Michael Hardy (talk | contribs) |
m try date-based archives |
||
Line 17: | Line 17: | ||
{{FAQ}} |
{{FAQ}} |
||
{{User:MiszaBot/config |
{{User:MiszaBot/config |
||
|archiveheader = {{ |
|archiveheader = {{Archivemainpage}}{{Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/archivelist}} |
||
|algo = old(10d) |
|algo = old(10d) |
||
|archive = Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive |
|archive = Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/%(year)d/%(monthnameshort)s |
||
}} |
}} |
||
{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/WikiProject used|link=Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-02-21/WikiProject report|writer=[[User:SMasters|SMasters]]|day=21|month=February|year=2011}} |
{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/WikiProject used|link=Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-02-21/WikiProject report|writer=[[User:SMasters|SMasters]]|day=21|month=February|year=2011}} |
Revision as of 17:14, 14 May 2011
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/WikiProject used
Project Euclid identifier?
I notice that several references link to Project Euclid. A bit like how many reference link to Mathematical Reviews. I think we should give Project Euclid its own identifier (and its own article as well) so references can be tidied up like the others.
For example, a citation with a link to Mathematical Reviews like
{{cite journal |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried |year=2008 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics |url=http://www.ams.org/mathscinet-getitem?mr=2413003 |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]] |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828 }}
gets cleaned up to
{{cite journal |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried |year=2008 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]] |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828 |mr=2413003 }}
I think that it would be a good thing to clean up
{{cite journal |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried |year=2008 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics |url=http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.bsl/1208442828 |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]] |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828 }}
to something like
{{cite journal |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried |year=2008 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]] |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828 |euclid=euclid.bsl/1208442828 |mr=2413003 }}
Which would look something like
- Gottwald, Siegfried (2008). "Mathematical fuzzy logics". Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 14 (2): 210–239. doi:10.2178/bsl/1208442828. MR2413003.
. or similar.
I've also made {{Euclid}}, similar to {{MR}} and {{doi}}. Appearance can be tweaked since I've no idea how a link to Project Euclid should be presented. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:59, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
- See a related discussion at Template talk:Citation#Many things about identifiers. I think the distinction between identifiers like MR and doi that have their own parameters and identifiers like {{ECCC}} that do not is the frequency of usage: how many project Euclid references do we have? In any case, it should work to use your Euclid template within the
|id=
field of a citation template. But I'm not sure I see the point when the doi goes to exactly the same place. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:52, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
- Yeah I remember that discussion, I led it :p. But as a point of comparision, There's a bit more than 500 articles with links to the Project Euclid website (524 articles, as of 17 March 2001), well over the threshold for inclusion. However, if these links are truely redundant with DOIs (as in dois will always resolve to the same location), then it would probably be better to convert these urls do DOIs instead of giving them their own identifiers. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:59, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
- Unfortunately I don't think the doi does always work. At least, for example,
works, while the corresponding following the syntax of your example, doi:10.2178/em/1047565447, does not. I agree that standardizing the format of our Project Euclid links would be an improvement. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:17, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
Link presentation
Any feedback on how to present the link though? Like which of pe:euclid.bsl/1208442828 (as the doi) vs. PE euclid.bsl/1208442828 (as most other identifier, but is PE understood to mean Projet Euclid as MR is understood to mean Mathematical Reviews?) vs Project Euclid: euclid.bsl/1208442828 vs... is best? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:36, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Minimization of prefix?
Hi! This is a useful template.
- Nordström, Kenneth (1999). "The life and work of Gustav Elfving". Statistical Science. 14 (2): 174–196. doi:10.1214/ss/1009212244. JSTOR 2676737. MR 1722074. .
