Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2020/Dec

Enumeration reducibility: Proposed article
Greetings, fellow appreciators of mathematics.

Enumeration reducibility is a requested article in the Logic page, I am looking to hear the opinions of others on this article I am now proposing. Has it been discussed in the past? Is it deserving of its own article, or should it be merged with other studies of reducibility relations at reduction (recursion theory)? It is also mentioned in Kleene's recursion theorem. Thanks. User:Colourfulskier 23:33, 5 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Notice that wikiproject Logic is not s sub-project, task-force, or sister project of this project. It regards logic as part of philosophy, while mathematical logic regards logic as a kind of boolean algebra which is a form of mathematics. JRSpriggs (talk) 01:44, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * On WikiProject Logic the introduction states that it is a "joint task force" between WP:WPM and WP:WPP. I will post this question at WikiProject Philosophy as well, but I am almost certain that this topic is a part of computability theory. I appreciate the response. User:Colourfulskier 05:02, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Where is the draft of this proposed article? Which are the sources showing that the concept of "Enumeration reductibility" is notable, and, if it is, whether it belongs to philosophical logic or to mathematical logic (nowadays, these fields have almost nothing in common). D.Lazard (talk) 10:45, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * There is no draft as of now, I was waiting to hear the views of others on this project. Enumeration reducibility is a reduction (or notion of relative computability) between sets of $$\mathbb{N}$$ where only positive information about the sets is used or produced. It was first introduced by the results of John Myhill, and formally codified by Richard M. Friedberg in 1959. It is otherwise noted in several papers(at least 20 or more), and a few course materials, but in truth it does not show up in many other types of sources. See User:Colourfulskier 23:46, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Spam, or legit?
An IP has recently added links to the same brand-new arXiv preprint to Landau's problems and Legendre's conjecture. Could someone who knows something about the area check if this is legit or spam? (Apologies for not properly looking at it myself.) --JBL (talk) 21:50, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Far too many of the references at Landau's problems are arxiv preprints, which are not reliable sources. The Hassani preprint is not new (it is from 2006). It appears closely related to, published in 2009. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:03, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I took a look at the math in the arXiv preprints themselves. Of course it is true that if f(n) = π(n^2) grows at a certain rate (as implied by the prime number theorem), then it cannot be that f(n+1)-f(n) is small for all n beyond a point (because then the sum of these differences would be too small to match the growth rate of f(n)-f(1)), and similarly these differences cannot be too large for all n beyond a point.  This is the kind of argument in the Hassani preprint, which is OK, but not notable.  Given that an actual publication is not cited, I would suggest removing the statement altogether from the pages.  The Wilson preprint says that the lim sup and lim inf of π(x)/(x/log(x)) are between log 2 and 2 log 2, which is true but a ridiculous thing to say given that the prime number theorem says that the limit exists and is 1. Ebony Jackson (talk) 17:04, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I removed the statements at the two pages. Ebony Jackson (talk) 00:17, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. A new account has now been quite aggressive in restoring the content at Legendre's conjecture; I left it an edit-warring template, but have not re-re-reverted. Other editors might want to take a look. --JBL (talk) 11:43, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Big O notation logo
At Big O notation, I feel that the logo at upper right with an image containing $$\mathcal{O}$$ is confusing readers into thinking that the standard notation is $$\mathcal{O}$$, whereas Donald Knuth in The Art of Computer Programming and just about everyone else for decades have denoted it $$O$$. (There are exceptions, but I am guessing that they are being influenced by Wikipedia rather than the other way around.) Can someone help by fixing that logo to use an ordinary $$O$$? It should be italicized, as usual for letters in math mode, but not calligraphic. Thank you in advance, Ebony Jackson (talk) 00:23, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * It is done. Please let me know if I did something wrong (specifically on the usage of the tilde), I am not knowledgeable in this subject. User:Colourfulskier 06:34, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The tilde and the O are separate symbols, so they must be separated by a comma. Even better: (without the quotation marks). D.Lazard (talk) 11:49, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Will do in a bit. The original was $$\mathcal{O}$$~, so I had just changed it to $$O$$~. But what you are saying makes sense, since the tilde is meant to denote approximation in this case. User:Colourfulskier 12:41, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Tom Ruen, ruining articles again
Anyone who edits Wikipedia's articles on polyhedra and tiling knows that they are a disaster, because they have mostly been totally overrun by huge colorful tables, repeated across many articles, of barely-relevant images on vaguely-related topics, largely consisting of unsourced original research or with generic sources that are the same for each article and do not support the actual content, added by User:Tomruen. In the last few days I have been working on cleanup of one of these articles, Cairo pentagonal tiling, by cutting out much of Ruen's cruft from this version (barely 3k of mostly-unsourced text, references that do not adequately source the text, no clear distinction among different variations of the tiling, and gallery after gallery of 56 images) to this version (cut back to 2k of text but without the original research, and only 6 relevant images), to this version (expanded to 75k of properly-sourced and relevant content, with 12 images). Now Tom is edit-warring to blow up the article by expanding image tables again, adding material that is not source-based and factually incorrect (for instance adding a classification of types of tiling as "type 2" and "type 4" that incorrectly classifies the basketweave tiling as only being one of those two types), reverting whenever his edits are questioned, and calling those edits "improvements". More attention from additional editors who care more about mathematical content and sourcing and less about papering the walls with pretty pictures would be helpful. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:33, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
 * All I did was change a floating table that was scrolling down other images out their sections, into a nonfloating table with headers, and David flips out, and reverts rather than improves. Tom Ruen (talk) 01:39, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
 * You added an image. You added an incorrect header line to the images. You changed from a 2-by-2 layout of images to a 5-wide layout of images, making the article much less readable on narrow screens. You changed from the normal unobtrusive floating-right placement of images to a big image interrupting the text, justifiable on rare occasion but dubious in this case, and in an inconstant format even for that change. Your excuses for doing so above are based on an issue that there is still too high a ratio of images to text (if that were not true, the images would not have overflowed in your view) and yet you added even more images. And when your edits were questioned, you restored them after any change rather than following WP:BRD. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:44, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
 * We had a dialogue in the edit comments. Calling something uglification isn't the most constructive feedback to justify a revert. The world wouldn't end with acknowledging too many floating images was a worse problem than not meeting your beauty standards. Tom Ruen (talk) 23:28, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Since Tom's changes to David's big fix of the article have been relatively small, I'd say this so far is more of an edit scuffle than a war. : can I suggest you back off, let David finish his work on the article, and then in the light of that we can talk about any changes he made that you think are real losses? David has a good track record into raising up articles to meet the good article criteria, so I think it is best to see what he is happy with before you make what I guess will be relatively minor criticisms. &mdash; Charles Stewart (talk) 20:32, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Sure, David Eppstein is a great guy, Wikipedia is lucky to have him. This is a stressful time. Tom Ruen (talk) 22:06, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Ring action
There is a discussion here about a redirect that may be of interest. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 02:29, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

