WikiProject Mathematics/Archive11 |
= n -th versus n th =
There are quite a few articles that use n-th , n -th , and/or n th (similarly for i th , etc). All of the literature I checked uses n th (and occasionally n th ). The only justification for -th that I can see today is if you don t have italics available, such as in a newsgroup. Based on the articles I ve seen, I think that n th is more common in Wikipedia than n -th and n-th , but I didn t do a formal count.
I think the standard style should be n th . 22:14, July 28, 2005 (UTC)
I prefer n th; but I could understand an editor deciding that it was unclear. A standard, but not a mandatory one
But then, I spent today watching the anti-Communist revert wars and the &^$%&$ AD/CE revert wars, so I m a little more laissez-faire than usual. 22:40, 28 July 2005 (UTC) : I prefer n -th. I guess it was my edits which brought 23:07, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
: n th IS CLEARLY THE ONLY SOLUTION AND I WILL not TOLERATE THIS POV CULTURAL IMPERIALISM CHRISTIANITY-HATING U.S.-BIASED FASCIST CONSPIRACY!!1! - !!!11!! 23:18, July 28, 2005 (UTC)!1!!!
:Should be n th. Bit of a pain to type, but if you have to use it in a lot of places, copy and paste (or write nth and do a global change). -- 14:36, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
::Would be nice if we had a wiki shortcut for super and subscripts. I ve been using T_{E}X (=TEX) markup in my greasemonkey scripts, although that might be confusing when alongside the same thing inside math tags ::Also things like 220+-5% becomes 220±5%, ==> becomes ⇒, 100degC becomes 100°C, and so on. - 16:11, July 29, 2005 (UTC)
:: My personal preference is for n th too, and that is sometimes used in the literature. However, n th is much more common in the literature.
::Another argument in favor of n th is that TeX has a function th{} , which makes 1st, 2nd, n th, etc, although it isn t implemented in WP. Furthermore, TeX interprets n-th as n - th . Since math formulas are rendered in TeX, I think we should use n th to be consistent. 16:08, July 29, 2005 (UTC)
I think n -th is marginally easier to read. I think i -th, for example, is definitely easier to read than i th. I think ( n − 1)th is not a sensible piece of notation, for example; and the sort of thing that shows we should mostly aim to be clear and readable. 16:34, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
:Well, ( n − 1)th is just jarring to my ear; I prefer ( n − 1)st. I can see the point that maybe it should be ( n − 1)st or ( n − 1)-st, to keep people from trying to evaluate it as an exponentiation (although the latter two choices could be, respectively, multiplication or subtraction). -- 16:39, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
::That s a good argument against n th. n th and ( n − 1)th look the best to me, so far, though it seems there s a better solution for n-1 out there somewhere. - 16:46, July 29, 2005 (UTC)
:::But in my experience nobody (or almost nobody) actually says en minus oneth . We say en minus first . Conflict between euphony and logic, perhaps--in this situation I vote for euphony. -- 16:50, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
: Quoting Charles, I think n -th is marginally easier to read. I think i -th, for example, is definitely easier to read than i th (ditto for i ). Readability is the reason I prefer n th over n th. But n th seems to be almost universal in the literature and I haven t found n -th in the literature. My feeling is that WP should be more like the literature in style than that of newsgroups and email. 17:50, July 30, 2005 (UTC)
= vfd =
14:24, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
= Law of information =
Is this article salvagable; does it even make sense 15:18, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
:I couldn t make any sense out of it. When I searched the internet I found a [http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Talk:There_is_a_law_of_conservation_of_information discussion] on a wiki about evolution. 17:11, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
:I put it on VFD 17:15, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
= Other_names_of_large_numbers =
I find 00:02, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
:hmm, it does seem pretty arbitrary -- 17:57, 14 August 2005 (UTC) :I concur -- 22:13, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
= meta: help formulae =
Has anyone else noticed what s happened at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Formula Someone has added a whole bunch of stuff which might be reasonable but I don t think it s the right place for it. It s certainly not what people should see when they go looking for help on TeX markup. I m not really sure where it should go though. 20:50, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
:You might have noticed that I moved it to the talk page. The suggestions contain a lot of tweak factors, which are probably very specific to the browser and configuration. They are totally out of place at ) 17:00, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
::I agree that they don t belong there at all. I think that was the point, though. Wanted them to be seen. Who s in charge of TeX markup, anyway - 17:05, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
:The ) 17:22, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
::So no one in particular Just kind of this thing that s there but no one ever touches or has anything to do with - 17:55, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
= E (mathematical constant) moved to Euler s number =
19:55, August 2, 2005 (UTC)
:Why should it be moved I think I ll move it right back. 20:01, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
:No, I m not happy with the move. It is rarely called Euler s number, I think. 20:06, August 2, 2005 (UTC)
:Good move. Leave it at 20:56, August 2, 2005 (UTC)
I think it would be best if everyone responded at 21:08, August 2, 2005 (UTC)
= blahtex version 0.2 released =
Blahtex is a new LaTeX to MathML converter designed specifically for MediaWiki.
More information is available at .
At the [http://abel.math.harvard.edu/~dmharvey/blahtex blahtex download page] may be found an interactive demo, samples of equations from Wikipedia, and the source code.
I invite everyone to participate in the discussion on .
This message will be cross-posted on and on the Wikitech-l mailing list (as soon as I figure out how it works).
