Messagetolove (talk | contribs) |
WP needs more pastoring and less posturing, no? here's to the good shepherd ; |
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::Ah, I see. Thanks for correcting me. Still, thanks for all your mathematics contributions; they are seamlessly integrated with the article rather than a separate section and I think that's a great way to do it. I left a message already on WillowW’s talk page. [[User:Greg L|Greg L]] (''[[User_talk:Greg_L|my talk]])'' 04:56, 3 June 2007 (UTC) |
::Ah, I see. Thanks for correcting me. Still, thanks for all your mathematics contributions; they are seamlessly integrated with the article rather than a separate section and I think that's a great way to do it. I left a message already on WillowW’s talk page. [[User:Greg L|Greg L]] (''[[User_talk:Greg_L|my talk]])'' 04:56, 3 June 2007 (UTC) |
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: Actually, Willow did most of the maths too, and I agree, it is a great way to do it! I was more like Mr. "Thou shalt not use a single term or concept before it has been explained". ;) I've never put in so much work on one article, but it was great fun! [[User:Geometry guy|Geometry guy]] 12:15, 3 June 2007 (UTC) |
: Actually, Willow did most of the maths too, and I agree, it is a great way to do it! I was more like Mr. "Thou shalt not use a single term or concept before it has been explained". ;) I've never put in so much work on one article, but it was great fun! [[User:Geometry guy|Geometry guy]] 12:15, 3 June 2007 (UTC) |
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::Back atcha: Your philosophy of "Thou shalt not use a single math term or concept before it has been explained" is most valuable and has been sorely needed on Wikipedia. I've long suspected that too many contributors just copy and paste from their text books (“look at the kinda of formulas that I can understand!”). What these type of contributors produced was of no use to ''anyone''. The reader who comes to Wikipedia is often drawn by the succinct, pithy introductory opening paragraphs and definitions. These are the type of reader who appreciates having their hand held as one advances deeper into technical articles. Simply having directly copy & pasted formulas barfed onto Wikipedia's pages is of no use to this typical reader, nor is it of any use whatsoever to an expert in the field because they simply go to their favorite reference book(s) for fear that Wikipedia's formulas could be in error. I've also had lengthy text exchanges — and even hour-long phone calls — with math-type contributors and I've found that some can deal with the math at a symbolic level without having a complete, intuitive understanding of the subject matter and what it all means. Explaining math variables and whatnot in a complete and understandable way is tough, double-tough. Thanks. I appreciate your placing the credit where credit is due; WillowW does ''awesome'' work. [[User:Greg L|Greg |
::Back atcha: Your philosophy of "Thou shalt not use a single math term or concept before it has been explained" is most valuable and has been sorely needed on Wikipedia. I've long suspected that too many contributors just copy and paste from their text books (“look at the kinda of formulas that I can understand!”). What these type of contributors produced was of no use to ''anyone''. The reader who comes to Wikipedia is often drawn by the succinct, pithy introductory opening paragraphs and definitions. These are the type of reader who appreciates having their hand held as one advances deeper into technical articles. Simply having directly copy & pasted formulas barfed onto Wikipedia's pages is of no use to this typical reader, nor is it of any use whatsoever to an expert in the field because they simply go to their favorite reference book(s) for fear that Wikipedia's formulas could be in error. I've also had lengthy text exchanges — and even hour-long phone calls — with math-type contributors and I've found that some can deal with the math at a symbolic level without having a complete, intuitive understanding of the subject matter and what it all means. Explaining math variables and whatnot in a complete and understandable way is tough, double-tough. Thanks. I appreciate your placing the credit where credit is due; WillowW does ''awesome'' work. [[User:Greg L|Greg L]] (''[[User_talk:Greg_L|my talk]])'' 17:42, 3 June 2007 (UTC) |
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P.S. On a separate note, I have had nothing to do with the [[Thermodynamic_temperature#Derivations_of_thermodynamic_temperature|formulas section]] of the ''Thermodynamic temperature'' article; it is beyond my expertise. I have noted that some terms are introduced out of the blue without having been explained. Do you have time to look at it? [[User:Greg L|Greg |
P.S. On a separate note, I have had nothing to do with the [[Thermodynamic_temperature#Derivations_of_thermodynamic_temperature|formulas section]] of the ''Thermodynamic temperature'' article; it is beyond my expertise. I have noted that some terms are introduced out of the blue without having been explained. Do you have time to look at it? [[User:Greg L|Greg L]] (''[[User_talk:Greg_L|my talk]])'' 00:59, 4 June 2007 (UTC) |
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==small comment== |
==small comment== |
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at least. |
at least. |
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[[User:Messagetolove|Messagetolove]] 02:02, 5 June 2007 (UTC) |
[[User:Messagetolove|Messagetolove]] 02:02, 5 June 2007 (UTC) |
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==Not far in thought== |
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[[Image:Unalion.jpg|thumb|250px|right|A grateful shepherdess and her stalwart, knightly assistant. ;)]] |
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Hi [[User:Geometry guy|G-guy]], |
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I've been travelling to see my sister graduate, which has been a lot of fun. I've never actually held an academic hood before today — not very practical, are they? Do you ever put it over your head? I'm planning on taking measurements anyway, so that I can sew regalia for other friends who get their PhD's, maybe even [[User:Awadewit|Awadewit]], if she'll let me. |
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Although I'm far from home, and we've been working in distant corners of Wikipedia these past weeks, you're never far from my thoughts. I can't express my thanks enough for your kind and chivalrous words just above; you and [[User:Cronholm144|Cronholm]] are indeed cut from a finer cloth. It ''was'' tons of fun, wasn't it? I hope we have the pleasure again very soon. Affectionately, [[User:WillowW|Willow]] 03:35, 5 June 2007 (UTC) |
Revision as of 03:35, 5 June 2007
Welcome to my talk page: please leave any comments, questions, complaints, praise, or just general chat below. If you have come here because you disagree with an edit I have made, try fixing or undoing the edit first: I make mistakes or misjudgements, just like any other editor, but this is a wiki, so all mistakes can be fixed (be bold!).
I will reply to comments on this talk page, unless you request otherwise.
Complaint
Dear Geometry guy, I am getting a bit tired and fed up with the insulting remarks you leave in your edit summaries when you edit my contributions. I'm referring in particular to the comment you left here, although your latest comment suggests you might be making a habit of it. Let me remind you to be civil to your fellow wikipedians and to stop making personal attacks such as calling me an "idiot", or telling me to "get it right the first time". Yes I make mistakes from time-to-time, but there is no need for these kinds of comments. What is worse, is that you do not seem to be so rude to other wikipedians, which makes me suspect you might be wikistalking me. Please stop. Geometry guy 08:46, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
- Uncivil? Who is the one being uncivil here, leaving accusatory remarks on my talk page, suggesting I am breaking two policies and a guideline to wit?! I could get blocked for this. And your justification for this attack is just two diffs? I'm just doing my best to make wikipedia better, and I am fed up with having to correct the numerous typos, grammar mistakes and other errors that you make in your edits. Have you not heard of the preview button? How about proofreading your edit for a change? It is a wonder that I don't comment more often. I think I have been very restrained. Geometry guy 09:06, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
- PS. And as for policy, have you never heard of assume good faith? Geometry guy 09:14, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
- Talking to yourself on April Fools' Day?--Shtove 07:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Huh?
Sorry if I am poking my nose into someone's family business, but do you by any chance suffer any form of split personality? Arcfrk 07:00, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well, yes and no! As for the preceding exchange, unfortunately I posted it three days later than I originally intended. I've fixed the dates artificially now so visitors get the idea ;) There is a serious point underlying this silliness, but nevermind about that... Geometry guy 12:25, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
- Aaaaaah.--Shtove 07:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, Geometry guy!
Hi Geometry guy,
Thank you very much for all your kindness and hard work, on the Encyclopædia Britannica and elsewhere. It was wonderful how you were able to pinpoint the difficulties and improve the article so much. I also really appreciate how you assumed good faith about me, even if I didn't deserve it; your faith and honesty helped me become a better person, which is all that we can hope for among ourselves, no? The fine draught of absinthe was medicinal indeed, despite the wormwood it held for me initially. I foresee that you have work on the EB still ahead of you, as do I, for which I thank you already. Please let me know if I can help you as you have helped me; in devoted friendship, Willow 11:19, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
P.S. Sorry that the image is not geometrical! ;)
Ah Geometry Girl, there is geometry in everything ;) It was a pleasure to help out at EB and thank you so much for adding some colour to my talk page! In your case I did not need to assume good faith: it is obvious from everything you do on WP! As for EB, I think it is in a very good state now: informative, comprehensive, balanced and encyclopedic. All thanks to one determined and energetic editrix, and a little encouragement from her many friends. Geometry guy 12:26, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
- Hello Willow. I wonder if you might help out in one or two small ways. Here at maths we have a scheme called Mathematics collaboration of the week, which is not in good spirits at the moment. Our friend Cronholm has proposed Mathematical physics as a possible candidate, which I think is an excellent choice. Do you think you (and maybe A.N. Other) could support it? Meanwhile, the current collaboration is Theorem, but it is not in a good state right now. I'd like to help a bit - are you interested in joining in the fun? Geometry guy 23:53, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi again, G! I'd be glad to help out, although I feel out of my depth. I have a vague notion of what physics and mathematics are, but I'm a little hazy about mathematical physics. Does it mean "mathematics that was developed to create theories of physics"? In my mind, I'm distinguishing it from physics-related mathematics, which I would imagine is mathematics that was inspired by or grew out of physical theories but then developed independently, kind of like the mathematics of torsion tensors and general connections arose from general relativity. Am I understanding that correctly? Willow 15:46, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
P.S. I'm going to visit my family soon, so I may not be able to reply soon. I have a sister graduating from college this weekend, and another sister from grad school in a few weeks. I'll try to write, but my family is a little old-fashioned and it might be difficult to get connected. Willow 15:46, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Equipartition theorem
PS. Oh, I almost forgot! I've been working a bit on equipartition theorem. If you can spare a moment, any thoughts or suggestions you might have would be most welcome! :) Thanks, G-guy! Willow 22:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'll take a look at equipartition theorem when I have time, but it probably won't be until next week. Geometry guy 09:17, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- PS. Sorry to find that you were so low recently. I know the feeling! Geometry guy 10:35, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Thank you once again for your wonderful edits to equipartition theorem, and, more personally, for your kind comment above, which I only just noticed. The right honourable lady appreciates your great help and insights into things beyond her own vision, and the graceful gentility with which they are uniformly delivered. :) Willow 14:25, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- You are most welcome, and thank you for the kind comments. Among these edits, I suggested a restructuring of the article, which you may not like, since it moves the history down past the general formulation. Anyway, I won't be offended if you change the order back! There is even an argument for putting the history at the end of the article in this case... Geometry guy 16:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Here there be dragons... ;) I've been flayed a few times (luckily, dragons can shed their skins) over not putting the History section first; I think there's a policy somewhere about it, although I keep forgetting where. :( Still, I think we might get away with it here; the history seems quite hard to explain unless you've introduced the theorem, don't you agree?
