Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2024/Jul

Proposed move of Trammel of Archimedes to Ellipsograph
In the past couple of days I spent some time researching the name "trammel of Archimedes", sometimes applied to the instrument for the several centuries previously and still often today called an elliptic trammel or elliptic compass (a "trammel" or beam compass is a wooden or metal rod or beam along which slide metal "trammel points", used to draw circles). This is a type of ellipsograph (tool for drawing ellipses). I learned that Archimedes had nothing to do with this tool, which may have been invented in the early 16th century by Leonardo da Vinci, and which operates on the same mathematical principle as a mechanism investigated by Proclus (5th century) based on the one Nicomedes (3rd century BC) used to trisect angles. Circa 1940 the name "trammel of Archimedes" showed up in the work of Robert C. Yates, apparently out of the blue (I speculate this may have been based on some confusion by Yates or whoever he got the name from between Nicomedes and Archimedes). Judging from searches of books/academic papers, the name "trammel of Archimedes" remained quite rare through the 20th century, but there have been a nontrivial number of people calling it that in the past couple of decades, perhaps partly under the influence of webpages like Wikipedia.

Anyway... I think this article would be improved by reorganizing it to discuss the general topic of ellipse drawing, so I proposed at that it should be moved to the title Ellipsograph (which currently redirects there), with "Elliptic trammel" turned into a top-level section. Then we can add other sections about the pins-and-string method for drawing ellipses, as well as various other interesting ellipse drawing tools/methods, and some further discussion about how these tools were used in practice. –jacobolus (t) 05:43, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Discussion on links in the lead sentence of mathematics
Please take a look at talk:mathematics. --Trovatore (talk) 22:02, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Question about a redirect
Is a proper way of notating Graham's number? voorts (talk/contributions) 19:12, 4 July 2024 (UTC)


 * That's an awkward ASCII way of writing $$3 \uparrow\uparrow\uparrow\uparrow 3$$, which is the first term in a sequence whose 64th term is Graham's number. The particular number $$3 \uparrow\uparrow\uparrow\uparrow 3$$ is mentioned in the lead section of the article Graham's number.  --JBL (talk) 19:42, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll mark the redirect as patrolled. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:05, 4 July 2024 (UTC)