User talk:William Ackerman

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Images
Hi,

I have used some of your images on french wikipedia (see fr:Théorie de l'approximation: and some people ask me for lincense of these images. Could you please indicate, what are the rights of them (GFDL, Public domain, etc.) Sorry for advance for my poor english. You can send me a message to fr:Utilisateur:Oxyde

Thank you very much fr:Utilisateur:Oxyde

Help researching info on MIT graduate Ed Seykota
I need help writing the article about Ed Seykota, I need help researching his time in MIT, I need access to MITs library. I want copies of his thesis, papers etc. I also need official documentation about his degrees at MIT. Please help.

trade2tradewell (at) yahoo (dot) com - Replace "at" with "@", and "(dot)" with "."

Thanks

--Trade2tradewell 20:24, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Floating-point arithmetic
Gidday... I included both not just because Archimedes needed both, but because from the two sequences a quadratically convergent sequence can be formed, the (2I + C)/3 column, thereby demonstrating that a good method can be ruined by computational errors in the numbers going in to it. However, it took me so long to mark up the columns of digits that I was worn out, and didn't have the energy to adduce explanations, nor employ the schemes for presenting formulae in better form as you have done. Alas, one must occasionally attend to the tasks one's employer sets. If you like, I could send you the trivial Pascal prog. that displays the numbers with colours instead of bold/plain text, via RNMcLean and yahbhoo comm More seriously, in your discussion you speak of subtracting 1 from a number very near to 1. But, the values of the t(i) sequence increase rapidly, indeed t(i) = pi/6*2**i so sqrt(1 + t**2) is soon well away from 1 But this is all wrong! The formula is pi = t(i)*sides, in other words t(i) heads to zero as sides = 6*2**i. Now the first formula does indeed cancel out the 1 in sqrt(1 + t**2) - 1, whereas the second does not. The way to consider this is via f(x + eps) = f(x) + f'(x)*eps + etc. in other words, differentiate the formula. The second form has t, heading for zero, divided by a number near 2 on each stage. Nice and stable, whereas the first has a number near zero both on the numerator and the denominator. When I can think straight I'll try to differentiate the formulae. (I'm attending the Wellington Film Festival; four dozen films in sixteen days...) I also distracted myself by pontificating on the summation algorithm you gave a reference to; from the pseudocode it took me a long time to recognise a scheme known from student days... Being short on sleep doesn't help. Oh well, and now to resume work proper, delayed by a local ISP choke. NickyMcLean 01:50, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Hello. I've been distracted from the floating-point article for a couple of weeks and I'm quite suprised by how much it has changed in that time. In reworking the intro you seem to have reverted the text drastically to a much early version focusing on floating point as a numeral representation. There is some discussion on the talk page about why this was changed that you have not added to. In particular: Floating-point is a system of arthmetic that operates on a particular representation (also called floating-point). You've also reverted the intro to the claim that floating-point numbers are representations of real-numbers. This makes no sense and there is much controvesy on the subject on the talk page. All floating point numbers are instances of a set that is a sub-set of the rationals. There are no irrational elements, and so it makes no more sense to call them Real than it does to call them Complex. As a result there is now a clash between the description at the top, and that later on. If you feel that these changes improve the article then could you please explain why on the talk page. Thank you. Amoss 16:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Meaning of cleanup tag on Floating point
I see that Earle Martin put a cleanup tag on the FP page on 8/14. He left this message on WP:Cleanup :

"Floating point - this article is very scrappy and poorly organized. -- Earle Martin [t/c] 13:34, 14 August 2006 (UTC)"


 * Would you agree with his diagnosis?
 * If so, do you have an ideal blueprint in your own mind for how this reorg should be done?

Since he's not a regular contributor to the page he must be referring to very general issues about how the sections fit together. From my limited knowledge the 'Cleanup' tag is often put on pages that have horrible problems, which this one doesn't. (At least, superficially it doesn't.  Perhaps intellectually...).


 * It might be worth requesting Peer Review (which could give arguments for an improvement scheme, if you have one in mind). EdJohnston 20:06, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

As per the remark buried in the text for Computer Representation and mentioned on the talk page, I have been contemplating reducing the IEEE aspect and specifics in Overflow Underflow and Zero in favour of a more general description, with references to the IEEE article instead, which itself might be extended. Likewise, adding exemplifications of the actual computer realisations of fp numbers on different computers, perhaps each format as its own article - full conformance in every last detail to the IEEE standard is not so common. It is all very well to call for a cleanup, but actually doing it requires time and patience. A larger-scale cleanup is a larger task. Regards, NickyMcLean 21:46, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I had looked at Floating point with an eye to doing a cleanup earlier in the summer, but got distracted. I'll take another look. Thanks to all that have been working on it. It gets linked from so many places it would be nice to get it to featured article status (at some point). Jake 21:12, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

IP address 161.88.255.139
Hello. I saw that you were also surprised by the IP address you're seen as within Wikipedia. We actually work for the same employer, so I can provide some info on the IP address (I'm not at work at the moment, which is why I show a different IP in my sig here). The address that you see (149.59.167.71) is your IP address within the corporate intranet. However, when we go through the corporate firewall, we all share a fairly small set of IP addresses that are assigned by a proxy server. I'm not certain if the same proxy IP addresses are shared by all divisions, but they are certainly shared by users in both major offices in the US, and possibly by all users within the division worldwide.