non-fat \oint
A bug report that has been there for a long time deals with improper rendering when the TeX control sequence \oint is used: the integral sign is too fat. But this screenshot from Macroscopic_quantum_phenomena shows one instance—the last one seen here—rendered correctly although all of the others are too fat, and the TeX code is just that same control sequence in all instances. Why does it work right this one time but not others? Michael Hardy (talk) 05:05, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't know but maybe it has something to do with the unusual table formatting used to create the equation number? For me I don't see this, but I do see a different rendering error: the line widths are specified in absolute numbers of pixels, rather than being relative to font sizes, and I use a larger-than-default font size in my preferences, so equation (10) is too wide for its width, the "(10)" has no space separating it from the equation and looks like part of the equation, and it doesn't line up with the other equation numbers. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:14, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Yuk! Strangely, I can't reproduce the fat oint or squashed equations on my Firefox or Microsft Edge (both recent versions) on Windows 10; Safari on Mac seems okay, too. I've no idea of the rendering logic, but imagine there must be branches according perhaps to browser type and user options, screen resolution, etc. Might it be worth exporting some manually created LaTeX to an HTML file to see if the oint is browser-related or elsewhere (ie. do it locally, so outside of Wikipedia)? I can't recommend a reliable exporter, but assume they must exist. NeilOnWiki (talk) 10:23, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I also don't see the ugly rendering. When this was previously discussed here a couple of years ago (ultimately inconclusively), it was also the case that many people didn't have the problem. --JBL (talk) 14:43, 14 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Could be good news: I've just managed to sabotage my display by changing my user Preferences > Appearance > Math options from MathML with SVG or PNG fallback to PNG images. This reproduces fat oints + a final thin oint, so must be a PNG-related bug. WP:Rendering_math and Comparison_of_presentations may have some clues as to why. NeilOnWiki (talk) 16:10, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

I get occasional email notices seemingly purporting to report on specifics of work being done to fix this particular bug. But the bug is still there. Michael Hardy (talk) 06:28, 16 December 2020 (UTC)


 * There's obviously still a bug and it looks like it's when rendering to PNG. I wondered if your Preferences might fix it for yourself temporarily; whether it gives an extra clue to help the developers; and if it explains why many of us aren't picking it up under our normal options and browsers. How do we contact the developers? I'd be happy to do so, if it seemed appropriate. NeilOnWiki (talk) 06:52, 16 December 2020 (UTC)


 * The bug in question is which is marked as resolved. Looking at Macroscopic_quantum_phenomena it looks good to me. My first thought is it could be a caching issue. Images are stored and not automatically recreated unless the equation is changed or a recalculation is forced using a URL like https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Integral&action=purge&mathpurge=true . Don't expect the PNG images to give good results. That's old tech and no one knows enough about the program which generates them to fix it. Salix alba (talk): 09:03, 16 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Hum, Argument_principle&oldid=947159568 seems to be a good example which has both thin and fat \oint. The mathpurge does not seen to be doing the trick, but if you edit the formula, but adding some whitespace with \, at the end, it forces recalculation and the thick \oint goes away.  I've fixed the page and copied the old formula to my sandbox User:Salix alba/sandbox to see if the problem with purge can be fixed. --Salix alba (talk): 09:29, 16 December 2020 (UTC)


 * It does work, but after doing the purge be sure to reload the page as the browser may have cached the images. --Salix alba (talk): 10:48, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Srivastava
For Draft:Ashish K Srivastava, are his books sufficient to shown notability ? I do not consider myself qualified to determine this.  DGG ( talk ) 18:14, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
 * One of the two books, Cyclic Modules and the Structure of Rings, has both the usual two reviews in zbMATH and MathSciNet (not adequate for notability because most pure mathematics books get these as a matter of course) but also another review in Aust. Math. Soc. Gaz. (listed in ). The other one, Invariance of Modules under Automorphisms of their Envelopes and Covers, is listed by the published as "coming soon" and appears to be unreviewed. Both are authored but joint among three authors rather than being solely the work of Srivastava. So the case is marginal, but I'm leaning against, largely because of the lack of reviews of one of the two books. His citation record, also, looks decent for pure mathematics (as in, he is having a successful research career) but not strong enough to convince me of a pass of WP:PROF. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:06, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I pretty much agree with David's assessment, but would just note that his publishers, OUP and LMS/CUP, are both prestigious publishers who normally have demanding peer review before acceptance, inclining me a little towards generosity. The article would need to say something substantive about what he has done, rather than just a mention of topic area, before I would consider there to be an actual assertion of notability with respect to his publication record. Does anyone know anything about the AMS committee on Human Rights of Mathematicans (he served in 2018 )? &mdash; Charles Stewart (talk) 12:12, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

To make some option for copying the LaTeX to picture converted equations as text
Suppose, I type the wave equation.

$$\frac{\partial^2 u}{\partial t^2} \;=\; c^2 \left(\frac{\partial^2 u}{\partial x_1^2} + \frac{\partial^2 u}{\partial x_2^2} + \cdots + \frac{\partial^2 u}{\partial x_n^2}\right)$$

Now, I need to copy the equation as plain text.

Maybe, I will have to open the "Edit" page, and copy the LaTeX formula from there. But, what about Edit Protected Pages? Or for common wikipedia readers(who are not the part of the community)?

For example... I am providing a link to an external site

https://www.toppr.com/ask/question/prove-that-xy-c2-is-other-form-of-rectangular-hyperbola/

I propose Wikipedia to enable such a feature. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Seeker220 (talk • contribs) 10:21, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Normally, on edit protected pages the edit button is replaced by a "View source" button which should solve your problem. However, I do not know whether this works on a smartphone. D.Lazard (talk) 11:09, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * In my browser (Chrome) I can select the equation as presented here, copy it, and paste it as text to any other app, producing its LaTeX source . No additional software is needed. No switching to the edit window is needed. No special provision for protected pages is needed. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:47, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * That code is more complicated than necessary. How about this:  People in fact learn how to write this kind of code by looking at what's here. It is better not to put lots of complications that serve no purpose into the code.
 * $$ \frac {\partial^2 u}{\partial t^2} = c^2 \left( \frac{\partial^2 u}{\partial x_1^2} + \frac {\partial^2 u}{\partial x_2^2} + \cdots + \frac{\partial^2 u}{\partial x_n^2} \right)$$
 * Michael Hardy (talk) 06:30, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
 * A lot of the complication comes from the Wikimedia developers, who insist that checking our TeX code for validity is not enough to prevent certain kinds of hacking, and that instead it is necessary to replace it with their digested-and-then-regurgitated version. It's annoying, but we don't have much control over the Wikimedia code at that level. Similarly, proposals to add new functionality to Wikimedia to enhance their handling of mathematics (or even to make it work, in the cases where it currently doesn't) have low probability of going anywhere, because that's not a high priority for the developers, because their crufty processing of TeX makes any change difficult, and because we can't do it without them. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:41, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If you follow the math project on Phab, that's been seeing slow work by Physikerwelt (I think paid by WMDE?). It wants to go somewhere. :^) --Izno (talk) 13:15, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Certainly I have noticed that there is a user called Physikerwelt who has given some attention to some of this. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:02, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * How about choosing LaTeX source (for text browsers) from Preferences?--SilverMatsu (talk) 09:13, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

You can add the following script to your Special:MyPage/vector.js this allows you to copy the latex on a double click of the image.--Salix alba (talk): 12:56, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Reductive logic
A review of this draft is requested. Should it be accepted? If there is doubt about whether it should be accepted, then it should probably be accepted, because it will get more attention in article space. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:10, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I would say no, it's not ready to accept. It looks more like an opinionated essay than like an encyclopedia article on a crisp topic in logic summarizing what reliable sources say about that topic. Its references look less like support for the conclusions it draws and more like "here's where to go for further reading on the topic I just mentioned". But the existence of one of the sources, a book with reductive logic in its title (used inappropriately as a source for a claim of priority to that same book) suggests that it may well be possible to write a more encyclopedic article on the same topic. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:28, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I too would say no. The article is written in imprecise language, and the references are not helpful since they refer to an entire book instead of to the relevant page.  I'm agnostic on whether an article with this title should exist, but if so, it should be nothing like the current proposal. Ebony Jackson (talk) 17:21, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you, User:David Eppstein, User:Ebony Jackson - I have declined the draft as per your reviews. I don't really want to review mathematics because I have forgotten all of the math that I learned in college, which is more than most people have learned and less than mathematicians know.  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:18, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Category:Pages that use a deprecated format of the math tags
I was unable to remove this page from the list.--SilverMatsu (talk) 14:41, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I have made an attempt (by looking for the constructions that are listed as deprecated, and replacing them); I am not sure whether it was successful. --JBL (talk) 14:56, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
 * $$E\lor F$$ is triggering the error category, but  $$\lor$$ is fine apparently ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:18, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
 * There are a few other false positives as well. I've created a bug . There is a bot User:Texvc2LaTeXBot which can be run to fix these errors, so fixing these things is not a high priority. --Salix alba (talk): 23:01, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
 * First of all, I would like to express my apology and gratitude for fixing my mistake. Thank you for preparing the fix task. Other false positives have been reported on Help desk.--SilverMatsu (talk) 01:06, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Massive publications lists on related biographies
If anyone wants to take a shot at reducing the massive publications lists at the student-advisor pair of category theorists Ross Street and Max Kelly that were added by an SPA, please do so. A WP:TNT & restart approach to the section might be more productive than reducing the list one-by-one. — MarkH21talk 03:59, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Pinging who did so three years ago at the Ross Street article and  who created the article, in case either are interested. — MarkH21talk 04:05, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
 * So at least one native speaker of English says "either are interested". Michael Hardy (talk) 03:17, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, if we're going to be pedantic about it, I think the singular pronoun we should use for "either of Diannaa or Taku" is "they", which takes "are" even when singular. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:36, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I suggest trimming the excessive lists to the three most highly-cited papers (for each author). Or is there any reason to have a longer list? Russ Woodroofe (talk) 20:23, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I've removed the sections from both articles. "Selected" should mean selected, darn it. Listing more than a handful of items is really only acceptable in extraordinary circumstances. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 20:36, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Edit warring at axiom
There is an IP contributor edit-warring at axiom to assert the rather grandiose claim that axioms are the starting point of "all reasoning". --Trovatore (talk) 19:16, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Now blocked (see User_talk:Favonian). --JBL (talk) 15:17, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Questions about the author name of the citation
I added a reference to the lead sentence of Several complex variables and wrote Cartan.H, et al. When using et al, is it okay to have only one author name? thanks!--SilverMatsu (talk) 05:18, 23 December 2020 (UTC)