{{cite journal}}
: Cite has empty unknown parameters:|1=
,|2=
,|3=
, and|4=
(help); Invalid|ref=harv
(help); Unknown parameter|month=
ignored (help); line feed character in|id=
at position 1093 (help)I would prefer the deletion of the (redundant) prefix "euclid." from the identifier. It would be useful to provide documentation and examples on its use; also, the documentation has 3 levels of parentheses, where I believe 2 are intended. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 13:10, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
- The problem is that "euclid." is part of the identifier, so you can't removed it. You could do something like euclid.ss/1009212244, but that means you input a partial identifier ("ss/1009212244") in the templates, which most people will not do. They will input "euclid.ss/1009212244", and it'll produce euclid.euclid.ss/1009212244, which is both uglier, and gives a bad link to the PE database. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:30, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
Polytope articles
I've raised this issue before, but we have a large number (in the hundreds) of articles on specific polytopes and more are being added all the time. I looked at one of the more dubious ones, Bipentellated 8-simplex, and found no reliable references and it seems to be largely original research. Most of these seem to be the work of a single editor and judging from the red links {e.g. Pentistericated 8-simplex) present on the page it looks like the final tally for these articles could be in the thousands. I find it difficult to believe that the majority of these articles meet the GNG so perhaps there should be a review to decide on a few dozen articles that are worth keeping.--RDBury (talk) 16:42, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
- "Bipentellated" doesn't seem to be a term used outside wikipedia. At least, there are no hits on Google scholar or Google books, and most (all?) of the Google hits seem to be Wikipedia mirrors. Maybe it follows some systematic way of naming these polytopes based on compound words formed from the Greek, but sources that address the subject directly are needed. I think most of these articles should be transwikied to wikibooks if sources cannot be found, since it seems to be clear OR. If anything the nomenclature is very non-standard. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:10, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
- I think some of the glossaries listed in External links section define the terms and the author is applying them to generate the names. If so then these would definitely come under the heading of original research. I'd settle for consolidating the articles since much of their content seems to be boilerplate and the actual information they contain can be summarized in a table entry, assuming that is that the information can be verified.--RDBury (talk) 20:54, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
- Even if we accepted that glossary as reliable, it doesn't seem to support the nomeclature "bipentellated". This seems made up. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:59, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
- I think some of the glossaries listed in External links section define the terms and the author is applying them to generate the names. If so then these would definitely come under the heading of original research. I'd settle for consolidating the articles since much of their content seems to be boilerplate and the actual information they contain can be summarized in a table entry, assuming that is that the information can be verified.--RDBury (talk) 20:54, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
Another popular "word" in all of this business is "bicantellated", which also gets zero Google books and Google scholar hits. The naming conventions in these articles, and the overall program, seems to be inspired by the "uniform polychora project" of Norman Johnson (mathematician) and George Olshevsky, but this project no longer seems to exist. I can't seem to find any published materials from the project that these articles can be sourced to. However, I also feel that a lot of work has gone into making these articles, and that we should make every effort to preserve this content. Even if it is original research, it seems like worthwhile and possibly useful original research. So I think that rather than deleting, all of these articles should be transwikied to WikiBooks. (I assume they allow original research.)
If there is consensus that either deletion or transwiki is appropriate, then I think the next order of business would be to make a list of all of these articles. There are various subcategories and subsubcategories of Category:Polytopes that are populated primarily with these sorts of articles. Does anyone (*cough* Carl *cough*) have a script that will unwrap a few levels of a category into a list? We can then go through this list and strike the ones that are either obviously OK, or ones for which there are good references. The remaining ones can be transwikied or deleted by the appropriate process. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:37, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
- There is Wikipedia:WikiProject Uniform Polytopes that gives some greater context for these articles. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:46, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
- Since language and logic seem to be important to this topic, I thought I would point out that there seems to be a conflation of two issues here.
- One is the introduction of NOR questionable naming associated with well known mathematical operations on hyperdimensional geometric objects. It would seem too broad a brush to simply eliminate pages from WP for want of more common naming schemes. I suggest due diligence by those interested in taking action to understand and correct the specific issues with finer strokes than a house painter.
- The second is the GNG as it pertains to visualizing the many permutations of hyperdimensional geometry. While one might replace all the amazingly beautiful visuals contained herein with a table, I suspect the public would not be well served. Think of the need to stimulate the minds of our youth with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)). Math tables are important, direct, and accurate but tend to be dry. Please consider the right half of the brain when pondering the elimination of these pages - they do provide another way to look at the world to the extent they represent valid geometry.
- Jgmoxness (talk) 16:05, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
- There is quite an active community of people working on these high dimensional polytopes which seem to be a bit outside the mathematical mainstream. Their main communication channel seems to be the polyhedra mailing list and I think there are some meetings. I would suspect the names reflect those of this community rather than one WP editor. As it seems to be outside the mainstream the work tends not to get published in traditional journal sources. So while not strictly "original research" it would still fall under WP:OR unless there are sources we don't know about. I would say wiki-books would be a good solution for much of this material. Anyway I've notified the main author of these pages User:Tomruen and it would be good to wait until we gat a reply from him.--Salix (talk): 17:15, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
- The terminology all comes from Norman Johnson, in the context of uniform polytopes, Coxeter's term for vertex-transitive polytopes with uniform polytope facets. Johnson studied under Coxeter, wrote his dissertation in 1966 on uniform polytopes and honeycombs, and has a long delayed book called Uniform Polytopes on the subject, which has been referenced as an unpublished manuscript, and his terminology used in various polytope sources. The polytopes are named with a prefix notation corresponding to the Coxeter-Dynkin diagram, graphs where each node is a reflection mirror, and each edge is a dihedral angle between the mirrors with a given reflection order. Each Coxeter graph has a set of regular and uniform polytopes by unique permutations of rings around the nodes. So the names are defined by the ring pattern, as well as a t (truncation), notation, like t0 forms a regular polytope (on the linear graph families), t0,1 is truncation (named by Kepler), and Norman named bitruncation for t1,2, Cantellation for t0,2, runcination for t0,3, etc, and mixed term like t0,1,2 is a truncation and a cantellation, so he calls that cantitruncation, etc. So that's where the names come from for uniform polytopes dimension 4 or higher.
