Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2021/Mar

about Oka–Weil theorem
Like Runge's approximation theorem, I'm thinking of creating Oka–Weil approximation theorem as a redirect to Oka–Weil theorem. If it's often called Oka–Weil approximation theorem, move the page. thanks! --SilverMatsu (talk) 02:56, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Some sources do use the name "Oka–Weil approximation theorem" (e.g. this one), but I don't think it is more common than just "Oka–Weil theorem". A redirect is still warranted though. — MarkH21talk 04:12, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for providing a helpful reference for the title of the article and creation of the redirect.--SilverMatsu (talk) 04:31, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Variational distance as a String metric?
Please see my question at Talk:String metric. --CiaPan (talk) 11:09, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Uniform Boundedness Conjecture
We now have an article Uniform Boundedness Conjecture, and a redirect uniform boundedness conjecture pointing to torsion conjecture. They're both on finiteness of sets of points in arithmetic geometry but one is on torsion points and the other is on rational points. Can someone who understands the relations among these principles help clean up this duplication of titles, please? —David Eppstein (talk) 21:16, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There are now several conjectures in arithmetic geometry that are called the "uniform boundedness conjecture", which all have essentially the same origin. To my understanding, the uniform boundedness conjecture about torsion points at torsion conjecture by Ogg (1973) was the starting point. After the proof of the Mordell conjecture by Faltings in 1983, the adaptation to rational points (which include the torsion points over the rationals) at Uniform Boundedness Conjecture was the next generalization. Now, there is also the uniform boundedness conjecture in arithmetic dynamics posed by Morton and Silverman in 1994.They are all known by the name "uniform boundedness conjecture", but they are often specified (e.g. Uniform boundedness for rational points). I would suggest:
 * Uniform boundedness conjecture for torsion points as a redirect to Torsion conjecture
 * Uniform boundedness conjecture for rational points as the title for what is currently Uniform Boundedness Conjecture
 * Uniform boundedness conjecture for preperiodic points as a redirect to Arithmetic dynamics
 * Uniform boundedness conjecture as a disambiguation for the three above, as well as any other similarly named notions
 * Plus, it might be useful to make redirects at similar titles (e.g. Uniform boundedness conjecture (torsion points), Uniform boundedness conjecture (rational points), Uniform boundedness conjecture (arithmetic dynamics)). I also would not be surprised if there are other uniform boundedness conjectures (e.g. following the Uniform boundedness principle). — MarkH21talk 21:59, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That sounds reasonable. By the way, Ogg's conjecture on torsion of elliptic curves over $Q$ was essentially formulated earlier by Beppo Levi at the 1908 ICM, and then again by Trygve Nagell in 1952.  See the article "Beppo Levi and the arithmetic of elliptic curves" by Schappacher and Schoof. Ebony Jackson (talk) 05:50, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Just carried out the proposal and added the background on Levi and Nagell to Torsion conjecture as well! — MarkH21talk 09:11, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There are four links to the disambiguation page left. Can someone take a look at these? Thanks! Lennart97 (talk) 20:42, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Done. Thanks for the notice! — MarkH21talk 22:02, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Math formatting in Particular values of the Riemann zeta function
A discussion at Talk:Particular values of the Riemann zeta function on how to format the display-equations in that article could use wider participation by mathematics-savvy editors. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:35, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Abominable typesetting in illustrations
Probably a solid majority of images in Wikipedia article that contain mathematical notation have a quality of typesetting worthy only of cavemen. Will that ever be done something about? Note:

\begin{align} & \rho=\text{-}\mathit{1} \quad\text{instead of } \rho = -1 \\ & \text{i.e. “-” instead of “}{-}\text{” and “}\mathit{1}\text{” instead of “}1\text{”} \\[8pt] & \text{-}1{< \rho <}0\quad\text{instead of }{-1}<\rho<0 \\ & \text{Here the issue is not just the hyphen instead of} \\ & \text{a minus sign, but the lack of proper spacing.} \end{align} $$ Michael Hardy (talk) 18:15, 9 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I fear that it would take a tremendous drive to fix all the poor quality typesetting in the images, as someone would need to remake all the diagrams. I try to use mathcha to make mine, which is fairly easy and when you put in text it formats it in LaTeX format. The alternative is to get people to create their diagrams in an actual LaTeX document, but it is a bit technically difficult to export such things in good formats like SVG or PNG at good resolution without some knowhow. Perhaps we could add such a website like mathcha to the style guide? It seems to me that a more critical problem than the bad typesetting in the current diagrams is that many articles could do with a lot of new diagrams to explain concepts, and if we were going to have a drive I'd rather it be for us to go through and put some good new diagrams in as many articles as we can; then the population of maths diagrams would asymptotically approach all being well typeset. My 2c.Tazerenix (talk) 00:07, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