 * et al means "and everyone else". But if there's only three or four authors, its nicer to list them all. And since they are coauthors of Henri Cartan, they're all 100 years old, and probably maybe famous in their own right. Just list them all. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 05:26, 23 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Also, for citing the Springer Encyclopedia of Math, please use Template:SpringerEOM -- it uses a common layout format for all such citations. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 06:09, 23 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much! I will start fixing immediately.--SilverMatsu (talk) 06:41, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Has completed. With Cartan as the first author, the other authors are in alphabetical order by first name. Maybe I wrote all the authors. thanks!--SilverMatsu (talk) 07:24, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Self-promotion on list of request articles
I don't personally use Requested articles/Mathematics (does anyone?), but I did notice (as a consequence of ) that all the recent edits there have a self-promotional flare, with a large helping of math.GM. Consider deciding what to do about it my Christmas present to the project. --JBL (talk) 18:45, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree that most entries of Requested_articles/Mathematics have to be removed. For making this reasonably easy, I suggest to add to the lead a sentence such as Every request for an article on a mathematical topic must include a reliable source where the the topic is defined, and must specify the place in the source where the topic is defined, specially when the source is a book. With such a caveat, one could reduce dramatically the size of this list. D.Lazard (talk) 21:43, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Sentence added. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 22:20, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Links to DAB pages
I've collected another batch of articles with math(s)-related links to DAB pages where expert attention would be welcome. Search for "disam" in read mode and for "{{d" in edit mode; and if you solve any of these puzzles, remove the {{tl|dn}} tag and post {{tl|done}} here.
 * Bayesian vector autoregression {{done}} by 78.28.44.204
 * Cadence Design Systems {{done}} JBL (talk) 00:37, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Contour line {{done}} Russ Woodroofe (talk) 19:43, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Critical three-state Potts model {{done}} XOR&#39;easter (talk) 19:44, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Dirichlet energy {{Done}} XOR&#39;easter (talk) 19:41, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Distribution (mathematics) {{Done}} — MarkH{{sub| 21 }}{{sup| talk }} 06:50, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Fairness (machine learning) {{done}} JBL (talk) 18:06, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Gauge theory (mathematics) {{done}} Russ Woodroofe (talk) 19:43, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Glossary of functional analysis {{done}} XOR&#39;easter (talk) 20:17, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Hilbert–Schmidt operator {{Done}} — MarkH{{sub| 21 }}{{sup| talk }} 06:50, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Inductive tensor product {{Done}} Lester Mobley (talk) 16:55, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Information integration theory
 * Isotropy {{done}} XOR&#39;easter (talk) 00:46, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Lattice (module) {{done}} Russ Woodroofe (talk) 19:43, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * List of terms relating to algorithms and data structures {{done}} —David Eppstein (talk) 20:24, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Majorana equation {{Done}} XOR&#39;easter (talk) 19:41, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Minimal model (set theory) {{Done}} Lester Mobley (talk) 19:19, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Normal probability plot {{Done}} JBL (talk) 18:48, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Order complete {{Done}} Lester Mobley (talk) 19:19, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Ordered algebra {{Done}} Lester Mobley (talk) 21:14, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Pareto distribution {{done}} XOR&#39;easter (talk) 00:46, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Plot (graphics) {{done}} JBL (talk) 00:37, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Projective tensor product {{Done}} Lester Mobley (talk) 15:33, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Register machine {{Done}} Lester Mobley (talk) 19:53, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Robert Penner {{Done}} — MarkH{{sub| 21 }}{{sup| talk }} 06:50, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Statistical graphics {{done}} JBL (talk) 00:37, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Statistics
 * Sum of residues formula {{done}} XOR&#39;easter (talk) 20:08, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Synchronous frame {{done}} XOR&#39;easter (talk) 20:21, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Synergetics coordinates {{done}} JBL (talk) 17:38, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Topological vector space {{Done}} — MarkH{{sub| 21 }}{{sup| talk }} 06:50, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks in advance, and Compliments of the Season. Narky Blert (talk) 15:42, 23 December 2020 (UTC)


