Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2009/Dec

General Rules For Mathematics Articles Editing
Any edit to articles should improve the readers ability to understand the subject material. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.106.38.252 (talk) 22:49, 19 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I think that you will find that we have been striving to make articles clearer all along. Unfortunately, some topics require more thought (or background) from the reader than others. Also editors often disagree about which wording is clearer. JRSpriggs (talk) 08:38, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

maths ratings / no wikiproject math tag
While we're talking about maths ratings, I've been noticing loads of mathematics pages on Wikipedia that don't have the wikiproject math tag on their discussion page. I've been tagging whatever I come across but there has been quite a large number of them. Is there an easy way to identify math-related wikipedia pages that don't have the wikiproject math tag? Rybu (talk) 19:54, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The list of mathematics articles has articles that are picked up by mathbot. There are sometimes false positives, but not usually any false negatives of any importance.  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 20:02, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I misread your question. ;-P Sławomir Biały  (talk) 20:03, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * There is no easy way with a web browser, but it's not hard to do by downloading the List of mathematics articles and also downloading a list of all pages with the maths rating tag. The issue is that, historically, we have agreed not to do mass bot-tagging runs to add a maths rating tag to all these. There are several reasons:
 * We already have a list that is automatically maintained (List of mathematics articles), so we do not need the maths rating tag to identify math articles. Worse, the maths rating tags are manually maintained and so the automatic list is likely to be more complete.
 * There is little benefit in just adding an "assessment" tag without actually filling it in. The lack of any assessment tag is perfectly good at conveying the fact that there is no assessment info; we don't need a category "unknown assessment data" as well.


 * I wasn't suggesting that. Nor have I ever done that. Rybu (talk) 20:14, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * To make the second bullet worse, when tags are added without assessment info, someone else has to go behind and fill in the parameters later. See a couple sections higher on this page, where I am discussing filling in about 1000 articles that were improperly tagged. Huge backlogs like that should be avoided.
 * So if you do want to tag lots of math article talkpages, please fill in the quality, priority, and field parameters as you go. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 20:08, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * For manually adding the maths rating template, I suggest enabling the "Display an assessment of an article's quality as part of the page header for each article." option in your settings if you haven't already done so. When an article hasn't been assessed at all, this will be displayed on the article page so you can see this without going to the talk page. (Most people probably already do this, I just thought I'd mention it for those who didn't know about this feature.) --Robin (talk) 21:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I should point out there is a benefit to tagging the articles that are most important to us: it helps them get selected for release versions of wikipedia. Wikipedia 0.7, a test release, is almost done, and the goal is to finish Wikipedia 0.8 soon after that now that the tools are more developed. So particularly articles that would be tagged as Top- or High-priority should have a project banner ASAP. But I think most of those are probably already tagged. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 21:46, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * But where is the benefit to having Wikipedia 0.8? Article assessment is one of the encyclopedia's most obvious failures. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:02, 24 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The goal is to have the right collection of math articles on Wikipedia-on-a-CD and Wikipedia-on-a-DVD releases. That's the fundamental point of article assessment. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 19:27, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * To get back to the original issue, yes there is a backlog of math articles with no tag or tags with fields not filled in. (In fact there is a backlog of a lot of things, but that is more or less the nature of Wikipedia.) But in my experience it takes a human with some knowledge of the material to fill in the missing info correctly, and it's better have it left 'unknown' than filled in with the wrong value.--RDBury (talk) 01:47, 25 November 2009 (UTC)


 * That's why we need editors to go through and fill them in by hand, as I am planning to do. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 19:27, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Bplus and GA class
From the archives I see that this has been discussed over an year ago (here), but I'm not too clear about the situation. It seems currently that Category:GA-Class_mathematics_articles is a strict superset of Category:Bplus-Class_mathematics_articles. The first category actually includes all GA-class articles + Bplus-class articles. Why do we do this? This means all Bplus articles are in two categories. A related question is why do we have Bplus and B, instead of B and C (which would make us consistent with other wikiprojects)? For instance, see Talk:Gottfried_Leibniz where it is rated C-class under WikiProject Mathematics too, to make it consistent with all the other WPs which have assigned it C-class. --Robin (talk) 04:39, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * GA is a meaningless noise; don't worry about it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 07:44, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The way I understand it, Bplus is a math-specific rating; GA is a wikipedia rating. GA's are usually assigned based on article structure and certain requirements. That is good for history or biography articles, where the information contained within is relatively easy to grasp. The content of mathematics articles by nature are often inherently more difficult to grasp, and so we have our own rating that can be assigned, and that rating does not pay as much (if any) attention to the structure/citation points that GA does. As an aside, we had some bad experiences a few montha ago with a(n ostensibly) well-meaning editor doing GA review on a bunch of math articles, and de-listing them because they didn't exactly fit the GA mold, even though they were written in accordance with our own MoS. It is possible to get Math articles the GA tag. For example, I helped bring Maximum spacing estimation to GA and Actuary to FA. Although the latter is not such a good example, as the content is more along the lines of a bio/history article, even though it is properly a Math/Stats/Business article. -- Avi (talk) 07:56, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately GA reviewers are as bad on historical and biographical articles, which is why I ignore the rating entirely. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 08:15, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The original intention of B+ was to identify those articles which were pretty close to the GA standard, as opposed to most B's which would have required more work. If it still serves a useful function I'm not sure. --Salix (talk): 08:24, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * So Bplus is supposed to be our version of GA? (Or something close to that?) So what should an editor of a math article do when he/she believes that it is a very good article? Try to get class A rating? (Which is a rating internal to this project, I think, so it'll be evaluated by the WPM community.) --Robin (talk) 13:39, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The problem with A-ratings is that discussions stall for months on end, see WikiProject Mathematics/A-class rating. My personal opinion is that we should try to simultaneously get B+/A ratings from participants in this project as well as the GA rating from the general community; it's not impossible although it is frustrating, especially for the more technically advanced members of this project, of which I admit I am not. I think any article which is A-rated by the project is pretty much a shoe-in for FA; personally, I originally felt that I should not put a math article up for WP:FAC unless it is A-rated by the experts here, but as the A-rating process is all but defunct, I am rethinking that position. -- Avi (talk) 15:10, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Class C vs. Start
I just changed Euclid from C class to Start since we don't use C. There are over 50 other articles with math rating C; I though it would be a good idea to check before changing all of them. I found some previous discussion about adding C for WPM (see archives 38 and 42) but nothing seems to have come from it. Any thoughts?--RDBury (talk) 18:22, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I would support adding class C. At the very least it makes us consistent with other WikiProjects. If that feels like too many distinct ratings, Bplus should be scrapped and moved down to B, and B becomes C. But if scrapping Bplus is not an option, I still support adding class C. --Robin (talk) 20:14, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * There was some discussion about this some time ago. I don't think any meaningful consensus emerged.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 22:23, 26 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't see any benefit to the C class rating. Having a coarse rating system has the advantage of being easy to explain. So I feel like I can tell a difference between Start- and B-class articles, but I don't know how to tell the difference between Start- and C-class or C- and B-class.


 * The Bplus rating is a separate point; it is essentially a project-specific analogue of GA. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 19:30, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Additive K-theory
Came across Additive K-theory during my new page patrol. Right now, the article consists of just the formula and nothing else (no explanation, etc.). It definitely can't stay as it is, but I know nothing about this topic to expand the article. Anyone here able to take a look? Singularity42 (talk) 06:42, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Certainly the article should not be deleted (note that if you wish to delete a mathematics article, it would be wise to perform a google scholar search first) - . Politely speaking, I am unable to understand where in the article lies a "formula". Rather, it is an isomorphism. Without claiming expertise on the subject, I am quite sure that it is an important area in mathematics (compare also to algebraic K-theory). -- PS T  12:18, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh, I fully admit I made a mistake with my PROD (I'm not familiar with the subject, and screwed up my Google search) - but that's nothing to do with my request for something more to be added to the article. Anyway, that has been done now, so the issue is now resolved. Singularity42 (talk) 15:50, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

David Foreman (mathematician)
I have proposed David Foreman (mathematician) for deletion (PROD). If you feel Dr. Foreman does meet the standards at WP:PROF, please remove the proposed deletion notice, or discuss the issue on the article's talk page. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 01:19, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Various non-TeX math symbols


Such things as the above are occasionally found in Wikipedia articles. They are not among the things found next to the word "Insert" nor the one found next to "Symbols" in the menu that contains those items and also "Wiki Markup", "Greek", "Cyrillic", etc. Where are they found? Are they tabulated somewhere? Michael Hardy (talk) 19:54, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * You can probably find them in the various Unicode tables, e.g. Unicode mathematical operators.--RDBury (talk) 20:08, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * (ec) The big list is at User:KSmrq/Chars. There is also a somewhat less comprehensive list at List of mathematical symbols.  These and other resources should probably be added to our project via WikiProject Mathematics/Editor resources.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 20:09, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Here is one more: http://htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/entities/symbols.html – not comprehensive, but I think everything on this list is fairly well supported in web browsers.. — Miym (talk) 20:36, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The big one is probably the \mapsto one (↦), which lacks an html shorthand (no &mapsto;). I propose the template mapsto to handle this, since I see a lot of ad hoc $$\mapsto$$ to achieve this.  Sławomir Biały  (talk)


 * I have created the mapsto template, but now I have a different difficulty. How does one find instances of $$\mapsto$$, e.g., as in a$$\mapsto$$b, where html is used except for the mapsto glyph?  These should probably all be replaced by the unicode equivalent.  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 15:26, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Querying a database dump is one option. AutoWikiBrowser is another. Algebraist 16:04, 29 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I can run searches against the database dumps if you ask. I searched for the regular expression / *\\mapsto/ in the dump from 2009-10-17 and found the following 32 articles. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 23:56, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * "Approximately finite dimensional C*-algebra - Bilinear map - Cancellation property - Compact-open topology - Differential geometry of surfaces - Dragon curve - Functor - Galois connection - Graded C*-algebra - Group action - Group ring - Hereditary C*-subalgebra - Integral domain - Kaplansky density theorem - Koszul complex - Lie group - Light's associativity test - Multibrot set - Natural transformation - Noncommutative integral - Permutation group - Polynomial code - Resolution (logic) - Riemannian connection on a surface - Scalar (mathematics) - Similar matrix - Spectrum of a C*-algebra - Table of mathematical symbols - Transfer principle - Vector bundle - Vector flow - Zappa-Szép product"

Take it to the Limit - DAB outreach request
Hi all, I was wondering if we could get some help from this project. I'm working on the Disambiguation pages with links project, and one of the most-linked dabs is Limit. This comes almost completely via the redirects Convergence (mathematics) and Limit (mathematics). This is a tricky one, and we don't want to get it wrong. Could someone help us point these articles to the correct target? You can find the lists here and here. Thanks! -- Ja Ga  talk 03:33, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The problem here stems from the recent undiscussed redirection of Limit (mathematics), which heretofore operated as an overview article on limits in mathematics, and to which Convergence (mathematics) used to redirect. I've restored the previous status quo until we've discussed this and reached some consensus as to what we should do if anything. In the meantime we should review the links to Limit (mathematics) and see if some ought to be more specifically directed. and redirect the links to  Convergence (mathematics) as appropriate. Paul August &#9742; 04:11, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I've done a bit of link sorting. Lot's more to do. Paul August &#9742; 05:36, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks much for the help, Paul. -- Ja Ga  talk 02:07, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Religious stance on Template:Infobox scientist
I've started a discussion on Template talk:Infobox scientist (see here) about the possible removal of the "Religious stance" field from this template. This isn't exactly a mathematical issue, but many mathematician bio's use this template so I thought people here might like the chance to comment. Comments will be appreciated. Cheers, Ben (talk) 22:27, 26 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The field should only be used where there is clear evidence the scientist identifies with some set of religious or philosophical beliefs rather than being a nominal catholic or whatever. SO I see no problem with it - religion of a scientist is a question people ask and if a scientist clearly says they are Buddist or an atheist or whatever that seems reasonable to me. Dmcq (talk) 00:13, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm basically opposed to info boxes in general. Paul August &#9742; 02:13, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't think a religion or religious stance belongs in the infobox. since in most cases the information has no connection or influence on his work plus it smacks a bit like "religion versus science"-settings, which imho we should avoid. In the few cases where religion matters and scientist has a particular prominent position for or against religion and ir matters significantly in his life or work it is sufficient enough to deal with that in the article itself.--Kmhkmh (talk) 06:05, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia isn't in the business of fixing the world by censoring things. People do go in for religion versus science and ask about the religion beliefs of scientists. That said the infobox description does say that field should only be filled in where the person clearly states their beliefs and identifies with them rather than it just being a nominal belief or affiliation. So saying atheism on Richard Dawkins is perfectly reasonable. The 'eclectic' on Einstein is rather a bit more problematic but his religion has been a matter of intense interest. The 'Lutheran' on Gauss is I feel wrong unless someone can produce something saying he identified with it, so a cn would be justified there. Dmcq (talk) 08:39, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Nobody suggested censorship, the question was about relevant information and the religious affiliation or lack thereof is irrelevant information about most scientists. If you have an infobox, then it should contain/summarize the most important characteristic you can state for most scientists and religious affiliation or stance is not among them.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:44, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I feel that infoboxes, if they exist, should contain information that is relevant to large classes of scientists (if not all), and I don't understand why religious stance is any more relevant, in general, than say, the scientists favourite country. In both the religious stance and favourite country cases there may be exceptional articles where it is relevant. But surely that should be discussed in the article text in those exceptional cases, as opposed to having an infobox that is designed for a large class of people containing a field for information that is not relevant for much of that class of people. Cheers, Ben (talk) 09:01, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * +1 I can live with or without infoboxes, but infoboxes containing largely irrelevant or even private information make no sense to me.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:40, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm with Paul August on the general point. But obviously any information about religious beliefs must be first verifiable (you need to be able to document religious affiliation as accurately as anything else), and a salient point about the person. Otherwise the information has no business in the article, in an infobox or anywhere else. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:16, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Which is basically what the template says and I fully agree with that. I think infoboxes are a reasonable way of putting together structured information about subjects. It may be fairly rudimentary but it is the easiest way for a robot to extract data like famous mathematicians born in Germany between 1800 and 1850. Wikipedia is in the business of making information like that freely available. Dmcq (talk) 11:38, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Btw the main purpose for an infobox is still just a short "summary" for the reader. If the purpose is just to other bots and software access to rudimentary data you can use invisible templates(see Persondata for instance)


 * True but I can't say I'm very happy with that. It stops editors seeing the data and correcting it. There's currently a debate going on about making infoboxes more accessible to databases at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/infobox template coherence and that is the better way to go I think. Lots of humans like bits of information to be accessible in a structured fashion too. Dmcq (talk) 12:17, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Let me expand a bit on my general objection expressed above. Infoboxes, If they exist at all, should only exist as an adjunct to the article. It shouldn't contain any content not judged important or relevant enough to be in the article itself, and It should certainly not be used as a place for content instead of the article. Infoboxes are inherently redundant. So for example if religion isn't mentioned in the article (probably true for the vast majority of our articles) it shouldn't be in the infobox. And for those rare occasions where religion will be judged to be relevant enough to be mentioned in the article, something as complex and nuanced as "religious stance" will often not be able to be summarized meaningfully and accurately by  being squashed into the narrow confines of a field in an infobox. Cookie cutter, baseball card like infoboxes may have there place, but probably not much of one. Paul August &#9742; 17:14, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * +1 well said--Kmhkmh (talk) 18:22, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I also agree entirely. Ozob (talk) 22:21, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for the input. This has now been removed. Now that most articles using the template will have a superfluous 'religion' field, I'm wondering if anyone know of a bot that can clean up the articles using the template? Or should it just be left? Cheers, Ben (talk) 22:32, 30 November 2009 (UTC).

"Variedad Nehari"
I stumbled across this random mathematics page that was posted to the English Wikipedia in Spanish--Variedad Nehari. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know a thing about advanced mathematics and frankly don't have the least clue what the article is talking about. I gave it a quick translation to English, but it definitely needs some attention by a mathematician for accuracy's sake. I'd like to move the article to an English name, but have no idea what the real name of the concept is, much less whether it's valid or original research (one of the infoboxes added by the original editor raised a bit of a flag with that when the "creator" name matched his username, although there are references cited).

I noticed there's been page requests for Nehari theorem and the Nehari extension problem on the "Missing science pages" list, and the original author seems to translate it to the "Nehari manifold" when he posted the image... Admittedly trawling Google and investigating the results still leaves me lost as to where it may belong, or if it belongs at all. If anyone might be able to give this article a better name, or let me know if it should be suggested for deletion or what... I'd appreciate it. :) Thanks! Tehae (talk) 00:52, 29 November 2009 (UTC)


 * It looks like someone already created a redirect moved the page to Nehari manifold. The original article should have been posted to the Spanish wikipedia since it doesn't exist yet there. My understanding is the Variedad is the correct translation for Manifold.--RDBury (talk) 02:13, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * For manifold, or for variety? (Strangely, we don't seem to have an article on varieties, in the sense of things that are almost manifolds but can have singularities and boundaries.  There's algebraic variety and abstract variety, but neither of those is quite the concept I'm talking about.  Or maybe the latter one even is; it's hard to tell.`) --Trovatore (talk) 20:52, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Nehari manifold is what English language sources call it. Sławomir Biały  (talk) 21:44, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, it's good to keep in mind that in romance languages, "manifold" translates to the cognate of "variety". Our "variety" translates to the cognates of "analytic variety" or "algebraic variety". Ozob (talk) 00:25, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I've tagged Variedad Nehari as db-g6 since there is no need for a redirect from a Spanish translation of the title. Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:25, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and untagged it -- as I understand it, redirects don't really need to be "needed". They just need to be plausibly useful, and not harmful.  I think this one meets both those criteria. --Trovatore (talk) 23:45, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what the logic is in having redirects from foreign language titles. That seems to be what interwiki's are good for, not redirects.  Otherwise we should have much more high-profile titles like variedad &rarr; manifold, análisis complejo &rarr; complex analysis, and so forth.  Maybe this is hypothetically useful, but it is clearly absurd.  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 00:00, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * There are lots of redirects that serve no really compelling purpose. So what?  It's obviously not worthwhile to add the redirects you mention, but I see no great advantage in deleting them either. --Trovatore (talk) 00:16, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Possible redirect for Dyadic tensor
The mathworld article says is an obsolete term for Tensor product. If that is the case then the article Dyadic tensor should just redirect there instead of having it's own article. Is there some context where Dyadic is still in current usage or is this something that can be added to another article as an aka?--RDBury (talk) 02:27, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I think the article should not be merged to tensor product, although perhaps it should be moved to dyadic notation. Firstly, the fact that this term doesn't appear in any modern treatments of tensor products (that I am aware of at least) would rather strongly argue against tensor product as a suitable merge targent.  Secondly, the mathworld article, the entry in Arfken and the entry in Jeffreys and Jeffreys establish notability.  Moreover, there is even a recent book entitled "Generalized Vector and Dyadic Analysis" published by Oxford University Press.  The target audience seems to be engineers rather than mathematicians.  Thirdly, there is no rule that an encyclopedia should only cover things that are in contemporary use.  It is obviously an important task of an encyclopedia to have many articles on things that would be regarded as obsolete.  At any rate, I don't think dyadics are entirely obsolete, so this is more of a counterpoint to your point.  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 13:54, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I disagree with a lot of what you're saying but since you can cite a reference that the term Dyadic is current in engineering math I'm not going to argue the rest. The article popped up on my radar because it had no references, so thanks for locating one and adding it to the article. It's not really my specialty so I can't say if 'dyadic notation' is the best move target, but it seems better than 'dyadic tensor'. From what I'm reading in the article and Mathworld, a dyad is a type of tensor so the article name is like saying 'tensoric tensor'.--RDBury (talk) 14:59, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, this article needs to get merged with dyadics and dyadic product, since they all treat exactly the same object but with slightly different notation. Any suggestions? objections? Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:56, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


 * A dyad is not just any tensor. It is a rank 2 tensor written in vector rather than tensor notation. So it deserves its own article. JRSpriggs (talk) 02:56, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I assume you are replying to the original post, not my own post. I agree that dyadics deserve their own article.  They do not deserve three more or less identical articles, however.  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 09:00, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I think it should stay a separate article but support the mergers. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:58, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Springerlink
Hey, does anyone have Springerlink access? If so, could they email me the various Springerlink papers linked to on my userpage? Thanks, Nousernamesleft (talk) 23:46, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Please don't solicit copyright violations on Wikipedia. Ozob (talk) 00:27, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh; I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was a copyright violation. Never mind then. Nousernamesleft (talk) 02:26, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * In the U.S. at least, the common wisdom is that personal copies of articles may be legally created to further non-profit scholarly research. But since the user above doesn't have an email address on their user page, and the "email this user" link does not accept attachments, it would be very hard to fulfill this request. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 02:31, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Is editing Wikipedia a "non-profit scholarly research"? It's clearly non-profit... -- Taku (talk) 02:57, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd say so. But that doesn't make it ok to put up commercial intellectual property in a way that makes it accessible to anyone. Emailing a copy to the individual user seems more acceptable, and some journal publishers' terms of use seem to explicitly allow it, but Springer's don't seem to. Reading through their terms, and going by analogy from what they say is ok for interlibrary loan requests, it seems the most they will allow is mailing a physical printed copy of the paper. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:14, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * It is not clear to me whether a SpringerLink subscriber is allowed to help with these kinds of requests. There are numerous conditions in the contract ("limited amounts", "incidental and non-systematic manner", "non commercial scientific communication", "not for re-transmission", etc.), and IANAL. However, you can always contact the original authors of the papers! In many cases (including Springer's copyright transfer agreements that I have recently signed), authors retain the permission to post their own versions of the articles on their own web sites. If the authors haven't done this yet, maybe you could email them and ask why this is the case; it would solve your problem and also help everyone else who is interested in those articles. — Miym (talk) 17:28, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * All right, I'll try this. Thanks! And oh, I hadn't realized that the Wikipedia email system doesn't allow for attachments. Whoops. Nousernamesleft (talk) 21:47, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Convolution for Optical Broad-beam Responses in Scattering Media
The new articles Convolution for Optical Broad-beam Responses in Scattering Media and Monte Carlo method for photon transport read like papers in the IEEE transactions rather than encyclopedia articles. I don't know what to do with them, but something is definitely wrong here. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:53, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Also similar: Radiative transfer equation and diffusion theory for photon transport in biological tissue. --Robin (talk) 00:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * For now you could add the template to flag the issue. Sounds like you should raise this at the Physics project though.--RDBury (talk) 03:45, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Suggested changes to Monty Hall problem
You are invited to join the discussion at. Rick Block (talk) 04:06, 3 December 2009 (UTC) (Using )

Linking to truth value and common conception
To truth value and common conception this time. It looks like we have to have a thread like this once in a while. Pcap ping  02:51, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * You're welcome.Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 02:54, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Many of the links to truth value seem OK. I think the links to common conception had mostly been reverted before I could look at them. So I don't think there is much to discuss. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 03:08, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't see why either of them need to be discussed at WP:MATH at all. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 03:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * A lot of the truth value ones were on my watchlist, which is strong evidence they are related to mathematics. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 03:18, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Okay, so that still doesn't justify the need for a discussion. Or do we just sound alarms at any old thing around here? People need to cool it. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 03:23, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I think this should have been discussed before this mass edit. The article on truth value seems to be about interpretations of the word in different logics and things like the Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov interpretation, which the reader who just wants to understand the satisfiability problem in complexity theory doesn't care about. Although it is the same concept, the link doesn't help the reader. If there's an article on truth values in boolean formulae, or a section of the article on truth values talks about this, that can be linked to. Linking to this concept seems counter-productive. Let me offer an analogy. It's like taking the sentence "the distance between San Fransisco and New York is ..." and linking the word "distance" to metric (mathematics). --Robin (talk) 04:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I can't really agree with your example. I find it to be a wild analogy. Truth value is one of the most fundamental concepts in logic, so it is reasonable to expect a link to it. It's a convenient link, so just exactly what is "counterproductive" about it will require substantially more explanation. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 04:26, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * See WP:OVERLINK and the related pages, including a psychological study that shows that links also have a point of diminishing returns.
 * Please stop it - again. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:31, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

List of q-analogs
We have no list of q-analogs.

After it's created, it should be added to the Lists of mathematics topics. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:16, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Gaussian q-distribution
I don't yet have any opinions on the new article tited Gaussian q-distribution (beyond the formatting cleanups I did) but an obvious problem is that hardly any articles link to it. Could anyone who knows of any articles that should link to it attent to that? Michael Hardy (talk) 20:10, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * To me, another issue is that the article only lists research papers as references, calling notability into question.--RDBury (talk) 02:49, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Robert Williams (geometer)
There is a proposal to delete the article on Robert Williams (geometer). Participants here may wish to comment in the deletion discussion.—Finell 02:50, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

PROD nomination of Catalog of articles in probability theory
My dear Catalog of articles in probability theory is proposed for deletion. Do you agree? Boris Tsirelson (talk) 07:01, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm a bit concerned about the deletion tag being used here. Despite the potential issue with WP core policies the article was edited by several mathematicians (including experienced Wikipedians), who seemed to have no objection at the time. From my perspective that usually should warrant a more detailed discussion either here or via a regular AdD listing, but using this "deletion without discussion" seems to be inappropriate to me here.--Kmhkmh (talk) 07:14, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The reason stated in the prod is not entirely accurate. List of mathematics articles is exclusively maintained by a bot, although the article comes just short of explicitly saying that this is what is going on. So the "nonstandard method of editing" is not unprecedented. Moreover, if there is room on Wikipedia for List of mathematics articles, Index of physics articles, Index of logic articles, etc., then there should also be room for a Catalog of articles in probability theory. I'm going to be bold and remove the prod tag. Sławomir Biały (talk) 08:45, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * As it stands, I think the article would be better off in project space. It would need at least a non-self-referential introduction, and shouldn't tell the non-editing reader how to edit it. — Kusma talk 10:40, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Feel free to remove the prod tag, however it will go to AfD if kept in its current form. It might even qualify for speedy. Until the policy issues are resolved it should probably be moved to userspace if you don't want it deleted. This is a proper use of the prod tag, and anyone can remove it (though they should say why). If what is said about the list is true it may also fail our policies. Verbal chat  11:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Since all Wikipedia policies are subject to interpretation and exceptions. It might help, if you provided some specifics and why they require a deltion in this case. At least from my perspective i don't quite see at first glance why this overview/index is something that has to be deleted.--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:56, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm obviously opposed to the AfD. See section below for a solution. Pcap ping  11:44, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, I'm not convinced this particular index needs a bot; see AfD for more. Pcap ping  13:05, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Switching to (or adding) a warning box when bot-updated articles are edited; add move protection
I think this is the best solution to avoid mishaps, like the above. I suggest we write a template, say Template:Math index edit instructions that displays a warning box like we have for (say) BLP articles in edit mode. It should have a parameter so the link for the editing instructions may vary from one index to another.

To prevent moves that break the bot like we had with the List of mathematics articles sub-articles, I think such articles should be move protected as well. I don't think it's possible to display a warning in that case, but hopefully the sysop trying to move them will hopefully hit edit before moving them... Pcap ping  11:44, 6 December 2009 (UTC)


 * There is already a method to add an "edit notice" to any particular page. Using that would probably be more robust than using a template. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 14:42, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know the syntax... Pcap ping  22:41, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It turns out all we have to do is edit Template:Editnotices/Page/Catalog of articles in probability theory. But the edit note has been removed from the top of the article, perhaps it is no longer needed. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 00:02, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Current activity page
Does anyone besides me ever look at WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity? This gets updated daily, except when it doesn't. And when it doesn't, I seem to be the only person who notifies Jitse Niesen that it's not happening. The list of mathematics articles supposedly also gets updated daily, except that now that hasn't happened since December 1st. Every time a math category is added to an article, bots add it to that list at the next daily update. I've added some statistics category tags to articles that formerly had only biology-related tags within the past few days; normally that would cause bots to add it to the math articles list, and that in turn would get it mentioned under "New articles" on the "Current activities" page. That has cease happening for several days now. I've notified Oleg Alexandrov and I await developments.

But I'm wondering, am I really the only person who notices when this happens? Or do others notice and assume someone else will attend to it eventually? Michael Hardy (talk) 19:35, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Put me in the latter class — I noticed but haven't done anything about getting it working again. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I monitor the page, but not very frequently, so I seldom notice any problem. Sławomir Biały  (talk) 01:14, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I watch the current activity page, but I don't notice when it doesn't run. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 01:18, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I've just started checking it recently. I suppose I would start to notice if there weren't any changes in a few days but probably not before that. Keep in mind that most of the categories don't have new additions every day anyway.--RDBury (talk) 02:42, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

"Most of the categories don't have new additions ever day."

What should one infer from that? I don't think there's ever a day when none of them has any additions. I look every day.

There are indeed changes on that page, to things other than new articles. But new articles ceased to get added several days ago. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:46, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Now that you mention it, it is kind of odd that the last new article added is from the first, this usually has something new every day. On the other hand some of the other categories have updates from the fourth. So maybe it's just the new articles section that's not working.--RDBury (talk) 02:59, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I already explained that, and I explained why that's what's happening. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:26, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I misread what you wrote, sorry.--RDBury (talk) 11:56, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I have it on my watchlist, and I often look at the updates. But if it isn't updated, I don't notice that it's missing from the watchlist page. —Dominus (talk) 22:37, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Oleg has now intervened and mathbot has done its first update of the list of mathematics articles since six days earlier. Thus when Jitse's bot updates the "current activities" page (in about 10 or 11 hours, I think?) it should show more recent new articles than those from the 1st of December. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:10, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Double recursion
I just created an article on double recursion based upon Robinson's paper (see ref). However, I was not familiar with the topic until I read Robinson's work. For anyone more familiar, is this how the term is generally understood? Also, the use of the phrase "obtained by substitution" seems a bit out of date or imprecise, can anyone suggest a more modern and/or more precise formulation? Thanks, — sligocki (talk) 01:55, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * There was a shift at some point away from the use of "general recursive functions" in recursion theory, so that nowadays things like double recursion are not really covered. If you asked a recursion theorist how to prove that these functions are computable, they would point at Kleene's recursion theorem, which works for a wide collection of multiple recursive definitions.


 * Multiple recursion is still important in proof theory, when you want to build terms for non-primitive-recursive functions. The term to look for in the literature is recursor. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 02:59, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

book-class
Since this is one of the bigger projects, and that a couple of Wikipedia-Books are math-related, could this project adopt the book-class? This would really help WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, as the WP Math people can oversee books like Mathematics much better than we could as far as merging, deletion, content, and such are concerned. Eventually there probably will be a "Books for discussion" process, so that would be incorporated in the Article Alerts. I'm placing this here rather than on the template page since several taskforces would be concerned.

There's an article in this week Signpost if you aren't familiar with Wikipedia-Books and classes in general. Thanks. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Anyone for/against this? Or don't have a shred of a hint of what I'm talking about? Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 23:37, 10 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm only a newbie here, but from what I've just read, it sounds like a good idea! Thudso (talk) 00:09, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I didn't comment as I don't really understand how anyone could be against the proposal... :) Exactly what there is to discuss? Are there some technical issues? Does the proposed change break some bots? — Miym (talk) 00:32, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * As I read it, Headbomb is asking the WP Math participants to maintain this field/category/whatever it is. I would be surprised if there were any objections to its existence, but I don't know how many people will commit to doing the actual work, if that's what's being asked. --Trovatore (talk) 01:23, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I think we should treat it like Portals: people who are interested can do it, and people who are not can ignore it. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 01:27, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

The reason I ask is that some people object to non-controversial template changes without asking permission first (its rare, but there are people more concerned with bureaucracy and procedure than anything else), which can delay editprotected requests etc... And also because wikipedia-books are relatively unknown, so if there are questions about them I can explain what they are and so on.

What I'm asking of WP Math is simply to keep an eye out on the books to make sure that they make sense, and are POV/OR free in scope. More enthusiastic members could make sure they are well-structured, and that each book is linked to a relevant articles (using Wikipedia-Books). Even more enthusiastic members could go through the PDF and see if they render properly. And some could even write books for each of the "big" subfields of mathematics, one on Lie algebra, one on operators, one on linear algebra, etc... But nothing's really "required" of anyone, after all I can't force anyone to do anything :P.

Beyond the mere categorization, is that the project banners should be on the talk page so people looking for help can quickly get to the relevant Wikiprojects. Anyway, seems like there is consensus to make the change, so I'll get on it. If you have questions, just ask. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 06:13, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually you use a custom banner, and there's something about a bot generating tables, so I'll leave it to the template maintainers. Otherwise I'd probably screw up something. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 06:17, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The current banner is really only set up for articles. At some point (once the new WP 1.0 system is in place), we will have to address that. The easiest fix is probably to add the non-article classes to maths banner, and use that on non-article pages. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 14:11, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

AWB linking to substitution instance
I'm not convinced automated linking to that article is appropriate because the article as it is now is only about propositional logic, but the links to it are made in more general contexts, e.g. unification. Pcap ping  04:40, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Substitution (logic) might be a better target, but I find it poorly written. Pcap ping  04:46, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * This is getting to be a recurring nuisance. Greg does this sort of thing over and over &mdash; elide the difference between a precisely defined formal notion, and the referent of a name of that notion in contexts where it's not appropriate.  He does it with these little articles (common conception, recently deleted), he does it with categories, in retrospect it's what he did at theorem.  No one seems to have much luck talking to him about it.  Maybe we need to escalate to some more formal sort of dispute resolution, such as a user-conduct RfC. --Trovatore (talk) 04:51, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Mediation might have a greater chance of success. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:18, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * How does that work? --Trovatore (talk) 10:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * By my reading of WP:DR, we ought to start with a conduct RFC first. All of these forums require a neutral statement of the dispute; I'd suggest something like, "Certain words have both an everyday meaning and a jargon meaning used in mathematical logic. Gregbard believes that articles on these terms should be primarily about their jargon meanings." Ozob (talk) 12:37, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * There is the option of asking in the Mediation Cabal. It is not particularly opaque what has been happening on the pages concerned. The mediation approach - trying to clarify what each side is trying to achieve - is more likely to be effective, than just redescribing the status quo. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:45, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The main problem is that he appears to put little effort in inspecting the context where he (auto) makes such links. He stated on a few different occasions (see his talk page) that his work is just WP:BOLD, and that it's somebody else's job to fix errors he makes. Pcap ping  12:49, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I support the idea of taking some sort of action. This is a great annoyance. --Robin (talk) 13:38, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Concur. Paul August &#9742; 16:10, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Let's file a request at the Mediation Cabal. In order to do this, we need: OK, that's what we need. Let's fill in the blanks so we can file. Ozob (talk) 23:28, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Disputed articles. It would probably be good to list here some examples of wikilinks he's added that we disagree with, as well as examples of major edits to articles he's made that we disagree with.
 * 2) People involved. Obviously Gregbard, but who here would like to represent us? I think we're allowed as many as we want.
 * 3) What the dispute is about. It seems to me that there are two things we dislike about his actions:
 * 4) Adding inappropriate wikilinks.
 * 5) Making undesirable edits (most recently to Theorem).
 * 6) What we would like changed. Clearly we want him to stop doing things we don't like, but does anyone have a better way of phrasing this?
 * 7) How the mediator can help. Whenever Greg comes to WT:WPM, I always get the feeling that neither side is able to get anything through to the other; I feel like I have no idea where he's coming from, and that he has no idea where we're coming from.
 * My Crystal Ball tells me that he will howl that he's being harassed by "The Math Department" again -- but maybe getting broader input will render that a non-starter. Here's hoping. 71.139.16.41 (talk) 04:05, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Regarding issues 3/4 above, my main concern is that he sometimes creates a large body of clean-up work by his bold use of WP:AWB in controversial contexts; Greg has been warned by an uninvolved administrator in one previous instance. The solution is that he discusses AWB linking campaigns before starting them. Editing on various articles, e.g. formal language, may be seen as reasonable editorial disagreements that can be solved on talk pages, even though Greg persists in getting his way for years, which is form of POV pushing that drains others' time. The Template:Mathematosis/Mathematosis incident (in which I was not involved) makes me think Greg has developed a WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality with regard to the "math department". His disdain for some mathematicians should not be allowed to permeate article space, or give him carte blanche to disregard the opinions of WP:WPM editors that disagree with him. Given that his bold use of AWB has been found contrary to WP:AWB by an uninvolved admin, yet Greg continues doing the same, I'm not sure what mediation can hope to achieve; as far as I'm concerned the matter has been arbitrated. I would certify a User RfC though, because discussing his actions here at length is at odds with the purpose of this talk page. Pcap ping  06:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd rather start with mediation, because I think Greg believes he is acting in good faith; I suspect that he believes we sometimes act in bad faith, and I think mediation may be our best hope of changing that belief.


 * Let's focus on his use of AWB. The issue that you contacted ANI about was inappropriate changes of formal language to formal language (logic), and you gave a list of undesirable changes there. For substitution instance, he's done:, , , , , , , and . Of these, the links at Zeroth-order logic, Raven paradox, Propositional calculus, Open sentence, and Condensed detachment remain, while the others were removed; so 3/8 of his links were undone. I can see from his contributions page that he's recently made a lot of links to logical form; I don't know whether they're appropriate or not. What we'd like changed, I guess, is that he stop using AWB to make irrelevant links: That is, he often will link a word or words to an article with that name but with a different topic. Trovatore put it very well when he said that Greg continues to "elide the difference between a precisely defined formal notion, and the referent of a name of that notion". That's what we want him to stop doing. Ozob (talk) 12:51, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not opposed in principle to mediation. (And even if I were, there's nothing stopping you other guys from seeking it. I only deal with Greg's damage when it intersects my watchlist these days.) I don't have a lot of faith in mediation as a wiki institution. On some informal mediation pages I've look at, the mediator had no clue what to mediate means, and instead arbitrated on contents, i.e. took sides or imposed his own solution. So, YMMV a lot depending on the mediator. Now, Charles Matthews has offered his services of sorts, and I do trust his judgment. Let's see how Greg reacts. Pcap ping  19:23, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Proof "subpages"
Where was consensus reached in favor of creating fake subpages like Cardioid/Proofs for proofs? Maybe it's time to revive the discussion on proof guidelines... Balabiot (talk) 08:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * My understanding was it's currently being done on a trial basis. Maybe it's time to evaluate the results of the trial.--RDBury (talk) 12:27, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * PS. there are currently 16 articles which are proofs subpages, namely Moore–Penrose pseudoinverse/Proofs, Möbius transformation/Proofs, Laplace–Beltrami operator/Proofs, Addition of natural numbers/Proofs, Distributive lattice/Proofs, Christoffel symbols/Proofs, Approximation theory/Proofs, Vector Laplacian/Proofs, Boy's surface/Proofs, Parabola/Proofs, Cardioid/Proofs, Ellipse/Proofs, Cone (geometry)/Proofs, Connected space/Proofs, Ordinary least squares/Proofs, Nondeterministic finite state machine/Proofs.--RDBury (talk) 12:44, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

My personal opinion on these is that if the proof itself is of encyclopedic interest, we should include it in the main article, and take care to write it up clearly. On the other hand, most proofs are not of encyclopedic interest (although they are obviously of mathematical interest). For that sort of thing, the reader would be better served by a proper text, and we should simply point them towards one. Our goal here is to present the highlights of a subject in a few thousand words, rather than to write textbooks.

Looking through three of the articles that RDBury listed, I had a few comments: &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 14:09, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Vector_Laplacian/Proofs is just a calculation. Distributive lattice/Proofs is an even simpler calculation.
 * Nondeterministic_finite_state_machine/Proofs is not particularly useful or readable in its current state. But the proof is actually the subject of the article powerset construction, which is where it should be covered. I think that latter article shows a better way to handle important proof techniques.

As far as the proofs with encyclopedic interest are concerned, those would comprise proofs being famous, using a common/wekk known proof technique or similar, they could indeed be handled in the original article. The question however is what to do with average proofs that might be offered as an additional service to readers and how to ensure correctness in such scenarios. I think that if we offer such average proofs, then a proof subpage might be the appropriate place. At least colluding the main article and possibly affecting its structure/readability with such proofs is imho not desirable. A problem that i see with such proofs is maintenance and to assure correctness, which might require more work/effort than checking normal articles. However it is definitely a nice service to readers. In any case this ultimately may need to be addressed or voted by the larger community, because if we formulate a guideline just based on a smaller set of currently involved or active editors (without having necessary a consent in the larger community) then this will be a setup for constant and possibly rather bitter quarrels. I would favour reviving the project mentioned above and making sure, that its outcome is to very least sanctioned with a clear majority by science/math editors at large (not just active portal members).--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:52, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * P.S: It is probably also important in this to context to be aware of various wikibook projects like this one . Because a possible alternative for proof subpages is to use those wikibooks for the proofs and simply provide a link in the wikipedia article.--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:59, 10 December 2009 (UTC)--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:59, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The idea of moving proofs to wikibooks is nice, though there is risk of original research there. Balabiot (talk) 16:29, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Not quite Wikibooks allow original research anyhow and most readers are "just" looking for a proof and not so much whether it was published somewhere else already. At least I see wikibooks as a compromise for still offering free access to proofs even when the community decides that normal proofs or proof subpages are inappropriate for Wikipedia itself.--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:17, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * What I meant is that since original research is allowed, it is much easier to slip in an incorrect proof on Wikibooks. Balabiot (talk) 13:51, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I generally think that Wikipedia is not the place for detailed proofs, unless such proofs are themselves notable. For instance, we currently give two detailed proofs of the Ascoli-Arzela theorem in the article. Only the first of these (the classic diagonalization proof) is worth presenting, in my opinion. However, my own opinions were overridden by two other editors there. As for /proofs subpages, these are almost always detailed proofs of silly/obvious/unimportant facts with very little quality control. Most of these were probably moved out of the main article by someone who felt that they didn't belong there, but was unwilling to delete the material outright. I think it is safe to start taking a harder line on proofs in articles, and especially /proofs subpages. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:34, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I favor the former but not the latter: proof 'subpages' don't hurt anything and may be useful in the future. (This is especially important for proofs of debatable notability.)  But long proofs don't generally (otherwise) belong in articles. CRGreathouse (t | c) 20:44, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I guess I can live with that. I suppose this is part of the reason the subpages have been tolerated thus far.  Although they are generally pretty awful, they also aren't seen as being especially harmful.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 21:35, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is the following: As WP:Subpages explains, there is no such thing as a "subpage" in the main namespace. For example, Cardioid/Proofs is simply a Wikipedia article, with a somewhat strange title "Cardioid/Proofs". My immediate reaction would be to propose it for deletion: the topic does not seem to be sufficiently notable to merit a stand-alone article (and even if it did, the title should be changed, as it violates WP:NAME). WP:NOHARM isn't an argument to keep articles, regardless of whether their title happens to contain a slash. What am I missing? — Miym (talk) 21:53, 10 December 2009 (UTC)


 * One thing to bear in mind is that all of these /proofs pages predate policies prohibiting subpages in the main namespace. In discussions, it was decided that no new /proofs pages should be added, but there was consensus that existing pages would be tolerated.  Clearly deleting a page just because it retroactively violated some (rather arbitrary) content guideline is highly questionable.  That said, I feel that there is very little of value in these pages, and if you want to discuss the merits of deleting them on a case-by-case basis, I would probably agree with deleting most of them.  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 22:25, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Just treat as a cleanup issue. The slash construction is ugly, anyway: if the page can't stand up as Proof of X, where X is like "divergence of the harmonic series" or "Lagrange's theorem" or something of the same stature, then it should be deleted if there is no reason to merge. There is no real point of principle. Charles Matthews (talk) 22:54, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

The following pages may be of some use regarding this topic: Paul August &#9742; 23:00, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs/Archive 1
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs/Archive 2
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs

Well formalities aside (subpage or its own page, or a side article to main article, etc.) there is still the question, whether we should allow average proofs as a service to readers within WP or not and I still think no matter which way we decide, the decision requires a sanctioning from a larger community nt just a few people discussing that here.--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:11, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Why, exactly? Making this sort of decision on the proper content of pages within a specific subject area is one of the major things WikiProjects are for. Algebraist 00:20, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it really should be discussed and decided case by case. In some cases, a proof may be a useful addition to an article, and in some cases a famous proof might warrant an article of its own. It depends not only on the proof itself but also on the context (for example, whether the proof appropriate if we take into account the intended audience of the article). — Miym (talk) 00:44, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think everybody here agrees anyway that in particular cases proofs are ok. The question is imho just about the rest. And why should we have sanction by a larger audience, because it is potentially a contentious topic. Its is not really convincing to advice somebody to follow a guideline in dispute, when polemically put the only reason behind the rule was/is the taste or personal preference of a few portal members. If on the other hand the decision or informal vote was at least supported by a large number of math or science editors, the advice will be appear much more convincing and legitimate.--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:58, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that the discussion is getting into the weeds a bit. To me the immediate question is what to do with articles named 'X/Proofs', not decide what should be done with proofs in general. My impression of the discussion so far is that, regardless of the original justification for creating these articles, the naming convention being used no longer fits Wikipedia guidelines, and something should be done with these articles to bring them into line. I'm also getting the impression that deciding exactly what should be done needs to be on a case by case basis. This first option would be to rename the article to 'Proof of the Y property of X' or something similar. There are already many article like this (see w:Category:Article proofs) but, from what I've seen, many of the article in the list above do not meet notability criteria independently. So it seems that some sort of merge or delete would be appropriate in most cases. I personally don't think deletion is a good idea unless the article is pure cruft and I'm not seeing that in these articles. The worst article I looked at was Parabola/Proofs but I think that can still be cleaned up and merged into the main article. In some cases, such as Addition of natural numbers/Proofs, a move to Wikibooks might be more appropriate. In any case, it seems to be that the next step is to go through the articles and add appropriate tags (merge, wikibooks, etc.) to them so their fate can be discussed on an individual basis, just as with any other articles with names that do not meet guidelines.--RDBury (talk) 02:54, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I think that dealing with them on a case-by-case basis is the best way to preserve what content there is. Although, for Distributive lattice/Proofs, it is not clear to me that merging that to the main article would improve the main article, so I am going to just redirect that one. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 12:31, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I put the list above into a user page, User:RDBury/Proofs articles for cleanup, to help keep track of progress etc. Hopefully these will all be resolved soon.--RDBury (talk) 04:00, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Endashes in article titles
User:Good Olfactory has been moving articles like Seifert–van Kampen theorem, with an unspaced endash, to the corresponding title Seifert – van Kampen theorem, with a spaced endash. I assume there is decidedly consensus against moves of this kind. Sławomir Biały (talk) 02:34, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * This is spelled out in WP:ENDASH. In most cases spacing should not be used but in cases such as 'van Kampen' where the name being linked has a space then there should be spaces.--RDBury (talk) 03:21, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I understand that this is what WP:ENDASH appears to suggest. It is obviously necessary to change the MoS recommendation.  "Seifert – van Kampen theorem" looks horrid, and I challenge you to find any good mathematics publication that uses this convention.  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 03:27, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * You may have a point, the Dash article says space should be used when their lack would be confusing, but that doesn't seem to the case here. But my point was that moves were done according to current guidelines. I'm thinking that it would be more appropriate to discuss guidelines themselves at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style rather than here, unless you want to create a special exception for mathematics and add it to WP:MOSMATH.--RDBury (talk) 04:09, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It turns out there was already a discussion at WT:MOS which came to the consensus that en dashes shouldn't be spaced. I've updated the MoS accordingly. Ozob (talk) 04:33, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, upon further examination it seems that they were considering specifically the case when one of the items to be dashed has an internal hyphen, whereas the MoS's instructions were for when one of the items had an internal space. So there may be some push back on this one, but I still think my change is correct. We'll see. Ozob (talk) 04:42, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Just so everyone knows, User:Tony1 has reverted my own edit and Ozob's to the MoS. So far at least myself, Ozob, and Michael Hardy have all objected to the current rule in one way or another. This is a long shot from being Wikipedia-wide consensus, but I think folks need to make some noise about this problem. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:53, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * To be redundant: any noise or (preferably) reasoned argument should go to WT:MOS. I think that there is a compromise already for surnames, which would resolve the original issue of renamed eponymous articles. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 13:42, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Harold Edwards
Is Harold Edwards worth a Wikipedia article?


 * A confession: sometimes I have confused Harold Edwards, author of a book on the Riemann hypothesis, with A. W. F. Edwards author of a book on the likelihood principle. (The latter has an article.)  But I bore in mind who's who when I posted the query above. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:11, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * If this is a question about notability i see no problem. Even if his mathematical achievements didn't suffice for notability per se, he still would be notable as an author. So the worth question is up to you, i.e. is it worth your time or not.--Kmhkmh (talk) 05:21, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree. As the author of eight books, one of which went into three editions and another of which was translated into Russian, he very likely passes WP:AUTH, and a quick search for course syllabi that use his books suggests to me that he passes WP:PROF #4. The Steele Prize and Whiteman Prize might also be enough for WP:PROF #2. It looks like a very clear case to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:39, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Noncommutative polynomial
Not pleased with this nomination: basically no discussion before nomination, snarling up the process of cleanup of the contribution. The title is hopeless. After investigation, this looks to me like a merge into Connes embedding conjecture, which also needs cleanup. The mathematics involved is serious current research. There is a relist notice on the AfD, so now would be the time to get this back on track. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:29, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Typography: Weierstrass p
Maybe someone can improve on this edit or on the article generally. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:25, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Noncommutative measure and integration
If anyone is familiar with Noncommutative measure and integration, it's a stub with a lot of potential for expansion. I rewrote the first sentence to remove an excessively close paraphrase, but I don't know enough about the field to add any decent context to the article. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 23:04, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The obvious person is User:Mathsci, but he is busy IRL at the moment. Sławomir Biały  (talk) 23:21, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Apparently the person who created this article and the Noncommutative polynomial article mentioned above was trying to fill in the red links in List of noncommutative topics in mathematics and created about 20 articles over a short period of time. It appears that some of these articles are proving to be problematic however.--RDBury (talk) 03:38, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Recent changes to Asymptote
Recently the Asymptote article was almost completely rewritten with no prior discussion much less consensus. See this diff. This is a highly visible article (it just misses being a top 500 most viewed) so I am requesting comment on the changes. I've already put in my opinion at Talk:Asymptote.--RDBury (talk) 22:59, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Edittools
We are thinking of adding a section with maths and logic symbols in the edittools that you see below the edit window when editing any page here at Wikipedia. We could need some help from the maths people here to get that section right. See discussion at MediaWiki talk:Edittools.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:56, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Articles containing proofs -> WPM
The other day I added a couple dozen article to the 'Articles containing proofs' category and it appears to have caused a couple of them to be added to the list of mathematical articles. While I expect that 99% of the articles that contain proofs will be mathematical, is that enough of a certainty that the article should automatically go to WPM? There might be articles in theoretical physics or philosophy, for example, that contain proofs but should not necessarily be considered mathematical articles. In any case, I would would hope that mathematical articles in this category would be categorized sufficiently in other ways so that it is unnecessary to use this as a criterion.--RDBury (talk) 19:07, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Proof as article
Proof for 1st exponential integral was just created, and I don't know what to think of it. Is this an appropriate article? Nyttend (talk) 03:38, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The short answer is no. I've read much of the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs and my interpretation of the trend (can't really call it a consensus) is that some proofs are acceptable subjects for articles, but only if they satisfy notability guidelines just like any other article. In this case, the article was apparently created as a link from List of integrals of exponential functions as a demonstration of one of the formulas there. The same proof is given in this article as hidden text under the same formula, so having it in a separate article is redundant anyway.--RDBury (talk) 06:46, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Lazy S symbol
I would merge Lazy S to Table of mathematical symbols but I have never encountered a lazy S and can't say what they are used for. The symbol from the article is "∽", which is not \sim "$$\sim \,$$". Does anyone else know what a lazy S is good for, apart from cattle branding? &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 18:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Here is one possible explanation:, p. 27: "Many symbols used in the Arabic presentation of mathematics are only horizontally reversed Latin mathematical symbols", "For example, the symbol tilde and its reversed form reversed tilde". — Miym (talk) 20:02, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I first thought of the wreath product, but of course, there tilde is aligned vertically. Arcfrk (talk) 16:27, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposed outline of Proofs guideline
The above issue and some of the other recent threads have convinced me that is is high time to turn the seemingly endless discussion about proofs in Wikipedia into an actual guideline. To further that end, I've drafted an outline of what that proposal should be and put it on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs with the intent that, after due discussion and editing, it will be put on WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs and fleshed out. If you are interested in this issue, please go over the outline and add appropriate comments.

On a related topic, I've also been going through the list of articles named 'X/Proofs' with an eye toward renaming them or merging them with other articles as a result of an earlier thread. See User:RDBury/Proofs articles for cleanup for the current status. The article most recently tagged for a merge was Ellipse which is a top 500 article.--RDBury (talk) 11:37, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Examples of boundary value problems
In addition to the "/Proofs" articles discussed above, we also have a few "Examples" articles. One particularly bad one is Examples of boundary value problems. I redirected it to Boundary value problem in November, but some IP undid that today. I don't want to have anything else to do with it. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 22:57, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Turing machine gallery
Just like the proofs articles discussed above, we have an article Turing machine gallery which cannot stand alone, due to lack of context. However, the article clearly states at the top that "The following article is a supplement to the article Turing machine." Is this sort of article fine? --Robin (talk) 23:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Mathematics = personal reflection?
The person who did this edit is unwilling to explain to me in what respect the article looked like a "personal reflection". It seems to me I've seen that tag added to the tops of articles a fairly large number of times and I've never understood any of them. Is it possible that there are some people to whom any writing on the subject of mathematics looks like "personal reflection"? I don't know why that would happen, but it might explain some of what I've seen. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:27, 17 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I have also seen the essay tag inappropriately added to mathematics articles recently. Moreover, especially in this case as the main author of the article in question, I am equally intrigued over the usage of the tag.  I think that there must be a breed of editors who use Friendly (or whatever) simply to add random tags to large numbers of pages.  This quite frankly is utterly unacceptable.  I think there should be more of a mandate about giving explanations on the talk page, or at the very least more informative edit summaries than:
 * Added article issues with parameters cleanup, context and essay-like expert tag to article. using Friendly
 * This needs to stop, seriously. There is enough of a backlog of legitimately tagged articles, that actually do read like personal reflections, and that really require expert attention, without throwing in spurious ones like this.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 16:59, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I did answer Michael Hardy on my talk page. The article was tagged on new pages patrol in July. Since then it has changed a lot, so the tag has been removed.  What is the problem? Jezhotwells (talk) 17:31, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It has changed very little since July. The version that you tagged does not look like an essay to me. — Miym (talk) 17:36, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Fine we disagree, what do want me to do? Jezhotwells (talk) 17:42, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * What I would like you to do is explain in what respect the version of the article that you tagged looks like a personal reflection or essay. To me that seems incomprehensible. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:54, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Jezhotwells: Your only answer on your talk page was your statement that it looked like a personal reflection or essay, so you tagged it accordingly. Then I asked in what respect it looked like a personal reflection or essay, since I saw not even the faintest resemblance to anything like that. You never answered, nor did you respond to my email. I don't see how the version that you tagged could appear to anyone to look like a personal reflection or essay. I thought maybe you could explain that. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:53, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not really looking for recriminations here, nor justification for what was an obviously bad edit. But this is hardly an isolated incident, and not all of these bizarre tags were placed by the same editor.  I think Friendly users who tag articles en masse generally seem to lack good judgment, and so this use of automated tools should be emphatically discouraged.  Moreover, while I don't think that talkpage comments should necessarily be mandated (for some articles, the problems are entirely obvious), they should at least be encouraged.  Drive-by tagging in any form is a nuisance to the real editors of the project, and leads to a poorer editing environment.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 21:18, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * In general I think many of these cleanup tags are both underused and abused. Underused in the sense that many of the articles that should have them don't and abused in that many of the articles that do have them shouldn't. If used properly in a well patrolled article, i.e. with a proper explanation in the talk page, they usually result in pretty prompt action in my experience. But if someone adds one for no apparent reason then I don't see anything wrong with just removing it. It's up to the person raising the issue to specify what it is, it's not the responsibility of the person trying fix it to try to figure it out.--RDBury (talk) 17:12, 18 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I have started a thread at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol admonishing new page patrollers for not using meaningful edit summaries and talk pages when applying maintenance templates.  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 09:14, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Et tu, Brute? From one of our own senior editors.  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 14:32, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

List of "essay-like" math articles
Here is a list of math articles tagged with Essay-like. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 15:56, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Does this include uses of article issues with the  parameter, or just  itself? Algebraist 18:30, 18 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Bayesian spam filtering
 * Algebra Project
 * Differential evolution
 * Implementation of mathematics in set theory


 * The edit summary on this one had an explanantion. It said "use of 'we' - encyclopedia articles should not address the reader or refer to the writer".  I have reverted the change.  —Dominus (talk) 17:38, 18 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Somewhat to my surprise, the mathematics MOS discourages this style. However, the MOS does not offer any alternatives or examples of how to do it differently.  —Dominus (talk) 17:42, 18 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I started cleaning that one up. Actually, removing the first-person really tightens the wording up -- though of course it would be best if someone could re-polish after my sweep. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:13, 18 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Grand supercycle
 * Cohen's class distribution function
 * Quaternion Society
 * Fitness approximation
 * Quantum affine algebra
 * Configural frequency analysis
 * Gauge theory


 * At the risk of incurring the ire of a bunch of people, I went ahead and followed my own advice and removed the tag from the articles where I didn't think it belonged. Many of them where already gone though. I left the one in Grand supercycle, let the economists worry about it since it's their baby. I also left Fitness Approximation alone because that really does read like and essay.--RDBury (talk) 18:01, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The Algebra project one actually does read like an essay as well.--RDBury (talk) 18:26, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for being WP:BOLD. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:13, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Re Algebraist: the original list was just essay. I did another query using the relevant category, then thinned that down to just "essay" complaints. That leaves the following articles. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 19:16, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Length function
 * Regression toward the mean
 * Algebra Project
 * Particle in a spherically symmetric potential
 * Khmaladze transformation
 * Archimedes-lab.org
 * Integer factorization records
 * I took a pass at these, see histories for details if you want them. The Particle one seems to be physics so I left it alone.--RDBury (talk) 20:06, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Why are these not listed at Pages needing attention/Mathematics? (Does anyone look at that page? Is it more or less complete and up to date?) Is it worth including mathematics articles tagged with essay-like in a place like this that the project can monitor more easily?   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 09:27, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * They are listed, but the Pages needing attention page has a backlog of about 5000 articles so it's not surprising that they weren't noticed.--RDBury (talk) 11:19, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I see. I was searching the page for "essay", but the relevant category that the putatively essay-like pages are added to is Category:Wikipedia articles needing style editing.  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 14:55, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Another thought: Part of the problem may be the template itself could be worded better. If you follow the link you find the statement "[P]lease do not use Wikipedia for ... [p]ersonal essays that state your particular feelings about a topic." It wasn't clear to me (at least) that that's what the template is supposed to point out until I actually followed the link. It's a bit more serious an issue the stylistic one I thought the tag was about, which is it seems to be used for. And if this is actually the correct interpretation then it's hard to see when it would ever be properly applied to a math article. OR I can see, but are people going to write an article on what they think of the Leibniz and Newton calculus controversy?--RDBury (talk) 19:31, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It's possible. We've had people verging on essay territory in nonstandard analysis, for example. Algebraist 19:40, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Never say never I suppose.--RDBury (talk) 20:07, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Here's another guess: People see the phrase "Let X be a bounded linear operator...." and think that phrasing something with an imperative verb form is an expression of personal feelings. Or they see the phrase "thus we conclude that..." in the middle of a proof and think that's an argument for one's personal take on something. Once I actually did see a math article tagged as a "personal reflection or essay" with an edit summary saying it was because the word "we" was used in that way in the middle of the somewhat long article. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:18, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm being told at user talk:jezhotwells that the following sorts of things are what justifies labeling an article as like as essay or personal reflection:


 * We explain the basic idea of CFA by a simple example.
 * Assume that we have a data set that describes for each of n patients if they show certain symptoms s1, ..., sm.
 * We assume for simplicity that a symptom is shown or not, i.e. we have a dichotomous data set.
 * We find...
 * We assume...

Michael Hardy (talk) 04:21, 19 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Of course that is to misunderstand a stylistic convention. A better form of tagging would be inappropriate tone, in cases where the tone really is felt to be inappropriate. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:00, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Maybe there should be a more specific tag, for inappropriate use of first person? It really is proscribed by our manual of style, most of our mathematics articles already successfully avoid it, and in most cases it's easy to avoid. Of course, the issue would be not so much creating the tag as persuading the drive-by taggers to use the right tag. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:00, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * You mean like Template:Inappropriate_person? Maybe if WP:Friendly included this one, people would use it more. --Robin (talk) 16:04, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Conventions on first-person pronouns should not apply to figures of speech that no one would take literally. In a google search for the phrase "we assume", restricted to en.wikipedia.org, I find several thousand hits, and 19 of the first 20 are for mathematics-related articles. Maybe non-mathematicians are not so familiar with this conventional usage. Still, it seems irresponsible to treat it as if it's intended literally. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:17, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not a question of whether it's intended literally. It's a question of deciding on and sticking to a uniform style for encyclopedia articles. The MOS says no first person here, it's very easy to avoid first person, and doing so usually both tightens the writing and reduces the colloquial informal tone of the writing, both of which I think are improvements. See e.g. here for one I just did. I have seen people argue that using imperative (as in the link above) or replacing "we" by "one" should also be avoided, as violating the spirit of the restriction against first person, but I think that goes too far. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:28, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * However the MOS is subject to specific fields as well and the "we"-style is fairly common manner of speech in math literature and doesn't really have much to with an "informal tone" or an "essay like style" in that area. So there are 2 separate issues to deal with here: a) where math articles might or might not deviate from the general MOS b) when such a deviation constitutes a "real" essay-like style. At least tagging articles as "essay like" by simply scanning for first person pronouns looks rather questionable to me.--Kmhkmh (talk) 01:35, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I completely agree that it's incorrect to call something essay-like merely because it uses the editorial we. But that's a different question from whether the proscription on editorial we leads to better writing here. I tend to think it does, but I can see that (unlike the misuse of the essay-like tag) there's a reasonable argument to be made for the other side of the argument. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:48, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

How would your reasoning apply to the exception stated in the manual: "No intact copies of this ancient work have come down to us", or something like that? Certainly there are cases in which there are better ways to phrase something than the editorial "we". "We assume throughout the proof that the formal system remains fixed" could be said in other ways, but the reasons why your recent edit to pizza theorem is an improvement don't seem to apply to that case. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:16, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Please do not fill up my talk pages with long winded justifications of why you don't think that Wikipedia norms apply to maths artciles. If you don't like tags, then remove them. If you don't like Wiki guidelines then attempt to change them through the normal methods. End of story. Jezhotwells (talk) 02:12, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia norms need to be applied with commons sense and not always in a literal manner and there are in fact various guidelines stating that explicitly. Moreover there is no Wikipedia norm suggesting the appearance of the personal pronoun "we" turns an article into an "essay-like" style. If you are looking for an "end of story" then simply don't tag them at all or tag them accurately - simple as that.--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:43, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Jezhotwells: Wikipedia is supposed to be collegial. I had to post to your page several times and send you an email before you would even tell me what you found essay-like in certain articles you tagged. This was BEFORE the postings you later characterized as "long-winded rantings". You still haven't answered in regard to one particular article you tagged, that never contained any of the sorts of pronouns that offended you. Why would you simply ignore an inquiry like that? Wikipedians should collaborate. Michael Hardy (talk) 07:43, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Template:SubSup
Does anyone have thoughts on Template:SubSup? It's far from standard practice; I am contemplating nominating it for deletion, but maybe there is a use for it. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 01:26, 19 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I use Template:Su for formatting things like &delta;$de&fnof; abc$ which would otherwise be a nuisance to format manually. That template is definitely useful.  I don't really understand what additional features this template is supposed to add, but I also don't see any compelling reason to delete it.  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 01:53, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It doesn't seem to be used anywhere but the article SPIKE algorithm so it doesn't seem like it would be much of a problem. But I would mention the issue on the talk pages for the Su, Sub, and/or Sup before doing anything; the people who would be maintaining these format templates aren't necessarily monitoring this page. Also, with any kind of deletion it's good manners to put an alert on the talk page of involved editors, and in this case that would mean User:JeffConrad.

Trigintaduonion
Trigintaduonion has been nominated for deletion. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:06, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Hypercube
Hypercube is becoming more infested with bizarre made-up terminology (e.g. "nulleract", a word with a grand total of zero hits in MathSciNet ⋃ Google scholar). More eyes on it and the other edits of would be appreciated. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:09, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
 * nomen est omen one might be tempted to think.--Kmhkmh (talk) 03:26, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I was trying to resist temptation to make fun of the name, but I agree. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:45, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
 * This user also created Trigintaduonion which I nominated for AfD yesterday.--RDBury (talk) 13:15, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Fundamental lemma of Langlands and Shelstad
Is anyone able to have a quick look at Fundamental lemma of Langlands and Shelstad please? I don't really know anything about the topic, but the first sentence just doesn't seem to make sense. Cheers, Ben (talk) 18:13, 21 December 2009 (UTC)


 * It looks good to me. You might be reacting to the bizarre name "fundamental lemma", but it really is named that. Ozob (talk) 18:31, 21 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I've expanded it a bit (notationwise, and the talk about "p-adic integral" was at best ambiguous - AFAIK these are honest complex-valued functions integrated over orbits in p-adic groups). Charles Matthews (talk) 22:12, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Looking around, it seems impossible to explain what actual mathematics has gone on without discussion of the Hitchin fibration. Anyone? Charles Matthews (talk) 22:36, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks everyone. Ozob, the name wasn't the problem for me, I just couldn't parse the first sentence. At first it seemed to be telling me it was a family of identities, but by the end it seemed to be telling me it was a single identity. After a sleep I think I can read the old version now - the sentence was just repeating itself, only in different terms. Thanks again everyone for having a look. Cheers, Ben (talk) 00:20, 22 December 2009 (UTC)#


 * Hmmm, there are some gaps in Glossary of Lie algebras just at the point where the notion of a regular element would be defined. This is the classical "redlink" issue of trying to cover advanced mathematics, before the background has been built up. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:00, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Hilbert's second problem
Please watch the page Hilbert's second problem; there is a dispute over the statement of the problem.

CRGreathouse (t | c) 04:00, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I think you need to be careful here. Given that the answer was negative, it is easy to say that the lack of consistency proof for Peano arithmetic is an adequate answer; a fortiori the theory of the reals cannot be shown consistent. But it seems clear that Hilbert was mostly interested in the reals: see references to the "axiom of continuity" in the statement, and what Kreisel says (in Mathematical developments arising from Hilbert Problems) about this. Namely that the formulation was not that clear, given that Hilbert was not talking about specific formal systems; but that he certainly did want to include real numbers, and classical analysis in the sense of analytic number theory.


 * In general, I would say, our Hilbert problem pages suffer from a lack of proper historical sensibility. They would be better presented in several segments, if not separate articles: statement of the problems in Hilbert's own wording; received interpretation in our contemporary mathematical language, which can be anachronistic (as in this case with PA); progress; discussion of current status (which is in some cases a contentious matter, to be handled neutrally); and modern developments influenced by the initial formulations. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:15, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment requested at Talk:Paneitz operator
A certain editor who seems to have been following me around for the past few days seems to be convinced that GJMS operator should be merged to Paneitz operator. Comments in the interest of expediting a so-called "consensus" that I am expected to "wait for" are appreciated. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:22, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Copyvio followups
I just wanted to call attention to two articles from the copyvio cleanup effort. There are now a bunch of article that have been tagged and may be deleted in a week or less if they aren't fixed. The two I wanted to mention in particular are: --RDBury (talk) 18:57, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Cyclic algebra - This has had significant additions since the original problem and this work will be lost unless the copied sections are rewritten.
 * Concurrent relation - This will need a complete rewrite but it's on Missing science topics. There is a MathWorld article on the subject here.
 * Btw, the list of articles currently tagged can be found at WikiProject Mathematics/Article alerts under the heading Copyright problems.--RDBury (talk) 19:05, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, thanks to User:Ozob, User:Sławomir Biały, User:R.e.b. and of course User:Moonriddengirl for all the work they've done on this. (I helped a small amount too.) There is still more to be done if you want to help as well.--RDBury (talk) 19:54, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I just looked at the former Measure algebra and at the corresponding paper "THE MEASURE ALGEBRA DOES NOT ALWAYS EMBED" by ALAN DOW AND KLAAS PIETER HART. I did not find any copyvio. The main theorem is formulated shortly in the WP article; is it forbidden? No phrases from the introduction copied, no fragments of proofs, nothing like that. The due credit is given to the source (and some other sources are cited). What should I (we) do with it? Boris Tsirelson (talk) 16:34, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Wait for it to be deleted, then start a new article from scratch. Most of the math articles this guy created were formed by pasting together sentences from copyrighted works. The chances are this one is similar, so if you did not find any copyright violations it probably just means you did not look hard enough. See Contributor copyright investigations/Henry Delforn for more details about this mess. r.e.b. (talk) 17:07, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Many of the articles had other issues besides the copyvio and would need extensive rewrite (or possible AfD) even without it. There are reasons that a search might not turn up anything, for example the source page might no longer exist or the source wasn't the web. I think the CCI page establishes a clear pattern of copying and pasting and it's better to remove text when it's uncertain than to leave it and risk legal problems. So it's a guilty until proven innocent situation and I think that's justified in cases like this.--RDBury (talk) 07:48, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Hessian form of an elliptic curve
Hessian form of an elliptic curve is quite obviously in need of some work. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:13, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Which reminds me, we also need a new article for Hessian curve since this is currently a redirect to the above article. My understanding of a Hessian curve is a different, but possibly not completely unrelated sense, as given here . I'll try to do it next year if no one else gets to it first.--RDBury (talk) 09:24, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

On a completely unrelated note, can I request people to use the "new section" button to start new sections instead of section-editing the last section on the page? This makes it much easier for people reading edit summaries. --Robin (talk) 04:19, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Sixth dimension

 * The article is currently at Six-dimensional space.

The article titled sixth dimension smells a bit funny. What do we think? (Maybe I'll look more closely tomorrow......) Michael Hardy (talk) 04:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Why is it that you're the one who always finds these? But I agree there is definitely a bit of a pong about it. You would expect something like Fifth dimension only +1, but this is completely different. The references go all over the map from theology to mathematical physics and one of them seems to be a blog. Plus there are no inline cites so you can't tell which claims (if any) are sourced. It's been PRODed but I have a feeling it will go to AfD because several people have been working on it.--RDBury (talk) 08:21, 15 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Just, ...wow. (Seconded the prod)TimothyRias (talk)
 * To be fair the last sentence is "The Theories above are examples only, many others exist. Judgments on them are not intended to be within the scope of this article." So, the article is an unclearly sourced list of theories on the 6th dimension, and this using a very liberal definition of theory. I agree with the prod. Pcap ping  10:18, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * After looking at Fifth dimension, this article could also be reorganized along those lines, i.e. clearly separating the more scientific speculation from the pure fantasy stuff, but I'm not volunteering. Hopefully anyone removing the prod will task himself with that. :-) Pcap ping  10:25, 15 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I've made a start on it: I think there's at least as much good mathematics to go on there as there is gibberish now, it just needs adding. --JohnBlackburne (talk) 13:32, 15 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The gibberish is overwhelming. I cleaned up some and commented some out; I also fixed some of the math.  I think this could eventually be a reasonable article, but it isn't at the moment. CRGreathouse (t | c) 17:41, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

To RDBury's question: I found this simply by looking at the daily list of new articles on the current activities page, and I look at that every day. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:32, 16 December 2009 (UTC)


 * And maybe seventh dimension... Protactinium-231 (talk) 14:46, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

collaboration?
Anyone up for a short-term collaboration (a week or so) on a basic (undergrad or lower), medium-sized article?

Potential articles I might enjoy improving (in a random order): Gaussian integer; Fundamental theorem of Galois theory, Seifert–van Kampen theorem, some graph theory, some logic, etc.

Would be nice to reach GA but I don't want to put myself any pressure. 92.149.147.129 (talk) 00:22, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * It appears the the math collaboration of the month project is currently moribund. (It's been algebraic geometry for almost three years now.) Not sure if that's because no one is interested, people are too busy with other things, mathies are just anti-social in general, or something else. Not that I have anything against the idea of doing collaborations, but there doesn't seem to be much evidence that this project is active in that kind of thing.--RDBury (talk) 08:32, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Basic issue in the past has been an apparent bifurcation between people voting proposals and people likely to write substantive contributions. E.g. I could write about Gaussian integers (second half of my Ph.D. in fact was on them) but I don't feel inspired. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:50, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I just want a two people, short-term, collaboration. Plus, I'm not fussed about the topic (just not too advanced). Who's inspired? 92.149.147.129 (talk) 11:15, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I would like to help, but I will be very busy IRL for the next six weeks. If you're still interested, drop me a message on my talk page at the beginning of February.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 12:48, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd be interested in a short-term collaboration. Unfortunately, since I work on algorithms and complexity, the only area of math I understand reasonably well is discrete math. So, for instance, I wouldn't mind working on a barely start-class article like extremal graph theory. We can continue this discussion on my talk page if this is just a two-person collaboration. --Robin (talk) 19:32, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd be interested in a collaboration. Gaussian integer sounds pretty interesting to me, but I'd probably be up for most undergrad-level topic. Drop me a line on my talk page. Cheers, — sligocki (talk) 05:58, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and remove collaboration of the month from the project page. It doesn't look like there is moch interest in a revival and it's embarrassing to have the link if it doesn't go anywhere.--RDBury (talk) 11:17, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

\cases


\operatorname{E}\big[(X-\mu)^p\big] = \begin{cases} 0 & \text{if }p\text{ is odd} \\ \sigma^p(p-1)!! & \text{if }p\text{ is even} \end{cases} = \sigma^p \frac{p!}{2^{p/2}(p/2)!} \cdot \mathbf{1}_{\{p\text{ is even}\}}. $$

It has long seemed to me that when "=" or the like follows a piecewise definition like this, a right curly brace of the same size as the left brace should precede it. Is there a way to do that using \cases or does it require manual insertion? Michael Hardy (talk) 01:39, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I've not seen the closing brace you talk about. But I've seen the 2nd = and what follows place on a new line aligned under the other =. The wiki latex doesn't support much of amsmath, and although eqnarray sucks for papers, it might be okay for a wiki snippet. Pcap ping  03:35, 24 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Use :

\operatorname{E}\big[(X-\mu)^p\big] = \begin{Bmatrix} 0 & \text{if }p\text{ is odd} \\ \sigma^p(p-1)!! & \text{if }p\text{ is even} \end{Bmatrix} = \sigma^p \frac{p!}{2^{p/2}(p/2)!} \cdot \mathbf{1}_{\{p\text{ is even}\}}. $$
 * Ozob (talk) 06:09, 24 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Or \left. and \right\}, which keeps things aligned nicely in the cases:

\operatorname{E}\big[(X-\mu)^p\big] = \left. \begin{cases} 0 & \text{if }p\text{ is odd} \\ \sigma^p(p-1)!! & \text{if }p\text{ is even} \end{cases} \right\} = \sigma^p \frac{p!}{2^{p/2}(p/2)!} \cdot \mathbf{1}_{\{p\text{ is even}\}}. $$
 * Ben (talk) 07:32, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

I've edited normal distribution, using \left. and \right\} for this thing. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:41, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Quick note
Just to let everyone know, I have changed the "Mathematics Collaboration of the Month" to Polynomial identity ring. A lot of research has been done on such rings lately; it has proved an extremely useful tool by which one may probe deeply into the structure of both commutative and noncommutative rings. -- PS T  13:50, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It is a nice little article, but doesn't the word "collaboration" mean participation by more than one editor in working on the article? Looking at the history log of Polynomial identity ring shows that the article has been edited by one user only.... Nsk92 (talk) 23:04, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
 * My point in making that article the COTM is that hopefully a few more editors will improve the article thus making it a collaboration (which at present is not, as you point out). Although I am somewhat sure that there is another article in greater need of collaboration, I cannot precisely pinpoint its existence (Galois group is one article which perhaps does require some improvement). However, if you would like to suggest a better candidate, it would be much appreciated. -- PS T  01:39, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, sorry, you are right. I had misunderstood the intent of the "collaboration of the month" designation. I thought it was meant to highlight a successful collaboration that already happened. However, after reading Mathematics Collaboration of the Month, I see that the intent is to create collaboration on an important topic needing further development. So designating Polynomial identity ring is fine by me. Nsk92 (talk) 01:53, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Join
How can I join? Protactinium-231 (talk) 14:55, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Add your name to WikiProject Mathematics/Participants. Watchlist this talk page and take part in the discussions. You could also add User WP Math to your user page if you want. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:13, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The main thing is to just start working on math articles, preferably on subjects you know something about. Monitor this page to get news and learn about current issues, but I don't think many people here care much if you're on a list or what's on your user page.--RDBury (talk) 11:16, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
 * ...Or you could make minor spelling, grammatical, style, TeX (or LaTeX) fixes to mathematics articles in general. Comments about the accessibility of certain mathematics articles are also very much appreciated. However, if you are knowledgeable in a particular area (or many areas) within mathematics, the most important thing would be to contribute to articles within the area(s) in question. -- PS T  14:04, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Comments welcome at Talk:Spherical harmonics
Comments are welcome at Talk:Spherical harmonics. The current revision is sourced to Courant and Hilbert's classic text. An editor wishes to change the treatment from the established one. Sławomir Biały (talk) 22:28, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

RBF Morph
Can someone take a look at this software (nominated for deletion) and see if it's worthy of mention in radial basis functions? Thanks, Pcap ping  01:24, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Two-sided Laplace transform
Unless I missed it, the article titled two-sided Laplace transform does not mention that that transform is one-to-one. Do we have an article we could link to that either states or proves that result? Michael Hardy (talk) 01:41, 26 December 2009 (UTC)