WP:FA devoid of STEM material
STEM articles are extremely underrepresented in WP:FA, and of the few that do exist, many are about products or services, biographical, or otherwise of a non-technical nature. I propose a review of top/high-importance articles in STEM to determine exactly what must be done in order for them to meet the featured article criteria, make appropriate edits, and award them featured article status as soon as possible, without delay. Particularly, material that is fundamental and important to scientific literacy in general or across multiple disciplines. I believe there must be a coordinated effort. Many scientific articles seem to become overly long and disjointed, with so many editors working independently. As a starting point, I think these three articles are all vital to basic scientific literacy and deserve very serious attention: Mean, Function (mathematics), Set (mathematics). My time is limited and I cannot improve them alone, but I would like to be part of such an effort. If at least a couple editors are interested, I'd like to set up an agenda, perhaps with a regular meeting. Once an article is agreed upon, we can read it, report back with comments, discuss how it can be raised to featured article status, and decide on specific edits. AP295 (talk) 20:11, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

I'd like to first establish some consensus about what a given article (starting with Mean) needs to meet WP:FA? standards. Lacking an agenda that interested editors can agree upon, it seems like many efforts to improve technical articles degenerate into content disputes and edit wars. To avoid that outcome, and to make edits productive toward WP:FA?, I humbly ask interested editors to share their suggestions and comments here, or hold their peace when I do edit the article.


 * In what ways does the article Mean fall short of meeting WP:FA? criteria? 

When I have some time I'll read the article in full and return with my own suggestions/comments. In the meantime, please feel free to share your own. Please make clear, actionable suggestions. AP295 (talk) 13:59, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

I'd also like to link this discussion in that article's talk page. Is there a nicer way to do this in wikimarkup than just pasting the URL? AP295 (talk) 14:06, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There is a long-term established consensus about what are WP:FA standards (see WP:FA and MOS:MATH). For mathematical articles, there is a further consensus that needs rarely to be explicited: a mathematical article requires to be mathematically correct. So, opening a general discussion on that (I do not talk of a discussion on a specific point) is a waste of time for every participant to this discussion. So, I strongly suggest to close it immediately. D.Lazard (talk) 15:35, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Please make clear, actionable suggestions about developing/improving the article Mean. AP295 (talk) 15:38, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The article Mean illustrates the difficulty mathematics articles have in getting to WP:GA or WP:FA standard. If we read the lead of the article we come across this formula $${\displaystyle \mu =\sum xp(x)....}$$. That will instantly trigger a too-technical complaint from a reviewer. The whole intro is packed full of technical terms. For an example take this quote from Featured article review/Euclidean algorithm/archive1
 * So, considering that the article has been quite substantially rewritten since it passed FAC, and the version that passed FAC was decipherable at least in English, I suggest that the first step towards preserving Featured Status here is a revert to that version. Making math digestible is not rocket science: textbooks and other websites do it all the time-- we can, too.
 * This comes from User:SandyGeorgia who is quite involved in the FAC process.
 * Unfortunately she is wrong. Making maths decipherable and digestible is very hard, some brave souls have managed it and any FA takes a lot of time to produce. The textbooks and website she mentions manage to make small parts of a whole topic digestible, but fail the other FAC of comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context;. And there are parts of the mean article with some quite complex major facts. This tension between digestible and technically correct and comprehensive make any STEM topics a tricky one for FA. Others in the project have had much more success with getting articles through GA and it is a more achievable task. --Salix alba (talk): 17:47, 10 February 2021 (UTC)


 * The mean is an uncomplicated concept and will lend itself to an uncomplicated wiki article with a bit of work. AP295 (talk) 19:27, 10 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Regarding sigma notation, I think we can avoid it in the introduction in favor of using something like (a1 + a2 + ... + an)/n or p1 a1 + ... + pn an, but possibly make use of it when needed in the body of the article. The intro should be accessible to the casual reader and the body can include more technical content (and the notation that comes with it) for completeness. AP295 (talk) 19:57, 10 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I don't think the concept of average is simple. Claiming that Grandi's series is $$\frac{1}{2}$$ is also average in a sense. 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ⋯ cannot be averaged by the Cesàro mean. These are, in a sense, averages, claiming that the averages cannot always be defined.--SilverMatsu (talk) 00:13, 11 February 2021 (UTC)


 * That's kind of neat, but probably outside the scope of the article. I think Arithmetic mean, Expected value, Average could be merged into a single article. Most people are probably looking for expected value, and it should be given due weight. Currently, Mean is really just a laundry list of various things that people call a "mean", so I'm not exactly sure what to do with it or whether our efforts might be better spent cleaning up and merging the former three. The replies so far have been tepid at best and I'll be pretty busy with other work for a while but I'll leave this RfC open and try to make time at some point. AP295 (talk) 01:50, 11 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Misplaced RFC. The place to discuss whether an article (that you think meets FA standards) actually does is in an FA nomination. The place to discuss how to improve that article (whether up to FA standards or otherwise) is on the talk page of the article. Whether the FA standards actually work or can be made to work for mathematics content (as in Salix alba's comment above) is a broader topic that is more appropriate here. As SA says, it has been possible to get even quite technical articles through the Good Article review process. It still takes significant efforts to make the mathematics understandable but there is a greater likelihood of that effort being rewarded. As Mean is not currently GA, that step seems like it should go first. To my mind it is not yet close to GA (it's rated B but I think it's more like C, mostly because it is too haphazard and has a lead that is entirely about one thing but a body about something else) but other GA reviewers might disagree. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:27, 10 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I do not think it meets FA standards. When it gets to that point, I'll take it up with the folks at FA nomination. I was going to make a topic on Mean's talk page too once we have a general idea of what must be done, but as the problem concerns more than just one article, I believe this is a good staging area. AP295 (talk) 18:58, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Part of the problem I'm seeing is that Mean, Arithmetic mean, Expected value, and Average are four separate articles, with a lot of redundant content between them. There must be a better way to organize this information, preferably into a single article, or a couple of articles at most AP295 (talk) 01:59, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Let's not forget centroid and center of mass. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:06, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I can't tell if you're being a smartass or not. At the very least, Arithmetic mean, Expected value, and Average could probably be integrated into a single article. There's a lot of redundancy between the three and having them in a single article would make their relation clearer. Less is more, sometimes. AP295 (talk) 02:12, 11 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Actually, the articles Average and Mean seem to be trying to do the same thing, so they could be put together. Merging Expected value and Arithmetic mean into a single article would probably work fine as well. All four are a mess and need a lot of work, even if they are to remain four separate articles. AP295 (talk) 02:42, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I would oppose a merge of Average and Mean. The common name "average" is broader than "mean", not just technically (since "average" can refer to other measures of centrality) but also in not-explicitly-mathematical applications, where averages are often a rough description of centrality in a concept that isn't precisely quantified. The page Average needs a lot of work, but much of that work should build out meanings that aren't redundant with the content at Mean. - Astrophobe  (talk) 02:53, 11 February 2021 (UTC)


 * There's also central tendency, which shares plenty of content with the others. The articles centroid and center of mass are different from what we're talking about here, so I'm not considering them at the moment. "The page Average needs a lot of work, but much of that work should build out meanings that aren't redundant with the content at Mean." I think that would be difficult. Do you think there's any way to condense Average, Mean, Expected value, Arithmetic mean and central tendency into fewer than five articles? And if not, how should we define the scope of each article? AP295 (talk) 03:38, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * In what sense are centroid and center of mass different? They are the same as the expected value of a uniform distribution over the shape they are defined over, for instance. And the centroid is certainly in wide use as a central tendency. But we do need to distinguish the general idea of a mean, center, or central tendency from the specific additive versions described in average and expected value. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:56, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That's fine, but then how should the article Mean be written differently from Average? Part of the challenge seems to be in agreeing upon the scope of any given article. AP295 (talk) 05:32, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * For example, is the table "Expected values of common distributions" in Expected value necessary? And I do like that it includes a few proofs, but as far as I know there isn't supposed to be any collapsed-by-default content in articles. AP295 (talk) 05:45, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Centroid assumes a uniform mass distribution; center of mass does not necessarily. Dicklyon (talk) 19:54, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * DE meant "In what sense are centroid and center of mass different [from what we are talking about here]?", not "... different [from each other]?" (It is a response to the comment by AP295.)  --JBL (talk) 19:56, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That's what I get for reading from the bottom instead of the whole conversation. Sorry. Dicklyon (talk) 01:02, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Dick, YOU'RE FIRED! My point was that those articles are pretty distinct from Average, Mean, Expected value and Arithmetic mean which have a lot of duplicate and/or unnecessary content and do not adequately distinguish themselves from the others. It's fine to keep them separate, I have no problem with that, but then we should try to make them clearer and more concise so that the reader understands the distinction, and the relation, between those concepts. AP295 (talk) 15:22, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Have a look at the Average article. I think it might stand a better chance of getting promoted than mean. Its aimed more at a general reader, has less technical details. FA encourages summary style and the Average article already uses that quite a lot. --Salix alba (talk): 01:00, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't believe "summary style" necessarily means "non-technical". WP:FA? is a very general and concise standard of quality, and to me it sounds like a cop-out when people claim that it disfavors technical or scientific articles. AP295 (talk) 19:59, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * And in fact, Principal component analysis, the first article I ever edited, is a good example of something that could be written much more concisely. I attempted to do just that but didn't get much past the lead, though at least I was able to improve it somewhat. It's not so much that these articles can't be written in summary style, but at least half the time I try to remove anything or reorganize/reword content in an article, other editors come out of the woodwork and go apeshit. That is part of the reason we're having this RfC, so that we can all get on the same page instead of getting into a week-long brawl that ends up on WP:ANI. I don't have the time for that bullshit. AP295 (talk) 17:07, 13 February 2021 (UTC)


 * In what ways does Function (mathematics) fall short of meeting WP:FA? criteria? 


 * In what ways does Set (mathematics) fall short of meeting WP:FA? criteria? — Preceding unsigned comment added by AP295 (talk • contribs) 19:03, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

I'd much prefer making Addition a featured article. I actually used to edit a ton of Wikipedia math articles, and got a few to GA status. I thought I'd try a crack at a featured article. I got one reviewer who suggested reference changes. I made all those changes, then the FAC was rejected after 8 days because no one cared to review it. Honestly, that's one of the biggest reasons I stopped editing.

Anyway, addition should be much easier to get to FA status.Brirush (talk) 22:01, 11 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Most people know how to add and generally have a firm understanding of the concept. Certainly it's a worthy objective, but I'm mostly concerned about articles that the undergraduate student might depend upon, many of which are in pretty rough shape. I don't think silly stuff like the value of .9 repeating (which has a FA) or zero to the power of zero (see the section below) or division by infinity (above) provide as much value to the young student/scholar as a good Set (mathematics) article would, for instance. I admit I did not anticipate when I made this RfC that Mean and its related articles would together comprise such a nasty rat-nest of redundant and disorganized content, which nobody wants to touch, so perhaps Set (mathematics) would be a better place to start. AP295 (talk) 22:41, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

For Set (mathematics), the set operations should be explained much earlier than they are. The article has a lot of sections and it can probably be reorganized into fewer. The first image in the article is not particularly informative or instructive, and so I'd like to replace it with something a bit more useful. This article should not be hard to get to WP:FA status, most of the content is already there and with some adjustments it should be a great article. Unless anyone has a good plan for mean and its related articles, the set article will be a better warm-up. AP295 (talk) 15:43, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

WHAT SAY YOU? AP295 (talk) 02:11, 7 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree that the beginning of the article could be made accessible to a broader audience by giving some examples of sets and some examples of basic operations upon them, since there are 100 times more users who will want to understand sets at the grade-school level than who will want to know what extensionality means or what Russell's paradox says. I also agree that the first image is not helpful; maybe better would be a Venn diagram of two sets labelled A and B, with a few numbers in all four locations, and with the caption saying what $$A \cup B$$ and $$A \cap B$$ are? Or perhaps the two sets could be positive integers and even integers. Ebony Jackson (talk) 03:08, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not necessarily talking about WP:ONEDOWN. Most people learn about sets in college and it's fine to assume the reader has completed high school. I have no problem with including Russel's paradox and I don't think the article should belabor the easy stuff (e.g. by having too many examples). The set article is mostly just in need of reorganization and a few minor things here and there. Generally my concern is that many vital math articles remain underdeveloped. Some have too much content, some too little. Many of them are poorly organized. Some (e.g. M operator) have terrible notation or are just plain bad all around. AP295 (talk) 11:27, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

This page may be useful. However, it may be a little too big.--SilverMatsu (talk) 04:18, 7 March 2021 (UTC)


 * For those who care, AP295 has now been indefinitely blocked. --JBL (talk) 19:16, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Having only seen this thread, that took an abrupt turn. — MarkH21talk 19:21, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

about Leibniz formula for π
I may have overlooked the explanation of the proof, but I remember this series convergence was subtle. Specifically, it seems that there is no explanation to Abel's theorem in the text of the proof. I feel like I learned this in complex analysis with Summation by parts and Abel's summation formula.--SilverMatsu (talk) 11:24, 7 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Just wanted to say the proof I remember also relies on Abel's theorem (or any variants). The proof given there looks ok, but I strongly suspect there is a complex-analysis proof that uses a usual trick of a contour integral. -- Taku (talk) 23:50, 8 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your reply. I added this one.--SilverMatsu (talk) 08:03, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Wolfram spam
Over the last month, a farm of sockpuppet accounts whose primary use was spamming and promotional editing associated with Stephen Wolfram. Many of the recent edits of the accounts have been reverted, and has expressed an interest in further cleanup. Since all of the accounts are several years old, I'm sure more assistance would be helpful. --JBL (talk) 20:41, 12 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks JBL. Interested editors may also want to have a look at this COIN thread (permalink). Blablubbs | talk 20:43, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
 * For those who'd like to pitch in, the list of edits to be checked is here. (Just cross them off if they've been reverted or if they're unproblematic.) Thanks, JBL (talk) 22:59, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe this is a good time to consider whether many of our existing MathWorld links (often found in external link sections of articles) pass criterion 1 of WP:ELNO, that the link "should not merely repeat information that is already or should be in the article". (This is different from situations in which MathWorld is used as an actual reference, for which I think it can be acceptable and sometimes necessary but usually not the best choice.) —David Eppstein (talk) 01:48, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Seems doubtful in most cases; I would support moving away from it as an external link. --JBL (talk) 02:28, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Elementary cellular automaton
Entry Pascal's triangle of JBL's list contains two references to Wolfram. In, this appears as a normal reference (in fact, the only one of the whole section). So, if it is a Wolfram spam, the whole paragraph, and, maybe, the whole section must be removed. This needs a further study that is not the subject of this post.

The object of this post is, that links heavily to Elementary cellular automaton, and its related articles Rule 30, Rule 90, Rule 110, Rule 184, and maybe others. All of this is based on a single self published Wolfram's primary source. I would incline to nominate all these article to AfD, but before that, it would be useful to have advices by people who know this kind of subject better. D.Lazard (talk) 09:38, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * "All of these articles"? Really? Did you not notice that Rule 90 and Rule 184 are Good Articles? All of these articles are definitely notable, despite the bad current sourcing for elementary CA. And elementary CA is one topic in mathematics that Wolfram really did make major contributions to; it is necessary to cite his works there (although we can and should of course cite others as well). —David Eppstein (talk) 16:59, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Is left-to-right preference in European languages a POV?
At Row and column vectors an editor has commented on "carefully selected references" as expressing a point of view. Matrix transformations take a row vector on the left, or a column vector on the right, when acting for transformation. Using column vectors has subsequent transformations accruing to the left, something to be appreciated in right-to-left languages, but not in European languages. The references mentioned are geometers. Compounded transformation is common in modern geometry where group theory prevails, so  the geometers avoid the reverse writing of transformations by using row vectors. A tag asserting the POV has been placed in the article, and discussion opened on its Talk. Rgdboer (talk) 03:28, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what your post is asking for here? had opened a talk page section at Talk:Row and column vectors. I agree with EB that considering the action of matrices on column vectors from the left is a more common convention than their actions from the right. I also agree with the older comment from  at Talk:Row and column vectors that the material claiming the fact that directionality of English text is left-to-right has led some English authors to have a preference for the row vector input to matrix transformation is unreferenced and probably WP:OR. — MarkH21talk 08:47, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Soumitra Kumar Mallick
The article Soumitra Kumar Mallick could use some expert attention. Right now, all its citations are not independent of the article's subject, but even if one were to disregard that concern, it's puzzling that his resume on the website of the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management claims the following achievements:


 * "Millenium Mathematics Prizes for solution of P Vs. NP problem with New Ecommerce Field with self energy and Artificial Intelligence with SO(32) String Matching Field Theory Higgs-Englert-Bosonic Mechanism (leading to the Development of Quantum Mathematics and Ramanujan-Hardy-Mallick- Hamburger- Mallick Functor Algebra Calculus (Tool Area)). [...] For solution to all Millenium and Clay Research Award problems for AGGNNNetworks with [.. some coauthors...] using RHMHM Functor Algebra Calculus and acknowledged by ResearchGate and referees."

Unfortunately I'm kind of rusty on Ramanujan-Hardy-Mallick-Hamburger-Mallick Functor Algebra Calculus myself, but it seems kind of odd to me that the Clay Institute's page for the P vs NP Millennium Prize Problem still shows it as unsolved right now.

I am also pinging User:DMySon, who created the article (including the claim that Soumitra Kumar Mallick has won a Millenium Mathematics Prize.)

Regards, HaeB (talk) 15:14, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It was vandalized by a bunch of IP-address editors. I reverted to a better version and semiprotected. It is still a seriously problematic article, but at least not blatantly false. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:48, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank You HaeB, for my attention. I found the Millenium Mathematics Prize claimed on (Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management) . At the time of writing i added most of the information on the basis of IISWBM. However, i also couldn't found any solid references. The prize and other edits done by ip address have been undone and page is semi protected by David Eppstein, Thank You for your help.  D My Son  17:35, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * No independent sources, few citations, and claims of proving their own claim of proving P vs. NP aren't sufficient for notability. Nominated at AfD here. — MarkH21talk 19:08, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Relevant Peer review
Hi all, the nominator at Peer review/Matchbox Educable Noughts and Crosses Engine/archive1 has requested comments "especially on the mathematical front". Members of this project may be interested in taking a look. Eddie891 Talk Work 01:33, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Square brackets notation for quadratic fields
Could someone more confident and competent on the topic than I -- i.e. almost anyone here, I'd presume -- comment over at Talk:Bracket (mathematics) on whether that usage would be worth adding to the article, and if so in what form? 109.255.211.6 (talk) 10:53, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I added a new section at Bracket (mathematics) to explain this. Ebony Jackson (talk) 14:02, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Great work! Many thanks.  109.255.211.6 (talk) 05:24, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Notation for partially solved multiple integrals
I spotted this in Planar lamina:


 * $$M_y = \int_0^2{\int_x^{4-x}}{}{}x\,(2x+3y+2)\,dy\,dx$$


 * $$M_y=\int_0^2\left.\left(2x^2y+\frac{3xy^2}{2}+2xy\right)\right|_x^{4-x}\,dx$$


 * $$M_y=\int_0^2(-4x^3-8x^2+32x)\,dx$$


 * $$M_y=\left.\left(-x^4-\frac{8x^3}{3}+16x^2\right)\right|_0^2$$


 * $$M_y= \frac{80}{3}$$

My concern is the high vertical line on the right side. While it is quite obvious in a case of a single-variable integral, I suppose in this case it may be somewhat confusing for readers not familiar with multiple integrals. The problem may arise: which variable should I apply the limits to?

I'd like to add the specific variable indication, like below (in red). Is it acceptable?


 * $$M_y=\int_0^2\left.\left(2x^2y+\frac{3xy^2}{2}+2xy\right)\right|_{{\color{red}y=}x}^{4-x}\,dx$$


 * $$M_y=\left.\left(-x^4-\frac{8x^3}{3}+16x^2\right)\right|_{{\color{red}x=}0}^2$$

CiaPan (talk) 12:52, 16 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Yes. --JBL (talk) 14:23, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * This notation is acceptable, but such a succession of formulas without any prose is not. So, it would be better to write "the value of the internal integral is ...; putting this result in the double integral gives thus ...". Such a split of the computation makes reading much easier. This would also avoid to have a vertical bar inside an integral; This may be confusing, although formally correct with your sggestion applied. D.Lazard (talk) 14:43, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the hint. I think you're right, but I need to find some more time to do it. (Or, may be, someone else will do that in a meantime.) Anyway, I think the detail I propose will still be useful for the expansion of the internal integral (i.e., at the point where you used dots for the first time), because there are both $x$ and $y$ in the same expression there. --CiaPan (talk) 15:53, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you both, I have made the described change (without the red color ). The result can be seen here: Special:PermaLink/1012477511. --CiaPan (talk) 16:04, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

By the way, the second reference seems to link to the top page. The title seems to be entered correctly, but I don't know why. --SilverMatsu (talk) 15:24, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Wow, well spotted. Apparently I didn't test it carefully enough. I thought the 'title' parameter to the MathWorld template is enough if it's same as 'id', but I was wrong. Fixed now: Special:Diff/1012473537. Thank you--. CiaPan (talk) 15:37, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the fix and teach. I was able to learn about templates in your reply.--SilverMatsu (talk) 16:01, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * So I suggest you learn Reply to template next. It's often used at talk pages to notify (a.k.a. 'ping') other users, as I did in this reply. You may also make some fun of exploring Smiley. CiaPan (talk) 16:20, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * But that's completely unrelated topic, so if you need to ask some questions, I encourage you to visit our WP:Teahouse, or – for more technical and Wikipedia-focused questions – an appropriate section of WP:Village pump. --CiaPan (talk) 16:23, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Formal mathematical language versus informal intuitive language
I noticed that recent edits to Set (mathematics) have removed some of the informal, non-mathematical comments, which were intended to help a layman Wikipedia reader to understand the subject matter. I am doubtful this is in accordance with Wikipedia principles. --Jonathan G. G. Lewis 00:33, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe I made some of these edits you are talking about? For me it was not about formal vs. informal, but just about clarifying and simplifying the wording; maybe I failed in some cases.  In fact, I was trying to make it less technical in places by moving jargon such as "intensional definition" and "ostensive definition" further down in the article.  In any case, I would be happy to discuss any of the edits at Talk:Set (mathematics). Ebony Jackson (talk) 01:54, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

about the priority scale of complex analysis
Apparently it was changed by the automated rater. I'm trying to re-evaluate the priority scale, but I can't seem to decide.--SilverMatsu (talk) 15:52, 20 March 2021 (UTC)


 * If you check the criteria for priority evaluation here, Complex analysis has significant impacts on other fields (engineering, physics) and is pretty important within mathematics also, so it qualifies as High priority. I'll update it now.Tazerenix (talk) 00:06, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

How to cite BAMS New Series
There are several citations to BAMS in a weird format
 * American Mathematical Society. Bulletin. New Series (used at least 44 times)
 * Bulletin (New Series) of the American Mathematical Society (used at least 13 times)

Would it be OK to normalize both to ? &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:10, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The normalization seems fine to me. I wasn't even really aware that there was a new series (it seems that the old series only ran from 1891–1894, ending even before the Annals first series). — Preceding unsigned comment added by MarkH21 (talk • contribs) 04:54, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Anyone else? I'd like to clean this up by the end of the week. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:33, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Definitely should be Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, with or without New Series. The first "weird" alternative is what you get from the BibTeX from MathSciNet in the FJOURNAL (full journal name) field; many journals are order. in the wrong. with periods. like that. The other alternative you're likely to see from the same source is their abbreviated format, "Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.)". Instead, zbMATH lists them as "Bull. Am. Math. Soc., New Ser." If you see any of those, they should be converted to the spelled-out title, I think. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:43, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Alright, setting User:JCW-CleanerBot on it. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:08, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Expansion in Planar lamina
I have added some prose to Planar lamina, as User:D.Lazard suggested in the previous thread (now archived at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2021/Mar). IMHO it still doesn't look like an encyclopedic article, but I hope it's at least a bit easier to read now. Any comments are welcome, as well as necessary fixes to spelling, grammar or layout. --CiaPan (talk) 09:44, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It may be a bit off topic, but I think improving iterated integrals can help explain this article. The contents of the Order of integration (calculus) are likely to help improve.--SilverMatsu (talk) 15:41, 28 March 2021 (UTC)