(2), rule [1] = -1:sqrt(2)
 * rotation angles; rule [0] = 45º, rule[1] = -45º

I hope this helped you a bit? If I can find some kind of source for this information, then I get back to you. // Solkoll 17:09, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sign of root
When calculating the root of Z then you get something like Z = [ x, y ] from the function. Now if the random choise selects the second root then you have to do x = -x and y = -y (rotate 180º). I don't know any names for the two roots so I was refering to them as "positive" and "negative", not as such complex numbers. But I understand, it is confusing if you don't know exactly what the function does =) // Solkoll 12:25, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

SL(2,Z)
Hi, I notice that you undid my edit of fibonnacci, you didn't like something about the modular group; but I'm not clear what that is. When people say "modular group" they may mean one of four things: SL(2,Z), S*L(2,Z), PSL(2,Z) and PS*L(2,Z). The fibonacci sequence belongs to S*L(2,Z), this group is defined and discussed in the article modular group but is not even mentioned in unimodular matrix. What is it about the orioginal link that you didn't like? linas 15:31, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I saw your reply. The modular group S*L(2,Z) is defined to have determinant having plus or minus one. The fibonacci's have determinant plus or minus one. I beleive the link to the article on the modular group is far more informative to the reader, since the reader will eventually get lead to modular group fractals pages like Eisenstein series and J-invariant. By contrast, the links on unimodular matrix don't ever hint why the fibonacci sequence is fractal. linas 05:24, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Chaos Theory
Sorry about that, i think you're right. It was not the ENIAC, I had them confused. I'll remove my edit (if it hasn't been removed already). Cyrloc 22:34, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Mandelbrot book, WDYT
Well, it could go either way, but because the images werent floated, I thought it might not have been touched for a while, and just inserted the stub tab rather reflexively. Looking at it more closely now, perhaps the article could use some small list of externals or related articles. Theres certainly nothing wrong with "quoting" a little from any book, if its relevant, but I should defer to you on that.

On a related subject, within math article development, I was wondering what you think of this as a kind of guideline or policy. The idea is that to bridge the gaps for elementary readers like myself, mathies like yourself should take care to explain all the relevant symbols used, and counter any assumptions that the end reader already has prerequisites mastered before reading an article. Some of us get interested in math subjects through curiosity about very advanced subjects, and each symbol should be explicitly explained on the each page. This would be a small tag/category/messagebox process whereby novices can tag articles which they think need explaining, and someone with expertise can follow up and add a little explanation. The various symbols can be listed in a condensed way, linking to the appropriate articles that define them. Articles can be of an any advanced and straightforward level, look like published math papers as much as authors like, but should maximize their appeal and access to beginners. Do you think the custom sidebar "key" idea might work? -SV|t|add 18:02, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Well I dont mean to suggest that all prerequistes are explained - thats just not even practical. What Im suggesting is the use of a small squarish TOC next to formulas, which can be easily customized with multiple links, etc. The problem with just plain links is that for the absolute or rusty beginners, links can be rather circular, unorganized by heirarchy and take quite a while to get to. This would be the packaged, very concise organization of prerequisites, rather than complete refresher courses. Since prerequisites can be fairly heirachical, there can be a few standards, but in the end whatever links are shown should be quickly customizable. Maybe a prototpye is necessary - I will work on one, and when its done, Ill ask for comment. Regards -SV|t|add 18:36, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Benford's law
That's it exactly, thank you kindly. (I'm going to prefer the RD over google soon :) dab (&#5839;) 17:31, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

participant of project math
I see you are not yet in the list WikiProject Mathematics/Participants. -MarSch 16:23, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Chaos theory
Suggested wording regarding determinism and chaos. Vonkje 05:02, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Escher
Sparkit - noticed you moved M.C. Escher from Modern artists category to Modern painters. Not sure if this is the best category - Escher was an engraver, not a painter. If you want to put him in a category that is more specific that Modern artists, how about Modern printmakers ? Gandalf61 08:56, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing this out. He was categorized as "Dutch painter" which didn't quite make sense to me, but I just carried that forward. I've now changed both - he's now categorized as "Dutch printmaker" and "Modern printmaker." >>sparkit| TALK << 15:06, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Science pearls
Hello,

Since you contributed in the past to the publications’ lists, I thought that you might be interested in this new project. I’ll be glad if you will continue contributing. Thanks,APH 10:43, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Tent map
Hello - I just uploaded a bifurcation diagram to the tent map article. Could you check what you have written under properties in light of this diagram. There seems to be some disagreements and some of the writing is not clear to me. Thanks - PAR 00:32, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Let's carry on this conversation on one talk page. I left a response to your question on my talk page. PAR 12:53, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Few or many
In one view, many cultures have contributed to mathemetics -- dozens, perhaps. But an equally valid way of looking at it is that very few cultures have contributed to mathematics. For example, no mathematics worth mentioning was done in Europe from the time of Archemedes to the time of Fibonnacci. I would wager that I could name ten cultures who never contributed to mathematics for every one you could name that did. This seems to me an important point, when the culture I live in is, according to its own government, committing unilateral intellectual disarmament. It is by no means certain that our current high level of technology will last. Rick Norwood 23:18, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

please vote on this
Hello. Please vote at Featured list candidates/List of lists of mathematical topics. Michael Hardy 23:37, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Padovan Sequence
about the initial values, i thought it would be 0,0,1 like Fibonacci starts with 0,1. (since they are somewhat similar sequences) and the book (Gnomons) i was reading about them also said 0,0,1. but i'm not an expert at math... i just thought it made sense to me.