- Printed references for these higher polytopes are still rare. George Olshevsky claimed to be the first online reference for the uniform 4-polytopes, and the only printed book which I know that uses the terminology is the 2008 The Symmetries of things by Conway et al. Richard Klitzing has the only online source for higher dimension uniform polytopes, so I've used that as my primary, [1]. He uses an inline (ASCII) Coxeter diagram, which are a bit hard to read, and references the polytopes by Jonathan Bowers, so I've included those names as well, but use Johnson's truncation terminology for the article names.
- My goal was first to get the basic families, summarized in this table Template:Polytopes, listing families by dimension, and the regular polytopes (or end-ringed quasiregular forms for the bifurcating families). I was hoping to at least get the uniform 5-polytopes completed, and didn't expect to expand articles on all the higher ones, since they approximately double on each higher dimension. I have generated the graphs for each family, orthogonal projections in Coxeter planes for each family which have the nice symmetry, and give a chance for visualization of these polytopes.
- Each uniform polytope can be projected in its family Coxeter plane, or any of its subfamilies, so I made tables for each family, and you can see the number of images increases rapidly.
- Simplex: List_of_A5_polytopes, List_of_A6_polytopes, List_of_A7_polytopes, List_of_A8_polytopes
- Hypercube: List_of_B5_polytopes, List_of_B6_polytopes, List_of_B7_polytopes, List_of_B8_polytopes
- Demihypercube: List_of_D5_polytopes, List_of_D6_polytopes, List_of_D7_polytopes, List_of_D8_polytopes
- (subset) En: List_of_E6_polytopes, List_of_E7_polytopes, List_of_E8_polytopes
- All these shapes are well known by Coxeter even 60 years ago, but it wasn't until Johnson that they were named. These are the easy ones since they are defined by symmetry. Harder ones are called non-wythoffian, like the grand antiprism in 4D, found by Conway, and unknown beyond 4D. Also less known are uniform star polytopes with rational-ordered mirrors, like Coxeter's 3D Uniform_star_polyhedrons and regular Kepler-Poinsot_solids. A list of 2000+ are known for 4D, which wikipedia articles haven't touched, and are not published ANYWHERE, but given in Rob Webb's software Stella_(software). The only listing of those wikipedia has (from Stella images) are the 4D regular forms Schläfli–Hess polychoron.
- Anyway, I agree it is hard to defend these on wikipedia, or where to draw a line. As far as I know Norman Johnson (and a few collaborators) are the only ones working on the subject. If it wasn't for wikipedia (seeing the original articles I worked from), I wouldn't have even bothered trying to learn about any of this, since it seemed too hard, and too few resources to help explain what they are. I saw Magnus_Wenninger polyhedron models in the 1990's at a math convention and thought they were beautiful but had no idea before wikipedia before I found out they are mostly "simple things" that look complex! Tom Ruen (talk) 19:00, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
- I think the 'list of' articles could possibly be defended but the individual ones just lack notability. They really should all have been in a wiki of their own. What could possibly be done for the moment is to move the pages to commons and reference them from Wikipedia with 'Wikimedia Commons has media related to: xxx' for each of them. Probably not really a proper long-term solution but it would avoid deleting everything till someone decides they deserve their own place elsewhere along with all the various knots and all the various graphs etc. Dmcq (talk) 19:10, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
- The primary reason I support individual articles for a subset of forms (possibly complete up to 5 or 6 dimensional, and single-ringed forms for 7 or 8), is because of the recursive definition, higher dimensional polytopes are constructed from lower dimensional facets. They might be linked to family tables, but pages load slower and harder to find. Also no singular table can contain all the information. And on notability, many of these polytopes are related to sphere-packings, and kissing numbers of densest packings. So all the uniform polytopes with circumradii as equal to edge lengths are the vertex figures of uniform lattices (or as root systems of infinite Lie groups). I hope to expand those relations at some point. Tom Ruen (talk) 22:35, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well just taking a fairly simple one at random Truncated 5-simplex I'm afraid I just cannot see the notability of that article never mind getting up to the Bipentellated 8-simplex. Lets start with general notability guideline "Significant coverage" means that sources address the subject directly in detail, so no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source materia" So where is the truncated 5-simplex mentioned in respect to anything else except being just one in a list? Is there something saying it specifically occurs in sphere packings or a kissing number of densest packings or a root system of infinite Lie grpoups like yous said they were? Dmcq (talk) 23:48, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