When I first learned what was going on, there were already several warnings at User talk:161.88.255.139, and I placed the small blurb at the top of the page. Sadly, because of the shared nature of the proxy address, we all suffer whenever somone within the corporate firewall uses their connection to vandalise this site. --24.19.60.17 03:46, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
 * FYI: There are at least two proxy addresses used. 161.88.255.139 and 161.88.255.140 - you will always use one or the other, I believe it depends on your division in the company as to which proxy you are assigned.  There may also be other proxies used by other divisions that I haven't yet seen. --161.88.255.139 16:53, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Evgeny Yakovlevich Remez (1896-1975) and Approximation theory
The on-line resources in English usually spell him Remez (including the American Mathematical Society). See for example. Most of his work is in Russian, though he wrote his name 'Remes' in his French-language publications. This is germane to Wikipedia since there is already a WP article Remez algorithm, which is hard to link to from the section on Remes in Approximation theory if the names are spelled differently. How would you feel about changing his name in that article? EdJohnston 14:39, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Abramowitz and Stegun
I'd like to check the widely-used Dover edition to see if it still says '1965' as the publication date, and what printing it claims to be. People appear to believe that the hard cover is more correct, but I don't know what the differences are. If the differences are on line somwhere, we could point to them. I'll try to get hold of a paper copy, before answering your question at Talk:Orthogonal polynomials. EdJohnston 22:38, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

floating point
I need to bring expert attention to the floating point page. I believe that there is a serious general disgreement between me and NickyMcLean. Let me first say what this is not:


 * It's not a yelling-and-screaming (or reverting) dispute, and I don't want it to become one.
 * I don't think that the usual mediation/arbitration/general formal processes are called for.
 * It is not an issue of vandalism. All parties are well-intentioned.

The real problem is that floating point is a rather esoteric subject. There aren't many experts in the field, and I would like to get their advice. I believe that what Mr. McLean is doing is misguided relative to what the Wikipedia page should be saying on the subject. (BTW, I consider myself an expert.)

The talk page already has a request at the bottom, from Mr. McLean, for experts to weigh in. (He clearly recognizes the dispute.) None have done so, though the serious problem has only been around for 4 days. I assumed that the experts have the floating point page on their watch lists, and would say something.

I've considered dropping notes on the talk pages of the experts (as determined by looking back through the edit history over the last year or so), and asking them to come over and look. Should I do this? Should I wait a while? Should I request some kind of formal bringing of expert attention? William Ackerman 19:04, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I've added the expert template to the article, but that may not have the effect you're looking for. I think that leaving messages for users who have previously edited the article is completely acceptable, and would help to resolve this problem.  If you have more questions, feel free to restore the helpme tag--this article is waaaay out of my area of expertise and so I can only comment generally.  -- Merope Talk 19:14, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

As one of the so-called experts I'm happy to participate. However I'd suggest using Peer Review because (1) that's a lightweight process that's little more than a focused exchange of views among the people you asked, and (2) you can see if the experts have any ideas in common, hoping to move to a consensus. I think this would give us a list of ideas for improving the article. If you have more thoughts on what's needed, feel free to send mail via 'Email this user'. EdJohnston 01:05, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

How to welcome people
No admin necessary. Put this in (without the "nowiki", of course.)

Welcome
~

Your A&S template becomes even more famous
I was able to convert a normal reference to A&S in Student's t-distribution to use your templated form, so readers can click on the online copy . There may be other statistics pages where this would be useful. At present Template:Abramowitz_Stegun_ref seems not to tolerate a decimal point in the chapter field (like 26.2) which is the only limitation I've noticed. EdJohnston 19:07, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Mozart for those who don't mess around
Bill, I don't have an email address for you, so I'm contacting you this way. I thought you'd be interested in this -

http://www.daedalusbooks.com/Products/Detail.asp?ProductID=54113

The recordings that I've listened to (out of 170 CD's I've listended to 20 or so scattered throughout the box) are very nice - a nice mix of original instruments and BIG 1970's GERMAN ORCHESTRA type recordings. At the price, I thought I'd get a bunch of 3rd-rate minor orchestras - not so, they're almsot all very nice.

If you're feeling a little masochistic, this is also VERY nice -

http://www.daedalusbooks.com/Products/Detail.asp?ProductID=55970

The last three months I've been working mostly for Philips Lighting.

Stay in touch. David Boundy PatentProcedure 0x40 gmail 0x2e com

sorry
sorry for vandalizing wikipedia, I just got carried away. 69.250.130.215 23:01, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Mathematics CotW
Hey William, I am writing you to let you know that the Mathematics Collaboration of the week(soon to "of the month") is getting an overhaul of sorts and I would encourage you to participate in whatever way you can, i.e. nominate an article, contribute to an article, or sign up to be part of the project. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks--Cronholm144 00:23, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Eutrophication article
Please see the history []. What happened there (to which you or your bot was a party) is somewhat confused. While it's true that 161.88.255.139 [] was engaged in vandalism, what happened next doesn't seem right. I'm writing to alert you to the possibility that there may be a bug in your bot. William Ackerman 16:03, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks William Ackerman for the heads-up on the situation. I went back and looked to see what was going on and you are right.  There was vandalism that was than reverted, than re-vandalized and etc – etc – etc..  And sorry to say  User:161.88.255.139 got caught in the middle of it.  Regarding the bot, yeah it can be overly aggressive at times, especially regarding the placement of warnings on the users talk page.  That is why I have included the sentence; “If you believe this edit should not have been reverted, please contact me.” And placed warnings on both my user and talk pages.  I know that this is no excuse, especially  when you are the one that has been giving the warning. If it is any consolation, I was also on the receiving end of this particular bot, by an other editor who is using it.  I have gone back and removed the tag from User:161.88.255.139 discussion page and replaced it with a copy of this response.  Hope this helps.   }}Shoessss talk

Re: Vandalism to Horace Greeley High School
Currently, the activity from the IP isn't high enough to justify page protection or a block, but I'll keep an eye on it. Thank you for the notification, –Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone  23:57, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

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