Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2018/Mar

Talk:Cyclic number
I've just added a ninth section to Talk:Cyclic number, I wouldn't normally post such a thing so quickly at a Wikiproject, but that talkpage has an unusual number of open and ancient queries which hopefully will be of interest here.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  14:58, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Wow, that whole article's in pretty bad shape . –Deacon Vorbis (carbon &bull; videos) 15:33, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Wow, that is some serious cruft right there. I would not have thought mathematics articles were prone to the same enthusiastic ramblings and obsessive listing of trivial examples as other areas of the encyclopedia, but I guess nowhere is safe. Reyk YO! 15:46, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Elementary number theory attracts all sorts. The number of people who want to add the remainders of any particular sequence you might care about with respect to all moduli up to 16 (or whatever) is remarkably large.  --JBL (talk) 16:06, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Computational complexity
I have recently created (it existed as a dab page) Computational complexity. I need the help of the community on two points. D.Lazard (talk) 09:54, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) Many math. articles use "computational complexity" without link or as a link of the form  computational complexity, where "xxx" may be time complexity, analysis of algorithms or computational complexity theory. None of these piped articles are convenient for readers interested in a specific problem. Other articles such as Euclidean algorithm or (until recently) Matrix multiplication use the terms  "efficiency" or "running time", which are improper as normally referring to specific implementations. There is thus a problem of updating links in a lot of mathematical articles.
 * 2) The rating of the article is presently "class = C". IMHO, it could be rated "class = B" (maybe this would require reference improvement). As the author of the article, I cannot change the rating myself. Being recent, the article has few watchers, and this is a reason for asking to a larger community.
 * Definitely a good article. It just needs some "inlining" of the references. Let me know if I can help.Limit-theorem (talk) 17:21, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Math Drafts
Excellent list created by Taku here: WikiProject Mathematics/List of math draft pages Thank-you. Legacypac (talk) 18:49, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Some MfD discussions
Here are some MfD discussions that might interest the members of the project. — Taku (talk) 11:16, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Tropical compactification
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Sphere bundle
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Specialization (algebraic geometry)
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Projective hypersurface
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Obstruction cycle
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Microfunction
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Macaulay representation of an integer (2nd nomination)
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Lie's formula (2nd nomination)
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Join (algebraic geometry)
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Gluing schemes
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Glossary of symplectic geometry
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Differential graded module
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Contraction morphism
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Compact object
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Coherency (homotopy theory)


 * Why weren't these just created in mainspace to begin with? It feels like a waste of effort to have to comment on MFD discussions because they were started as drafts. It takes very little effort to create a stub with a couple references that would not be a candidate for deletion. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 17:11, 28 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, because some drafts are not in a good shape (e.g., Draft:Glossary of symplectic geometry) and I prefer to put something more complete in the mainspace. There is also an issue of accuracy; sometimes I write off the top of my head and want to be sure of the accuracy before putting it in the mainspace where the content can become accessible from a Google search. Some simply lack a reference (since I need to do a trip to a library, say). I mostly start artciles in the mainspace or move drafts to the mainspace within hours. Those that require more care (by me or the others) are in the draftspace. —- Taku (talk) 17:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Also, I prefer to put those drafts in the draftspace rather than in my userpage since that would allow collaboration (I use my userpage for my personal notes I don’t want the other editors to edit). — Taku (talk) 18:20, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Somehow related, I do have a proposal: can this project maintain the list of all math-related pages in the draftspace? One of the problems is that the draftspace is somehow invisible to the members of this project (and one of the reasons for the above MfDs is, ostensibly, to bring some attention to those drafts). Having such a list helps address this concern. — Taku (talk) 19:22, 28 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I think it would be better to just start stub-quality articles in mainspace, saving effort for everyone. The standards for a stub are very low - just a couple sentences and a couple sources - so there's really no reason I can see to bother with drafts. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 19:29, 28 February 2018 (UTC)