- Nope, you're right on that random example, and no more important than one of its facets, truncated 5-cell, or one of its cells, truncated tetrahedron. (The Stericated_5-simplex#Root_vectors in contrast vertices represent the root vectors of A5, but just a quick reference there.) Probably all but a handful of the uniform polyhedra and polytopes are not defendably notable if you apply strict standards. The Uniform polyhedron compound (which another editor compiled) is largely just a list as well, possibly just overlapping other lists as being stellations as well as compounds. Tom Ruen (talk) 00:11, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well just taking a fairly simple one at random Truncated 5-simplex I'm afraid I just cannot see the notability of that article never mind getting up to the Bipentellated 8-simplex. Lets start with general notability guideline "Significant coverage" means that sources address the subject directly in detail, so no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source materia" So where is the truncated 5-simplex mentioned in respect to anything else except being just one in a list? Is there something saying it specifically occurs in sphere packings or a kissing number of densest packings or a root system of infinite Lie grpoups like yous said they were? Dmcq (talk) 23:48, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
- The primary reason I support individual articles for a subset of forms (possibly complete up to 5 or 6 dimensional, and single-ringed forms for 7 or 8), is because of the recursive definition, higher dimensional polytopes are constructed from lower dimensional facets. They might be linked to family tables, but pages load slower and harder to find. Also no singular table can contain all the information. And on notability, many of these polytopes are related to sphere-packings, and kissing numbers of densest packings. So all the uniform polytopes with circumradii as equal to edge lengths are the vertex figures of uniform lattices (or as root systems of infinite Lie groups). I hope to expand those relations at some point. Tom Ruen (talk) 22:35, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
- My initial thought when I saw this was that someone, somewhere on Wikipedia must have dealt with this somehow before. With a little work I found Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects, which has topical archives on tables of asteroids. With more effort I found that Wikipedia:WikiProject Algae has a large number of articles which seem to have been created by importing parts of AlgaeBase (see for instance Category:Algae genera and Category:Algae stubs). It's not clear to me whether there is a community consensus for articles which can be created essentially by rote and in some cases by machine.
- I think the present situation is partway between the asteroids (where almost all articles were expected to be hard-to-maintain database dumps) and the algae (where I think the long term goal is to eventually add real content to every article). Some of the polytopes are notable and should be kept, but I'm not sure which ones. Ozob (talk) 01:21, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- I think the 'list of' articles could possibly be defended but the individual ones just lack notability. They really should all have been in a wiki of their own. What could possibly be done for the moment is to move the pages to commons and reference them from Wikipedia with 'Wikimedia Commons has media related to: xxx' for each of them. Probably not really a proper long-term solution but it would avoid deleting everything till someone decides they deserve their own place elsewhere along with all the various knots and all the various graphs etc. Dmcq (talk) 19:10, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
- There has been an effort to maintain statistical information by "template databases" (idea started by another user, and continued by me), for example the regular polyhedra at Template:Reg_polyhedra_db (can be converted to/from Excel spreadsheets), and used for stat tables: Template:Reg_polyhedron_stat_table. The databases can be used for different table formats and allow new fields to be added. I did an initial tests for 6-polytopes at Template:Uniform_polypeton_db and tested on Rectified_6-simplex. The main reason I delayed from expanding is deciding how much information to include, so far only included basic summary counts and symbols. I've done the same thing for the solar eclipse articles for 1900-2100, which I hoped would allow a framework for notable past and future eclipses to be expanded. So the same is true for these uniform polytopes. The less notable ones can just have basic information, and the full lists (of the lower dimensional families) allows browsing cross-linked exploration of these beautifully symmetric objects. So far we have mostly Coxeter plane projections which have a number of graphs per polytope, but there's also perspective and stereographic projections that can be added, and too much to be summarized in a single table or article. Tom Ruen (talk) 01:47, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Maybe we can borrow from Wikipedia:Notability (numbers)#Notability of specific individual numbers? If a polytope has three or more unrelated and distinctive properties (e.g. its skeleton is a Cayley graph, it has a record-high genus for its number of faces, stuff like that, not "it is the teratopentellation of the dodecadodecahedron"), if it has obvious cultural significance, or if it is treated individually and nontrivially in published works such as Wells Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry, then we can include it, otherwise not. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- Expressions of notability can end up as original research as much as anything, like the the n-permutohedra (described atTalk:Permutohedron) being clearly related to the omnitruncated n-simplex polytopes, BUT I have no sources that state the connection. Similarly the root vectors of the simple lie groups are drawn in lower dimensions as related to uniform polyhedra, but to my sources its inductive OR to state the uniform polytope connection to higher dimensions. I have limited ability to express these connections, although I have some book sources like Conway's Sphere packing, lattices, and groups, its tough reading. So anyway, for me my strength is merely to express the uniform polytopes as defined by Coxeter and Johnson, construct them computationally, and draw their symmetry projections. I do hope I can understand more in time, but for now their amazing symmetry is what attracts me to showing them. My interest would suppport (1-done) All convex and star uniform polyheda (~75) (2-done) All convex uniform 4-polytopes (~55), (3-done) All nonprismatic uniform 5-polytopes (~105), (4) A subset of convex uniform polytopes from 6,7,8, mainly the smaller ones 1-2 active mirrors, and summary tables of all convex forms. (5) Summary tables for 1-2 ringed forms for 9D, 10D. 9D is a good place to stop with the E8 lattice and the highest uniform hyperbolic honeycomb, and 10D and higher have no new special symmetries. (Although Conway and others would claim still more interest up to 24D!) Tom Ruen (talk) 02:04, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- p.s. Documentable notability within the field of uniform polytopes would mainly come from Coxeter himself, and his historical references of previous discovers, like Ludwig Schläfli and Edmund Hess who identified the (full) list of regular polytopes, and Thorold_Gosset and E._L._Elte who independently described semiregular polytopes by different definitions that eventually Coxeter expanded to the uniform polytope defintion that was complete. Tom Ruen (talk) 02:15, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- I like David Eppstein's suggestion. I have no objection to keeping lists of polytopes up to 9D; you gave a good reason above why 9D is a good place to stop (namely, that's the dimension where E8 appears). I think we should have articles on all the uniform polytopes of dimension less than or equal to 3 (regardless of whether interesting properties can be found), and I could possibly be convinced push that to dimension 4. But all the other polytopes are going to need some interesting properties. (You mentioned Johnson's manuscript Uniform polytopes above. Maybe that has some interesting facts about these objects?) Ozob (talk) 11:13, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- I couldn't disagree more with Ozob. Stopping at 3 is like burning geometry books after Euclid. 4D polychora are merely the beginning of modern geometry. Visualizing as much modern geometry up to E8 is needed to show the public how to percieve something they probably thought was impossible - but there it is! While I understand the debate over OR & GNG as potentially interesting - what POSITIVE purpose is being served by moving these particular articles? Reorganize and rename - YES! Move'em out - NO! Jgmoxness (talk) 13:42, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well, if I recall correctly, we require evidence of notability for numbers outside the range −1 to 101. The first positive integer that doesn't have its own article, however, is 218. All I'm saying is that three or four dimensions should be the limit of where we should accept notability without justification, just like the number 101. I'm confident that there are good reasons to keep most of the polytope articles that have already been created; I just think that those reasons need to be added to the articles. Ozob (talk) 23:57, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- I UNDERSTAND your logic, but disagree with the analogy. It is precisely the value of undersanding how to visualize dimensions greater than 3 (or 4) that MUST be incorporated into the human knowledge base (not relegated to the trash heap of just another number or dimension). Indeed, all of physics may depend on this type of information (up to some dimension much greater than 4 or even 8). So there is your justification! Jgmoxness (talk) 00:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- I still disagree. I would like to hear more opinions. Ozob (talk) 01:39, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- I'm with Ozob on this one. I agree that dimensions greater than 3 or 4 are important. So are numbers greater than 101. But we have to draw the line somewhere—we don't want to see millions of separate articles appearing on either topic. I think Ozob is proposing a reasonable compromise here. We're not proposing mass deletion of a lot of articles, only that each case past a certain point needs to have some individual merit. Jowa fan (talk) 