At first, I was concerned about putting the quantum effects at the very end, since the role that equipartition played in showing the need for quantum mechanics was pretty important. But now I see that it makes more sense, given that the applications are all classical. Oh, do you know where we can find a nice Figure illustrating the development of ergodicity; I remember seeing some kind of "breakdown of invariant tori" Poisson-mapping kind of image, but I'm not sure where and whether it were free. I'll add some other Figures for color and fun. Willow 17:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well the onus is on the flayer to find the policy or guideline: this may take some time ;) Anyway, I certainly agree that in this article (indeed most technical articles), the history has to come after the definitions: affine connection is a rare counterexample. I had two other motivations for putting the limitations at the end: first, it is a pity to explain what the theorem is not good for before explaining what it is good for; second, these sections branch out into a wider context, which is what the end of an article should do. The figures look good, but I'm afraid I have no idea where to find an ergodic theory picture. Geometry guy 17:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm pleased to see that you simplified and shortened the lead - I was going to suggest that at some point. It is much better now! I have some reservations about the NASA neutron star picture: it grossly oversimplifies the structure of neutron stars (as it is currently understood) and uses misleading words like "solid" and "liquid". The latter is probably refering to the superfluid neutrons that arise at certain densities, but this is believed to happen close to the crust, rather than deep in the interior, if I have understood correctly. Can you find a better picture? Geometry guy 11:54, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
- Good luck with the FA, Geometry (and Physics) Girl! As you predicted, the issue of the history section soon arose. I'm still not in favour of starting with it, but I did have another thought: move some of the examples up, and the general formulation down. As geometers, we both know that the best way to understand a concept is with an example, right? ;) The kind of reordering I have in mind would be:
- Basic formulation and applications
- History
- General formulation and further applications
- The first set of examples would correspond roughly to the current "Basic applications" section, taking care to ensure that the discussions all use the quadratic point of view rather than the general point of view. It is just an idea, and maybe not a good one, but people seem to like the infinite beer glass example... Geometry guy 11:32, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
- I feel a bit like the Eminence grise here: I leave a comment and, remarkably, Equipartition theorem changes accordingly! I realised too late that my latest suggestion had the disadvantage that that the sedimentation example is not quadratic, but you found a nice way around that. Still, I can see scope for further restructuring, e.g., to explain a specific heat example before the history, to reduce repetition around the application to ideal gases, and to avoid using the general form of the theorem before stating it. But, maybe I should pull down my shadowy hood and enter the fray! Geometry guy 18:04, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
- PS. Nice to see you at Affine connection!
Votre visite me ferait grand plaisir, Votre Eminence; vous etes toujours bien venu chez nous. Je vous en prie, entrez et de votre propre vouloir, comme il dut un si grande Seigneur anglais. ;) Restez chez nous et editez avec une liberte (et j'espere contentment) plusplarfaite.
Forgive me for not having replied right away to your wonderful suggestions, which as you see I tried to bring to life. But I'm happy to see that you're diving in yourself now, as befits the Englishman: "once more into the breech, dear friends, once more; in peace, nothing so becomes a man — as editing Wikipedia." Wait, is that how it goes? ;) Willow 22:47, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
- Umm, you missed the rather crucial line "Or close the wall up with our English dead." I'm dead for now, but tomorrow I will try to imitate the action of a tiger. Geometry guy 23:15, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, I wouldn't want to stray into discourtesy or morbid thoughts; I couldn't ask such a high price of you for fixing up equipartition. ;) Besides, I conked out long before you did, the result of overly enthusiastic gardening. ;) Thanks for all your manifold improvements to equipartition! Speaking of manifolds, may I tinker a bit with affine connection? Although I'm not very good about it in my own articles, I think we ought to be more gentle with the reader there, starting with flowers before flours, ramping up gradually to the terribly twisted torsion tensor. ;) Although I'd intended to start in on making knitting into a Featured Article, this might be a fun diversion for a while, if you'll be patient with my limitations. :) Willow 15:27, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, blood was summoned and sinews were stiffened, but I still haven't fixed the problem that the article uses the general form of the theorem before stating it, so there is more to be done. I also think there is a confusion in one or two places between coupled oscillators and normal modes, which are not the same thing, and I wonder if the SHO section could be reorganised to put the application to crystals up-front.
P.S. I might have to revert to "bottle" of beer, because the equipartition theorem requires that equilibrium has been established, which could take weeks. I wouldn't want the beer in the glass to go flat! :)
- I think after these hard days of editing and/or gardening, the beer going flat would not be the most serious problem affecting the experiment. (More seriously, I also switched from bottle to glass 'cos most of the bottles I know are coloured, so you can't see the haze very well - although, now I come to think of it, we could ask Corona to sponsor a product placement.) Geometry guy 16:07, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
- Phew, I think that a beer (even in a bottle ;) would be most welcome. I've enjoyed a lot working on Equipartition, and I hope you did too, though we both had to face some nightmares: for you, differential forms, for me {{fact}}. I'm horrified I added such a tag, but am glad you fixed it easily. Geometry guy 22:37, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Dear G-guy,
PLease don't worry about adding the {{fact}} tag. I'm grateful; I would be rightfully ashamed if we coasted into FA-land with a substandard article. As the saying goes, seats in Valhalla should not be cheap. ;) We should recruit Awadewit and others to review the article; I suspect that they'll bring a good perspective to the article and help us to gauge how intelligible the writing is.
Someday, I may also conquer my irrational fear of differential forms; how tough can they be? ;) From dribs and drabs in random books, I sort of get the torsion tensor now, so maybe it won't be so hard to cross over into that promised land. Willow 15:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for the beer! What a great present, just in time to celebrate the FA, although yet again, I didn't vote in time. Congratulations! Geometry guy 14:04, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Affine connection
PS. Although I'm not sure I will like the taste of my own medicine, if you do stop by and would like something to do in a spare moment, take a look at Derivative or Affine connection, into both of which I have put quite a lot of work recently, but I am not sure what to do with them now. The latter, in particular, is rather advanced maths! Geometry guy 19:40, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
- Hey Geometry guy,
- I just discovered your postscript, I'm sorry about not responding earlier! The lead of affine connection looks good, although I'll need to read it more closely tonight. I've never understood all that, but now's my chance and what better teacher? :) I can already tell that I'll have difficulties with some of it, though, since I'm scared to death of differential forms and wedge products. I'm sure that it'll all appear trivial someday, but now... I didn't read the article carefully, but maybe you could derive the connection by embedding the manifold in a really high dimensional Euclidean space, translating the vector/tensor as in a normal Euclidean space, and then projecting back into the manifold? That's how I would do it, if I were an angel and could move things about in n dimensions. ;) But perhaps I have too conservative an imagination? I bet there's many ways of doing it! Willow 22:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, straight away you spotted the main thing that I would like to add to the article (leaving me impressed, yet again)! At the moment, the construction of an affine connection by embedding a manifold in Euclidean space is limited to the example of the 2-sphere in 3-dimensional space (7.1). I would like to explain the construction in general, giving the 2-sphere as an example. Geometry guy 09:17, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- (Copied from above.) Speaking of manifolds, may I tinker a bit with affine connection? Although I'm not very good about it in my own articles, I think we ought to be more gentle with the reader there, starting with flowers before flours, ramping up gradually to the terribly twisted torsion tensor. ;) Although I'd intended to start in on making knitting into a Featured Article, this might be a fun diversion for a while, if you'll be patient with my limitations. :) Willow 15:27, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm very glad you would like to work on affine connection. As for limitations, well if you'll be epsilon, I will be your delta ;) It is fun working on an article with you, and hopefully it will also inspire me to make the improvements I mentioned before. Geometry guy 16:04, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I've just been looking at your sandbox, and I realise that there is something I should mention. This subject has two origins and two points of view, which might be called the French and the Italian, since the former is represented by Darboux and Cartan, the latter by Ricci and Levi-Civita. The French school developed the geometry, the Italian school the tensor calculus (although Bianchi contributed to both). In some sense, the Italian school "won" because they provided hands-on tools for Einstein to use in his theory of general relativity. The geometric point of view then became a minority interest for over half a century.
Why do I mention this? Well, there already exists an article — covariant derivative (perhaps misleadingly named) — which develops the notion of an affine connection from the tensor calculus point of view, although it still needs a lot of work. One of the main reasons I contributed to affine connection was that the most recent previous edits had put it on a collision course with covariant derivative and a merger was suggested (see the talk page and history of affine connection). Consequently, in my rewrite of the article, I took the point of view that readers might already have met the covariant derivative point of view, and so I tried to introduce them to Cartan's geometric point of view with that in mind.
Affine connection could certainly be made much more accessible, and I'm sure your input will be invaluable, but at first sight, it seems to me that many of the ideas you are developing fit better as (much needed) improvements to the covariant derivative article. I would be happy to join in an effort to improve both articles, but would be sad if the contrast between them was lost. I hope you see where I am coming from here. Geometry guy 02:04, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
PS. I've seen your sandbox is aimed at several articles. I just wanted to mention that another article where you/we could really make a difference is connection (mathematics) which is the lead article in the whole connections category. Geometry guy 02:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
- Bonjour Votre Eminence! :D
- Thanks for putting everything in context for me! I'm still just getting my feet wet, so I'll need a while before things come into focus. I barely understand the Levi-Civita approach now, although I'm beginning to intuit the torsional thing. However, a hundred different narratives and metaphors are already crowding in my brain to explain it to lay-people: "Once upon a time, there were two cousins, Sophie and Anaïs, who loved each other dearly but lived far, far apart..." Perhaps if the Italian school won out, we should call them "Sophia and Anna"? ;) Once I learn a little more, I'll look over the other articles that you mention and try to see how they fit together.
- Can you recommend any good books on the French approach? I've heard of Cartan, but know nothing of his work. I've heard likewise of Darboux, but only remember him from the differential geometry of 3-D curves that I tried to pick up a while ago. It's a beautiful subject; I always wanted to learn more to help me understand my sewing, especially the proper shaping of princess seams. I like their long graceful look, but I have trouble designing such seams from scratch, except by smoothing darts and gores. Please be patient with your benighted Willow 10:57, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
In reply, I should probably ask you to be patient with the whole connections category ;) since it is still in rather a mess, although it has much improved recently thanks to the efforts of User:Fropuff and User:Silly rabbit. As for references, I guess even with your fondness for French, you might not want to tackle Darboux's multivolume Leçons ;) but the book of Sharpe (cited in affine connection) is quite good. Geometry guy 12:04, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks, I'll try to find Sharpe near me. I'll confess, though, that I'm getting a little discouraged. Sometimes I think I understand it, but other times I feel like I'm just fooling myself. There are so many ways of getting to an answer, and most of the books want to do it differently than my pen does. :( Willow 21:33, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Please don't be discouraged! The problem with this stuff is that everyone wants to do it differently. In half a day you already managed to produce a better formulation than the covariant derivative article does! Trust your pen; I'm sure there is a place for all of your thoughts. Geometry guy 22:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for the encouragement, G-guy! I feel like a droopy flower that just got watered. :) It also helps that I think I may have a valid "angelic transport" derivation of parallel transport, although of course there's tons of tweaking and fleshing out to be done. I'll keep plugging away at getting the Big Picture (and the refs for equipartition!) Thanks for all your help, personal and thoughtful, Willow 22:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Plücker coordinates
You added a comment to the talk page of Plücker coordinates saying
- "The role of Plucker coordinates in computer graphics seems to have too much weight here."
