Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2018/Sep

Wikipedia requiescat in pace.
User_talk:Jimbo_Wales Michael Hardy (talk) 05:08, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Does this have anything to do with mathematics? —David Eppstein (talk) 05:43, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Perhaps as an example of adding 2 and 2 and making 5... —SerialNumber54129  paranoia / cheap sh*t room 13:12, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

OP blocked two days for personal attacks. -Roxy, the dog. barcus 14:15, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * OP=?--Kmhkmh (talk) 15:12, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * "Original poster", opener of the thread. Usenet jargon from the old days . - DVdm (talk) 15:15, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * If someone here is curious, some links may be relevant: Ancestral health; its discussion on WikiProject Medicine; AfD; AN; User:Michael Hardy/libel. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 20:46, 28 August 2018 (UTC)


 * (I have just un-archived the thread; if the premature archiving is not bullying, I don’t know what it is.) —- Taku (talk) 08:08, 29 August 2018 (UTC) For me, the attempt like suppressing this thread already amply proves Michael Hardy‘s point. —- Taku (talk) 09:05, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree. I do not support "Ancestral health". But the nervous reaction of these two wikipedians that edited this page being not members of this wikiproject bothers me. Have they something to fear? Boris Tsirelson (talk) 13:02, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Archiving a discussion that has nothing to do with Wikipedia's mathematics articles is not "bullying". This page is for discussing Wikipedia's mathematics coverage and how to improve it. It isn't the place for general site-wide concerns. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 15:22, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
 * True. However, I watch this page ten years, and I do not remember such case (not even once), that a non-member (of WPM) bothers that we are (sometimes) off-topic here. So I wonder, what really happens now? What is their motivation to urgently archive this section? Boris Tsirelson (talk) 15:29, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Speculation about other editors' motivations appears to be exactly what got MH blocked. Really. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:10, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

If Michael Hardy does retire, that's relevant to this WikiProject, as he has edited a lot of Mathematics articles. power~enwiki ( π, ν ) 15:30, 29 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Hear, hear! Boris Tsirelson (talk) 15:49, 29 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I continue. "...the reason why it (Wikipedia) is banned in countries that want to maintain strict control of their populations..." (quoted from the Jimbo Wales talk page linked above). Nice. But what is the motivation to maintain strict control of WPM talk page? Boris Tsirelson (talk) 15:36, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
 * To keep an unfolding drama focused in the places most appropriate for it, rather than letting it sprawl across the backrooms of Wikipedia? Or, to exact some petty revenge using the letter of policy as a shield? Who can say &mdash; and in a vacuum of evidence, I find little use in speculating.
 * It seems a rare event that anyone from the outside cares about this WikiProject at all; perhaps today is a day to celebrate. :-) XOR&#39;easter (talk) 15:42, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Wow! Nicely put. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 15:46, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
 * To keep an unfolding drama focused in the places most appropriate for it, rather than letting it sprawl across the backrooms of Wikipedia? yeah pretty much Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:48, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

The "personal attacks" to which "Roxy" refers consist of my declining to recant an accusation. When I'm the target, it's an "accusation"; when "Roxy" is the target, it's a "personal attack" regardless of whether it's a factual statement. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:08, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Boris Tsirelson. While it is certainly not appropriate to "spread drama" over various project pages, shadowing users to censor their drama on those various project pages doesn't strike me as particularly appropiate either. The regular users/project members of those projects pages can decide for themselves whether they want to close/cut short/archive a discussion or not.--Kmhkmh (talk) 21:30, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Michael Hardy
Whatever the issues are concerning and his behavior elsewhere (see above section "Wikipedia requiescat in pace") I want to point out that Michael, in his 16 years here, and with over 200,000 edits, has made an enormous contribution to Wikipedia's mathematics content and in addition has been an extremely valuable member of this project. In my 14 years as a member of this project, I can personally attest to the significant positive impact Michael has made here. It would be a shame if that were to come to an end. Paul August &#9742; 23:48, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I would add that if there is anything any of us can do to help insure Michael's continued contributions here, we should do it. Paul August &#9742; 23:53, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

-4 (number) and -999 (number)
Redirects -4 (number) and -999 (number), which presently target 4 (number) and 999 (number) respectively, have been nominated for deletion at RfD. You are invited to the discussion at Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 September 3. Thryduulf (talk) 10:38, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

WENO and Weno
I think that WENO methods are notable and important. We should change one of them (WENO and Weno) to a disambig page.--Sharouser (talk) 15:14, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Before renaming existing articles, you must say what are Weno methods, and provide sources attesting that they are notable and important. D.Lazard (talk) 15:24, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * WENO means weighted essentially non-oscillatory. WENO methods are used in finite difference method and finite volume method --Sharouser (talk) 04:21, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
 * There is a brief mention of these methods at High-resolution scheme -- 04:51, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Plane normal form
Could somebody take a look at Draft:Plane normal form and leave review comments on the draft. It requires a SME to review properly. Thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:22, 9 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Please note the draft was started om Sep 9, 2018, so the review seems a bit premature (unless, of course, Wikipedia is now a competitive sporting game where people compete for time. Kids nowadays...) —- Taku (talk) 11:05, 10 September 2018 (UTC)


 * You should take that up with the author of the draft, since that’s the person who requested it be reviewed. —JBL (talk) 12:45, 10 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Ok, I missed the submission template (which was mistakenly placed at the bottom of the page). Still the "submission" is was premature since, for one thing, the lede is was missing (the issue is probably that the author doesn't enough clue about the AfC process.) In fact, since the draft is not an AfC draft, the AfC submission template is not applicable/should not be placed. (stroke since it is not math-related). -- Taku (talk) 23:15, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

What a relief!
Finally, at last, all remnants of disagreement by an highly meritorious math editor vanished to oblivion for any casual passers by. What a satisfaction for a certain gang.

I myself bemoan mostly that also the despicable efforts to completely eradicate, and when this did not work, to brutally silence any utterance of empathy.

I hope this is ignored, but I expect it to be deleted, because talking about silencing math editors is off-topic for the WikiProject Mathematics. In any case I can do no other. Purgy (talk) 08:06, 17 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I suppose Purgy is referring to the blocking of Michael Hardy. This is certainly a remarkable development and I have commented myself.  Andrew D. (talk)
 * ... not immediately, see my primary target in the added hatnote above. Purgy (talk) 10:16, 19 September 2018 (UTC)


 * That archiving was done in the normal way by User:Lowercase sigmabot III, the bot that archives all discussions on this page after they have not had a new comment for two weeks or so. If you have nothing to say here that is related to the question of editing math articles on wikipedia, this thread should also be hatted and archived.  --JBL (talk) 11:23, 19 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I never claimed any exceptional archiving for the last time, but I remind you all that the thread, to which I refer, has been exceptionally archived and hatted and closed, before it was archived the normal way. Obviously, you (?)almost(?) can't wait to do the same with this reminder. Isn't the standard archiving procedure fast enough to sooth your angst?
 * Silencing math editors your way IS related to the question of editing math articles on wikipedia. Purgy (talk) 13:17, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
 * If you want to whine about some user's conduct, go do it on their talk page or on some drama board -- that is not what this page is for. Everyone who watches this page is aware of the issue.  (I will not comment here further, and I do not object to having my comments removed or hatted along with the rest of the thread.) --JBL (talk) 22:37, 19 September 2018 (UTC)


 * This is not a quote! If you want to whine about some user's conduct, go do it on their talk page or on some drama board -- that is not what this page is for. Everyone who watches this page is aware of the issue. I will not comment here further.
 * I strongly object to having any comments removed or hatted along with the rest of the thread or instantaneously archived in a pre-schedule, as long as they are fully de rigeur. This pertains especially, for repeatedly given reasons, to this. Purgy (talk) 12:14, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Mathematical practice
Mathematical practice, an old (2004) but still-unsourced and short article, has been proposed for deletion. Anyone want to try rescuing it? —David Eppstein (talk) 00:34, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Honestly I don't see any reason to. Do you think there ought to be an article at that title, or with the general subject matter of the current article? --Trovatore (talk) 00:41, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * If I was sure it should be rescued, I would have already done so myself. I am merely mentioning it here in case others are more positive. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:45, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * One possibility is to redirect to Common_Core_State_Standards_Initiative as a common use of the term. But that may violate the principle of least surprise for readers searching for the more general concept. -- 02:07, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Seems too specific. Really I can't think of anything that should appear in Wikipedia under that title, nor do I think the current content really belongs anywhere.  "How to practice the discipline of mathematics" isn't really what you go to an encyclopedia for. --Trovatore (talk) 03:42, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * By the way, another aspect of mathematical practice appears here: Equivalent definitions of mathematical structures. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 04:39, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Another possibly relevant content: User:Tsirel. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 04:56, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I've read Section "Historical tradition" (of "Mathematical practice" article) with some interest. I guess, it can be sourced to some books on the history of math (or biographies). Boris Tsirelson (talk) 05:02, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying there's nothing of value in the current content. It's an essay.  The essay may or may not raise valuable points; those points may or may not be sourceable.  But it's still an essay, which WP articles are not supposed to be.
 * To keep the title, there would have to be a "notable" notion of "mathematical practice", called and discussed by that name in multiple independent reliable sources. I doubt there is, or rather, I suspect that you could find such sources discussing a thing of that name, but probably not as a term of art where it would be clear that different sources discussing it were talking about the same, specifically named, thing, as opposed to just a natural-language description.
 * Some of the content might fit somewhere, but it would be a pain because we don't want to leave a redirect (see WP:XY; you yourself made the case above why this is an XY), and if we don't leave a redirect, then someone has to do a history merge to preserve attribution. I doubt it's worth it. --Trovatore (talk) 05:59, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I see. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 06:25, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * At best I'd say maybe it could be a disambiguation page. Dmcq (talk) 08:42, 14 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Heartfelt thanks for asking whether someone in the community wants to rescue this article. I think that there is much I'd expect to read in an encyclopedia about practices in math research and math education, be these considered best or unfair, enhancing or dumbing down. While I consider the didactic part as -at least nominally- covered in Mathematics education, the habits of research that possibly calmed from, murdering to bragging (Aristotle), taunting, hiding, shopping (de l'Hospital), and more "recently" to posting "Millennium Problems" or "archiving" crackpottery, deserve, imho, a thorough treatment in WP, taking also about challenges and their winners (Bernoullis, Lagrange, ...). I'd like to have such an article ... Purgy (talk) 09:12, 14 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Does Wikipedia have an article on the sociology/psychology/culture of math? That's what I was expecting, when I clicked on Mathematical practice. Something along the lines of The Mathematical Experience? I see Sociology of science but not Sociology of math. Mgnbar (talk) 10:56, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Wow: Sociology of scientific knowledge has a link to Mathematical practice! Boris Tsirelson (talk) 13:20, 14 September 2018 (UTC)


 * What jumps to my mind is the current of "philosophy of mathematical practice". They have published several books (for instance Paolo Mancosu (ed.), Philosophy of Mathematical Practice, Oxford UP, 2008), organized regular conferences and they have even an association  where the topic is more less defined. --Cgolds (talk) 23:12, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Quite interesting. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 04:52, 15 September 2018 (UTC)


 * The prod has been removed without comment by . --JBL (talk) 23:19, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
 * And nominated for deletion at Articles for deletion/Mathematical practice (by me). — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 03:35, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
 * My comment in the edit summary for removal of the prod was "remove prod". That is my standard practice because the prod process   is not structured as a discussion.  I have commented at greater length in Rubin's AfD.  My point here is to note that the prod was presumably placed because the page had no sources.  There is a category articles lacking sources and this is patrolled by deletionists looking for articles to nominate.  The mathematics project seems especially vulnerable to this because our mathematics articles often disdain sources, preferring to work things out from first principles or simply assert some mathematical truth.  Such pages are usually protected by their abstruse and difficult nature but a prose article, like this one, will be attacked.  The project should address this as a general issue to avoid wasting effort. Simply ensuring that every project article has at least one source will ensure that it doesn't appear in that category and so avoid unwanted attention. Andrew D. (talk) 06:59, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The AfD has been speedily closed per snow. In the course of this, I consulted Charles Matthews who made an excellent addition to the lead.  This is interesting in that it refers to a somewhat mathematical approach to the topic.  Maths editors who are not comfortable with prose may prefer this. Andrew D. (talk) 09:06, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

So, many of the older mathematical articles are not well referenced (indeed may be unreferenced), because (a) they are old, and WP:V was not the first content policy, and (b) there was a view, which I would articulate in this way, "full inline referencing does not help to see the wood from the trees in understanding advanced mathematics". I deprecate the by-passing of WP:BEFORE in nominations for deletion. In the case of older articles, I would like to underline the point that if they predate Google Books, the facile step of searching Google Books should be carried out. Come on guys, the Web is not static, and new potential sources are posted online all the time. Nominating some article started in 2004 for deletion should not be done without the due diligence specified in the guideline. I'm quite happy to beat anyone over the head with it if they think it is kind of OK to use AfD as a cleanup area.

Which brings us to whether mathematical practice is an encyclopedic topic. Well, it is. It is quite hard to explain what "mixed mathematics" as mentioned in Mathematical Tripos actually was without the concept. And so to explain why my alma mater has DPMMS and DAMTP, and why both Hawking and fluid dynamicists had offices in the latter. That is, it may not be the kind of concept an "internal" view of mathematics in the 21st century relies on, but it has a great deal of traction in placing mathematics socially and historically. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:37, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Confusion with Beltrami equation page
Update on September 22: To resolve the confusion described in the following paragraphs, I have now installed my rewrite of Section 2 of the page for Beltrami equation, my new version being a cookbook of Gauss's technique. For more details, see Talk:Beltrami equation. Unless someone else finds themself confused, the issue can now probably be considered resolved.

LyleRamshaw (talk) 17:42, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

The page for Beltrami equation underwent a significant rewrite in mid-2012. User:Mathsci added Section 2, which discusses Gauss's technique for constructing isothermal coordinates on a Riemannian 2-manifold whose metric is real-analytic. I am quite interested in that technique, but I can't follow the argument presented in Section 2. I described my confusion in a posting on Talk:Beltrami equation back in June, with no response so far. I recently posted a query to User talk:Mathsci as well. They haven't responded; but that isn't surprising, since they were recently hospitalized.

An Australian grad student named Yi Huang referred to Section 2 in a 2013 posting of his to MathOverflow:. Huang's posting suggests that some of the equations in Section 2 may have their variables somehow scrambled. Huang also apparently interprets Section 2 as approximating the isothermal coordinates by computing successive terms of their power series. That's a reasonable approach, but I didn't have that approach in mind when I tried to read Section 2.

User:Mathsci references Volume IV of Spivak (pages 314-317 in the third edition, pages 455-460 in the second edition) as their source. I have read the argument in Spivak, and I now understand that argument well enough that I have successfully used Mathematica to numerically approximate isothermal coordinates in a simple but nontrivial test case. I have posted a possible new version of Section 2 to Talk:Beltrami equation, explaining Gauss's technique as I now understand it. Unfortunately, I still don't understand what is going on in the current version of Section 2.

Does some Wikipedia math editor know enough differential geometry to help me out with the current Section 2, or to comment on my proposed new version?

LyleRamshaw (talk) 17:11, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

List of polygons
Does the list of polygons have any value or is it just Listcruft that ought to go for AfD? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:49, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree to go to AfD, but for another reason. The first section is not about polynomial, but about linguistic of numbers. The main section, that is the second one is entirely based on WP:Primary sources, which are not reliable, being either forum posts or teacher exercise. There is no indication that most of these name are commonly use in mathematics. It is thus WP:OR. D.Lazard (talk) 19:52, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * See also List_of_polygons,_polyhedra_and_polytopes and List_of_convex_regular-faced_polyhedra. (List of geodesic polyhedra and Goldberg polyhedra at least seems to have one reference.)  --JBL (talk) 19:55, 25 September 2018 (UTC)