06:53, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- I still disagree. I would like to hear more opinions. Ozob (talk) 01:39, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- I UNDERSTAND your logic, but disagree with the analogy. It is precisely the value of undersanding how to visualize dimensions greater than 3 (or 4) that MUST be incorporated into the human knowledge base (not relegated to the trash heap of just another number or dimension). Indeed, all of physics may depend on this type of information (up to some dimension much greater than 4 or even 8). So there is your justification! Jgmoxness (talk) 00:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well, if I recall correctly, we require evidence of notability for numbers outside the range −1 to 101. The first positive integer that doesn't have its own article, however, is 218. All I'm saying is that three or four dimensions should be the limit of where we should accept notability without justification, just like the number 101. I'm confident that there are good reasons to keep most of the polytope articles that have already been created; I just think that those reasons need to be added to the articles. Ozob (talk) 23:57, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- I couldn't disagree more with Ozob. Stopping at 3 is like burning geometry books after Euclid. 4D polychora are merely the beginning of modern geometry. Visualizing as much modern geometry up to E8 is needed to show the public how to percieve something they probably thought was impossible - but there it is! While I understand the debate over OR & GNG as potentially interesting - what POSITIVE purpose is being served by moving these particular articles? Reorganize and rename - YES! Move'em out - NO! Jgmoxness (talk) 13:42, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- I like David Eppstein's suggestion. I have no objection to keeping lists of polytopes up to 9D; you gave a good reason above why 9D is a good place to stop (namely, that's the dimension where E8 appears). I think we should have articles on all the uniform polytopes of dimension less than or equal to 3 (regardless of whether interesting properties can be found), and I could possibly be convinced push that to dimension 4. But all the other polytopes are going to need some interesting properties. (You mentioned Johnson's manuscript Uniform polytopes above. Maybe that has some interesting facts about these objects?) Ozob (talk) 11:13, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Here's an analogy. The multiplicative inverse is an important operation on numbers, important enough to have its own article. And many small integers are important enough to have their own articles. But we do not have articles on the multiplicative inverses of very many integers — many fewer than the articles on integers. So, truncation is important, and simplices are important, but that doesn't mean we need a separate article on seven dimensional truncated simplices. There just isn't that much to say about them that is different from six dimensional truncated simplices or whatever. The parts that are different (the f-vectors, for instance) can probably just be summarized in a table. I can't think of any justification for having an article on this particular polytope and not having an article on the number 1/21. And I am perfectly happy not having an article on the number 1/21 — there's not much to say about it that wouldn't be in the article 21 (number) — but I think that Truncated 7-simplex is even less worthy. And that's one of the less baroque ones. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:34, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- Agree completely. If somebody wants all that they should set up a separate wiki where they can be looked after properly. If you're willing to have ads Jimbo will give you space free for anything like that at wikia.com for instance. It's the thing to do for knots and graphs and groups and suchlike which can be listed out but aren't in themselves of much note. Want the Alexander polynomial of your knot with 12 crossings?, I don't think Wikipedia is the right place really. Dmcq (talk) 07:20, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- While DMcq might find it difficult to find "much to SAY" about seven dimensional truncated simplices, that doesn't mean there isn't value in showing the patterns emerging from it's geometric permutations (treated together on a page). These are unique and interesting (even to those outside of the math community - the main customer of Wikipedia BTW). I suggest we stop at 8, but using the integer analogy we could stop at 218. For the life of me I can't understand how anyone can see value in a position in a decimal table as more significant for a page than a beautiful set of geometric permutations resulting from hyperdimensional objects. Before proceeding with removing pages, I encourage you to suffer through reading EACH of the integer pages up to 218 - they have a LOT to SAY on those pages!
- Wait- maybe you're right - thus we PROD all the integer pages that don't provide salient info that can't be put in a table. I think above 21 decimal would do it.
- You've (tried) to make a point about GNG, but I suspect there's another bur in your saddles here. Anyone care to talk about it? To quote HAL in 2001 - "What seems to be the problem Dave?"