That may be your opinion, but by putting it where you did you make it damned awkward to have a discussion about it, so I am removing it and bringing the discussion here for the moment. I scanned the article to see what could possibly have supported it, and found myself baffled. There is a brief mention in the intro, that "[t]hey have proved useful for computer graphics, …" and both "External links" happen to be computer graphics related; but I find nothing in the body of the article. Since I wrote (almost all of) the body of the article, and did so by transcribing material on Grassmann coordinates straight out of Hodge & Pedoe (1994), but specializing it for Plücker line coordinates, I know first-hand that your characterization is not supported by the genesis. Furthermore, robotics was using Plücker coordinates (Mason & Salisbury 1985) long before computer graphics (and continues to), and they are also discussed in contemporary works on Clifford/geometric algebras, and in computational geometry (Stolfi 1991). I happen to think many computer graphics discussions are amateurish, but others insisted on adding the two external links; I'd be satisfied to see them both removed. The use of Plücker coordinates for lines in 3D may be trivial and boring from the view of research mathematics, but it is hardly so for applications. I apologize for handling the case of Plücker coordinates while leaving the greater spread of Grassmann coordinates untouched, but I was tired of wading through index soup, and not ready to write that separate article. And, so far, no one else has written even a stub. --KSmrqT 03:05, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for removing it. You are right. The comment was not well thought out. Geometry guy 06:11, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
- The tough part was finding the comment source! (That subpage inclusion mechanism strikes me as a spectacularly bad idea.) To get some good out of this, I'm removing the entire "External links" section, since I think those links actually detract from the article. The references section already cites better online material, such as Stolfi's work. And I don't say that just because User:Jorge Stolfi is a Wikipedian. ;-) --KSmrqT 09:46, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
- Sorry for any inconvenience and annoyance this caused. I was working through many articles in the geometry and topology field adding ratings and comments (mostly not mine) and made a mistake. I guess I get put off by the index soup that seems to go with this subject as well ;-)
- Anyway, the reason for all this is that there is one very good thing about putting comments in subpages: it allows the automatic generation of the maths rating pages by field: see CMummert's proof of concept demonstration. This is so useful, in my view, that it outweighs the awkwardness of having a subpage. This is being discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Mathematics ratings and tables.
- Meanwhile, I changed the rating and dated it - I think B class is more accurate. Feel free to replace with your own assessment and comments. Geometry guy 12:06, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
Explanation by 141.211... from Talk:Derivative
I think I should give you an explanation, because you haven't seen me before. (Before this, I've mostly stuck to advanced articles like spectral sequence and sheaf (mathematics)—I'm rather proud of those two—and my only serious foray into more elementary topics, Riemann integral, didn't elicit any response.) First, I take the commandment be bold very seriously, and if I want to change something then I change it. If you don't like it, you should be bold and change it yourself. With an article as good as this one I'm changing mainly the exposition, not the content, and that's something that can be tinkered with endlessly. Second, I like my anonymity, and I want to remain anonymous even among Wikipedians. I'm well-aware that you can see my IP address and that an account will bring privileges I don't have. I'm still not getting one. (I seem to be an Exopedian.) I hope that clears things up a little. 141.211.62.20 15:14, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I did visit sheaf (mathematics) a while ago, and think you have reason to be proud! It is a nice piece of work, and the edits I made were all pretty minor. I didn't notice that you were a major contributor, though, so thanks for pointing it out! Geometry guy 16:26, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Re anonymity. You can actually be more anonymous with a user name that without. A user name does not have to tie your to a real world identity. From your IP I can identify which university you're at, and even where you sit. The benefit to us with a user name is that we can link your edits together - ah that's an edit by Mr Secret he generally does good work and not confuse you with a vandal. The benefits to you are you get this thing called a watchlist where you can see the recent changes to articles which you have edited. You can also join Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Participants and discuss things at WT:WPM. Of course you are free to remain an IP if you wish.
- Coupled with WP:BOLD is Wikipedia:Consensus and the need to discuss things on the talk pages. Luckily your edits have all been of high quality so there has been little need for it. --Salix alba (talk) 16:09, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, I know, that's the peculiar thing. I don't understand my desire to do this, but I don't want to have an identity. I want my edits to stand alone, just as edits, without anything to back them up. If they are good, then they'll be accepted, and if they're bad, then they won't be. In particular I want to avoid, "Oh, that edit's by Mr. Know-it-all, it must be good," because everyone makes mistakes. There is a story: Once Alexander Grothendieck and a collaborator were working together on a problem and they got stuck. The collaborator suggested trying a specific example, which required choosing a specific prime number p. Reportedly, Grothendieck said, "How about p = 57?" (You can find the full story by searching Google for "Grothendieck prime".)
- Regarding the user talk page for that IP: I don't care who knows what school I'm at. Anyone can look that up. Regarding the revert of my changes to calculus, it seems like there's room for discussion on the right way of describing things, so I figured I'd wait until people's opinions had settled somewhat. 141.211.62.20 18:04, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I was about to make the same point about anonymity. There is a bot that automatically puts the information about an IP address on anonymous IP talk pages. This has happened at 141.211.120.199. You may wish to remove this.
- I also wanted to remark that it is harder to make bold edits to more elementary and evolved pages because there are many more Wikipedians (often without specialist mathematical expertise) who are watching them, reverting any changes which they consider to be vandalism, or even unhelpful. I think this happened to you at calculus, for example. Geometry guy 16:48, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Manifold
Hello, I've added a couple of things to Manifold and left some comments at the talk page, can you, please, take a look? I know it's all part of your grand plan! Arcfrk 02:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Mistake... maybe?
Take a look at your edit to the discussion page of calculus. You posted in the middle of the WP:M at the top of the page and messed up the box a little bit and you copied almost word for word what was said in the to do list box. Just letting you know. Cronholm144 00:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks. It is a template problem, which we are trying to fix. Geometry guy 05:01, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- The template problem is now fixed. Anyway, I wanted to sign and date the calculus maths rating with a comment (so that it appears here) and your "todo" comment was perfect. I hope you don't mind that I used it. Imitation is...! Geometry guy 12:14, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks and no problem about the copy, frankly I was worried that I had subconsciously copied you after staring at the talk page for too long. I couldn't be more pleased with the welcome I have received here and hope to continue to add constructively wherever I go. I think we are getting close on the article and this, being my first major contribution here, is a very exiting feeling. If you ever want my inexperienced eye on an article your working on don't hesitate to ask. I will always do my best to help. Cronholm144 05:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
VeblenBot's table
I updated the bot's source code to match your changes. The way the bot is implemented, it does not merge the new table into the page, it just overwrites the entire page with the new table (including the noinclude part). So any changes to that page need to be made to the bot source code rather than to the table page itself. CMummert · talk 17:47, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
- I see, thanks! Would it make sense do to what you did with the per-field pages, i.e., generate the table on a subpage of User:VeblenBot, and transclude it from there? Geometry guy 18:10, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Pedantry at the WikiProject Mathematics front page
Pedantry is always welcome! We must put our best foot forward on our project page, after all. If you want extreme pedantry, I would point out that typically there are no spaces surrounding an m-dash—just like in this sentence. Since you've started hanging around here, I've seen a lot of you doing lots of good things. Thanks for being helpful! VectorPosse 00:16, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
- Oh dear, I have put such extra spaces around m-dashes all over the place (I guess I like it that way), but feel free to fix them! Thank you so much for stopping by and for your kind remarks. Geometry guy 00:28, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
- Space around em dashes varies from publisher to publisher (often hair spaces are used). By the way, you should avoid editing other people's spelling in talk page comments - you can edit my spelling all you want, but some people are very touchy about it. [1] The math project page is fair game, though. CMummert · talk 00:44, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, I'm aware of that, but thanks for the link (although I have not so far been overwhelmed with enthusiasm by SMcCandlish's attitude and contributions). I normally only fix the kind of trivial typos that I myself make all the time, but I have been known to fix the occasional very old spelling error (you probably noticed me correcting "coppied" recently). I think if someone gets upset about it long after the event, I can take the flak! I always try to make such edits in good faith, and not in order to criticize the original editor. Geometry guy 01:09, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
- I certainly don't mind if you fix my occasional dyslexia. :) And thanks to CMummert for the clarification about the m-dash. A hair space actually seems more elegant to me than no space at all, so I might start using that if I can figure out how to create a hair space. VectorPosse 03:05, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Mathematicians
I added code to VeblenBot to make the mathematician table. I also made all of the other tables sortable while I was at it. Please let me know if I have left any mistakes. CMummert · talk 14:23, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
- Very good, and thanks for shipping the table header formatting out into templates. This allowed me to make some of the columns unsortable. Since there is no point in sorting comments, I have also (tentatively) moved the field into the comments column in "Table row format long". This may be a bit of a crowded look, but the rowspan = 2 approach meant that neither the article title nor the field could be sorted.
- In general, I think it is a good principle to let VeblenBot concentrate on producing the data and leave page layout and formatting decisions to the Wikipedia 1.0 pages and associated templates. Separating form and content completely however, would require some thought, and quite a bit of work!
- I may temporarily revert the mathematicians page to its previous form, since there is extra information still there that we need to decide whether we want to use.
