User talk:Huon/Archive1

I think you merit a canned welcome! Ahem:

Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~&#126;); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Melchoir 20:29, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
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Hello all! Thanks, Melchoir, for the welcome. Up to now, I have just amused myself by contributing to the discussion about 0.999... and 1. It is rather surprising, but even though imho the opponents of 0.999...=1 lack mathematical training and rigor, making their contributions difficult to read, I still learn something. Most interesting are the social aspects:

- Practically all proponents of 0.999... have accounts and routinely sign their messages.

- To my knowledge, only one of the opponents had an account, and many don't even sign their messages.

- Almost all who have formal mathematical training (including at least one MIT lecturer) agree that equality holds,

- while the opponents make claims like "No mathematician who *knows* what he is talking about will agree with you.", but seem to be at a loss to present just one example of such a "mathematician who *knows* what he is talking about" (there was a link to a constructionist who made up a new system of numbers called "decimal numbers" as opposed to the usual "real numbers"; interesting reading, once more, but he does not state anything about the relation of the real number represented by 0.999... to 1).

Probably it would be better not to feed the trolls, but I rather think that ignoring them would be seen as "capitulation of the PhDs", and I am not exausted yet... ;-) Have fun! --Huon 11:13, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay, by now the 0.999...=1 discussion boiled down to divergent views about what 0.999... should be, and the mathematical community's view that it is $$\lim_{n\to\infty}(\sum_{i=1}^n\frac{9}{10^i})$$ (and thus equal to 1) seems to have prevailed. Probably I'll have to look at something else in the future. --Huon 12:15, 11 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Word. (I have nothing insightful to add.) Melchoir 03:40, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Analysis
The 0.999...=1 discussion once more seems to be alive and well. This time, anon decided to launch a frontal assault on all of analysis: It is "full of errors and contradictions", even professors with 30 years of experience teaching analysis "are still unable to demonstrate flawless proofs", students don't grasp what it's all about and forget it again as soon as possible. I cannot let that stand unchallenged, but it would be quite off-topic on the proof talk page.

I don't know those professors; thus, I cannot discuss their abilities. Of course everybody makes mistakes, including professors, but that does not mean that flawless proofs are not available. And if those professors are indeed unable to demonstrate flawless proofs, I'm not surprised their students don't understand them.

It is rather easy to make an analysis lecture extremely abstract very quickly. Then most students will indeed face severe problems, especially since analysis is usually one of the first lectures and students are only used to the rather low level of abstraction taught at school. But that is a question of didactics, not mathematics.

Concerning the errors and contradictions: It is easy to make such a general claim. Name just one of these errors and contradictions, and we can discuss it in detail! --Huon 22:43, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

A friendly suggestion
Hi. Seeing that your contributions are mainly to the 0.9999 thing, I would like to advise that this is probably not very good to your health. I only made a few posts there and got completely irritated. There's so much more to Wikipedia than making silly arguments with anons having little mathematical understanding (or possibly, attempting to annoy people by pretending to lack such understanding). But if you feel your serenity reserves are greater than mine, go ahead and good luck :-) -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 09:19, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Reading the 0.999 talk page again, I cannot help but put a little comment on your talk page under this heading: I think you are going to break some world record of patience in dealing with hopelessly clueless idiots who are not really interested in seriously reading any of your arguments that may possibly contradict their conclusions. You explain it properly to them and they just dismiss it; you are wasting your time and effort, and I have to agree that "this is probably not very good to your health"! You know what, I reckon he thinks that d/dx (x^2) = x, because using an argument like his, I can write
 * d/dx (x^2) = d/dx (x + x + ... + x) [x times]
 * = (1 + 1 + ... + 1) [x times] "by the linearity of the differential operator!!"
 * = x
 * !!! No cancellation here either. :P See you! -- KittySaturn 15:41, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Do not feed the trolls
The anon posting at Talk:Proof that 0.999... equals 1 has been doing that for half a year now, and as you can see by taking a look at the archives, any reasonable doubt concerning his true colors has been abolished. My advice is therefore to heed the aforementioned guideline. Maybe he will just go away if we cease these senseless arguments, which he apparently enjoys quite a bit. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 14:48, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I fear you are right. And while I would hate to leave the field to him, his methods of discussion become less and less coherent. I would have abstained from feeding him long ago, but it seems better to let him have his go at the arguments page than either at the article itself or its talk page proper. Yours, Huon 15:30, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I see. It would indeed be a problem if he started "working" on the article with as much energy as in the arguments page. If he didn't switch IPs, the solution would be simple - block him as soon as he starts vandalizing the article. I don't know what are the technical possibilities in light of the fact that he does switch IPs, but I'll look into the matter. At least in this case, we would have a good reason to take action against him, which would simplify matters a bit. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 15:44, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Hello again. In case you're still concerned by the possibility of him vandalizing the article, perhaps you'll be interested to know that I have pretty much mapped the IP ranges he uses, and I believe in this event it shouldn't be a problem to deal with him using a Range block. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 13:46, 19 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your efforts; I appreciate them. Actually, I hope he finally reached the end of his mathematical "wisdom"; he does not seem to be able to give cogent definitions. Yours, Huon 14:16, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

So what else is new? :-) It is amazing how similar his current arguments are to his first ones. My theory is still that he is not unwilling to learn, but rather that he already knows (and always knew) what we have to say. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 07:14, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Annamaiah
I've done some googling and rewritten the article with the help of a source. Please let me know what you think of it now. (I will move it to its proper location shortly. - Mgm|(talk) 10:25, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Illutia fun
Hi,

I notice you prodded the article Illutia fun a short while ago. While I entirely agree that it should be deleted, unfortunately I had to remove the prod tag as an AFD discussion was already underway. The AFD tag had been removed and the nomination blanked by the author of the page.

Kind regards, Chrisd87 23:26, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

TruMark Financial Credit Union
Hey,

Sorry for the possible copyright infringement. I work for the company and I just copied it from my intranet history page. If you want, I would be more than happy to delete the text and re-write a brief summary about the CU instead of the history.

Let me know and I will be happy to comply Csapp96332 08:20, 14 July 2006 (EST)

Robin Hood (1991 TV movie)
thanks for youre help Miles Fallconet 09:38, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Joel Sherman
thanks for the improvements. Looks a lot spiffier. User:Krazeb


 * You're welcome. --Huon 14:54, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

RebDrummer61 13:40, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
I thank you for the editing you did on my (and now also yours to a certain degree) Albert Ellmenreich article. I could only roughly translate some of his works. Thanks again. Update: My same graditude for The Spinning Song article.

Küsnacht -> Hombrechtikon
Thanks for picking up the slip-up I made here. I'll go back and check I didn't make any similar ones. --BillC 17:18, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Yechezkel Levenstein
I responded on my talk page. Jon513 18:17, 13 September 2006 (UTC)