Cheers 13:37, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
= Deletion of VfD =
This isn t strictly an issue for this project, but I thought it was about such a fundamental part of Wikipedia that it should be widely publicized. It concerns the Vfd process (and as it turns out this page has been involved in several VfDs recently). There has been considerable recent discussion about possibly eliminating VfD see: *An RFC about the recent deletion of the VfD page (since undeleted): . *A vote and discussion on the deletion of the VfD page: . 15:19, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
:Ongoing discussion at 01:29, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
= Inline PNG formulas - a poll requested =
There was a discussion right above about PNG-fied TeX vs HTML. It looks to me that the arguments for inline PNGs there were the same as in , but that the consensus nevertheless seemed to be that HTML is preferred to PNG.
However, the issue does not seem to die out, with some kind of silly revert war going on at 15:27, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
:I ve gone both ways on this. At first I put equations in as HTML if they were simple enough and used TeX for the more complicated stuff. However, it didn t look good to me to have some equations in one and some in the other, since they look so different. Secondly, in some fonts at least (including the one I use) the HTML Greek letters are not very close to the way I m used to seeing them. Therefore, if some of the equations on a page were in TeX I want to do all of them in TeX. A drawback if TeX is that the characters are thin and not of uniform thickness, at least on my system. 15:45, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
:: *sigh* — if only MathML was working, we could leave this debate behind.... (hint hint see above 
15:52, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
::: Yes we know that MathML will cure all the ills. :) But it is at least 5 years away I would say. What is your position on inline PNGs in the meantime 15:35, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
:Haven t we been through this :I can see both. Ideally we would use math tags for everything, and the inline PNGs and HTML and mathML generated from that code would look good no matter what. See 15:41, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
:: Oleg, you re much more pragmatic than me My position is: both inline PNGs and HTML look awful, but I am forced to concede that inline PNGs are worse. Therefore, in the current software environment, I think inline PNGs should be forbidden under all circumstances. As displayed equations, they are fine (if a little rough around the edges). I also think that inline HTML should be avoided if at all practical. Such equations should be made displayed if at all possible. In other words, I really don t like any of the options currently available for inline equations.
:: In response to some other points: (1) I m not sure exactly what you re referring to when you saying that MathML is five years away. There are browsers out there that do a half-decent job. (Perhaps not decent, but half-decent anyway.) Besides, there are moves afoot. For example, the [http://www.stixfonts.org/ Stix fonts project] is supposed to reach a major milestone later this year. (2) I m concerned about the portability of Maynard Handley s ideas. I would like to see them up and running on a test wiki, so that I can try them out in a few browsers. 16:10, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
::: In response to (1) and (2). What matters is when Microsoft s Internet Explorer will have default and goood MathML support. And I doubt that will happen soon. 22:13, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
:::: I agree that IE won t have default MathML support soon (if ever). That s a shame. I also agree that the current plugin support (i.e. MathPlayer) leaves a lot to be desired. However, I don t think requiring a plugin is necessarily a bad thing in itself. For example, lots of people view PDFs in their browser, even though browsers generally don t have default support. (Correct me if I m wrong about this.) There is some mechanism that lets the browser inform you when you need an appropriate plugin for something.
:::::: Yes you are right. :) So let us hope MathPlayer will work soon, and work not only for IE. 23:47, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
::::May I add that my position on inline PNG would change drastically if Wikipedia had MathML support enabled. If MathML was there and working, I would *encourage* people to do inline equations in tags, and hope that this encourages people viewing those pages to switch to a better (!) browser. 22:32, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
Separated from other text, I think TeX looks a lot better than HTML. However it s use inline is problematic. I usually try to avoid inline TeX, and I think there has been a consensus for this view. But to me it is also problematic to mix inline HTML with non-inline TeX, so sometimes when I want to use non-inline TeX, I also sometimes use inline TeX (for example for variable names, see 16:39, August 4, 2005 (UTC) : Agree about not wanting a hard and fast rule about it. But why would one use as in 22:13, 4 August 2005 (UTC) ::I agree that doesn t make a lot of sense. 02:51, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
Please see my comments on this issue at: 03:48, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
The blind, with screen reading software and with some kinds of HTML enabled software, have some hope of making sense of the page if HTML us used. Unless appropriate alt= attributes are required, they have no hope with PNG. 02:35:26, 2005-09-08 (UTC) : If you would have checked yourself, the TeX in math tags is in the alt text. 02:41, 8 September 2005 (UTC) :: The section is PNG formulas, and I understood the question to be HTML or PNG. Since my browser doesn t speak TeX, I ll guess you are referring to a PNG produced from the math tags And I give, how is it that you expected me to tell PNG from a PNG produced from the tags so that I would have noticed this 02:51:08, 2005-09-08 (UTC) ::: I think you are misunderstanding how PNG formulae are generated. The formulae images are not manually created, users do not upload regular images of formulae. Formulas are written in the TeX language and are placed inside tags. If the formula is very simple, the TeX representation of the formula is converted into HTML and displayed. Otherwise, if it is complicated, the TeX representation of the formula is converted into a PNG image and is displayed. The alt text of the PNG image is the TeX representation of the formula. For example, the PNG formula S_{mathbf{p}}(mathbf{a})=alphamathbf{v}_1+etamathbf{v}_2 will have S_{mathbf{p}}(mathbf{a})=alphamathbf{v}_1+etamathbf{v}_2 as the alt text. So the issue of appropriate alt= tags is responded to, and thus some provisions at least are made for accessibility. ::: If you would have investigated this issue yourself, by either playing around in the sandbox, or having a look how some mathematics articles are typeset, and viewing the alt text of PNG formulae, you would have found out all this yourself. 10:40, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
= Ten thousand articles waiting to be written ... =
Looking for something to do ) 22:39, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
= CiteSeer citations =
I ve created a template you can use for CiteSeer citations. If they ever change the URL again, only the template needs to be updated.
-- 22:28, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
:I ve also created one for links to MathWorld
:
-- 03:33, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
:The second one duplicates 19:09, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
:: Did I say 19:29, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
= minus or negative infinity =
linearly towards minus infinity or linearly towards negative infinity or linearly towards −∞ - 22:35, August 4, 2005 (UTC) :: Negative infinity sounds right to my non-native speaker ear. 00:41, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
::: I think either of the first two are ok. The second sounds slightly more formal, but I once had a professor who couldn t stand people even saying negative three , it was only minus three for him. 00:56, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
: I use minus infinity in speech, which sounds better, but that may only be so because it s closer to what it is in Dutch. I think I prefer negative infinity in writing, however. -- 01:02, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
::I am a native speaker (UK English), and only ever use minus , be it three or infinity. (I doubt I am Dmharvey s professor!). -- 21:32, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
:: To me, negative three sounds like the script of a Holywood B-grade. I m a minus 3 type of person. -- 13:43, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
::: IMO, they are different. minus infinity is a number, negative infinity is a place. -- 22:04:53, 2005-09-08 (UTC)
=Jitse s math news page=
I don t know if you noticed, but , new requests for math articles, fulfilled requests for math articles, articles in need of attention/on vfd, etc.
I believe this page should be a very useful resource for math articles editors (that is, us). I would suggest adopting this page to the project, that is, renaming it to or something, but I can t come up with a good name.
Any ideas of what else such a page can contain or what other things itchy bot writers like Jitse and me could do to improve the math wikiproject 00:41, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
: how about : I ve sometimes wondered whether it would be possible to write a non-reciprocated link finder script. If A links to B then in many cases B should link to A. Would be nice to find these more easily. But I can think of lots of reasons that it wouldn t really work. 01:00, 5 August 2005 (UTC) :: I could write such a script, and generate a list of pairs of math articles which have links going on only in one direction. Is that what you want 23:47, 5 August 2005 (UTC) ::: I guess I would be interested to see that. My only reservation is that I expect there to be a very large number of links that we discover only really make sense in one direction, and that the links we are really interested in are actually hard to spot within such a list, and therefore that you d be spending a lot of time writing a script that turns out not to be useful. So if your best guess is that it wouldn t be worth the effort, then don t bother. Otherwise, please go right ahead! (by the way, where is some information on how to write such robots I might be interested in trying my hand one of these days.) 23:51, 5 August 2005 (UTC) To write the script would be very easy. It will not be a bot, rather a 00:05, 6 August 2005 (UTC) : I agree. Leave it for now. 00:34, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
::::I moved ) 01:48, 6 August 2005 (UTC) ::::: How did you find 8979 articles I count 8227. 02:06, 6 August 2005 (UTC) ::::My first guess is that I include ) 13:00, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
= other languages =
hi I m just wondering if there are math(s) project pages like this in other languages It sounds like a lot of people who hang around here actually are quite multilingual. I speak only English (and a pathetic amount of mandarin chinese). 01:28, 5 August 2005 (UTC) : I could not find anything in Romanian or Russian. 02:22, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
:Dutch: no mathematics project. :German: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskussion:Portal_Mathematik. :French: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_Wikip%C3%A9dia:Projet%2C_Math%C3%A9matiques and http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_Wikip%C3%A9dia:Projet%2C_math%C3%A9matiques_%C3%A9l%C3%A9mentaires (both not very active.) -- 02:40, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
:Italian: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Progetto_Matematica :Spanish: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProyecto_Matemáticas :Swedish: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipediadiskussion:Projekt_matematik :Japanese: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:_
:Some are, inevitably, more active than others. And some of them were already linked together, I would never have been able to find the Japanese one myself. — 13:08, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
= request =
Could an admin exchange 02:40, 5 August 2005 (UTC) :Done 03:00, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
Another one: ) 12:25, 7 August 2005 (UTC) :Done 23:58, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
EXTRAPOLATION METHOD I would be grateful if the mathenaticians would be kind enough to look at my extrapolation method on www.AIDSCJDUK.info to determine whether it is suitable for a link from Wikipedia. Copy of earlier E-mails with Wiki. are below. Edward G. Collier MBCS CITP
Unfortunately, it seems that one cannot paste E-mails into this area. My method was devised in 1987 and wasexplained in detail at a Royal Statistical Society special meeting on AIDS forecasting that year. It was briefly written up in the Jornal of that Society Vol 151 Part 1 1988 Although the professors, statisticians and epidemiologists present also explained their proposed methods, my simple (but not simplistic) mathod was the only one that ever produced any viable forecasts and is still being used today as can be seen from the web site. I also have used the method for several years in forecasting variant CJD in the UK. The SEAC sub-committee with responsibility for overseeing the progress of vCJD asked me to get the method published. However, the various mathematical bodies and journals that I approached declined to publish it as I had no references. As a retired engineer and not an academic, I had no way of finding appropriate references and in any case I had not referred to any as the idea came into my own head. I am sure that there are many people who could make use of the method - even in control engineering- if you can publicise it in the excellent Wikipedia. Thank you, Edward G. Collier
:Peer review is not a perfect process, but Wikipedia is explicitly not supposed to be a way around it. See 20:06, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
= Project subpages =
As some of you have noticed, partly in honor of Jitse s great new /Current activity page — way to go Jitse! — I have created a new section on the project page to list and describe the various project subpages. I know they are all mentioned somewhere else on the page, but I thought it would be good to also list them together. At any rate that got me to thinking about these pages:
: I think we should not make them subpages, as these pages are not just about our project. So, our style manual, , might be better off standing on its own rather than :: .
: I agree though that it is better to list some of those pages together, as there is quite a bit of duplication now on the project page, with things listed multiple times.
: On a more general note, I would think the project page needs a bit of overhaul. Wonder what people think. 19:35, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
:::: YES. 12:29, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
:: On a related note, I think the name of the style manual, 19:35, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
:::Actually, I think it could well be a subpage, like ) 12:49, 7 August 2005 (UTC) ::::: The shorter the better. :) I hope more opinions will come in as how to rename it, since it is an important document. 23:24, 7 August 2005 (UTC) ::: I agree that 17:23, August 7, 2005 (UTC) : What about just 19:36, 8 August 2005 (UTC) ::I think if we do not want to make it a subpage of this project, then it should probably be called (see table to right.)
I agree with Paul and Jitse about naming it . By the way, I truly hope that the fat style template to the right will not make its way in our manual of style, it is just so long, and not so helpful (for example, why would we need in our manual of style a link to how to write China-related articles).
Oh, and we can make the shortcut 20:30, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
: Agree that 01:51, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Moved. 20:37, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
= blahtex: now compiles on linux =
Blahtex 0.2.1 has been released. It now compiles and runs on Linux thanks to .
Jitse has had some initial success with integrating blahtex into mediawiki: .
Source code, online demo and samples [http://abel.math.harvard.edu/~dmharvey/blahtex/index.php here].
More info and bug reports at .
01:53, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
= Style: *-algebras =
I was editing the already because it relies on the * character appearing superscripted by default.)
And while I m here: our preferred spelling seems to be 04:58, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
= mentions of categorical considerations =
I wrote the section on morphisms in the article on 07:13, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
: I agree. I don t think you can assume that the person reading about projective spaces knows about category theory. However, that doesn t mean you should throw out what you ve done. I think the article needs both versions. (The baby one first.) 11:03, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
:: I agree with Dmharvey, we can have our category theory and eat it too! (of course this come from someone who was a categorical topologist in a past life 
19:55, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
But the thing is, for the example I m thinking of, there aren t two versions . I just say in the category of ____ the morphisms are ____ . there really isn t any category theory there that can be separated out. just some terminology that can be used or not used. - 22:07, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
: Hmmm. A question: what title would you give the section if you chose to write it without categorical language Would you still call it morphisms Or something like Projective linear transformations Are you worried that without the categorical language, it is difficult to motivate why these particular types of maps between projective spaces are important 22:16, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
::It seems like only someone with category theory in mind would, immediately after describing a new mathematical construction, then describe maps between such constructions. I imagine that if I didn t have that language available, I also wouldn t have the mindset to take time out to describe the maps. So I guess it s probably OK this way - 22:59, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
::: I m not convinced. I think that for a reader interested in learning about projective spaces, but without the category theory background, it is still useful for them to hear the fact that the right kind of maps between such spaces are the projective linear ones, even if they don t quite have the context to understand what right means. Anyway, why is this the right category What about algebraic maps between projective spaces 14:33, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
= Sub and super markup feature request =
I ve requested that markup be added to simplify entering sub and superscript at [http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgiid=3080 Bug 3080]. It s just TeX markup with mandatory brackets. I think it will clean up the markup and be a lot easier to type than HTML.
Examples:
*x^{3} x3 (powers) *CO_{2} CO2 (carbon dioxide symbol) *1^{st} 1st (ordinals) *^{2}H_{2}O 2H2O (isotopes)
I can t think of anything this would conflict with, can you [http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/votes.cgiaction=show_user&bug_id=3080 Vote for it] if you like it. Suggest a different syntax if you don t. [http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgiid=1894 Other syntaxes were suggested], which I really don t like. - 19:39, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
: I am not really happy with new notation. You can just use math tags to do the same thing. 20:25, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
::There are lots of uses for super and subscripts that aren t math, like CO_2,! or 1^{st},! place . There s really no need to type 17 characters to output 3. My markup is 6 characters; shorter and quicker and easier than both math and HTML markup. Math markup isn t appropriate for everything, and there s a lot of contention about whether it should be used inline with text at all.
::And regardless of whether math markup is the way things should be done, HTML markup is the way things are done, in most cases (as in these featured mathematics articles: Trigonometric function#History, Ackermann function#History).
::This could save time and effort for those reading and writing the markup this way. - 21:25, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
:::I agree that for things like CO2 and 1st it would be nice to have simpler markup. I disagree in the case of x^3, since this should have the semantics of a mathematical expression, but let s not go there, because that always seems to open up a can of worms . However , I m quite uneasy about adding your modifications to the wiki markup. How are you going to handle the fact that there are probably quite a few ^ and _ and { and } characters hanging around in existing articles 22:25, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
::::It doesn t matter if there are ^, _, {, or } characters hanging around in the markup. It only matters if there are ^{ ... } or _{ ... } hanging around outside of math tags. If there are, I doubt there are many. The only article I can imagine having them is 23:46, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
FWIW, I like it, seems like a good idea. As to the stray-markup issue, what about articles that contain sample source code I thought I saw an article that showed how to compute factorials in 18 different programming languages. 00:00, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
: I have to admit it s starting to sound tempting. Have you suggested this to the people who work on chemistry articles 00:30, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
::Yeah, I suggested it at .
::As for stray markup, just track it down and put <nowiki> tags around it before implementing the markup filters. I m not sure how that works for preformatted text, though:
Testing testing 12 34 5^{6} 7^{8}
::Looks like it works for those, too. - 02:47, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
= AKS primality test cleanup =
I ve expanded the article with information about the algorithm itself, and some detail about the proof. I m not happy with the look of the <math> sections though - this is my first attempt at a significant amount of mathematical markup - so some help in cleanup would be appreciated.
Eventually this article should probably include the full algorithm in programming terms (rather than only in mathematical terms), and describe the complete proof. But I need to learn a bit more about finite fields and group theory before I can hope to do that myself.
As far as I can see, the only markup forcing things to PNG are the use of sqrt(r) and equiv . 13:39, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
:Thanks. It s an important algorithm, which caused quite a stir when it appeared. I cleaned it up a bit. In particular, you should use log for logarithms in <math> mode, and ge instead of >= (incidentally, ge and le are other commands that force PNG, which is rather strange as they can be rendered rather easily in HTML). Look at my changes for details. Oh yes, if you reference articles like Lenstra 2002, they should also be put in the references. Cheers, ) 15:05, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
::Thanks; I didn t know about log, but I ve noticed that I tend to miss the < and > operators; the references to more recent papers are not mine (though among my next tasks is to track those down and try to read them).
::I m not convinced I like the mix of <math> and inline HTML, but I accept there is no ideal solution at the moment - Bubba73 s comments in the 16:59, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
:::As I say in that discussion, I usually don t change PNG to HTML (though I do make the change sometimes when I don t think enough), but since you made the request, I thought it would be okay. Anyway, I changed it back. I hope you don t mind my changing the forall in text. Sorry about assuming that you put the references in there; I should have checked that. -- ) 17:20, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
::::Apologies if my lack of clarity here caused you to waste time. I can claim only ignorance and foolishness; I m trying to catch up with the options and arguments on formatting, but I haven t located consensus yet on anything beyond no current solution is ideal , and wouldn t it be nice if MathML were here already , and it s a mess .
::::In summary, I don t know what is best for that page, and don t trust that what s best for me (my browser, my OS, my installed fonts) would be best for the majority, so I can only hope for and defer to someone better able to judge. 18:10, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
= Move of Inclusion (mathematics) to Inclusion map =
I am proposing moving 18:42, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
= I found this on VfD =
= Mathematics and space =
Over at the 07:58, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
= VfD for Mathematics and God =
The article 19:36, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
:Of course, anybody watching ) 11:37, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
::Yes that s how I discovered it by checking up on 16:50, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
:::BTW, its not showing up on 23:58, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
::::The idea is that VfD discussions are supposed to last only seven days, so I thought it wouldn t be useful to list it longer. However, as you noticed, some discussions are not closed after that period, so now VfD pages are kept for ten days. I m still trying to find the right balance on how long to keep the material. Of course, you can always look in the history of the page. -- ) 17:33, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
:::::The VfD is closed. Keep won, though I d hardly call it a concensus. The NPOV tag remains in the article itself (correctly, in my view). China, India, and the Arabic world have produced more notable mathematicians than just 20:01, 2005 August 19 (UTC)
= Category:Mathematician Wikipedians =
I created 23:28, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
: What about 23:56, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Will people list themselves there or can anyone list them there If the former, the list may be so incomplete as to be useless. 21:28, 18 August 2005 (UTC) : If anybody is willing to go through mathematicians user s pages and add them to one or the other category, I will not mind. :) 01:28, 19 August 2005 (UTC) :: Do you think that the others would I think a directory is a great idea but perhaps the listing should be voluntary. Or maybe you could just leave someone a note on their talk page when you have added them (to give them the option to be unlisted). What do you think -- 19:13, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::: To rephrase myself, if anybody is willing to go through mathematicians talk pages and mention to them about one or the other category, I will not mind. :) 19:56, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
14:01, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
: 20:05, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
::Don t know about you folks, but my profession seems to change every few years. (Three years ago, I was a businessman . Now I m an engineer .) Classification by areas of interest, past and/or present, might be more accurate than whatever (non-)career is one is fated to, given the caprecious winds of the economy and slipperiness of the rungs of the social climbing ladder. 21:31, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
According to 22:32, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
OK, I moved myself to 05:48, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
I ve now nominated 15:34, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
: 16:08, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
= Announcing Jise s RfA =
I would like to announce that I have nominated Jitse for adminship, and I am here shamelessly encouraging everyone to vote (in support I hope . To vote or comment go here: 16:58, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
:Paul s nomination was successful, so I have now access to the admin tools. Thanks to everybody for voting. -- ) 12:28, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
::Jitse, shouldn t you update your blurb in the participants list to reflect your newly elevated status --- 00:04, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
= PNG rendering improvements =
Maynard Handley has put up a wiki demonstrating some improvements he has made to the LaTeX => PNG rendering process.
With his permission I offer you the URL: http://name99.org/wiki99/. It will disappear within about a week so check it out soon.
In my opinion, some of the improvements are great (Wikipedia should definitely use them), some are so-so, and some are, let s say, ambitious.
I d like to hear some opinions. 21:39, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
: The rendering looks worse to me. 03:21, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
::Those are all terrible on my system (Firefox on KDE/linux with 1024x768 res) - 03:35, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
:::Correct link to the zip-file: [http://name99.org/wiki99.zip wiki99.zip]
:There is a particular, uncomfortably large, font size at which the rendering is readable (although still worse), otherwise the rendering is unreadable (Firefox 1.0.4 and IE 6 SP2 on Win XP HE SP2, LCD screen 1680x1050). I think the way it scales with font size is cool though. -- 04:21, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
::The auto-scaling feature is indeed interesting, but the actual rendering, as noted above, does resemble an atrophied 16th century manuscript. (I m using Konqueror.) 22:42, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
::: Having a stronger TeX->HTML conversion would make autoscaling irrelevant, however. A good first step has been taken in ensuring that the HTML text is the same font as the rest of the document, but the conversion is still so weak as to render less than signs in PNG and not use HTML (iirc). 22:52, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
:::: Actually, in my browser (Safari 2.0, also with Firefox 1.0.4 for mac), xyz is rendered (via HTML) in a different font to xyz . Am I doing something wrong 23:18, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
::::: Dave, go to and add ::::::span.texhtml { font-family: sans-serif; } ::::: See ) 10:24, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
:::: Looks like your skin. It looks quite nice and consistent in Cologne Blue, where math is in the same font as italics. 11:45, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
:::::Not for me, if I switch to Cologne Blue, then xyz (xyz) is rendered in a different font than xyz ( xyz ). Perhaps a browser thing, or something to do with the browser settings More research needed. -- ) 11:59, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
:::::: That s quite bizarre. The fonts should be the same, anyway. 12:15, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
:: Hmmm. I ve applied Jitse s suggestions (about 12:32, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
= Number articles up for deletion =
= New section: Mathematics featured articles , comments =
I ve added a new section: Mathematics featured articles to the project page. I might expand it a bit with some information on Featured articles and the FAC process. It might also be nice to track down and add the date when each article became an FA. Comments 18:48, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
Ok I ve made some changes to the featured articles section. In particular I: # added a list of former features articles # added the date when each article was featured and de-featured # linked the date to the featured or de-featured discussion (for those I could find, older articles don t have nicely organized and archived discussions) # used a tabular format rather than a list format. # changed the section title to reflect the addition of former articles.
20:28, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
= Mathematical notation in articles =
I m new here, and I d like clarification about use of mathematical notation, specifically in set theory and mathematical logic. For example, my new stub of 00:29, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
: Generally speaking, you would want to follow the guidelines. However, my opinion in your case is that using ∈ is fine, essentially because the audience for that article would be expected to be familiar with standard set-theoretic notations already. 03:23, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
: Two distinct concerns apply, both of which argue for is in . The first is whether a reader can properly view the character in their browser. This would not be a problem for a PNG image, but that s ugly inline. The second concern is audience comprehension. For this brief article there is little to be gained by technical notation; is in may invite more readers.
: The implications of these two concerns vary among articles. We can only hope that the character set problem will go away soon, but meanwhile the list of Insert characters below the edit window is considered safe. In the case of a long, technical article like 04:46, 2005 August 17 (UTC) :: Good points by Dmharvey and KSmrq. 15:16, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
= more about improving inline PNGs =
I ve been trying to improve on what Maynard Handley did with the PNGs.
There are still severe problems (mostly relating to Windows), and it s not good enough for deployment, but I think it s starting to get somewhere, and I d appreciate some opinions.
Check out .
17:15, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
= Requested move =
Could an admin move 06:57, 20 August 2005 (UTC) : I did it. Now 08:28, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
= Framed box around formulas =
Yesterday I removed with my bot framed boxes around formulas wherever I could find them. I mean, boxes of the form:
This is a theorem, or a formula.
I based my reasoning on the discussions at 18:46, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
: I don t feel strongly one way or the other, but I never use the boxes. I think they should probably be left out unless something really needs to be emphasized. 19:28, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
:I don t much like them. I think it would be good to remove them, at least in the cases I ve seen. Perhaps there might be a use for some more visually pleasing way ( not purple dotted lines) to set off certain text. But it would be best to use such devices sparingly, if at all. 19:36, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
:I think the borders are gaudy and obtrusive, but I m not going to bend anyone s arm either way. -- 20:28, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
: Can we have hot pink with circulating neons -- 02:44, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
=Characterizing Notability of Mathematicians=
Hi all, I am a non-member dropping by to alert you all to an ongoing VfD discussion.
The issue is: which mathematicians should have biographies in the Wikipedia I think a simple and common sense rule of thumb (the title is a joke; of course I don t expect a mathematically precise criterion) should be:
:a wikibiography of mathematician M, which claims no non-mathematical notability for M, should explain or at least describe at least one clearly notable mathematical achievement of M.
I am no doubt hardly the first to point out that with thousands of person obtaining a Ph.D. in math every year, and gadzillions of math professors around the world, and tens of thousands of members of SIAM, AMS, MAA, and other mathematical societies around the world, simply earning a Ph.D. or publishing some research papers probably shouldn t qualify one for a biography.
Here is a more bizarre possibility: suppose the article claims that M is notable because he won the Y Prize, it should link to the formal English language Y prize citation for M. If that doesn t exist (in English), at the Y Foundation website, and if there is no other grounds for M s alleged notability, I question whether M should have an entry in the English language Wikipedia.
No, I didn t make that up. This is exactly the argument some nonmathematician made in a VfD. (Quick now: has anyone here ever heard of the Zois Prize Before reading the preceding sentence)
Yesterday, I happened across several biographies listed in which I think violate my simple rule:
#Aleksander Malnic #Dragan Marusic #Tomaz Pisanski
I have nominated them for deletion as non-notable. I think the first two are clear cases, the third maybe a bit less clear. Just to be clear, in each case, I would be equally happy with either of the following outcomes: # the article is deleted on the stated grounds, # someone comes up with a useful description of a truly notable mathematical achievement of the subject. I hope many of you will drop by those pages and vote one way or the other, but I d also like to see any comments on the bigger issue raised in the subject line: how can one characterize which mathematicians are notable
In retrospect, I probably should have considered trying to contact authors/editors of these articles before making my VfD nominations. Has anyone had some good experiences along these lines to share Or advice on how to proceed if a similar situation arises in the future
Someone raised another issue: these three men all happen to appear on a 21:50, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Oh dear: to forestall misunderstanding, of course I did not mean to imply that whether or not I recognize a name is an adequate criterion for mathematical notability. But if none of the members of this project know anything about mathematician M, and the biography doesn t help, I would say that biography should probably go.
Another thing: I overlooked another name I recognize: 22:04, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
P.S. Someone commented in the VfD to the effect that the fact that some towering figure doesn t yet have a biography, while some lesser figures already have ones, is not by itself grounds for deleting anything. I agree; clearly, Wikipedia s growth is haphazard so this will be a not infrequent occurrence. The balance issue raised in these three cases goes far beyond that, I think, but all I am really trying to say is that, IMO, the average reader of a biography on Wikipedia should not be left with serious doubt that the subject is indeed notable, as I was after reading these three biographies. Again, I d be happy if someone who knows more than I do about them can convince me I am wrong by telling us all (by expanding the biographies) about some clearly notable accomplishment. But some prize I have never heard of Doesn t help me. Some very rough analogies (not very serious):
JYolkowski has suggested several times (if I understand him correctly) that the mere verifiability of stated facts in an biography is sufficient grounds for keeping it (see my talk page). This doesn t make sense to me: name person X, birthdate, and birthplace, and someone can probably verify that information. Does that alone qualify X for inclusion I think it should be rather the notable substance of stated facts (or lack thereof) which qualifies X (or not) for having a biography here.
I seem to be trying to summarize, er, notable comments recieved elsewhere. I have to take the blame for this. Due to the accidental way I got into this (and my inexperience in Wiki discussions of this kind), various useful (or bizarre) comments are now scattered over the talk pages of the three articles, my user talk page, and the vfd pages. Sorry for the confusion!--- 00:35, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
Jitse actually found the citation (in Slovenian, I guess) of some obscure award to Marusic So I did the obvious thing and awarded the very first 01:02, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
:Hi CH, by posting here, you are now officially a member. You might be interested in considering the positions of the [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Inclusionist_Wikipedians Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians] as well as the [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Deletionist_Wikipedians Association of Deletionist Wikipedians]. There are some serious philosophical battles on these issues. Amazingly, WP is filled with oodles of non-encyclopedic, non-notable material, e.g articles on ancient soviet submarines, underwater electrical cables, television shows, Pokemon characters, and rock-n-roll bands. 04:57, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
:Hi CH, to add to what Linas said above, the issue of notability on Wikipedia is unsettled, see: 16:11, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
OK, some anon has translated the now notorious Zois prize citation of Marusic, which led me to guess that if he is internationally recognized, some papers by him would appear in a review paper I happened to have at hand. This turned out to be the case, so I changed my own vote in the VfD to a lukewarm keep.
I d like to try to summarize a few more valuable points which came up: *if someone knows of a mathematician who rarely if ever publishes in English but has done extraordinary work (every mathematician can think of examples), of course we all agree that this person should have a biography in the English language Wikipedia, because such a person has clearly made a notable contribution to the body of human knowledge. *exhaustive lists of Lusitanian mathematicians might be appropriate in the Lusitanian language Wikipedia, but should be discouraged in the English language Wikipedia, which clearly has a special responsibilty to students all over the world because English currently plays the role of the scholarly lingua franca.
Paul August: up above I think I expressed my take on inclusion; fine by me as long as it doesn t intrude upon the learning experience of the generic user . My concern is to keep that from happening. A mixture of discouraging cruft (hopefully by the art of gentle persuasion) and segregating it is probably the best answer. :Two points, first, providing a learning experience for our readers is a noble goal, but strictly speaking, that is not the mission of an encyclopedia, and second, If we are sufficiently creative, having subjects with low notability, should not intrude upon such a goal anyway. 23:02, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
Linas: OK, I m adding back my name, but I need to focus on the GR WikiProject at least for the rest of this year, because I promised to get some serious work done on that. Yes, I m talking to you, and all is forgiven, but Linas, I really hope that in the future, you in particular will pay attention to clues that you might be getting on my nerves (or keep an eye on the wikistress meter on my user page), OK If that happens, I m sure I ll try to tell you, so if you just remember to be a good listener when interacting with me all should be fine.--- 22:27, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
= Can more people help me out =
I have a question/problem/something-I-don t-understand that has been bugging me for years. I have posted it at the bottom of 17:20, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
= weird vandalism =
There have been some rather strange edits to 18:49, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
: This is the IP address of a cache server fom United Online, so is most likely used by a lot of different users. -- 18:58, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
= Tav (number) article =
Take a look at 13:50, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
: It has a valid basis but is so poorly written as to be incomprehensible. See the footnote on page 3 of [http://www.u.arizona.edu/~miller/finalreport/finalreport.ps this Postscript document]. Here is Tav: -- 14:11, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
= =
The notations used by the cluster of articles close to 13:58, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
=Sheaf=
Almost a million (well, nearly) pages still point to 20:33, 26 August 2005 (UTC) :There s an entry for it on the disambiguation page. What s wrong with that -- 20:53, 26 August 2005 (UTC) ::Well first, the article at sheaf should be about the mathematical kind if that is the primary meaning of the word (see: 21:17, August 26, 2005 (UTC) :::Actually, there are 109 articles listed on the what links here , of which TWO are not mathematics-related. I vote to change it back. 21:25, 26 August 2005 (UTC) :::to Paul August: I see. That makes sense. I d be willing to work through all the mathematical articles that point to 22:18, 26 August 2005 (UTC) ::::If you can make a good case that the primary definition of sheaf is moving away from the mathematical one, then I might be persuaded to change my mind. However, the overwhelming proportion of wikipedia articles are presently pointing to the mathematical meaning of 22:42, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
::::: 22:58, 2005 August 26 (UTC)
::::The meaning to which the most links point should perhaps not always be considered primary. For example, the word sheaf was probably chosen for use in mathematics to be suggestive, precisely because the word has another, non-mathematical meaning. The effectiveness of the mathematical usage to some extent depends on that other meaning. 22:51, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
:::Almost no one outside of math actually uses the word 00:37, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
:::::Change it or leave it, it s all the same to me. -- 01:12, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
Agree to move it back to 16:03, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
:Sorry, I don t know how I missed the remaining links. I will contribute to fixing them or moving them back, based on what we all decide here. Regarding the move, I was thinking that sheaf is a common enough word that it could have many possible current (and future!) meanings. Personally, I don t see any harm in having a more specific link to the mathematical definition (so long as the remaining links are fixed). However, if you d like to go back to the old link, that s fine with me too. - 16:58, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
::I have fixed the remaining old mathematical links to point to the new location. Apparently at least a couple of articles have already referred to sheaves in the agricultural sense. - 04:40, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
=Aged requests=
Some of you may remember that in August 2003 a user began adding a huge number of missing math topics to 23:28, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
= Math Babel =
I ve just made a comment on the category deletion pages for project. Then I realised it s actually only an extension of the Babel project. Below are some sample categories for discussion, and we could make up a pretty box template like the babblers:
If we preferred it could be a proper equivalent of Babel, where statisticians, applied mathematicians and pure mathematicians have their own boxes, and people like me can be Pure Math-1! -- 11:12, 27 August 2005 (UTC) : Not sure I like this fine level classification. OK, if one wishes to do that, one could. But those Babel thing are ugly and take a lot of room on the page. 16:10, 27 August 2005 (UTC) ::The only problem I have with that classification is that it doesn t distinguish different types of math-nativeness. For example, I might be classified as native myself, but when it comes to articles on algebraic topology, numerical analysis, several complex variables, or any number of other topics, my understanding is really probably somewhere between Math-3 and Math-N at most. In other words, a lot of the time, the level would depend on the particular subject itself. 21:52, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
:::I think those categories are setting the bar too high. After all, we don t make up separate categories for native speaker of english , native speaker, additionally is studying english literature at PhD level , and native speaker, additionally teaches english literature and phonics at university level . I think what you have as Math-3 is the highest level I would be willing to categorise on babel. After that there are just too many problems with specialised areas, as Revolver notes. 22:10, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
:I did wonder about the height of the bar, especially as compared with native speaker of English (which covers perhaps 300 million+ people), as opposed to perhaps a few thousand math professors in higher education. However, sometimes I feel it is worth knowing that X is actually a math professor, rather than a doctoral student. I also agree that specialised subdomains complicate thing. I would also be Math-3 (alternatively, Graph Theory-N , Number Theory-1 , Statistics-2 ) under this classification, but then I do feel that others are better qualified than me, and would appreciate knowing who is who (and would also like other editors to know that my math isn t always 100%, and needs checking). -- 12:33, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
::A math(s) professor may advertise themselves as such on their user page without a babel notice, if they so choose. Perhaps what you really want is a Mathematical Wikipedians, classified by area of specialisation page. The difficulty is that often people categorise themselves too high because they don t know any better. For example, there would be a fair few high school students who would describe themselves as accomplished in geometry and algebra , despite not knowing the first thing about what real mathematicians in these areas actually do. 12:54, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
= Merge sigma additivity into measure (mathematics) =
The article 19:21, August 27, 2005 (UTC)
= New math categories =
As part of working on categorizing articles copied from project, I noticed that there might be a need for more math categories from subjects listed in the [http://www.ams.org/msc/ Mathematics Subject Classification (2000 edition)]. Here s the categories I have in mind:
# , as per MSC 16-xx, Associative rings and algebras # , as per MSC 17-xx, Nonassociative rings and algebras # , as per MSC 39-xx, Difference and functional equations # , subcategories in , as per MSC 58-xx, Global analysis, analysis on manifolds # , as per MSC 40-xx, Sequences, series, summability # , as per MSC 92-xx, Biology and other natural sciences
I am aware that the Mathematics Subject Classification is not directly applicable to Wikipedia math articles, still, probably it can give some inspiration. I am most uneasy about the global analysis and analysis on manifolds thing. Any suggestions and discussion of the above are very welcome. 22:57, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
: 09:45, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
:: Charles, should it be 15:36, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
(I changed the list to a numbered one, to make referring to it easier). I think (1) and (2) should be under ring theory, as I find it hard to see there being enough articles to justify addiational catergories. Similarly for (3) - I don t think there s enough articles to justify additional catergories. For (4), it seems the seqeunce catergory is broadly equivilant to the catergory you suggest putting it under. On the other hand, I definately agree with doing (5) as you suggested. It is important to remember that the MSC classification is designed to classify maths papers , not maths itself. 11:50, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
: So: 01:54, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
= Fibonacci numbers subscript style =
I raised this question on 18:56, 28 August 2005 (UTC) :I think I prefer Fn, both PlanetMAth and MathWorld use that notation. And 20:15, August 28, 2005 (UTC) :: Agree with Fn as the preferred notation. 20:46, 28 August 2005 (UTC) ::I agree too. I think subscripts are preferred when you have them available. some literature uses f instead of F . 22:54, August 28, 2005 (UTC) Both notations are common and should be defined. F(n) notation is better for complex expressions such as F(n-3) or worse I think. For simple expressions I prefer F_n though.-- 16:01, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
= Game theory wikiproject =
Hello all - In the interest of standardizing and growing wikipedia s coverage of ··· 02:22, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
= featured math articles template =
I ve templatized the math FAs, although thanks to Paul it doesn t add much :) Any ideas about this -- 15:41, 30 August 2005 (UTC) : I have objected on 15:41, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
:: I doubt how much use a template is. 15:59, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
:At the time I created the FA section on our project page, I thought about suggesting this at the FA talk page, and decided not to, since I thought it would be easy enough to maintain our list separately (at least for the foreseeable future). I also figured (correctly as it turns out) Raul wouldn t much like it 19:54, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
= Math equations to plain english =
There is an interesting thread at 19:02, 30 August 2005 (UTC)|
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