- Finally, I think the bugbear of the Unassessed-Class has bitten again: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0/Unassessed-Class_mathematics_articles is not detecting the many unassessed mathematician pages that there are now. Geometry guy 15:51, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing that problem out; I changed the unassessed-class handling again and now it appears to work correctly. The problem is that the category is Category:Unassessed mathematics articles instead of Category:Unassessed-Class mathematics articles and so I have to translate back and forth between the category name and the name of the quality grade. Also the category is empty most of the time and so it isn't obvious during testing that there is an error. CMummert · talk 16:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
The mathematicians page was much easier. If there are more changes I need to make for it, please let me know. I didn't know there was an unsortable option, but it makes sense to use it where you did. CMummert · talk 16:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yes the name of the Unassessed category is a real pain! Anyway, we're still not out of the water: VeblenBot is using the wrong header and row format templates for Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0/Unassessed-Class_mathematics_articles although perhaps this will sort itself out at the next auto-update. Geometry guy 17:03, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Theorem article
Hey there! I think you are right, for whatever reasons there is a lack of boldness in editing the Theorem article. Anyway, just a reminder to work on that article, as you instructed on the talk page :-). Whatever you can do to make it better would be great! Kier07 00:01, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
- Many thanks for the reminder and encouragement! If you look at very recent edit history of this talk page, you will probably see that I am already gearing up for this, and also hoping to recruit a friend. Thanks again. Geometry guy 00:20, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Equipartition
As a representative of the educated but not scientifically-trained masses (and an avid reader of popular science books), Willow asked me to look over the equipartition theorem article again for overly obscure language. As I wrote in my earlier peer review, I am not sure that this article is one that anyone will stumble on who doesn't have some mathematical and physical knowledge already (unlike, for example, natural selection), but I do believe that at least the lead of every article should make an attempt to be comprehensible by the non-specialist. I think that the lead for this article has improved, but, to me, the opening paragraph is overly specific (I am thinking here of for example, the average kinetic energy in the translational motion of a molecule should equal the average kinetic energy in its rotational motion). "Translation motion" and "rotational motion" may be obvious terms to physicists and mathematicians, but they were not to me (but perhaps that is just me). I would suggest that every attempt be made in the lead to explain equipartition in simple terms and leave the "meat" for the article. Unfortunately, I understood equipartition not from this article, but from my live-in physics expert who explained it to me after I read the article. There must be some way to convey the gist of equipartition to the non-specialist in this article - perhaps in a separate section? Awadewit Talk 20:04, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
- Many thanks for looking again at this article. It isn't really "under my wing", as Willow suggested: I just made a lot of edits recently, partly (despite my profession) to simplify and reduce the math content. Anyway, I agree entirely with what you say, and essentially all of my edits have been intended to make the article less technical and more accessible. The lead is a bit more accessible now, but (as you say) there is still some way to go, despite the FA status. Do you mind if I copy your comment over to the article talk page? If I make some edits along the lines you have suggested, this might help other editors see where I am coming from. Geometry guy 21:08, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
Copy away - I am on an ongoing quest to make the science articles on wikipedia more accessible to the lay reader; often, I find that science articles, even basic articles such a physics, are written by editors who think that they are addressing broad audiences but the articles end up being written only for highly-educated audiences. By the way, I don't understand the "despite" in your comment - I thought mathematics was all about simplification and reduction. My live-in physics expert is one of those physics people who loves math and he is always trying to explain the wonder of math to me. Just the other day, he showed me some equation that encompassed the entirety of our understanding of electricity and magnetism in it to try and inspire me to learn more math (an ongoing project of his). Awadewit Talk 22:51, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
- A worthy goal indeed! Any thoughts on Adenosine triphosphate or glycolysis? Despite the forbidding names, these are really quite fundamental things (where do we get our energy from?) that are both fascinating and worth knowing about, but I found the articles pretty hard going. The "despite" meant that you might expect a mathematician to add math content, but I am happy that you didn't. It sounds like you have a great physics friend: I suggest you get (if you don't have it already) the T-shirt with the caption "And God said 'dF=0 and d*F=j' and there was light" :) Geometry guy 23:14, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
Wikiaddict?
Hey Geometry Guy, I know that you don't like to brag about your contributions but that won't stop me from bragging for you. In the 4 months you have been here you have logged over 3000 edits with quality ranging from good to brilliant(usually brilliant). Congratulations and thank you for all your hard work and constantly friendly disposition. If I knew how to post barnstars...(maybe later). I laughed out loud at your comment to Oleg "Okay account made, although I don't plan to contribute much at the moment: I just saw an incorrect proof and wanted to patch it up." little did you know ;). Congratulations on being a Wikiaddict, may you continually grace us with your presence here.--Cronholm144 02:38, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for the kind words. Guilty as charged I guess ;) Barnstars are simply templates and are easy to use. The reason this is not obvious is because barnstar templates are usually substituted rather than transcluded and so the simple method for including them gets immediately replaced by the more complicated code of the template. I'm not a big fan of them: I find them a bit formulaic and unattractive, and much prefer a nice personal message like the one you have written. On the other hand, I don't want to declare this a barnstar free zone, because I like visitors to my talk page to express themselves however they wish. Geometry guy 17:48, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
- Why bother with your heathen barn-starthery? We don't have barns in the UK, but rather ol' fashioned farms :-) Instead of barnstarring, why not assign a personal message or invite them into the Knightly order :-) ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ slurp me! 21:41, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Point of tangency
Fixed the image now. ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ slurp me! 19:14, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks Minestrone! And thanks for the accolade too! I hope you don't mind me moving the image further up. I wonder if this would be a good image for calculus or derivative: the tangent sword to the shoulder function? ;) Geometry guy 16:25, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Slight request
If at all possible when editing articles, would you in the future like to contribute towards a *NEW* wikibook on calculus or algebra that is either targeted at particular ages of students, or as an introductory book in non-patronising terms ("Take x bunnies and y foxes")? I'd really like to do one in chemistry (my other love) also, and its an idea for the calculus/algebra just so that the books can be printed very cheaply (< £1 per book) and give a better overview and introduction to the concepts of precalculus and calculus earlier on in the learning curve. Just thought it may be an idea to collaborate asynchronously to a wikibook, whilst editing relevant calculus topics, as it'd be killing two birds with one stone! ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ slurp me! 21:38, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
- Sorry for the slow reply. Encyclopedic articles are different from pedagogical ones, so it is not clear to me how this will work. I am mainly interested in the former, because my work here is meant to be a break from my day job ;) However, if you can find a synergy between WP and some wikibooks, then go for it: everything here is released under the GFDL, including my contributions. Geometry guy 21:53, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Oops
I think that we might be editing at cross purposes, see Abel's theorem talk page history let me know if we can coordinate.--Cronholm144 23:41, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for the warning. I am trying to get ahead of you, so I can just add the template, field and importance, and leave you to make quality judgements. Is that a good way to coordinate? Geometry guy 23:44, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes it is, Thanks so much, I am only as far as Aberth so you are already almost past me.--Cronholm144 23:46, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
P.S. How do you do a double field? (analysis and geometry) for example.
- You can't. Choose one, and mention the other in the comment. Geometry guy 23:51, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Mathematics COTW
I have finished "spamming" every active math contributer I can find, except for you and Willow, I think I will leave her to finish X ray crystallography first though. Here goes ...ctrl V...oops... I am writing you to let you know that the Mathematics Collaboration of the week(soon to "of the month") is getting an overhaul of sorts and I would encourage you to participate in whatever way you can, i.e. nominate an article, contribute to an article, or sign up to be part of the project. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks--Cronholm144 00:33, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Schouten-Nijenhuis/Frolicher-Nijenhius
Yes, thanks. You were right. I was confused. Silly rabbit 03:42, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
- Leaving yet another stub to write... ;) - although this one can usefully be linked from Poisson manifold as well. Geometry guy 04:05, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Minestrone Soup???
I think his account may have been highjacked, look at his latest edits. I don't know who to report this to but I don't think that the person who left those latest comments could possible be him.thanks--Cronholm144 20:05, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
- I see no sign that it is him either, unless he has multiple accounts. I have passed this information on to Oleg, who is an experience admin, and as much my wiki-mentor as I am yours ;) If he doesn't respond fairly soon, I will leave a message on ArnoldReinhold's page advising that Minestrone's account may be compromised. Geometry guy 20:38, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I would hate to lose him as a wikifriend and editor, I have started editing the new list by Oleg. It is very good I am hitting way more B and mid to high class than before, and since there are "only" 600 I think I can actually finish within the week. Oh and I have added about 5 stat articles thus far, all in good condition, except for statistician ironically enough;)--Cronholm144 20:47, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
- Sorry fellows, i think my laptop may have been used as a means of vandalism by a student; i had left my laptop in the office (fortunately locked to the desk), but it appears that someone may have used it. Only just arrived back now, apologies to all. What exactly was done? ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ slurp me! 21:07, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Glad to have you back with us, squire! I think you have addressed all the issues: the miscreant just blanked your user and talk page and left rude messages for ArnoldReinhold, but you know this already from the contribs history of your account. To be on the safe side, please change all your passwords! I will update Oleg. Geometry guy 21:15, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
PS. I had a look at User Talk:ArnoldReinhold to check all is well. Friendly advice: after a mishap, it may be worth being more apologetic, especially in order to build a good wiki-connection to improve Trigonometry. On the other hand, your comment "...due to lack of coffee." left me rolling with laughter! Thank you!
- S'alright. I just finished working on my own little Knightly Equipments, if you want to create your own such page, or if anyone does.. just steal the layout and replace images :-) ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ slurp me! 21:51, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Category:Jewish mathematicians
Categories about Jewish people in various professions (figure skating, mathematics, music, etc.) have been the subject of extensive debate at WP:CFD. As you can see, the categories are treated differently than categories for people of other religions. I almost wonder if the issues related to these categories needs to be decided by the Wikimedia foundation (as is the case for exceptional situations). I myself have little heart to participate in these debates, and I am currently at a conference, so I have not felt like contributing yet.
On a related note, it may be worth renaming Category:Arab mathematicians to indicate to actual nations (such as the Abbasid Caliphate) in which these people were citizens. Otherwise, the category may be interpreted vaguely to include people from many countries and time periods, and it would thus group together people who are only vaguely related to each other outside of mathematics. (I would almost prefer not to group people by nationality as well.) Dr. Submillimeter 08:28, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
"go to another website"
See User Talk:Mhym#"go to another website"
Kind encouragement
Hi Geometry guy,
You're always so good about encouraging me, and kind words are long overdue to you as well. I'm inspired by your steadfast devotion to assessing all the math articles, which are some of Wikipedia's best; it's a worthy Quest for the knightly and wise eminence grise. The mathematics community seems wonderfully active and collaborative, too, much more so than the Physics WikiProject; the occasional rencontre is perhaps a small price for such a community. Bonne chance avec toutes, Willow 12:10, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
- Hey Willow! Thanks for the encouragement. I think I need it more at the CfD for Category:Jewish mathematicians. Rating maths articles is pure joy compared to wading through the quagmire that is categorization by religion, especially when Jewishness is involved. Geometry guy 12:50, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Newton and Leibniz collaboration
Hey Geometry guy, I am just wondering if you had heard the latest news on the Newton Leibniz debate. I have just read a very interesting article entititled When Lions Battle in Math horizons. I encourage you to check it out, since it has completely changed my perspective of the two men, and Bernoulli for that matter. I am very excited about this article, but I don't want to ruin it for you, (I will say that we might have to make some changes to the history sections of Calculus, Newton, and Leibniz.) but I will let you read it yourself [[2]].--Cronholm144 14:43, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
- Brilliantly done! Though I am afraid I smelt the proverbial rat a bit too early on in the article to really appreciate it. Geometry guy 15:05, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Maths rating template
Hello, I was referred to you as the person who might be able to help me with Template:Numbers rating. I based it off your Maths rating template but mine doesn't quite look right. I think I set one of the parameters wrong. If you have time, could you take a look at it? Anton Mravcek 20:33, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
- I worked a lot on the template, but did not produce it. However, what you have here is an html issue: you have replaced an image by text. I suggest you make an image for the number 47, and replace the font tag by the image, as in the maths template. Geometry guy 21:05, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
- Oh, OK. I will make an image, but then I better make it fancy. Thanks for the advice. Anton Mravcek 19:07, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for your concern
Thanks for your concern; he was one of the people who actually got me into teaching, as he actually paid me through university (twice) whilst he worked. I'm not sad of his passing but glad that it was whilst he slept, rather than in some other undignified way. Thanks for your concern :-) ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ slurp me! 08:09, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
To say i'n not a biology man, i've done well with this!
