Wikipedia:Peer review/Srinivasa Ramanujan/archive1

Srinivasa Ramanujan

 * I did not read the article, but you cannot have a cleanup banner at the top of the page if you want to be a featured or good article (in case you did not already know). --thedemonhog talk contributions 06:09, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Please don't Wikilawyer. Both serve the same purpose: "Please read this and see if it's all right." Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:40, 11 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment The article lacks inline citations. See any featured articles to understand how inline citations work. You can use specific templates such as Template:Cite web, Template:Cite journal etc. There are some links to external websites within the text, these should be converted to inline citations. I have not the article, but on a quick glance, the content seems to be fine. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 17:51, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Comments by Sopoforic
As User:Dwaipayan noted, the article lacks inline citation, which will be necessary for the article to become featured. Additionally:


 * The "Mathematical achievements" section needs probably more text and less math.
 * The "Theorems and discoveries" subsection should explain why those discoveries were important, rather than just including a list.
 * The "The Ramanujan conjecture and its role" subsection claims that this conjecture was very influential on later work, but doesn't explain how. Also, it is probably too technical.
 * The "Ramanujan's notebooks" subsection in particular needs citations.
 * The "Other mathematicians' views of Ramanujan" section is only a collection of quotations. It should be written as prose with quotations to support it where appropriate.

The article needs a bit of improvement in other areas, but it is probably not productive to go into too great detail just yet. Adding citations to the article will probably change it quite a bit (as sentences are rewritten from sources, etc.), so any particular comments on style and such may not be helpful.

I agree that it would be excellent if this could be a featured article, so I hope that these comments will be helpful. --Sopoforic 01:14, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Comments by Chan-Ho Suh
My comments will be more or less about the content.

One paragraph on his life in England? No insights into the complex relationship between him and Hardy? These are big omissions.

The article seems to spend too much time dwelling on ways to prop Ramanujan up -- the number of theorems he proved, quotes about whether he was "Nobel-prize class", etc. The best way to show the brilliance of Ramanujan is to let is show naturally in the prose, e.g. in descriptions of his accomplishments.

His style of work and notebooks needs to be better described. It's not clear to someone not familiar with him or his notebooks how peculiar they look. Also, it's not necessary to be so defensive in saying Ramanujan knew the proofs of his results. It's clear he had a deep understanding of mathematics, not to mention, his idea of proof was always nonstandard (for example, Kanigel describes Hardy trying to teach Ramanujan what a proof was) but may not actually be that peculiar compared to the way some outstanding mathematicians of today work.

The parts on his early life look good, although I note some omissions. For example, he learned about infinite series from a particular book usually used to study for tests like the Tripos. The biographer Kanigel attributes Ramanujan's style of writing lists of theorems (with no proofs) to this book which had a similar format.

Oh, and there definitely needs to be more mathematics in the article. It was a big part of his life and we would be amiss in restraining ourselves to a mere list of items. "More math" doesn't mean more formulas and less words (although Ramanujan discovered some very nice ones, like the continued fractions for pi); one can explain the basic mathematical gist (say in some particularly nice base cases) with some elegant prose. --C S (Talk) 04:28, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, Ruhrfisch 03:37, 4 May 2007 (UTC)