 * In practice, the list will be maintained mostly by me and also the list includes some math drafts started by anonymous users as well. (Right now, they receive very little attention.) I think some people also simply like to edit pages and the list helps them find such pages; the list would help content development. Also, some editors like me do prefer to start an article as a draft (for the reasons I mentioned above); it’s just the mode of content creation, I think. —- Taku (talk) 19:31, 28 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I agree with Carl. Although in theory other users might see and edit an article in draftspace, in practice they don't. So I think, most such article ought to be started in mainspace. Those which are thought to be not yet acceptable for mainspace, should be in userspace. Paul August &#9742; 19:49, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * (Mosf of my stubs are started in the mainspace.) Yes that invisibility is precisely why having a list of drafts (which can also include userpage drafts) can address it. Is there any serious objection to the list? — Taku (talk) 20:08, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * A list would be useless to anyone but regular editors. If regular editors wanted to do something with these permadrafts, they would have by now.  The point of a stub is that it's visible to the world, not kept in some Wikiproject or User list which is not indexed by search engines.  If anyone is going to beef these up, they will be from outside Wikipedia most likely.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 21:11, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * And the list will be useful for regular editors who are looking for pages to work with. I get that stubs in the mainspace are preferable. There are materials that are useful to regular editors but not are not meant for the general public yet: the list collects links to such materials. -- Taku (talk) 21:19, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * But regular editors, yourself included, are not working on many of these drafts, and no one has expressed an interest in doing so. For one thing, regular editors just don't work that way.  They just don't work on other peoples' drafts.  Secondly, your drafts are of extremely narrow interest even in mathematics.  If the hope is that typical mathematical Wikipedia editors are going to be able to assist much, that is simply empirically not true.  The only way to attract the required motivated interest is by having something that graduate student specialists in these fields can see, make additions to, etc.  Regular editors are not the ones you should be targeting at all.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 21:54, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I don't feel you are really against having the convenient link list for the editors per se. By regular, I don't mean ordinary. No I don't expect every ordinary math editor is going to work on the drafts if there is the list. Recent activities show there are at least few editors who are interested in finishing up the drafts. That's all I'm expecting. Effectively there is already a list of drafts (through MfD nominations). What is a problem with having a more official list of drafts at all? -- Taku (talk) 23:22, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * But why is there reluctance to accept what seems to be the reasonable suggestion of making stubs? Do you need help doing that?   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 23:44, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I didn't disagree to create stubs: in fact, I usually start articles in mainspace. But from time to time, there are drafts that I'm not comfortable putting mainspace right away for the reasons of completeness, accuracy, etc. Since I don't think there is an actual objection to the draft list, I'm going to create one. -- Taku (talk) 23:55, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Before you get too far into that, it might be more productive and globally useful to get on the article alerts coders to add draft listing functionality to the alerts tables (i.e. User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Custom/Mathematics-Overall). I'm not quite sure even where to begin with that, though. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:34, 2 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Yeah.... I think I understand this idea but isn't a bit overkill. There is a possibility that in coming few months, the list will contain only a dozen as many get finished and move to the mainspace; the message I'm getting here is even if I were to use the draftspace, I should use it sparingly. As it turned out, having more than a dozen draft is a bad idea. If the number of the math drafts is low, hopefully that helps reduce the sentiment that there is an issue if there were. But I will do the research. Thanks for the input. -- Taku (talk) 03:40, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

I can't see how a list would hurt. I've put work into several of these drafts when my attention was called to them, and I've seen at least one other editor do the same. Several drafts have been promoted to main space as a result. And if we had the full list, we could get a better sense of how many are three-word fragments that might as well be deleted, how many only need a little work to become decent main-space stubs, how many could be merged into existing articles, etc. At worst, a list would be one more thing for people who don't care to ignore. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 16:00, 2 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Also I'm still not seeing any strong objection (and I cannot understand having the list at all is considered as a disruptive edit; e.g., abuse of Wikipedia as webhost, seriously???) So here is the list WikiProject Mathematics/List of math draft pages (I have not completed it yet) (the list should now contain all drafts started by me). -- Taku (talk) 04:00, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I've added a bunch by checking the what links here to Mathematics and Mathematician. Some of them look clearly notable. One Draft:Peter Eccles (Mathematician) I dearly like to see make it to mainspace as he was my MSc advisor, but academic criteria seem pretty strict.--Salix alba (talk): 09:42, 3 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I have used “algebra” as a search key word to find a couple more. There are few like Draft:Supermanifold Hypothesis in Deep Learning, which I didn’t think is in the scope of this project. — Taku (talk) 10:02, 3 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I must say if Draft:Viktor Ginzburg is not considered notable, most others will have little hope. —- Taku (talk) 10:24, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * As a general note, I'm not sure that everyone who evaluates AfC submissions for academics does so with WP:PROF in mind. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 18:21, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If the subject meets WP:PROF or some other appropriate guideline feel free to promote it. Any editor can move it out of Draft space. Just strip the AfC comments when you do. Legacypac (talk) 18:44, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I've promoted Viktor Ginzburg (I hope its the right person as there is another Russian-American mathematician Victor Ginzburg). The article does not really have any third party sources to show his notability so any assistance in that would be good. In particular an article on the red link Conley Conjecture would be helpful.--Salix alba (talk): 20:30, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * About my early comment: sorry, I mistook him for more famous Victor (didn’t remember that was Victor with c) since the areas both Ginzburg work overlap, retracting my early comment. But Viktor with k does seem to have some fame (i.e., he is more than your average math professor.) —- Taku (talk) 20:38, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Discussions about surfaces
There is a move request at Talk:Surface (mathematics) and a WP:MfD at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Surface‎‎. Both may interest members of this project. D.Lazard (talk) 20:57, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Help needed with GA nomination of Hidden Markov model
The article Hidden Markov model has been nominated for GA, and is now the second oldest unreviewed article there; it was nominated in June 2017, over eight months ago. I have been doing GA reviewing recently, including some maths articles, but would like to get someone with deeper mathematical knowledge to review this -- my maths degree is now nearly thirty years old, and this is not a topic I know anything about. Would someone here be willing to help out by reviewing the article? If someone is interested but not knowledgeable about GA reviewing I'd be glad to help out with that side of things. Thanks for any help. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:20, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Locally nilpotent derivation
(I didn't start this draft). Is this notable? -- Taku (talk) 23:35, 5 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, it gets hundreds of scholar hits published in top quality math journals.  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 23:44, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Ok. I think I will ping to promote it to mainspace. -- Taku (talk) 23:49, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Done. Feel free to fix anything of course. One more draft off the list :) Legacypac (talk) 23:58, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The later sections (starting with "Slice theorem") need some pretty heavy copy editing. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 00:33, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that’s true, and the sentiment of the project from the above is that such further editing can happen more when the page in mainspace, because of increased visibility. So the question is notability (since there is no much point to put the stuff that cannot survive AfDs.) —- Taku (talk) 17:46, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It easily passes, and by allowing more eyes to see it, it will improve over time.  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 22:15, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Uh in the phrase: if $$X$$ admits plenty of such actions, or equivalently, if its coordinate ring $$\mathbb{C}[X]$$ has a lot of locally nilpotent derivations" what do "plenty" and "a lot" mean? Paul August &#9742; 19:39, 6 March 2018 (UTC)