Just wanted to brag about my first-time prowess with Inkscape. Love it! ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ slurp me! 20:03, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
- I'm suitably impressed, so I framed your work of art! Geometry guy 16:37, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Jewish Mathematicians
Thanks for your comments; I'd left Epeefleet a note on the reversal, hoping he'd add his comments without deleting someone elses - it's good of you to do that. This is one that I find hard, because while I am not sure it is a significant intersection I am also not sure there is any other single category in the tree of mathematicians by nationality that is any less significant, and I see value in a comprehensive scheme. With the concept of nationality, I also find it seems to fall apart in your hands as you examine it - what exactly do we mean by nationality, especially in times and places (including contemporary places) where there is not an equivalent to the European nation-state. Also, the nationality categories are fought over - and there's nothing we can do about it, since part of being a nation seems to be claiming a heritage, and it always gets tricky where boundries and languages have shifted. Usually, if I can't find a firm reason to exclude, I err on the side of inclusion and wait to see how things develop. What I'm thinking about now is what you do because of the down-side of ethnic and religious classification when there is overlap between ethnicity, religion, and nationality - should we be more reluctant to categorize universally by nationality? Bottom line, though, I'm tending toward keeping until something shakes out, and am considering sparking a discussion on guidelines that address what we mean by nationality, anyways.A Musing 16:22, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
- I agree with you: the current policy concerning categorization by nationality is underdeveloped and flawed, especially in an historical context. I would welcome a discussion of these guidelines and would be happy to join in such a discussion. All there seems to be is Wikipedia:Categorization of people#By nationality and occupation, which does not define what it means by nationality. In practice what generally happens is that people of the modern era are categorized in an inclusive way, as you suggest, so that a person who was born in X, but mostly worked in Y, then naturalized as a citizen of Z gets all three categories. For people in more historical eras, compromises are made.
- I'm not an expert on this, however. It may be worth talking to User:BrownHairedGirl and User:Dr. Submillimeter: you may not necessarily see eye-to-eye, but my observation is that these people have considerable expertise on the way Wikipedia currently handles categorization issues and why (and they comment on an impressive number of CfDs!). They might at least be able to direct you to relevant previous policy discussions.
- Wikipedia talk:Categorization of people did at least lead me to Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Categorization scheme: Nationality -> Country, so it seems people are beginning to discuss improving the situation. One possibility is to make the classification geographical rather than political. That would reflect what actually happens on the ground for modern era people, and would make some of the historical classifications less awkward.
- Concerning the issue at hand, although you have given me much food for thought, my gut feeling is that a "no consensus" decision at this CfD will do nothing to shake-up the status quo. Within the current guidelines, Category:Jewish mathematicians is anomalous amoung Category:(ethnic/religious group X) (scientific field Y). There are certainly lessons from this CfD that the Mathematics WikiProject can take home, but the project already has a fairly robust categorization scheme which can be informed and improved in the light of this CfD. The best people to categorize mathematician articles are the experts who have worked on them. If instead this category is kept, the people who will suffer will be these mathematics editors, who will have to deal with edit-wars as the category is repopulated, sometimes by non-experts. What will this achieve?
- These experts are not the people we need to draw into the debate on categorization by nationality. Instead we need to hear the voices of those who argue that Jewish categories should not be deleted on the "non-notable intersection by ethnicity or religion" clause. Geometry guy 18:18, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
I generally much prefer to see categories developed by the relevant experts - I've seen a lot of deletion discussions flounder because people with no substantive knowledge were making decisions based on irrelevant criteria. I'm not upset the category is gone, though I found the discussion interesting. By the way, you may find the Wikipedia article on Nationality interesting - because it is just as confused as any other discussion on the topic! I'm trying to haunt a few discussions on CfD on the topic, and not start trying to take positions too hastily. One of the more interesting current discussions is on Category:Fauna of Northern Canada, since it focuses on the use of "by country" categories in the context of biology, where as best I can tell it is even more out of place. It's a related issue.A Musing 00:10, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
- I agree entirely, and thanks for the link. For myself, I don't think I have the energy to follow more CfDs for the time being, but would be interested to hear how your thinking develops. Geometry guy 11:19, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Finally AWB
I finally got AWB and now I can join you in full..., as soon as I finish a rather lengthy paper in real life that I have been neglecting.;)--Cronholm144 21:18, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
- Congratulations Squire, knighthood is but a few thousand clicks away ;) ! Good luck with the paper; I replied more seriously on your talk page. Geometry guy 21:36, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks
Thanks for the quiet fix. It seems no matter how I try, the bug sneaks up and bites. I've even considered switching browsers to see if that might make a difference; maybe Opera would beat it. <:-( --KSmrqT 13:48, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
- You are most welcome. I have been wondering why this particular bug seems to bite you more than others, and it occurred to me that, ironically, it might be because you take extra care to avoid it. While I was doing the fix, I used "Show changes" which I rarely do (I usually use "Show preview") and the wiki-engine suddenly started behaving strangely: I think that this is because "Show changes" reloads the current version of the article, whereas "Show preview" does not. If the article has changed since editing began, the wiki-engine has two "current versions" and gets confused. I may be completely wrong, but it is just a thought. Geometry guy 14:02, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
User name
Do you have a concern people will confuse you with User:Geologyguy?? Georgia guy 21:16, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
- It hasn't happened so far! Do you think we should form a special Geo... guy society? Geometry guy 21:22, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
- How's it going Geography guy? ;-) ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ slurp me! 22:19, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
- Excuse me! Please use my correct title, which is Geodesy guy. I am after all, the shortest path between two points! Geometry guy 22:53, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Brauer's theorem on induced characters
I answered (to some extent) your question about this on its talk page. Messagetolove 23:40, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thank you, I appreciated you quick answer, and commented further there. Geometry guy 00:24, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
I have now done quite a bit of work on the Brauer's theorem on induced characters article, and added a section on induced characters on the Character theory article. Although there is a separate Induced representations article, I felt that it did no harm to do the induced characters for finite groups separately, as the Induced representations were done in greater generality, and extracting the right formulae for group characters in the finite case would take some effort and prior knowledge. Messagetolove 15:34, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
- Great, that is fantastic! I prefer to spend my time improving rather than rating articles, so it is good to see them getting improved while I do this more mundane exercise! I think Brauer's theorem on induced characters is probably still a stub, but is well on its way to start class. I've rated Character theory as start class, but it surely is not far from B. Feel free to change any of these ratings, and thanks again. Geometry guy 17:02, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Haven't got used to this ratings business ( certainly won't get into self-assessment!). Just trying to deal with articles incrementally as I find things I feel I can usefully improve upon and expand, sometimes by an iterative process. Messagetolove 19:58, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello again GG- one day after pompously pronouncing that I would not contemplate self-evaluation, I find myself changing the rating on this page (after some further work)! However, if someone else wants to do further work/cleaning up, I will be only too happy- I will probably go back there myself from time to time, as much more could certainly be done. Seriously, though, I find myself having to re-evaluate how I view good exposition of mathematics in this context- I guess my own view is that if a good idea of the essence, relevance, and context of the subject matter is conveyed in a way which is accessible to someone who is not a complete expert in the exact area, and what is written is accurate (though not necessarily comprehensive enough to reconstruct 'on site' a proof of the result(s) under discussion), then an article has some mathematical value and content. In this context, a 'Stub' rating seems a rather harsh judgement for some current articles ( at least if the 'miserable or no mathematical content' definition is taken literally-of course some articles do fit this description). Messagetolove 16:00, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
- Yes I agree it is start class now. I tend to rate quite strictly because I regard the classification as much a standard to be achieved as it is a description. So for me it is not enough that a stub is no longer miserable, it has to meet the start class standard. I like to think this encourages improvement. Anyway, it seems to have done in this case! Thanks for your efforts. Geometry guy 16:15, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Well,OK, but I guess people who are motivated by a desire to improve mathematical exposition are not going to be driven any harder or faster by a fairly anonyomous rating ( especially if they are in command of the subject matter they are writing about and can change ratings themselves anyway)- I know, I know, you are going to say that my own behaviour contradicts that assertion! I can perhaps imagine that the prospect of GA or FA status might provide an incentive to polish up an already good ( in the informal sense) article. BTW, I was commenting a little more broadly above than just on my own edits. Messagetolove 16:49, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
- There is a quality assurance aspect too (especially for the WP 1.0 CD), but yes, you are right, ratings are not going to change the world! Geometry guy 19:43, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Borromean rings
Why is that of "low" importance? It certainly has a high public-profile among people who have any interest in that area of mathematics at all (without being professional experts in the field) -- not to mention having been used as part of various symbols and emblems for about a millennium annd a half... AnonMoos 03:42, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
- Greetings and thanks for your interest! Feel free to change any ratings you disagree with: this is a wiki after all! However, these ratings are meant to assess the importance etc. of the article from the point of view of the Maths WikiProject, not the general reader. At the moment, it is not completely clear how such importance should be judged, and so I have been adding ratings to lots of articles in a rather rough and ready way. Once we have a more complete coverage, it might be easier to have a discussion about how best to use the importance rating.
- See WT:WPM#As yet to be added mathematics articles for further information about the latest work on the article assessment programme. Geometry guy 04:02, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Your mathematical antithesis
Who do you think is you antithesis in terms of math disciplines, I notice that the Statistics articles are not getting rated as often as Geometry articles, not to say that this is bad but I think that a double pass through the articles with two differing viewpoints could greatly improve the quality of our work in terms of only including the most "important" articles, sort of a check and balance thing--Cronholm144 04:27, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
- I agree that the double pass is very beneficial, but some bias is inevitable, and not necessarily bad: we really need a statistician to go through the list; there is a limit to what we can achieve.
- I am not very good at assessing which applied/discrete/stats articles to include. With applied and discrete, there is often good coverage by the physics or computer science project, so that is not so bad. With probability and statistics, the main problem, however, is that so few articles were assessed before we started. I think I got better at adding these in the B's, where you will be amazed to find that Brownian motion and Bayes' theorem had not been rated!
- Anyway, my feeling is that it is best not to enlarge the coverage too rapidly, but more proportionately. The number of rated probability and statistics articles has doubled since we started! It may be more useful to get the balance/selection right within each field than across fields.
- There's a lot of geometry, analysis and algebra out there, but a lot of the algebra has been rated, so it is perhaps not so surprising that geometry (and topology) and analysis are growing the most. Geometry guy 11:59, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree about not expanding too rapidly, I have lost track of the number of stubs I have added, and these will surely plaugue editors for generations to come.;) I am afraid that some of them will difficult to expand upon. The fact that Antiderivative had no rating is what has shocked me most thus far. Anyway I was just a little worried about accidental bias but you seem to have it under control. I am almost done with the A's, and I am still eagerly awaiting the AWB confirmation/denial, but I guess I will just have to wait and see--Cronholm144 14:19, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
- Keep checking up on me - and don't be afraid to remove the rating from a non-notable and unpromising stub. I think I rated slightly too many A's but then I imposed the 1/3 rule on myself, which helped a bit. Geometry guy 14:27, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Another busy day?
Wow, I see you've had another busy day rating articles GG. I'm impressed. Messagetolove 19:26, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
- Well I figured how to get WP:AWB to make life easy for me by presenting me with the article first and then the talk page. Anyway, I have been trying to be slightly more generous towards stubs than before (but not too much ;) A welcome for you was long overdue, so I have added my personal welcome to the standard template on your talk page. Geometry guy 19:48, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Rating by whom?