- BTW - among MANY others who have tried to make legitimate arguments on these math pages, I fully understand that attempts to change the opinions of this collusive gang are hopeless, I just think someone on the planet needs to at least try to right a wrong so at least it is on record what is happening here).Jgmoxness (talk) 13:49, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- What have you got against setting up a separate wiki where the notability guidelines don't matter and where there can be more control so the pages don't just become a burden in the fight against vandalism? There could be any amount of original research and provided it looks reasonable and is mainly okay I'd still be perfectly happy to have pointers to it from Wikipedia. What is this wrong you are talking about? And what kind of a burr do you suspect? Dmcq (talk) 14:19, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- I think it sounds like an excellent idea. I know that this is our default attitude when someone posts "junk" to Wikipedia, but in this case I genuinely believe that this is a worthwhile project that should be continued. However, it just doesn't seem to be a project consistent with our mission here. I'd help in any way I can to make this a viable project elsewhere, perhaps on another Wikimedia site. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:44, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- Ugh. I can defend facts, but not value. I did consider putting content on higher polytopes on Wikia or Citizendium, but immediately felt frustrated that hundreds of wiki hyperlinks suddenly go nowhere, or have to be converted to web links, or have article contents completely duplicated in the other wiki, and then have two independent, nearly identical copies to be kept updated. The BEST solution from my side would be if a large set of geometry articles and images from wikipedia could be copied to wikia. At least then I'm at ground zero on a parallel source. But then there's still the question what should stay. And as soon as you draw a line, you're taking out something someone cares about, and blocking interest in future improvement, and reducing the number of eyes to keep the vandalism out. Tom Ruen (talk) 21:33, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- Tom, this is not about the burden of vandalism. I doubt there will ever be undue burden on anyone interested in polytopes WRT vandalism (unless you try to add a visual to the tesseract page that Dmcq doesn't like). What I don't understand is how the logic defending moving these articles based on integer pages up to 218 defends the original premise that these need to be moved at dimension 3 or 4. In fact, this analog supplied to defend removal is in fact an argument that supports MY argument. I would like someone to actually address my questions rather than ignore them.
- No one on this forum is arguing for PROD of 218_(number) (which if you notice is misdirected to 210_(number) - now THERE is a mess that we should WORRY about. But NOooo! We are worrying about polytopes and not integer pages!). Why NOT? Please read it and tell me why this polytope movement is more important to act on than that! The info is certainly able to be put into a table (except I see NO interesting visuals WRT the number 218 decimal or any other for that matter). I don't get it. Why this? Why now? Even IF the GNG argument were valid (which I don't concede), it can't explain this prejudicial analog with integer pages. Call me cynical - but somebody has a bone to pick with new and interesting polytope visualizations. Jealousy?, NIH?, academic arrogance or pride?, not sure.... it sure isn't embedded in any logic being provided thus far. I hope this answers Dmcq's questions on what is wrong and what the possible bur is - I can't make it any clearer than that (sorry, I don't have an equation for it). Jgmoxness (talk) 01:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for that, I see you were trying to stick some animations into the tesseract article and I objected. People can read Talk:Tesseract#New Animations themselves and have a look at what you were trying to do and judge for themselves. The number 218 redirects to 210 because 210 has a short bit about 218, 218 was not judged to have enough in it to justify having its own article. The online encyclopaedia of integer sequences is a good example of a site that provides a good service but Wikipedia should only have that tiny proportion of the sequences described there that pass notability guidelines. Dmcq (talk) 08:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- I don't think we are all successfully communicating. Let me ask a question: Can anyone name one higher-dimensional polytope with one property that is not shared by other polytopes of the same dimension? For example, "This polytope has the smallest number of vertices of any polytope with this symmetry group," or "This polytope has the largest number of cells of any self-dual polytope of this dimension." These are the kinds of properties I'm talking about. The existence of interesting properties is why we keep the numbers 102–217. We don't have a separate article on 218 because there isn't much to say about it. I am sure there are interesting things to say about regular and uniform polytopes. Before continuing this discussion I would like to know what some of those interesting things are. Ozob (talk) 10:43, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- Ozob, most of the integer properties you suggest are valid GNG are not mathematical properties. They are mostly rather meaningless correlations (which could be found via search). That is a very low bar for the precedent of GNG. I would imagine it should be easy to find similar (rather meaningless but true) idiosynchracies in polytopes up to order 8. Let's try. If not, each removal shoud follow proper procedure and get consensus individually before moving or removal. Have fun! As for the opinion of Dmcq and his meat puppet minions, you can see I tried and failed to sway their consensus OPINION. You can find the animation living on the 24-cell page (as the Tesseract is embedded in it). Jgmoxness (talk) 13:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- I would like time given for the articles to be given a proper home and I do not intend to immediately stick AfD's on them. I would have already