 * These are the reason why the sentence starts with “roughly speaking”, I think (the ref https://arxiv.org/pdf/1011.5375.pdf gives more precise meanings) I don’t know flexible variety is notable enough (so I will unlink it.) —- Taku (talk) 21:00, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Level structure
This is a wrong redirect. The draft was/is about a level structure in algebraic geometry. Can someone correct it? (I can't do it myself without risking getting an indefinite ban from Wikipedia.) -- Taku (talk)
 * If so, what is the proper TARGET? All you had to do was change it to the right main space redirect, but no, you decided you wanted to go on a revert spree instead of fixing the problem. You don't unilaterially undo something that's been standing for 6 months. You should know better Hasteur (talk) 00:46, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * None, I think. (I didn't think correcting the wrong redirect triggers too much dramas, and apparently do.) -- Taku (talk) 00:48, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Ok, so you see a problem, but you don't have a solution for it. Oh and by the way, this thread is WP:CANVAS/WP:MEATPUPPET violations and you should know better. Hasteur (talk) 00:55, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

In fact, it seems I will be indef-ban after all. See Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents. (I know I'm not completely blameless but still.) -- Taku (talk) 01:18, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I have just finished Draft:Level structure. (The quality is ... bad. Who cares right?) -- Taku (talk) 03:27, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If it's bad quality, how about you continue fixing it before a real New Page Patroller starts ripping it apart and puts it on the path to deletion. BTW: You removed the maintenance templates without fixing all the issues. Hasteur (talk) 03:40, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