See User talk:Edgerck and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive 25#Can people who don't edit under their real name rate articles? Unfortunately the page User talk:Edgerck is operated more like a soapbox than talk, so I had to use the edit history to link the original discussion.
Monte Carlo - top importance?
Hi! I see you rated Monte Carlo method as Top importance in mathematics. I tend to disagree. Don't you think concepts like probability distribution and probability theory (both of which are High importance) are more basic? Putting too many articles in top importance will just cause that category to lose its meaning... --Zvika 17:48, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
- Hi Zvika! Thanks for your interest in rating articles. If you disagree with any rating, feel free to change it: this is a wiki after all. I tend to think of "importance" in context. Thus while motive (algebraic geometry) has a relatively low importance within geometry as a whole, it has a rather high importance within modern algebraic geometry. Still, it may be worth having a discussion about this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics.
- Concerning the case in point, perhaps I overrated Monte Carlo method, but in any case I would be more inclined to uprate at least probability theory, if not both of the other articles. More generally, the field of probability and statistics really needs a champion from the ratings point of view. The currently rated articles are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Probability and statistics. Would you be willing to update the existing ratings, and then maybe extend our coverage? Geometry guy 18:10, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, I don't know if I have the time right now to make some big changes in the ratings of lots of articles. But since you don't object, I might change a few, including Monte Carlo method. --Zvika 19:08, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks. I've rated another couple of probability articles Top importance: Talk:Markov chain and Talk:Ergodic theory. Feel free to fit them into the assessment scheme you are developing for this field. Geometry guy 22:48, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Probability importance ratings
Hi Zvika! Thanks for fixing all those ratings! I'm tempted to uprate Brownian motion again, because although it is not a fundamental concept of probability, it really is very important throughout science, from financial mathematics to statistical physics. But I'm no expert, so I thought I'd mention my reasons here first in case you have comments. Geometry guy 11:29, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
PS. I thought you might like to know that I have started a discussion on importance ratings at WT:WPM.
- Naturally, the rating of any specific article depends on the general guidelines that you are discussing in WT:WPM. But my personal reading of the current rating instructions is that Top-rated articles are only those which are so fundamental to mathematics that excluding them from a mathematical encyclopedia would be outrageous. Brownian motion is of fundamental importance in physics, and indeed it is rated as such by WP:PHYS, but in my view it is less so as a mathematical concept. I think the different ratings of WP:PHYS and WP:WPM capture this nicely. However, clearly you have more experience with this than me, so if you think otherwise, go ahead. --Zvika 12:42, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Ergodic Theory Problem
Hi "Geometry Guy," if you want to know exactly what the problem is that I mentioned on Talk:Ergodic theory, here it is, as suggested by my masters student, who got it from his math professor. Starting with a real number x, let . Consider the sequence . What is the ratio of negative terms in this sequence? We haven't fully worked it out. But if you use , restricted to the interval [0,1], you get that the the ratio of terms that are less than 1/2 is 1/2 with probability 1, but it can be any value between 0 and 1, and it can be undefined. It is very strongly conjectured that the answer for the original problem is of similar form. My student is currently meeting with the math professor tonight to go over the problem. Vegasprof 00:37, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for this, but I couldn't find any reference to a problem on Talk:Ergodic theory, nor do you appear in the edit history: I guess you were editing under an IP address at the time. Anyway, I'm not an expert on ergodic theory, so I doubt I can help: good luck with the problem! Geometry guy 00:43, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
- Oops ... that's because I accidentally didn't save my edit there, so I put it in later. It's there now. I am also not an expert on ergodic theory; in fact, I never used it before until I encountered this problem. I'll add the problem when I get a "Round Tuit." Vegasprof 02:48, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Composition Series
I have had another pass through this article ( I had previously only put in a modules section, and not touched what was written in the group theory part). (Won't always be this quick). Messagetolove 16:57, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
- Great! I was a bit surprised to find the Jordan-Holder theorem is not yet a separate article, though... Geometry guy 17:57, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Gee, you're not an easy person to please!
- Messagetolove 22:41, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
- Was I not pleased enough? :) Well, okay, but you don't have to please me if you don't want ;) Geometry guy 23:22, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I understand this, for sure, and my comment was meant to be somewhat light-hearted. My primary motivation is to improve and extend articles where and when I can, but sometimes one has to accept that the horizon is ever-receding, and hope that others will tend some patches left untreated ( oops, I seem to have mixed a metaphor or two here). Messagetolove 00:26, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, I enjoy our light-hearted banter! You might be pleased to know that I have been correcting some of my harsher judgements at the stub/start borderline this evening. Have fun with our ever receding goals! Geometry guy 00:30, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
Robust criticism
See User talk:Arcfrk#Category vs field for: a well argued but critical view of my thoughts on importance ratings and the discussion at WT:WPM, together with my replies.
Class ratings
In responding to a question about a rating, a point came up that I thought I'd better mention to you before disaster strikes. I have put a fair amount of work into a few articles, and would rate them as A or B+; but if that means you or someone else will submit them for GA or FA status, I would object vehemently. I believe those processes are so badly broken that they do more harm than good, and I would prefer to classify anything I care about as Start-class rather than see that happen. Others in the mathematics community have similar strong objections. Efforts at reform have had little success; our best result so far is our own citation guidelines, which are radically different from the lunacy handed out by GA nuts.
I would rather use a checklist of features that are present ■, absent ■, need improvement ■, or not applicable ■. That would make rating easier, and also better support improvements. The comment system as presently used seems hit-or-miss, sometimes mentioning things to improve but often not. One model is referee reports, which often ask for both binary judgements as well as free-form comments.
Aside: It's a little scary how many mathematics articles we have, and more so how many deserve work. Perhaps we could adapt something like SuggestBot to help editors (e.g., me) cope. --KSmrqT 07:57, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks - I share your some of your misgivings about GA and FA and have no intention of putting forward articles. It is up to contributing editors to make such nominations.
- I think you are a bit harsh on the GA process however: this is just one person, who is not necessarily one of the inline citation nuts. I haven't seen it do that much harm: sometimes an article is rated GA before it deserves it because the reviewer is not qualified enough to spot its defects, othertimes the result is a list of ticks and crosses which editors can follow or ignore as they wish. That's not so damaging. For those who don't like it, we have Bplus, which is pretty much the "mathematicians' GA". And B-class already describes a pretty solid maths article.
- I already expressed my view about FAC and mathematics at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive_24#Wikipedia:Mathematics_Collaboration_of_the_Week. I have had some experience of FAC since then (see Equipartition theorem), but I still believe it is not well adapted to mathematics. This means that, for the time being at least, A-class is the mathematics gold standard. It is meant for articles which are close to FA standard without being dumbed down or splattered with inline citations. An article isn't necessarily A-class because an experienced and highly qualified editor has put a lot of work into it: I recently put a lot of work into Derivative, which somehow achieved GA status when it was still a mess. I think it could be close to A-class now, but I'm not in a hurry to uprate it. We have an in-house peer review process for A-class, so I might give that a shot and see how it works.
- The ratings system is not ideal, but I think we have to make the best of what we have got. Also, comments are hit-and-miss, but please try not to be hard on editors who estimate a rating but leave no comment. I have rated about 1000 articles in the last week or so just to get them on the radar and make the coverage less patchy. I have added a comment where I could, but to do it for all these articles would simply take too long. Geometry guy 08:51, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
curvilinear coordinates
Hi Geometry Guy, of course I know that curvilinear coordinates don't have to be orthogonal. My idea about the merging was to go from the general classic Beltrami form (including metric tensor) of gradient, divergence, etc. to go the the orthogonal form (still containing Lamé factors), to the Euclidean form (unit metric). One would avoid some overlap between the two articles. But avoiding overlap is not really important, that is why I didn't follow up on my suggestion. Cheers, --P.wormer 08:45, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
- Hi, thanks for stopping by, and sorry if the comment sounded a bit blunt: it was just a passing remark as I was adding the maths rating. Anyway, since there no longer appears to be a drive for the merger, I've removed the tag. Also the article seems to have been expanded and cleaned up, so I've removed the other tags, turned the introduction into a lead and upgraded the article to B-class. Geometry guy 12:26, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
Prod tags on little edited articles
Please do not put Prod tags on real math topics because they are stubs that haven't been edited very much. Keep in mind that this reasoning will be "controversial". If you still feel strongly about deletion about this type of article, please take it to AFD in the future. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 08:44, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for rescuing these stubs from deletion. I look forward to you replacing their one line definitions by worthwhile content. However, please do not complain to me for following Wikipedia policies. It is completely unclear that we currently need separate articles on marginal topics such as these, and the articles as they stand are possibly even speedy deletion candidates (I had a similar article speedily deleted at the same time, and my reasoning was accepted). So I believe I kindly gave these articles a stay of execution by only WP:PRODing them: you have challenged my reasoning, which you are entitled to do, and is what WP:PROD is for. Now if I want them deleted I will of course use AfD, but I will continue to use the same reasoning with other articles in the future. Thank you for your concern. Geometry guy 09:03, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
As an illustrative example of the pitfalls of this kind of prod'ding, consider that a very cursory search on Google Scholar on parafree group shows at least half a dozen papers by the famous group theorist Baumslag, one paper by Tim Cochrane in Inventiones, a recent paper by Marc Lackenby (at Oxford). --Chan-Ho (Talk) 08:56, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
- This does not imply that Wikipedia should have a separate article on the topic. Maybe it should, maybe not. Maybe this definition should be covered in a different article. I fail to see any pitfalls in deleting articles with no content. If this really is a worthwhile topic, then at some point, someone will write a worthwhile article on it. Geometry guy 09:03, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
- If I may intrude: I'm not sure what the other PRODs were, but I'm inclined to go "inclusionist" for parafree group. It's often nice to be able to find a definition, even with little else, just so I have a clue about something I'm reading. And for me Chan-Ho's quick discovery of a number of substantial references is an uncomfortable reminder of a recent event in which two non-mathematical editors tagged and deleted (speedied, no less) an article on a major mathematics research center with apparently not even the sense to see from the link cited in the article that it was manifestly notable. And the parafree group article, while stubby, was created with two links (demonstrating relevance) — far better than many stubs.
- When a PROD tag is placed, it is courteous and customary to notify those who have edited the article; but sometimes people are away from Wikipedia for the five days before deletion. So even though it is more of a burden to do a background check, I see here hints (maybe with 20/20 hindsight, admittedly) that we should do so, and ease off the trigger finger a little.
- I am not familiar with editor Vipul, who created the page, but I see evidence on his user page of an above-average interest and expertise in groups. I also see a marked absence of edits since January, so it is quite possible a PROD would be missed. (It appears he is a bright undergraduate from Chennai currently spending two months in an exchange program at the École Normale Supérieure.) And, I'm troubled that I see no courtesy note on his talk page, in case the article is not being actively watched.
- In my experience, editors can get testy about such things (though probably not young Vipul); I think Chan-Ho has given you good advice. --KSmrqT 10:08, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
- If I may interject, WP:DICDEF has a few things to say about this. "Wikipedia should not have single-fact articles." Perhaps the articles should be moved to our sister project and be tweaked to say that a parafree group is a math term that refers to..., or it should be dealt with in the context of a larger article. That is, of course, assuming no one intends to improve the articles past the current one sentence definitions. "Per our Wikipedia:Deletion policy, stubs that cannot possibly be expanded beyond perpetual stub status should be either renamed, merged, or refactored into articles with wider scope, that can be expanded beyond perpetual stub status, or deleted if it cannot be renamed, merged, or refactored."--Cronholm144 10:31, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
- It's impossible to ascertain whether "no one intends..." And it takes a very bold editor to determine that a math stub not in his field of expertise "cannot possibly be expanded beyond perpetual stub status". In any case, it's clear if you look through the topics, that this does not apply. Additionally, expansion, renaming, merging, refactoring, etc. are all options that should be attempted before deleting an article, which really is my point. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 05:11, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
- Hi KSmrq, thanks for stopping by, and even more for fixing parafree group so that the definition can be read without having to guess the meaning of a redlink. I remember well the IMA debacle, but this is nothing similar (the 4 or 5 articles I PRODded are more like an article giving the title of the 18th conference held at the IMA). On the other hand, I agree I should have notified User:Vipul, and perhaps the case for keeping parafree group has been made, although I'm inclined to think it would better be replaced by a redirect to a larger article which gives the definition in context. These issues, however, are not decided by the expertise or sensitivities of contributing editors, but by Wikipedia policies and article content (or lack of it in this case). I can cope with other editors getting testy about my actions.
- Anyway, I am grateful for the advice. I would be interested to know your opinion on projectionless algebra, which was also rescued by Chan-Ho. Created by an anon in 2004, the only substantive edit since has been the addition of the three examples last October. This article is nothing more than a dictionary definition. Keep, or delete? Geometry guy 11:14, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
- Although popups help a lot, mathematics uses vast numbers of terms, more than anyone can know. Even with a working link, it is often practical and considerate to include a brief inline definition. The fact that this one ameliorated a redlink was an extra benefit.
- As to projectionless algebra: I might not PROD it myself; I might mention it on the project page. Here's my thinking.
- One article, noncommutative topology, refers to it.
- Immediately after its creation, Charles Matthews (an experienced mathematician and editor) massaged it slightly rather than deleting.
- For those of us using popups, articles with definitions — even brief ones — are appreciated. The guideline Cronholm144 quotes is often ignored as being inappropriate, both within mathematics and in Wikipedia at large.
- I didn't know that. :( I was attempting to establish a basis for the conversation. However, it looks like I am the one who was misinformed. Does the mathematics wikiproject have a specific policy about stub preservation? A general metric for removal would be helpful, considering the number of articles that are in a similar state as these few we are considering.--Cronholm144 15:32, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
- A Google scholar search gets many hits, suggesting the concept is of active interest.
- However, the term only appears in the context of C∗-algebras, so a merge rather than a deletion may be the best course. We have the good fortune that mathematics seems to attract junk articles quite slowly compared to other subject areas, so we can afford to be more relaxed and leisurely about deletions. --KSmrqT 14:48, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
- I only bothered to do a literature search on parafree group; I didn't simply pick out one out of several I researched. Now that I look at projectionless C*-algebra (the article creator seems to have had trouble with creating titles with math symbols), it seems there is a reasonable amount of literature on constructing examples of particular types and whether certain operations are closed on the class of such algebras. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 05:11, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
- Many thanks for these helpful suggestions. As Cronholm points out, there really are quite a lot of articles out there on quite marginal topics which don't even meet the guidelines for a reasonable stub. This we discovered during maths rating. In particular, a lot of algebra stubs got assessed early on without much regard for whether they were even of Low importance. Geometry guy 15:51, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
- I might point out as well that it much easier to see a stub (even a crappy one) and want to fix it than it is to create a new article from scratch, at least for me. So if our stated goal is to help articles get better, than we should leave stubs that have potential. VectorPosse 19:01, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
- Good, there seems to be some consensus here! Thanks to all for comments. Geometry guy 08:17, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
I have been nominated to be an admin. If you support me, please indicate so on the RFA page. Thank you.
GA review
I spent a while "discussing" that stuff about a year ago. The conclusion I have come to is that the regulars at GA review generally want the "good" articles to be nearly perfect. So there has been a general upward creep in the GA requirements, to the point that there is no difference in practice between the FA and GA requirements. Typically, a proposal to increase the requirements says something like "How can an article be called a good article if ...". Moreover, both of these processes tend to be dominated by people who give excess weight to the presentation (I have seen someone say that an article should not be promoted to FA because there is an en-dash in the title). I think the easiest thing to do is ignore GA until (if and when) it gets revamped. CMummert · talk 16:55, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, I agree. I have left some further comments there to reflect the despair there is about the process, but am not going to waste many energies on this! Geometry guy 16:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
- Are we judging figure skating or decathalon? It is almost impossible to quantify good writing; we know it when we see it, and different editors have different reactions. But we can help editors with more detailed reporting — as in that checklist idea I've mentioned previously, supplemented by free-form comments. --KSmrqT 00:40, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
- Good morning G-guy, do you mind if I copy your comment over to WP:GA's talk page? A similar discussion is going on there--Cronholm144 10:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
- Morning Squire! Actually, I'm just about to copy it over myself. Geometry guy 10:08, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Overdetermined
I rewrote Overdetermined system in my sandbox, but I have run into some problems. My first thought was to ask the creator of the article for help....So here I am. My rewrite is here please tweak the problems you see, but my main question is at the top of the article, once I get my answer I think I can eventually replace the old one. Thanks!--Cronholm144 11:39, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
- Well, I just created the article because overdetermined previously linked to a page dealing with psychology! Then I left it to its fate. I originally intended it to expand on the PDE aspect, but instead the elementary linear equations aspect has been emphasised. I seem to remember Wikipedia having other articles which cover some of this, but I can only find Elementary algebra and System of linear equations right now. Your rewrite has nice pictures, but it is a pity to lose the intersecting hyperplanes entirely.
- A full explanation of the subject requires a bit more linear algebra, in particular, the meaning of linear dependence. In your example 5, the equations 2X-Y+1=0, -2X-Y+1 = 0, X-Y+1=0 are linearly dependent because their is a nontrivial linear dependence relation 3(2X-Y+1) + (-2X-Y+1) - 4 (X-Y+1) = 0, i.e., the vectors (2,-1,1), (-2,-1,1) and (1,-1,1) are linearly dependent. Hence there are only two independent equations (more precisely the span of the equations is two dimensional). Geometry guy 12:11, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank goodness! that helps tremendously (my faith in algebra is restored). As for the hyperplanes, I will add them and the prisms back in. The tone was such ("and this is precisely the overdetermined case." ah, so it is!) that I deleted it while I was rewriting. Thanks as always.--Cronholm144 12:22, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
I just realized that my comment could have come off as rude... I am very sorry. I only meant to imply that thinking in terms of hyperplanes is not as intuitive as the article implies (at least not for the layman or student), I have started incorporating the original text into the article and I think that the difficult ramps up at a more reasonable rate now.--Cronholm144 14:24, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
- Not rude at all! Anyway, I didn't write that bit ;) I would probably drop mention "prisms": this doesn't add much. Geometry guy 14:28, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
WP:GA
No problem. I understand the frustration, because it's hard to find a minimum standard of what is good on Wikipedia because of all the different styles, genres, and policies/guidelines. Plus the actual process itself doesn't help matters. I tried to help with the criteria a couple months ago, and it worked a little bit, but the process still needs a lot of tweaking. — Deckiller 22:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Cantor
Thanks! :-) Ling.Nut 23:06, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Georg Cantor
..thanks for cleaning my dishes for me... I left more requests for help on the article's Talk.. gotta go, at least for today... bye! Ling.Nut 19:24, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for all your work on this. It was a pleasure to tidy a bit after you. I won't investigate the Dauben ref, but maybe an Honourable Squire who yearns for distractions from rating Z-letter maths articles will take it up, who knows? Geometry guy 19:40, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
- OK, I emailed him. Perhaps I get a little too excited sometimes. :-) If he doesn't do it, I'll do it tomorrow or the next day. See ya 'round. Ling.Nut 20:07, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
- I dropped a note on Salix alba's talk page about Cantor, since he nommed it for GA & he's a Math guy (like yourself)... as I said there, if consensus arises to send it to FAC, I hope MATH people will be the one(s) to nominate it... thanks.. Ling.Nut 19:45, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
- Math people are not that popular right now among reviewers! ;) There will be a lot of fact tags, complaints, copyediting requirements, and the article needs some images to make it more appealing. If someone from maths nominates, are you ready to chase after all that stuff with the same dedication you have shown already? If you are, then I may be able to help, especially if I can phone a friend. Geometry guy 19:55, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
- I dropped a note on Salix alba's talk page about Cantor, since he nommed it for GA & he's a Math guy (like yourself)... as I said there, if consensus arises to send it to FAC, I hope MATH people will be the one(s) to nominate it... thanks.. Ling.Nut 19:45, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
(undent) ...not popular among which reviewers? GA obviously (full disclosure: I used to be a GA reviewer & may return some day), but FA as well? Anyhow, I can help some.... Ling.Nut 19:59, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
- Well I don't know how great the overlap is between GA and FA reviewers, but the maths project has never had fantastic relations with these processes, because inline citation using footnotes, as a method of attribution, is totally alien to mathematics, and often regarded with distrust or even contempt. If both Salix Alba and my friend respond, though, we may be able to cross that hurdle. Geometry guy 20:07, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
- I'm a Linguistics guy. I live, breathe, eat and sleep inline cites. :-) If you think Peer Review is better, then go for it.. If you think FAC is cool, then we can git 'r done. Ling.Nut 20:11, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
- Okay, go for FAC, Ling.Nut, while the blood is still hot! Geometry guy 20:16, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Splitting Geometry and Topology
Hi, Geometry Guy. Once again, I want to thank you for all your efforts in this rating project. If it is eventually decided to split Geometry and Topology into two fields, I would ask that you involve me in the process. My expertise is contact and symplectic manifolds, and it is precisely this subject that straddles the line between geometry and topology. So reclassifying articles will be a bit tricky. Case in point: the currect "main" page for symplectic stuff is called Symplectic topology but the contact stuff is at Contact geometry. (Symplectic geometry redirects to Symplectic topology but Contact topology redirects nowhere for now.) This present state of affairs is already a bit problematic, and it will get worse if and when the Geometry and Topology fields are separated. VectorPosse 23:54, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks, that would be great. My current thinking is to go through the current geometry and topology articles replacing the geometry tag by topology only for those articles which are unarguably topology. Then we can see how many articles like this there are, and decide what to do from there. I agree the symplectic stuff is tricky, but this is only about ratings, not about categorization: some topics can be listed under both fields in a similar way to my proposal for information theory articles. In my opinion the most urgent issue in the symplectic category is the fact that symplectic geometry is a redirect! It really has a different flavour/emphasis from symplectic topology, and is an utterly fundamental article as I am sure you agree! Geometry guy 08:26, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
Maths rating
Sorry for the delay - it took me a while to get the code working. You asked about how categories can be used to make tables of article ratings. Here's how.
- Use List of mathematics categories for raw info
- Use programming interfaces to get for each of those a list of the articles directly in it and a list of its subcategories.
- Fetch a list of all rated math articles as well. Limit our attention just to those.
- View the category structure as a directed acyclic graph. Start at each root node and recursively propagate articles from child categories to parent categories.
- Now we have a list for each category of all rated articles in its scope.
- Use these lists to make the field pages. The easiest way is to maintain a list of exactly which categories should have tables generated. Then as some categories get bigger we can add them and if they get too big we replace them with their subcategories.
CMummert · talk 14:03, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
VeblenBot now does topology
The topology page for VeblenBot is now working and will be updated like the rest.
Re your request at VeblenBot/SuggestedImprovements, it won't quite work to leave off the open and closing table syntax because the table of field vs. importance has a very different number of columns than the other two. But if I add some extra "colspan" commands to the narrower table I think that that will work. CMummert · talk 18:02, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks, that is great. Unless I receive any strong objections, I will soon turn off the link to "Geometry and topology" for "Topology" pages, and then it would be a good idea to rename the field "Geometry". Geometry guy 18:31, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thinking more about this, it makes no sense to combine field vs. importance with the other two. Still, it could be combined with the quality vs. importance transpose table. I will update VB/SI. Geometry guy 10:58, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Ratings project
Hi Geometry guy, I've belatedly replied to your encouraging words about my recent mass rating spree on my page (my outlook is a lot darker). Arcfrk 06:58, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
Low?
How did you arrive at the rating you put at Talk:Errors and residuals in statistics? This is an extremely important topic. Michael Hardy 20:53, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
- ... and at talk:polygonal number you said "mid". So that's more important that errors and residuals in statistics? That's a bizarre idea! Michael Hardy 20:55, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
- Maths ratings are not set in stone, and importance is a particularly subjective rating, whose meaning has not yet been fully developed. However, Michael, this is a wiki, which means that the IRL complaint mode is best replaced by the wiki fix-it mode: why not just fix my misjudged first guesses at a rating, and move on from there? I won't be offended: if I disagree, I will revert and then we can go to talk, but that is pretty unlikely, since I still have about 3000 articles to add maths ratings to. Geometry guy 21:06, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
I wasn't offended, but I was surprised. Michael Hardy 22:10, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
- Very good! I hope these ratings will converge through the good work of many editors like yourself. Geometry guy 22:15, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, so topological manifold is more important than errors and residuals in statistics. Why? Michael Hardy 00:29, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks, I've lowered the topological manifold rating. These articles are incomparable and it is useless making such comparisons. They need to be judged in their own context. I agree that topological manifold doesn't add significantly to the general concept of manifold and so a mid importance rating is more appropriate. Geometry guy 00:38, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
tagging Definition as a mathematics article
Hi, I noticed you tagged Definition as a mathematics article. As it stands now, the article says nothing about mathematical use of the term. The article is entirely from the view of logic or philosophy. Could you take a closer look at the article and offer any comments on how the article could be expanded (or whether there should be a separate article). There is already a section called "definitions in mathematics" at Talk:Definition. --Jtir 22:16, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
- Sorry for the slow response: I have added a comment to that section. I suggest growing a section on definitions in mathematics, and only starting a separate article if/when the section becomes too large. Geometry guy 12:41, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
- PS. In case it is not clear, the tagging just means "This article is of interest to the Mathematics WikiProject", it doesn't mean it is being claimed as a "mathematics article".
- Thanks for your comments at Talk:Definition. I don't feel qualified to add a section, so I have solicited comments from Banno and Vesal, although the latter hasn't been very active lately. I take your point re "claims" — yet another reason that these project tags can become contentious. BTW, I only just now noticed your comment that the "Article needs a section on definitions in mathematics!". Having a comments subpage for projects seems redundant with having a talk page. --Jtir 16:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
- This comment is again for the benefit of the Mathematics WikiProject, and is actually transcluded onto lists of rated maths articles so that members of the project can easily find articles to work on. So, on the contrary, it is potentially very useful: it might even attract a maths editor to the page to help write the section! Geometry guy 16:55, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
- OK. I didn't know about the transclusion. --Jtir 17:05, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
- This comment is again for the benefit of the Mathematics WikiProject, and is actually transcluded onto lists of rated maths articles so that members of the project can easily find articles to work on. So, on the contrary, it is potentially very useful: it might even attract a maths editor to the page to help write the section! Geometry guy 16:55, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
statistics
I suggest that if a topic is covered in EVERY course in the statistics curriculum from kindergarten through Ph.D.-level, then it should be considered to be very important. To rate degrees of freedom (statistics) as of "low" importance makes me wonder if you've ever heard of statistics. Michael Hardy 22:28, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
- Where do they teach degrees of freedom (statistics) in kindergarten? --Jtir 16:53, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
peripheral? trivial?
Are you COMPLETELY unaware of the fact that at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Assessment it says "low" means "Subject is peripheral knowledge, possibly trivial"? Michael Hardy 22:41, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
- These descriptors are badly worded and need revision. Wikipedia 1.0 refers instead to the subject as being mainly of "specialist" interest. However, I don't find this descriptor so helpful either. There has been a discussion at WT:WPM about improving the situation, and I have been thinking about it and working on it since then. In the meantime, I have tended to err on the low side if in doubt, because articles are generally getting overrated. In this particular case I made a mistake, as I clearly did (in the other direction) for polygonal number (now fixed). Geometry guy 02:22, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
- Geometry guy, Michael is grumpy with probability 0.5, don't take that too close to heart. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:25, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
- Seems more like 'almost surely', to me. Arcfrk 06:48, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
- Geometry guy, Michael is grumpy with probability 0.5, don't take that too close to heart. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:25, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Equipartition theorem improvement
Geometry guy. Many months ago, I added a link within the Thermodynamic temperature article to the Equipartition theorem article. I found the Equipartition theorem article at the time to be very wanting and tried to make an easy-to-understand first paragraph that was accessible by a wide audience. I immediately caught flack by others. After they were done making their changes, what remained was entirely techno-talk lifted seemingly straight out of an advanced textbook (worthless for Wikipedia's purposes). I just now looked at the article and was amazed at the quality of the article. While you will no doubt claim that you had help from others, I can tell who is largely responsible. The article clearly has benefited from a single good shepherd who has worked hard to produce an outstanding article. Absolutely outstanding work! Greg L (my talk) 22:42, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
- Many many thanks for taking the trouble to come here and express your compliments. I have to say, though, that in many ways I was actually a helper, rather than the helped. It was WillowW who transformed the article of early March into something close to FA standard: she deserves nearly all of the credit. I acted as assistant shepherd during the FAC, partly because, being a mathematician, I wanted to make the maths easier and more accessible, rather than more impressive and forbidding! I imagine you will want to thank Willow personally for her incredible work, but I will certainly pass on to her how much the improvement to this article has been appreciated. From my own point of view, I know I put a lot of work into the article, and am very touched that you have noticed that and commented on it. Thank you, Geometry guy 23:31, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
- Ah, I see. Thanks for correcting me. Still, thanks for all your mathematics contributions; they are seamlessly integrated with the article rather than a separate section and I think that's a great way to do it. I left a message already on WillowW’s talk page. Greg L (my talk) 04:56, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, Willow did most of the maths too, and I agree, it is a great way to do it! I was more like Mr. "Thou shalt not use a single term or concept before it has been explained". ;) I've never put in so much work on one article, but it was great fun! Geometry guy 12:15, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
- Back atcha: Your philosophy of "Thou shalt not use a single math term or concept before it has been explained" is most valuable and has been sorely needed on Wikipedia. I've long suspected that too many contributors just copy and paste from their text books (“look at the kinda of formulas that I can understand!”). What these type of contributors produced was of no use to anyone. The reader who comes to Wikipedia is often drawn by the succinct, pithy introductory opening paragraphs and definitions. These are the type of reader who appreciates having their hand held as one advances deeper into technical articles. Simply having directly copy & pasted formulas barfed onto Wikipedia's pages is of no use to this typical reader, nor is it of any use whatsoever to an expert in the field because they simply go to their favorite reference book(s) for fear that Wikipedia's formulas could be in error. I've also had lengthy text exchanges — and even hour-long phone calls — with math-type contributors and I've found that some can deal with the math at a symbolic level without having a complete, intuitive understanding of the subject matter and what it all means. Explaining math variables and whatnot in a complete and understandable way is tough, double-tough. Thanks. I appreciate your placing the credit where credit is due; WillowW does awesome work. Greg L (my talk) 17:42, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
P.S. On a separate note, I have had nothing to do with the formulas section of the Thermodynamic temperature article; it is beyond my expertise. I have noted that some terms are introduced out of the blue without having been explained. Do you have time to look at it? Greg L (my talk) 00:59, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
small comment
Hi, GG. I am assuming that you, as a Mathematics Professor, understand the point of the problem on the Complete metric spaces page, and that there is a flaw with the argument presented there at present, in that the completeness of the reals is assumed, and therefore the claim that this argument can be used to complete any metric space is fallacious, in that it can't be used to complete the rationals to the reals, as it already assumes completeness of the reals. I really, really don't care that my text was reverted, but, as far as I am concerned, truth is truth in Mathematics, and can't be compromised. I can understand if someone takes the view that the gory details of first completing the reals before completing a general metric space is more detail than needs to be on wp pages, but then some explanation should be given of the points that are being glossed over- a mathematically incorrect and misleading chain of reasoning should not be left to stand unchallenged. You may wish to distance yourself from the discussion, and I wouldn't blame you for adopting that stance, but as far as I am concerned, this is an issue of mathematical fact, not taste or opinion. Messagetolove 23:52, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
- I don't wish to distance myself from this (although, as I say on my user page, my credentials are not relevant, and I am not a horse ;). I agree that it is nice to view the completion of a metric space as a generalization of the completion of the rationals to yield the reals, and so one feels a little bit cheated if the latter is assumed. However, the article is still desperately short, and there are other issues that could be elaborated and clarified as well as this one. That is the approach I would take if I had time to edit this. Good luck! Geometry guy 00:50, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
- OK, thanks. I did not mean that you had extra credentials because
you are a Mathematics Professor, just that I knew for sure you would understand the logical issues. I'm not sure I understand the horse allusion, but it's late- oh, I get it, GG ( but you don't seem to have been cranky about this before, what's made you get the bit between your teeth about the issue now?). Anyway, I have had another attempt at editing the page. I think it is clearer. If this gets reverted, then I guess I will feel that I am wasting my time in this game, which will be a great pity for me, at least. Messagetolove 02:02, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Not far in thought
Hi G-guy,
I've been travelling to see my sister graduate, which has been a lot of fun. I've never actually held an academic hood before today — not very practical, are they? Do you ever put it over your head? I'm planning on taking measurements anyway, so that I can sew regalia for other friends who get their PhD's, maybe even Awadewit, if she'll let me.
Although I'm far from home, and we've been working in distant corners of Wikipedia these past weeks, you're never far from my thoughts. I can't express my thanks enough for your kind and chivalrous words just above; you and Cronholm are indeed cut from a finer cloth. It was tons of fun, wasn't it? I hope we have the pleasure again very soon. Affectionately, Willow 03:35, 5 June 2007 (UTC)