 * I took care of a few. But I'm not certain that probability plot in Plot (graphics) and Statistical graphics needs disambiguation.  In the high level overview those articles are giving, the term likely refers about equally well to everything in the dab article. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 19:43, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * {{ping|Russ Woodroofe}} If all the links on the DAB page are relevant, the approved technique is to link through the (disambiguation) qualifier - see WP:INTDAB. Direct links to DAB pages get flagged as errors (which is how these crossed my radar). Narky Blert (talk) 19:46, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with Russ and have linked via the (disambiguation) page, as you suggest. --JBL (talk) 00:37, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I resolved a few. In Isotropy, the item with the dab link in it didn't make sense (as written, it would just refer to the origin), so I removed that bullet point entirely. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 20:07, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Is Synergetics coordinates a real thing? The article fails to make an intelligible definition of its subject and appears to suggest that 3-space can be tiled with regular tetrahedra. --JBL (talk) 00:42, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I saw that and couldn't make any sense of it. I doubt it's noteworthy enough to deserve an article. Synergetics (Fuller) is also pretty bad. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 01:56, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The 3-space tiling that the followers of Fuller generally go nuts over is the tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb. For which our article is...not good, but in a different way. Anyway this tiling does involve regular tetrahedra, but also regular octahedra. I agree that there is nothing redeemable in Synergetics coordinates. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:03, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I have converted Synergetics coordinates into a redirect to Synergetics (Fuller). --JBL (talk) 17:38, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * That seems like a good move; thanks. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:56, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Piped link breaking with sfrac
I'm looking for opinions on what should happen with the following from Unit (ring theory):
 * in the ring, and in fact the unit group of this ring is infinite.

which displays the following with a broken fraction:
 * in the ring $O, ~$, and in fact the unit group of this ring is infinite.

The issue is reported at Template talk:Frac. It looks like the above worked correctly before sfrac was converted by to use Template:Screen reader-only/styles.css as part of WP:TemplateStyles which prefers css. I'm wondering whether fixing the problem in the template is desirable, or whether the expression should be shown differently. It seems likely that links with such complex piped wikitext will break. Johnuniq (talk) 23:26, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * This is not an answer to your question (sorry), but I think that link is an unforgiveable WP:SUBMARINE, so regardless of the rendering issue it should go. --JBL (talk) 23:38, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * (Now gone. That article is a real shame, incidentally -- some nontrivial portion of the topic could be explained to a bright high-school student, but I can't imagine anyone who hadn't already taken abstract algebra learning much from the article.) --JBL (talk) 23:50, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I suspected that the link was inappropriate and the article definitely looks better now. Johnuniq (talk) 08:28, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
 * As I said at the linked discussion, I think most such links are specious (from the EGG/SUBMARINE perspective). --Izno (talk) 19:40, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

John Milnor's research
On the research section of John Milnor's page there are several paragraphs which, in my view, have nothing to do with Milnor's research. I removed them but they were added back again. Anybody else's input would be welcome Gumshoe2 (talk) 20:08, 26 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Doesn't seem to be about Milnor's research so much as other peoples research about his conjecture. It could surely be cut down to one or two sentences at most. I'm not sure one should even bother stating the conjecture (I'm sure Milnor has made a great many interesting conjectures, none of which receive such a significant statement on the page, although it does give a good example of the kind of problem Milnor finds interesting), but certainly there doesn't need to be 3 paragraphs afterwards giving a detailed history of other mathematicians resolution of it.Tazerenix (talk) 12:19, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, at the very least it should be condensed into a summary; as written, it's not suitable for an overview of Milnor's career. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 16:44, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, I've removed the paragraphs again with reference to discussion here. Gumshoe2 (talk) 18:04, 30 December 2020 (UTC)