This discussion is difficult to understand. Apparently, is a draft created in June 2015 by Taku. It has be wrongly redirected by in August 2017. It is only yesterday that Taku reverted this wrong redirect. This started an edit war between Taku and Hasteur, until Taku moved the draft to the main space with the name Level structure (algebraic geometry). The edit war continued about maintenance tags, this time, because Hasteur insisted to put tags about issues that are common with almost all stubs (otherwise, these would not be stubs) and thus duplicate the stub tag. After having clarified the history, I see two remaining issues:
 * It was an error to leave a redirect when moving the draft (possibly, Taku did not has the rights for not leaving a redirect).
 * 's edits in the draft/article and here are undoubtful WP:Harassment. Moreover, above Hasteur's posts contain personal attacks (accusation of canvassing and meat-puppetry) not only against Taku, but also, implicitly, about all members of this project. D.Lazard (talk) 14:19, 4 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Having looked over the article Level structure (algebraic geometry), I think I can say that it has attained that level of "incomprehensible to the uninitiated, possibly useful for advanced students who need pointers into the literature" that characterizes so much of Wikipedia's mathematics articles. In other words, it's fine, though of course further work could always improve it. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:04, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think I understand what you mean: at least currently the article doesn't make much sense! (unless you already know the stuff.) This is a type of a math article that is very hard to write because it depends heavily on the context; some math article involves more than copying facts from the sources.
 * I will be adding the def of Drinfeld level structure soon, which is also cryptic, unfortunately. -- Taku (talk) 03:32, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for that veiled personal attack Lazard. By the way your edit summary removing the maintenance tags is in violation of WP:SUMMARYNO.  The article is now up to the level that the tags are no longer needed, though I really wish that the removal of the tags would have been left alone to someone who can neutrally evaluate or myself as I don't think Lazard's removal was impartial. Hasteur (talk) 17:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * My "violation of WP:SUMMARYNO" consists of omitting of mentioning in an edit summary the involuntary removing of a blank line before a section heading. I leave the member of this project appreciating what is a personal attack. D.Lazard (talk) 18:54, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Intrinsic flat distance
This article was at one time a draft, which was copied into mainspace several years ago but has never been assessed. It seems to me that it needs more independent references, and may have been a neologism at the time it was created. Can someone with a math background and access to academic journals fix it up and/or tag it appropriately? Thanks.&mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 10:03, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I am not a specialist of this area. However, this is clearly WP:COI and WP:OR, as the username of the creator of this article is the name of the author of all published references. Looking, on Scholar Google, at papers citing the main reference, it appears that most are self-references. However, Michael Gromov cite this reference as a possible step toward the solution of a problem (one line comment). IMO, the main reference on which the article is based is an interesting paper, but not interesting (notable) enough for having its own WP article. I suggest its deletion, but I'll not prod it myself, as not sufficiently competent. D.Lazard (talk) 11:03, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I have not looked at the article yet. But my understanding of "OR" is that it is research first published in Wikipedia. If it appears in a refereed journal first, then it's not OR when written about in Wikipedia. Michael Hardy (talk) 06:16, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I am not a specialist as well; googling a bit I see an article in GAFA Journal 2017 and Section 3.3 in a book (Springer 2012). In addition, arXiv eprint 2014. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 11:09, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The editor who created the article has sent me two indignant e-mails about the inappropriateness of a mere musician questioning the notability of the original draft. My reply is HERE.&mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 11:22, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Article reads as heavily promotional (at least for a math article). Whatever the decision is on notability (at a glance, dubious based on current sourcing), that will need to be fixed. --JBL (talk) 12:05, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It is bizarrely promotional for a mathematics article&mdash;making a big deal, for example, out of a brief mention in a blog post. Given the comparative recency of it, and the low-but-not-vanishing citation figures, it's possible that giving due weight to this might mean just writing a succinct summary of it in another article (e.g., flat convergence). I lean in this direction due to Gromov's remark that the intrinsic flat distance is "A preliminary step toward the construction" of a metric in the space of $$n$$-manifolds with certain properties . (Elsewhere and similarly, Gromov says it is a distance that suggests possibilities .) XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:00, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I was just writing to point out the connected article Flat convergence, but XOR&#39;easter has covered that better.&mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 17:07, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I did a quick de-promotionalization of the article, so at least we won't have the advertorial tone as a distraction while we figure out what to do with it. I note that the book chapter found by Tsirel was written by Sormani, so it is not an independent source. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:10, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Wow, written by Sormani, indeed; regretfully I did not note this fact. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 21:03, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

On a related note, what about the article Christina Sormani? It has been prodded twice but survives. Is the topic notable? Mgnbar (talk) 00:12, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes. As a Fellow of the AMS she clearly passes WP:PROF. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:18, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, David. I didn't really know the prestige carried by that fellowship. Mgnbar (talk) 00:23, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

On "scheme theory"
I've seen the phrase "scheme theory" used on wikipedia several times (e.g. in the current version of the article Main theorem of the elimination theory), and while the meaning of this term is clear, I don't think it's a conventional phrase. As more or less an algebraic geometer, I find it very quaint and nonstandard. Only the adjective "scheme-theoretic" seems to be commonly used. To support the feeling let me remark that, unlike group theory, representation theory, number theory and others, books introducing schemes are (almost?) never titled "scheme theory". Here are some popular books covering schemes :
 * Hartshorne's "Algebraic geometry"
 * Vakil's "Foundations of Algebraic Geometry"
 * Mumford's "Red book of varieties and schemes"
 * Eisenbud-Harris "The geometry of schemes"
 * Liu's "Algebraic Geometry and Arithmetic Curves"
 * Görtz-Wedhorn "Algebraic Geometry I, Schemes with Examples and Exercises"

