Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Collaboration of the Month/Removed

This page is an archive of all articles removed from Mathematics Collaboration of the Week. Those entries who won the award can be found here.

February 15-21, 2005
Four Color Theory


 * Nominated February 10, 2005


 * Removed by poster

Support:
 * 1) ral315 17:14, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Comments:
 * An interesting theory that could easily be a featured article if made COTW.
 * Is there something different from Four color theorem that this can be about? - Taxman 03:35, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * My mistake; I should have looked there first. Removed.  ral315 03:39, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * Created redirect to Four color theorem --L33tminion | (talk) 13:25, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

February 22-28, 2005
Euler prime


 * Nominated February 10, 2005

Support:
 * 1) ral315 17:14, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Comments:
 * A three-sentence article that could really use some TLC. ral315 17:14, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Or maybe VfD. Which pairs of odd primes satisfy the definition (exercise)? Charles Matthews 13:42, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Modular forms

 * Nominated February 10, 2005

Support:
 * 1) ww 00:28, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) ral315 05:03, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Comments:
 * Critical to the development of Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. Little or no coverage accessible to the non-professional available. WP math mavens would be doing a service in creating some, especially in connection to FLT. Current WP article is quite technical and inaccessible.
 * This article is more suitable as a cleanup article; Collaboration of the Week articles must be 1000 characters or less (or 2 paragraphs or less). While I agree that it needs some work, it doesn't fit the COTW criteria. .  After further review, the guidelines of CotW articles have been changed to allow for articles in poor shape. ral315 02:29, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * I wonder if the supporters know what they are asking for. No way an account of Ribet's work on the epsilon conjecture would be more accessible than what is there now. Charles Matthews 07:49, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm going to defer to CM here. There may be no way to improve this one significantly in terms of accessibility.  --L33tminion | (talk) 15:10, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * I've been hacking wikipedia articles quite close to this recently. I've been planning on editing this one. For example, one problem with the modular forms article is that the definition of the lattice is confusing and not integrated with the article on lattice (group) -- things like Lambda=&lt;alpha,z &gt; need to be more clearly/simply defined. That alone would help.  It is also a minor tweak that converts the article from something opaque to something accessible; otherwise the novice reader is scratching their head "what the heck is Lambda=&lt;alpha,z &gt;" even though the rest of the article might be easy to get at. So while I agree with CM, I disagree on editorial points like this.   However, I've never done a one-week free-for-all before, so I am nervous about this.linas 15:49, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * It will often be the case - without prejudice to whatever could happen with this article - that better access to a part of mathematics can come from dealing with preliminaries, and also some historical perspective. But do bear in mind that order-of-magnitude estimates of the amount of mathematics required to explain big advances, to grad students, come out at 1000 pages or more. Charles Matthews 21:13, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * One page at a time ... there are plenty of one-page articles in wikipedia that share titles with 500-page volumes with the same title. Symplectic manifold and Riemann surface come to mind. No matter -- the Erdos model of mathematics says that sometimes its enough to advance mathematical knowledge simply by becoming aware that previously unrelated topics are related. The ability to chase links in wikipedia is a strength that wikipedia has over linear textbooks.  A practicing mathematician in one area, completely ignorant of another field, can profit from the ability to skim through wikipedia to find related topics and background. In my case, I didn't know a modular form from a hole in the wall until I accidentally found out that fractals are made out of them ... something you won't find in any book on fractals, or in any book on modular forms.  To establish this relationship, you don't need to understand Andrew Wiles proof or Taniyama-Shimura or any of the hard stuff; just a small dose of basics is quite enough -- and yet, its still "new math", however non-profound it may be.linas 03:14, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Singular point of a curve

 * Nominated February 14, 2005

Support:
 * 1) Charles Matthews 19:15, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Fropuff 15:17, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)

Comments:
 * We have plenty of more fancy stuff on algebraic geometry. This is a basic topic, with the chance to use many graphical illustrations, and certainly a potential featured article. Charles Matthews 19:15, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * I'd like to see what articles would link to this article. What is the context? Jake 23:16, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Areas of mathematics

 * Nominated February 17, 2005

Support:
 * 1) Tompw 23:09, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Markus Krötzsch 21:40, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) 500LL 16:23, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Comments:
 * This is an article intended to help give the big picture when it comes to mathematics. Maths is such a vast subject that an article which explains the varoius areas of maths, and how the interlink would be beneficial for those who are not expert in a particular field. Tompw 23:09, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Support. All these uncommented lists seem to have their main use for search engines, or is anyone reading such lists? So this article would be a nice replacement/predecessor for the List of mathematical topics on the portal page. And everybody could contribute to this project easily, which helps to promote the overall concept of MathCOTW. --Markus Krötzsch 21:40, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Here's a link I have found very interesting: . It's from a few years back; but I feel the classification used is closer to the reality of active research. Looking at it another way, we are not dealing at WP with current publication, but a whole heritage. One way or another, I don't think we can expect to get agreement on what the areas of mathematics are; the AMS list of course is authoritative in its way, but not definitive. The lists of articles here: they matter to the experts in areas; I wouldn't say that someone who can't just scan them would benefit in the same way, but I don't think we can do without them. Charles Matthews 22:23, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Elementary mathematics

 * Nominated April 21, 2005

Support:
 * 1) linas 15:33, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Vince Vatter 02:52, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comments:
 * Actually, the nomination is for most articles in this category or one of its subcategories; there are about 150 articles grand total in there, many/most of these articles are in apallingly bad shape; many are stubs, none are marked as stubs. This could keep us busy for the next 3 years :). Please note that almost all of these articles deal with "high-school" or even "grade-school" math, and so just about any Wikipedian with a college education and a love of math can participate in the editing. This is in marked contrast to the nomination of modular forms, for which there are less than half-a-dozen active wikipedians who are capable of editing. By working with the more elementary articles, you will achieve several goals: 1) a much higher participation rate in CotW and 2) a much larger readership.  Honestly, how many people want to read about modular forms, as compared to the more elementary topics? linas 15:33, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Root_%28mathematics%29 could be a really good article, as could be counting, just to name a couple. Vince Vatter 02:52, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)



Emmy Noether

 * Nominated May 18, 2005

Support:
 * 1) One of the all-time greats. We should try to push this up to featured article standard. Charles Matthews 12:52, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Great idea Charles, and dare I say it, politically correct to boot. Paul August &#9742; 19:27, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) I read a great quote from Edmund Landau today, saying he was sure Noether was a great mathematician, but couldn't be sure she was a woman. So that probably balances out any excess PC. Charles Matthews

Comments:



Pascal's triangle

 * Nominated May 28, 2005

Support:
 * 1) This is a subject that has great potential to capture the public interest (conceptually accessible; a large number of visual patterns etc) and which has sufficient depth to interest mathematicians at all levels. It is important to many popular subjects such as gambling (probability theory), combinatorics etc ... reetep 22:50, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Comments:

Tangent bundle

 * Nominated June 2, 2005

Support:
 * 1) Tangent bundles are beautiful constructions which provide a nice connection between topology and vector spaces. Jake
 * 2) --MarSch 10:03, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Comments: