Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2015/Sep

ICM speaker category deletion discussion
Please see Categories for discussion/Log/2015 September 2 and contribute to the discussion. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:36, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Jitse's bot
Since Jitse's bot stopped updating the new articles list on the current activities page I've participated a lot less in Wikipedia. He said in an email to me not long after the situation arose that he'd look into it. The last new-articles update was on the 15th of June. Is it possible for others to take over the bot --- perhaps for everyone who knows how to run it to be permitted to contribute to running it? Michael Hardy (talk) 20:33, 2 September 2015 (UTC)


 * It would be nice if there is some documentation on how the process works; in hindsight the problem was a lack of such documentation (because other editors can't just take over the bot.) I'm "willing" to take over but I need to know more about the bot, like where it is running. -- Taku (talk) 21:19, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Some but not all of the bot's activities are duplicated elsewhere. Lists of new articles are still updated at User:Mathbot/Changes to mathlists, and pointers to active deletion discussions can be found at WikiProject Deletion sorting/Mathematics, so if you watchlist both of those you can stay reasonably up to date. But I miss the updates to Pages needing attention/Mathematics; that was a helpful way to find pages in need of editing and (by tracking its size) to feel that I was making a difference in the quality of our overall coverage. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:54, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Order of a polynomial‎
This AfD has been relisted for the second time. Please, comment there in order to reach a sufficient consensus. D.Lazard (talk) 08:37, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Conversion between units of angle
I've suggested at Template talk:Convert that convert support conversion between units of angle (ie. degrees of arc, arcminutes, radians, gradians, etc) ; what do you guys think? -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 05:07, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Much of the time when one specifies an angle (at least in a mathematics article) one wants an exact formula for it, not a numerical approximation. E.g. one is more likely to write (and want to read) 90° or $\pi$/2 radians rather than 90.0 degrees or 1.5707963267948966 radians. Exactly how do you propose to support the conversion of such formulae? —David Eppstein (talk) 06:57, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I was thinking of using the numerical approximation for the conversion formulae, instead of the pi-fractional-value, for radians. CONVERT already uses significant figures by default, so that would come out with round degrees. Identifying the pi-fractional-value on the other end would take out the pi from the value returned such as by and then formatting with the appropriate markup; the fraction would still be decimalized -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 05:01, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * What of conversion between the units in the same sexagesimal system? Degrees of arc, seconds of arc, minutes of arc, sub-second metricized units of arc (ie. milliarcsecond) -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 05:03, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * So 90° would convert to 0.5&pi; rather than &pi;/2? Hmm. The 0.5&pi; is not technically wrong, but it feels culturally wrong. And 60° would convert to something like 0.33&pi;, rather than &pi;/3? Such approximation is not desirable in pure math articles, although it might be useful in other articles. Mgnbar (talk) 08:29, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * But I think this reply misses the point. An expression like pi/3 doesn't have just one or two significant figures, but rather infinitely many.  How would the proposed template ascertain this, and what would its behaviour be in such cases?  S ławomir  Biały  11:10, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The anonymous poster is motivated by astronomical data. Such a conversion could be useful in astronomy articles. We would be under no obligation to use it in pure math articles (right?).
 * In some sense mathematicians are the wrong audience for such a question. Geographers, physicists, engineers, etc. would be more appropriate. Mgnbar (talk) 11:58, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I've no real objection to using it is, e.g., astronomy articles. But I find the case that it is actually useful even there rather hypothetical at the moment.  Although it is certainly true that just because something exists doesn't mean it must be used, templates like this do have a way of being applied in contexts we would regard as inappropriate. Claims that we can convert radian measures  involving pi to other units are not exactly encouraging.  They strongly suggest that this proposal hasn't really been thought through, nor that actual applications of the template will take much of a nuanced view of things.  Something vaguely like WP:BEANS is relevant here.  If someone is knowledgeable enough to apply the template correctly, they are knowledgeable enough to do conversions if they are appropriate for the article.  There are other ways of including the original value if necessary than through this template: footnotes, inline comments, parenthetical notes, erc). 12:30, 8 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Fractional conversions seems like an over-engineering. In sciences, when you use 'fractional pis' like &pi;/2, you mean an exact angle. Anyone writing &pi;/2 would also know this is 90&deg;, and the conversion can be done manually if it's relevant. When it used to express measurements, you report them in decimal form e.g. ($89 deg$, or $1.553 rad$). If convert handles the later case (likewise for seconds, arcseconds, etc.), that's all it should do. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:44, 8 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Perhaps it would be useful for the template to explicitly refuse to support conversions to and from radians. As far as I'm aware, radians are used almost exclusively by people who are comfortable with rational multiples of &pi;, and in those situations the conversion can be done by hand.


 * It's also undesirable for the template to try to recover the appropriate rational multiple of &pi;, because while the recovery is easy, the result is unhelpful. Converting $45.172 deg$ to radians should not give 529782818665573&pi;/2111062325329920 ±730709039540863&pi;/202661983231672320 rad, because it's wrong (these huge expressions are because 45.172 and 0.649 are not exactly representable as floating point numbers); it shouldn't give 11293&pi;/25000 ±649&pi;/1000 rad because, while accurate, it's hard to read; and it shouldn't give &pi;/4 ±0 rad because it's wrong.


 * As a third comment, val (which I initially hoped to use in the previous paragraph) does not support fractions; I'm sure there are other templates out there that don't support fractions and certainly not rational multiples of &pi;. Wikipedia's template infrastructure isn't set up for symbolic manipulations that support for rational multiples of &pi; would require. Ozob (talk) 14:26, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Styling of block mode display of math formula
The latest version of the extension now supports a  mode to display equation in a display rather than inline style. Visual Editor is offering this mode and does not seem to allow the :$$...$$ formatting which is the standard here.

Currently this mode centres the equations and hence clashes with the standard single indent style used in this wiki and most of the other wikis I've checked.

I've a bit of CSS which seems to make these equations display left aligned indented one space so it matches the other equations. I've checked this in PNG/SVG and MathML modes on a mac but not on mobile. We could potentially add this to MediaWiki:Common.css or possibly make it the global default in ext.math.css.

I've raised this at VisualEditor/Feedback and created a task (which someone has helpfully closed).--Salix alba (talk): 17:05, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Discussion about whether to deprecate Template:Cite doi
Template:Cite doi allows editors to generate a citation from a digital object identifier. There is a discussion about whether to deprecate this template. Since doi's are used the sciences and this is a science WikiProject, I am inviting anyone here to comment.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  14:25, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Notation for super-exponential functions
There is a group of related concepts involving fast-growing arithmetic functions, for which our article seems to be at hyperoperation (I am not sure how standard this name really is, but that's not my immediate concern). There are lots of different notations detailed there.

Anyway, there's an IP editor, editing as User:101.14.227.116 and User:101.14.37.226 (and perhaps other addresses but I haven't seen them), who seems to have decided that one particular notation, the ASCII version of the "box notation", is the one that should be used. That notation appears in the references of the hyperoperation article with references no earlier than 2005, whereas other notations are dated much earlier. I see no evidence that the box notation has become standard (particularly in its ASCII variant).

I want to emphasize that I have nothing particularly against the box notation. It does seem a bit "neater" visually than the Knuth up-arrow notation that Wikipedia seems to have favored up to now. But I doubt that it is very much used in the wild (I would be interested to hear evidence either for or against this proposition), particularly in its ASCII variant. And procedurally, I don't think we can allow an editor to come in and make a broad change of notation without discussion. --Trovatore (talk) 16:26, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Missing mathematics journals
As a follow up to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive/2011/Jul, and the recent update to WP:JCW, here are the top-cited missing journals of mathematics.

Like previously mentioned in the old thread, there's also Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society which currently redirects to London Mathematical Society, but should really get it's own article. Same for the Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society and the Journal of the London Mathematical Society, which also redirect there. Journal of Algorithms seems to have a less-than-boring history, considering the board resigned en-masse at the behest of Donald Knuth as a way to protest the Elsevier prices. They went on to establish the ACM Transactions on Algorithms. See for some sources on this, as well as the current content in the Elsevier article.

See WP:WikiProject Academic Journals/Writing guide for guidance, and don't forget to add them to List of mathematics journals once they are created. Many thanks for all the help you can give us. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:58, 24 August 2015 (UTC)


 * , is your journal article script thing still available? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:18, 26 August 2015 (UTC)


 * The journal article creation tool is defunct. It was a script in my web directory on the toolserver, which was decommissioned. I don't believe I have any copy of the source. But it was really just a small script to take information in a web form and format it into an article. I don't have enough time for web development these days, but a competent programmer could do it very quickly given a model of the articles that are being created. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 23:20, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Is Congressus Numerantium really a journal? It looks like a book series to me. In any case I can't find enough independent in-depth coverage of it to start even a stub. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:33, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
 * It is really a journal in format, rather than a book series. I have a recent volume on my office shelf. However, I agree that there is not likely to have much independent coverage. I have the vague impression that journal used to publish more, but recently has been primarily publishing conference proceedings. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 00:43, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
 * 'Journals', in the sense of my original post (and in the sense of WP:JWG), refers to journals, monograph series, conference proceedings, etc... If it's notable in the sense of WP:JOURNALS, then it's likely enough to keep/have an article around. An alternative is to have it redirect to the publisher, and have a section in the publisher's article about Congressus Numerantium . I'm not familiar with that publication, so I don't have any specific recommendation about which of the two is the best course of action. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:13, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I have some fond memories of Congressus Numerantium, and have several early career articles published in it. From the 1992 (Vol. 89) frontspiece we have that it is "A Conference Journal on Numerical Themes" and that there are two subseries: 1) The Southeastern Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory, and Computing and 2) the Manitoba Conferences on Numerical Mathematics and Computing. Besides these subseries, other volumes have been published. The publisher is Utilitas Mathematica Publishing Incorporated which I believe is associated with the University of Manitoba. The guiding force behind the journal and Utilitas (I think) was the late Ralph G. Stanton of the University of Manitoba. The journal has its own ISSN number, but each volume has its own ISBN, which is probably why it looks like a book series. Bill Cherowitzo  (talk) 03:00, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Care to take a stab at it? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:22, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I've moved the list to a separate page, linked above, so that it will persist when this page is archived, and can be more easily linked-to. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:42, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

orphans!
The list of WiMAX networks included Spectral Networks, which offers services near the Iowa–Missouri border in both states. Clicking on that, one found the article titled Spectral Networks, on a topic in Riemannian geometry. I moved that to Spectral network with a lower-case initial "n" and no final "s" (and did some obvious copy-editing), and then changed Spectral Networks with a capital "N" and a final "s" into a very very stubby article about the company, with a disambiguating hatnote linking to the geometry article. Hence the geometry article is now an "orphan" with no other articles linking to it. So one problem is: which other articles should link to it?

But more generally: what should we do about the fact that lots of new math articles are orphans? Mathematicians doing the one and only Wikipedia edit of their lives create a new article and almost always [no pun intended] it does not occur to them that other articles should link to it. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:17, 12 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I believe the standard way to solve this problem is to create a stub before not-so-active editors start an article and never bothers to have links to it elsewhere in Wikipedia. The other effective solution is to create link farm-type articles; like glossaries or lists of award recipients. Ideally those articles have a lot of red links and so we can preemptively prevent orphanage from occurring. (By the way, red links are thus very important; it's puzzling to me some editors find having red links is somehow the evidence of deficiency, which really isn't.) -- Taku (talk) 00:02, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

PlanetMath
template:PlanetMath has been proposed fro deletion -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 06:22, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Merge row vector and column vector
Both of these article are short, similar, have clear overlap, and the references are even similar. Any good reasons not to merge?

Another triplet to consider is row space, column space, and row and column spaces. M&and;Ŝc2ħεИτlk 19:20, 16 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I would merge them. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:17, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Sounds sensible.TR 20:26, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree. --JBL (talk) 20:36, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Me too. There's no point in having symmetrical pairs of articles like this when one will do. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:38, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I would also do it that way. Noticed that the "space" articles had been split out of the row and column spaces article in 2007 by a reasonable editor but without any reasons given. I'd be curious to know what those reasons were since I can't imagine a convincing justification. Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 20:45, 16 September 2015 (UTC)


 * The row and column vector articles are now merged. Now merging the separate space articles into one. M&and;Ŝc2ħεИτlk 22:55, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

A draft at AFC needs help
Please help review Draft:Kinds of abundant numbers. If you don't wish to, or don't know how to, do a formal AFC review please post your comments on the draft's talk page. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:16, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Integer complexity
Is the new (and currently orphaned) article titled Integer complexity worth having? (It has a page in OEIS, but I think that alone is not enough evidence of notability.) Michael Hardy (talk) 18:23, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Platonic solid popcult
Is the new "popular culture" section of Platonic solid justified to include, and does it actually report neutrally and accurately on the popular-culture aspects of platonic solids? Another editor and I have a disagreement. —David Eppstein (talk) 14:29, 21 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree that it doesn't belong there. It is not referenced to any secondary sources, which makes it impossible to determine the relative WP:WEIGHT to assign such content in relation to the rest of the article, but given the vast reams that have been written on the subject of the Platonic solids, my feeling is not much.  Platonic solids have enormous cultural and historical significance (e.g., Mysterium Cosmographicum), which makes me think that for a place in the article, we should really demand multiple high quality secondary sources.  Also, a plot summary of a book of relatively minor importance seems very inappropriate tone for an encyclopedia article, at least on a serious mathematical topic.   S ławomir  Biały  14:41, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

In its current form, it's not good enough to include, but I suspect with some library research one could write a reasonable "popular culture" section in that article. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:26, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Paul Cohen move
The article on Cohen the mathematician was moved in 2006, unilaterally/inappropriately. I have started a requested move, see Talk:Paul Cohen (mathematician). Solomon7968 18:22, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

IP address editing at Talk:Jacob Barnett
The article Jacob Barnett is back. This time, an IP is arguing there that sources like the BBC breakfast, which place a Nobel Prize in the young Barnett's future, are reliable sources for theoretical physics. Please comment at Talk:Jacob Barnett.  S ławomir Biały  19:39, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Possibly off-topic here, but the IP's talk page, in which the same IP appears to be working to help other editors game the Wikipedia conflict-of-interest noticeboard for articles including Dunnet (video game) (COI editor Ron Schnell) and NTA (company) (COI editors including Dtompos, NTAInc, and Wscribner), makes enlightening reading. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:50, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * What do you mean "game"? They explained to me why I should not edit the article directly and flag as COI on the Talk page so that it would go in the queue.  So far it's been in the queue over a month (a one sentence change).  I would hardly call this "gaming".  I would say it's the opposite. Ron Schnell 23:46, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * David means WP:GAME. Common way to get people out of your way on wikipedia, is to find something they are doing wrong, and topic-ban them (or just global-ban them).  That is an example of WP:GAMEing the system; whereas by contrast, what I do with the wp-coi-queue is perfectly within policy, both letter and spirit.  Speaking of which, while I'm here, I'll go ahead and pull some WP:IAR, and say that my wiki-buddy User:Aviators99 aka Schnell aka the DUNNET guy, is *still* waiting for some neutral eyeballs to help him out.  He's been in the edit-queue over a month now, nudge nudge, if anybody wants to spend five minutes and mainspace his request, over on said videogame's talkpage?
 * p.s. I too, nearly apprehended the orangemoody mastermind, which is how I got involved with NTA... please see here, where I just about screwed the pooch, but thankfully stopped shy of mistakenly accusing an OTRS volunteer of being the sockmaster!  :-/  Though I believe that User:samtar has forgiven me now, mostly.  :-)       p.p.s. David forgot to ping User:Wscribner (active), User:Dtompos (mostly inactive), User:NTAInc (not active and a violation of username policy in any case).  Ron found his own way here through his custom crawler app, or through his wiki-stalking my edits as his mentor, I'm not sure which, so no harm done there, and now that all the wiki-gossip has been laid bare, all is well in the wiki-verse... though I must say, that is hardly a wikiproject notification that could in any way be considered WP:FULLYNEUTRAL.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 19:07, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you could explain how you found this editor and why you look so specifically to their advice for guidance on this issue. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:43, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I learned of the editor's existence during the AfD discussion. They were suspicious that I might be "meat-puppetting" and asked me some questions on my talk page.  This led to some questions back and they offered advice, especially on how I should not be editing COI articles in the mainspace, which led to what you've described, which was for me to flag my one sentence requested change for review on August 14. And nobody else has offered me advice (other than one person whose advice was to delete the article), and I'll always take advice wherever I can get it. Ron Schnell 18:30, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks, that makes sense and is reassuring. I was trying to find a way to allay my suspicions of paid consulting and your explanation does that. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:48, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Lots of suspicion around here! :-O I guess it's from experience. :-( Ron Schnell 19:09, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Not to mention... dunnet?
 * ">eat lamp You forcefully shove a lamp down your throat, and start choking. You are dead. You have scored 0 out of a possible 90 points."
 * I don't think COI is really all that much of a concern here :-D  S ławomir Biały  19:12, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * See the gameplay-snippet still on usertalk, starting with the bit about "eat boulder" in the |quote= param of the offline MacAddict 2003 cite. There was also one videogame reviewer that attempted to "punch tree".  Too much violence in video games, eh?      75.108.94.227 (talk) 19:07, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Speedy deleting without Afd
See Deletion_review/Log/2015_September_27. Solomon7968 20:35, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Andy Liu
Our article on mathematician Andy Liu recently survived a deletion discussion, but now there's a discussion on what content to include in the article that could use additional participation. See Talk:Andy Liu for details. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:37, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Euclidean space
The Euclidean space article is popular, important and is fairly long. However, it is still not verified at least since 2013. Perhaps we should start working on it and add the inline citations for verification. I had the idea to come here to warn you guys about that issue after reading the edit summaries.

I would add the citations myself but I'm definitely going to need some help... Huritisho (talk) 22:43, 25 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I am wondering why this article is so popular, it is a rather hi brow math subject. I think it is because some links link to this page while they should link to more basic (low brow)/high school mathematics) pages, like Three-dimensional space (mathematics), solid geometry or maybe other more basic geometry pages. Maybe we should rename the page to Euclidean n-Space and have Euclidean Space to be about one of the more basic geometries WillemienH (talk) 17:40, 27 September 2015 (UTC)


 * your English is confusing to me. What are you trying to say? Huritisho (talk) 18:33, 27 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, the article needs references and other improvements. Let me just remark that this has been one of the most contentious articles in my Wikipedia experience. It is about a technical math subject, but one that interacts with school math curriculum, physics, history, etc. So editors from different backgrounds can argue a lot. (Example issue: Did Euclid work on Euclidean spaces?) So, if you're going to work on this article, be prepared for hard work. Mgnbar (talk) 18:47, 27 September 2015 (UTC)


 * A good high brow reference is the text "Geometry" by Marcel Berger. I have no idea what a good non technical introduction is, but it should be possible to summarize in a way that is meaningful to most intended readers of the article.  I don't have time right now, but I may take a crack at it later.  The references certainly need improvement.   S ławomir  Biały  18:56, 27 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Sorry I was tired when I wrote my remark. My point is that I think most visitors to the article are looking for something more basic geometry than what the page is offering. I think that most visitors think they will get an article that is about (high school geometry like) Three-dimensional space (mathematics) euclidean geometry solid geometry and so on, while the article is more about the academic subject of n-manifolds where the parallel postulate holds.
 * For Euclid he did do solid geometry see Euclid's Elements Books 11 through to 13 (Should we not have a article for every group of books of the elements?) WillemienH (talk) 10:56, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * " the article is more about the academic subject of n-manifolds where the parallel postulate holds." I'm certain this is not true.  The article is about the standard real coordinate space, with its natural distance function.  I don't know whether that can be made accessible to someone with "high school geometry", but it is the subject of the article.  We should try to make it as accessible as possible, but not at the expense of changing the subject matter to suit who we think will be in the audience.  Our most important obligation is to make sure the article is not wrong.  Other considerations to do with audience are secondary.
 * One thing that needs clarifying is that there are really at least two things that are called Euclidean space in the literature: one is a real inner product space, and the other its underlying affine space. There is yet a third thing that is often conflated with Euclidean space, and that is R^n equipped with the dot product.  While such nuances might seem trivial, they actually do matter.  The Euclidean space is what's left of the real coordinate space when you've forgotten the coordinate system, but still know how to compute the inner products of things.  You can try to simply this description for as low-level an audience as you like, but it still has to be made clear from the beginning.   S ławomir  Biały  22:00, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Sucharit Sarkar
Deletion of Sucharit Sarkar is proposed. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:36, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Really? Where? —David Eppstein (talk) 21:52, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * OK, apparently it's not currently proposed. It was speedily deleted and that was overturned. Perhaps whoever wanted it deleted has retreated. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:53, 30 September 2015 (UTC)