To follow the usage in the literature, I would replace "scheme theory" by "modern algebraic geometry", but I think D.Lazard objects to this choice, so maybe "the language of schemes" is an OK replacement. Dpirozhkov (talk) 16:31, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I am strongly against the "modern algebraic theory" for several reasons. Firstly most readers, even those that have heard of schemes, do not know that this phrase should mean either "language of schemes" or "scheme theory". Secondly, identifying modern algebraic theory to scheme theory excludes from modern algebraic theory many parts of algebraic theory, where the language of schemes is not or rarely used, for example, singularity theory, real algebraic geometry, computational algebraic geometry, invariant theory, numerical algebraic geometry, analytic geometry (several of these areas have been identified as subareas of algebraic geometry after the introduction of schemes by Grothendieck. "Language of schemes" may be a good formulation in some case, but this hides the fact that scheme theory is not a reformulation, but a generalization of algebraic geometry.
 * For modern popular books that talk of algebraic geometry, without using schemes, see Algebraic geometry. D.Lazard (talk) 17:57, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with your mathematical points, though my main concern is the specific phrase. It seems to me that people who work with schemes professionally avoid the phrase "scheme theory" in various ways, instead saying "the language of schemes", "the geometry of schemes", "algebraic geometry using schemes", "properties of schemes", etc. The list of the titles above was to support this point, not about popularity or a lack of it for schemes. To me, "scheme theory" sounds like a mistake, almost like saying "a module on a ring" instead of "a module over a ring". I only see this phrase on Wikipedia and this bothers me, since Wikipedia should follow the standard usage. Though maybe it's a case of professional slang, and mathematicians who don't usually work with schemes say "scheme theory" all the times. Is that your impression? Dpirozhkov (talk) 19:14, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I have searched Scholar Google for "geometry of schemes", "language of schemes", "scheme theory" and "theory of schemes", all between quotes and associated with "algebraic" and "geometry" (for avoiding other meanings of schemes). The highest number of hits is got for "theory of schemes", followed by "scheme theory". Also, the first words of the introduction of Eisenbud's book "The Geometry of schemes" are "The theory of schemes ...". In the same introduction, I have found "scheme-theoretic methods". This shows that it is wrong that people who work with schemes professionally avoid the phrases "scheme theory" and "theory of schemes". Their majority use these phrases. However, it is true that "theory of schemes" is more common than "scheme theory". Personally I do not see a significant difference between these two phrases. D.Lazard (talk) 23:02, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

(I'm late to the party but here is my take). -- Taku (talk) 00:59, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It is usually hard to determine the standard usage because it heavily depends on a field, a subfield or a context. Google search can help but can be misleading since Google can give only an overall number and, for example, in some subfield, there is really no distinction between "algebraic geometry" and "scheme theory" (how can Google search detect this?). So, the question is what is the context behind the "main theorem" and that's very unclear to me.
 * "Modern X" is generally a bad term just as "modern analysis", "modern algebra", "modern geometry", etc. are not good terms to use (because of time ambiguity). For example, scheme theory constitutes the classical case from the point of view of derived algebraic geometry. (Maybe derived algebraic geometry is post-modern algebraic geometry??). Oh, and in this context, "scheme theory" is the natural term to use, I think.

Draft:Multivariate quadratic random number generator
Could someone that understands this let us know if this AfC draft is any good? Legacypac (talk) 07:40, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It seems that this is pure WP:OR: A Scholar Google search on "Multivariate Quadratic Random Number Generator" and on the variants given at the end of the lead does not provides any hit. It is asserted that this is variant of another algorithm called QUAD, but nobody is credited for the design of the variant. Therefore, the subject of this article is not sourced, not even by a primary source. D.Lazard (talk) 09:07, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The page has been nominated for deletion. Please join in the conversation there. Primefac (talk) 12:22, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Category:Unary operations has been nominated for discussion
Category:Unary operations has been nominated for possible deletion. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:55, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Data-driven control systems
There is a lot of math in Draft:Data-driven control systems. Is this page ok for mainspace? Legacypac (talk) 00:46, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I've just done a bunch of copy-editing on it to bring it closer to the norms of WP:MOS and WP:MOSMATH, and I may do some more. Then I'll think about whether it's ready to move to the article space. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:54, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Shinichi Mochizuki
There is a discussion at the conflict of interest noticeboard which could benefit from input from editors with mathematics knowledge. Please see the discussion for details. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 12:44, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Stephens' constant
The new article titled Stephens' constant is something of mess. It doesn't have a proper introductory section nor a proper opening sentence, nor does does it say enough to make it clear why the topic is notable. And it could use copy-editing of a number of different sorts. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:39, 17 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure if cleanup would be easier than rewriting from scratch. - CRGreathouse (t | c) 05:57, 18 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I cut out a whole lot of stuff and reworked the references. I think that now it looks like a decent stub, though I wonder if it would be better off merged into something else. My general feeling is that to a first approximation, if MathWorld has an article on it, we ought to cover it somewhere, but not necessarily as its own article. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 16:27, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

abc and "Inter-universal Teichmüller theory"
I recently had a look at the page on Shinichi Mochizuki's Inter-universal Teichmüller theory and found it to have several problems. First it is far from having a neutral point of view (the most flagrant example of this being the complete omission of the fact that very few mathematicians accept Mochizuki's idea to say the least, as illustrated for example by this blog post: https://galoisrepresentations.wordpress.com/2017/12/17/the-abc-conjecture-has-still-not-been-proved/ and the discussion following it). Second (perhaps this point is more my personal impression) it has no discernable mathematical content and is basically useless as an introduction to the theory as far as I am concerned.

I think that the page as it stands should not exist on Wikipedia. On the other hand it seems to me that mentioning IUT on Wikipedia is important, and I'd like to suggest the following to take care of this in what I believe is a better way:
 * that we change this page to a redirect to S. Mochizuki's wikipedia page, where a lot of its contents already resides.
 * that the page on abc conjecture be edited to reflect the fact that Mochizuki's claimed proof is at present, as far as the mathematical community as a whole is concerned, not an accepted proof. I can do this but I am no expert in number theory and I think it would be better that such a person undertakes this (I edited the lede of the article regarding this point but in the main text there should include more detail which I am not able to produce without substantial effort).

I think this is a rather touchy subject (witness some discussions on blog comments, eg. here: https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=9871) and this is why a discussion here might be needed. jraimbau (talk) 15:59, 13 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Indeed the article needs work. A lot of it has been written by SPAs, , , , , , , , , , , . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2a02:c7f:da17:900:d97e:efa:1f30:9375 (talk • contribs)


 * Thank you for this list! This seems to provide further proof that something is rotten in the coverage of IUT on wikipedia. In all these edits I noticed a pattern of removing sources touching the unacceptance by the community of Mochizuki's claimed proof under cover of minor revisions, e.g.:
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shinichi_Mochizuki&diff=prev&oldid=821426951
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shinichi_Mochizuki&diff=prev&oldid=675115425
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inter-universal_Teichm%C3%BCller_theory&diff=prev&oldid=770262632
 * jraimbau (talk) 17:03, 13 March 2018 (UTC)


 * By the way, the talk page Talk:Shinichi_Mochizuki contains similar criticisms (in particular by ) but I think that as the issue concerns a set of pages it is better discussed here. jraimbau (talk) 17:10, 13 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I agree there are a lot of problems with the current page. Unfortunately, one of my current life goals is to not spend the time to understand IUT, so I'm no help improving the page.  It's sufficiently notable that the page needs to exist, but it's possible there's only about 2 paragraphs worth of material that can be covered in an encyclopedic fashion. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 18:07, 13 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I do agree there is a serious notability question, and I tend to think the page does actually fail the notability (in the sense of Wikipedia) and, accordingly, that page needs to be deleted or partially merged into the Mochizuki article. The notability of math topics mainly comes from the fact that they are part of mainstream established literature (textbooks, monographs, frequently cited papers, etc.) The IUT is clearly not notable in this manner. If the article exists, it might have to exist outside the scope of this math project. In this project, we simply don't cover original works outside the mainstream, rightly I think (although I cannot say ITU is a fringe theory.) Some years from now, the status of the theory may change of course and we can revisit the matter in such a scenario. -- Taku (talk) 22:58, 13 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Has anyone tried to send that list of WP:SPAs to WP:SPI? In some sense it's not worth it (they all only edit for one day) but it's pretty obvious that many (if not all) of them are actually the same person.  Maybe a friendly admin could be convinced to put some semiprotection on or something.  --JBL (talk) 23:26, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The biography is the same; in addition to the accounts mentioned by the IP, there are, , , , , , , , , , , , , and who knows how many others. (I did not look back in the article history before 2017, but clearly this has been going on for years.)  --JBL (talk) 23:37, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

User:Primefac perhaps some page protection is in order, like 30/500 to weekld out all the SPAs noted. Legacypac (talk) 00:17, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If there's a history of abuse then I can see this being an effective method of combating the problem, but if it doesn't meet the notability criteria there's not much point. If there's evidence they're not just SPAs (and actually linked) then an SPI would be the first step, then RFPP (assuming the page is worth keeping). Primefac (talk) 01:36, 14 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Ok, I will file an SPI tomorrow morning (say, 10 hours from now) if no one else does first. --JBL (talk) 03:12, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Filed. --JBL (talk) 12:10, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Two updates:
 * Most of the material on Inter-universal Teichmüller Theory was removed from Shinichi Mochizuki as unsuitable for a biography page. This followed an editing dispute that is apparently only tangentially related to the issues discussed here.  The similar material at Inter-universal Teichmüller theory is still there.
 * I reordered and expanded the list at the SPI. This resulted in a message that the case has moved to this page, which does not, at present, appear to exist.
 * Will Orrick (talk) 14:35, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, . I have moved the page to the new title.  (It is unclear to me if this will result in a tsk-tsking from some admin, but whatever. [Update: tsk tsk.  That was quick!]  I also don't understand what "stale" means in this context.)  --JBL (talk) 15:33, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The various one-day-only editors have been confirmed as sock-puppets. This process also incidentally identified the article Ivan Fesenko as a target.  Per 's suggestion, I have filed a request for page protection at WP:RFPP. --JBL (talk) 22:58, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

I have edited the page on abc to better reflect the fact that Mochizuki's work is currently not accepted as providing a proof of the conjecture. The main reference is the Persiflage blog post, including comments by Brian Conrad, which is maybe not ideal but I think this is the best quality source on the topic. I will try to revise the IUT page soon (after thinking a bit more it seems not to be the better idea to include it into S.M.'s page). jraimbau (talk) 13:59, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I've given Shinichi Mochizuki, Inter-universal Teichmüller theory and Ivan Fesenko, extended confirmed protection. That should hopeful make the sock puppetry much harder. --Salix alba (talk): 23:51, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, . Maybe abc conjecture should also be added to the list, per 1 2 3?  --JBL (talk) 00:49, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I gave it 6 months in light of its history. - CRGreathouse (t | c) 06:02, 18 March 2018 (UTC)


 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jean_Raimbault/sandbox/temp is a revised version of the page on IUT. I kept to the old version where it merely describes the contents of the theory. Please suggest and/or make edits. Barring opposition from members of the project I will update the page in mainspace in 24 or so hours. jraimbau (talk) 16:20, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I have made some superficial edits; overall, that version reads nicely. (I will admit to not carefully comparing with the existing version to see if you left out any improvements there.)  One obvious thing that still needs fixing is "2005 (??)".  --JBL (talk) 16:37, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The new version has been put in place. I didn't remove the tags for COI and factuality, I'll start a discussion at [] before doing that, please contribute there if you have comments on anything related to the above. jraimbau (talk) 17:36, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Odometer (ergodic theory)
Should there be a page titled Odometer (ergodic theory)?

There is now a page titled Markov odometer, which could probably use some work. Michael Hardy (talk) 13:01, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Subtle trolling?
has been adding ridiculous "analogies" to mathematics and physics articles. Some of these are vaguely relevant, but rather useless (e.g., this). Others are clearly absurd (e.g., this and this). And others still seem to be purely vandalism (e.g., this). I'm not sure if this is subtle trolling, or just very poor judgement. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:24, 20 March 2018 (UTC)


 * These are needed in my community college neighborhood where people can't even do simple algebra. Chadyoung (talk) 18:00, 20 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Then try simple English wikipedia. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 18:18, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Please also see WP:OR. Paul August &#9742; 21:02, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Robert Langlands
Robert Langlands is the 2018 winner of the prestigious Abel Prize and his article is nominated to be displayed on the main page. Please could someone more experienced with mathematics articles take a look to fix "Research section" in his article or his Langlands program which also needs attentions. Suggestion is also welcomed in the talkpage. –Ammarpad (talk) 04:35, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Question about articles on funtions and equations at the Teahouse
Please see WP:Teahouse where the OP has asked whether the Wikidata interlanguage links for articles about cubic/quartic functions and equations respectively should be merged, are they separate topics or not? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:30, 22 March 2018 (UTC)


 * the Teahouse-link does not work for me, it just leads me to the bottom. The addressed thread is the #61-thread (of currently 67), and will be archived, probably, to archive #741. I do not understand the intentions of the Polish cross-language mergers. Teahouse was nice to me, I would like to help. Purgy (talk) 15:05, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Split off some sections of Hodge theory
I have made a proposal for splitting-off the complex-algebraic-geometry-related section of Hodge theory to a separate article at Talk:Hodge theory. Opinions from the editors who might have opinions on the matter are needed. -- Taku (talk) 23:02, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Unjustified deletions in Foias constant and Mandelbrot set
and just deleted 3 recursive definition formulas for very nontrivially defined constants conjectured to be transcendent irrational. Also in other articles about such hard to understand numbers like Feigenbaum constants explicit definition terms could clarify much furtherly and help classifying them. E.g. also in substance articles multiple chemical structure representations are often available so if they can be directly derived from a given defining explanation then why not specifying them explicitly? --LKreissig (talk) 19:07, 22 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Your additions are completely incomprehensible. --JBL (talk) 19:42, 22 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Also, although it's okay to post here to bring issues to a wider audience, you should generally discuss things like this at the talk page(s) of the article(s) in question. But since we're here, I'll just briefly mention that the expressions you've added don't make much sense out of context (the Mandelbrot set one just appears to be a restatement in terms of the integral of its characteristic function, which isn't useful to include).  Also, your use of English at the Foias constant article was unintelligible.  –Deacon Vorbis (carbon &bull; videos) 19:47, 22 March 2018 (UTC)


 * @: Is my added Mandelbrot set area formula true or false? In Foias constant I mentioned a "complexity rank", of course the transcendent irrational numbers can be ordered by their amounts of recurrences, limits, integrals, ... necessary to define them. The higher these amounts the higher the ranks of their complexity tend to be. That is not unintelligible. --LKreissig (talk) 21:24, 22 March 2018 (UTC)


 * What you wrote in Foias constant is completely incomprehensible, any reasonable person who came across it would have reverted it. There is no sense in talking further about these questions if you fail to understand this.  --JBL (talk) 21:41, 22 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Agree. Had I come across it first I would have reverted it for not even being a good approximation to English. Also, Wikipedia is not just a collection of statements, there must be a reason to insert something beyond its just being a true statement. --Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 21:50, 22 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Under SEE ALSO mathworld.wolfram.com only references to each other between Foias and Grossman's constant due to their definition similarities so comparing these both is absolutely justified and also there my additions are righteous. If there are language mistakes tell them concretely and focused! --LKreissig (talk) 22:04, 22 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Here is the language mistake: what you wrote is completely incomprehensible. Not like "you made a typo" or "there are grammar errors characteristic of a non-native speaker"; it is literally not possible to make sense of what you wrote. --JBL (talk) 22:10, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

At this point you really need to explain in some comprehensible way what the things you added mean. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:27, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The problem is beyond comprehensible or incomprehensible (though it is incomprehensible); the problem is use of original research, WP:OR. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a paper submission board. Limit-theorem (talk) 16:59, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * (It is obvously no WP:OR because only the explanation of formulas are brought into their explicit form so that the sources are still reflected meaningfully.) For example look to article nandrolone. It gives its structure 1. in a picture, 2. in its full structure describing IUPAC name and 3. in its SMILES notation. WP:NOT PAPERS is not reproached here because dealing with that complex chemical structure is difficult and the article helps. So for example can also the article Foias constant include $$\frac{1}\alpha = \lim_{n\to\infty} \frac 1 {a_2\text{ from } (a_n=2,\,a_{n-1}=\sqrt[-n]{\left\vert a_n\right\vert}-1)}-1$$ (&alpha; is defined in that article) if it is true according to the recursive definition given in the section COMMENTS of its source ? --LKreissig (talk) 15:07, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * This is not only your English that is incomprehensible, it is also your formulas. Specifically, your use of from in the above formula in not defined in any standard textbook and cannot be understood, even by professional mathematicians. Also, the whole formula is original research, as nothing like it appears in your source, which is not a reliable source, because the section "comment" has not been validated by anybody but its author (the approval of the sequence is not an approval of the whole content of the page). There are so many reasons for reverting your edits that, if I were the first one to see them, I would have reverted them immediately with the edit summary "pure nonsense". D.Lazard (talk) 16:12, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Aha! It's all so clear to me now: $$a_n = 2$$, so $$1/\alpha = \lim_{n\to\infty} (1/a_2) - 1$$, so $$\alpha = -2$$. What's not to get? XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:21, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Of course a2 &ne; a&rarr;&infin;! The OEIS source comprehensibly concludes: “With this we have a surprising representation of the Foias constant: x_1 = 1/(-1 + 1/(-1 + exp(-1/2*log(abs(-1 + exp(-1/3*log(abs(-1 + exp(-1/4*log(abs(-1 + exp(-1/5*...” which is (here with separate k for the limit and n): $$\frac{1}\alpha = \lim_{k\to\infty} \frac 1 {a_1\text{ from } (a_k=2,\,a_{n-1}=\sqrt[-n]{\left\vert a_n\right\vert}-1)}-1$$ with &alpha; = x_1? --LKreissig (talk) 18:37, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There is no point in continuing this conversation so long as you fail to understand that what you've written is incomprehensible. (Your recent posts are no better in this respect than the deleted material.) --JBL (talk) 19:21, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Centre for Studies in Discrete Mathematics
Is this a notable topic? Legacypac (talk) 19:32, 29 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Some research centers (e.g., Institute for Advanced Study) are obviously notable. I don’t think this one is; my quick Google search didn’t yield anything showing the notability. So, no. —- Taku (talk) 21:31, 29 March 2018 (UTC)