done so if I had though that was best. However if there is no intention of moving them and just this idea that each deletion will be resisted then I will start sticking AfDs onto them. What is it to be? Dmcq (talk) 15:45, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- I agree that this is a low bar. It ought to be a low bar. Honestly, I want most of the polytope articles to stay, but notability is policy. It is not something we can forget about when we find a topic interesting. So yes, please find similar meaningless but true idiosyncrasies about each of the polytopes up to dimension eight. Then they will meet the GNG. If there is a polytope where nobody is able to do that, then that polytope would appear to be not notable and its article ought to be deleted. Ozob (talk) 22:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- Ozob, most of the integer properties you suggest are valid GNG are not mathematical properties. They are mostly rather meaningless correlations (which could be found via search). That is a very low bar for the precedent of GNG. I would imagine it should be easy to find similar (rather meaningless but true) idiosynchracies in polytopes up to order 8. Let's try. If not, each removal shoud follow proper procedure and get consensus individually before moving or removal. Have fun! As for the opinion of Dmcq and his meat puppet minions, you can see I tried and failed to sway their consensus OPINION. You can find the animation living on the 24-cell page (as the Tesseract is embedded in it). Jgmoxness (talk) 13:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- I don't think we are all successfully communicating. Let me ask a question: Can anyone name one higher-dimensional polytope with one property that is not shared by other polytopes of the same dimension? For example, "This polytope has the smallest number of vertices of any polytope with this symmetry group," or "This polytope has the largest number of cells of any self-dual polytope of this dimension." These are the kinds of properties I'm talking about. The existence of interesting properties is why we keep the numbers 102–217. We don't have a separate article on 218 because there isn't much to say about it. I am sure there are interesting things to say about regular and uniform polytopes. Before continuing this discussion I would like to know what some of those interesting things are. Ozob (talk) 10:43, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for that, I see you were trying to stick some animations into the tesseract article and I objected. People can read Talk:Tesseract#New Animations themselves and have a look at what you were trying to do and judge for themselves. The number 218 redirects to 210 because 210 has a short bit about 218, 218 was not judged to have enough in it to justify having its own article. The online encyclopaedia of integer sequences is a good example of a site that provides a good service but Wikipedia should only have that tiny proportion of the sequences described there that pass notability guidelines. Dmcq (talk) 08:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- I can't support any deletion (or moving) unless all the polyhedral geometry articles are treated as a whole and clear standards are defined for which are allowed individual articles. You can say "things that are a part of a class" should be listed in collective articles. That might be easy, but ultimately there's no easy "notability" for any specific polyhedron/polytope to have its own article. Take for example, Coxeter's icosidodecadodecahedron - the only thing in this article that's not in the larger list List of uniform polyhedra is the related polyhedron section which cross links to other polyhedra and compounds which share the same vertex arrangement. If you take away the individual articles, there's no space for comparisons. I just don't see any clear distinction to say 27 of 76 uniform polytopes are notable and the other 49 are not. For me, they are a set, and if ONE of the set is not notable, then none of them are notable individually. Tom Ruen (talk) 20:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- It is in the list List of uniform polyhedra. You can sort the tables by clicking the title at the top of a column and that will bring all the entries with an attribute the same together so if there is something that collects a bunch of things together they can have the same identifier in some column. Dmcq (talk) 20:50, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
If we're going to start deleting/moving, let's start from the bottom and plan comprehensively! Here's a bunch of categories on polyhedra alone: Some are "finite sets" and some are open-ended sets. Should all 75 of the uniform compounds, compiled from a single paper be included? Should all 92 Johnson solids have their own articles, again, compiled from a single paper that enumerated them. Should all 53 nonregular star uniform polyhedra be included?
- Category:Polyhedra ~189 articles, mixed polyhedra and related articles
- Category:Catalan_solids - 13 of 13 models
- Category:Archimedean_solids - 13 of 13 models
- Category:Johnson_solids - 92 of 92 polyhedra
- Category:Polyhedral_stellation - 15 of ??? stellations
- Category:Polyhedral_compounds - 75 of 75 uniform models
- Category:Uniform_polyhedra ~50(?) of 53 star uniform polyhedra (Cat not used on all apparently)
- How about adding a Category:Polytopes to be moved? Maybe a bot can be created that can download them for moving before deleting? Tom Ruen (talk) 03:44, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
At this stage I would leave the three dimensional ones its more the higher dimensional polytopes which are in question.
- Category:Polychora (3 C, 101 P)
- Category:Honeycombs (geometry) (1 C, 57 P)
- Category:Space-filling polyhedra (15 P) - 3D models again so keep
- Category:Polychoral image (83 F) - keep if used
- Category:Polychora stubs (66 P) - all of these exist in parent categories
- Category:Honeycombs (geometry) (1 C, 57 P)
- Category:5-polytopes (67 P)
- Category:6-polytopes (60 P)
- Category:7-polytopes (91 P)
- Category:8-polytopes (43 P)
- Category:9-polytopes (11 P)
- Category:10-polytopes (6 P)
From these the definite keeps are the various lists
- Polychoron - Schläfli–Hess polychoron - Convex regular 4-polytope - Uniform polychoron
- 5-polytope - List of A5 polytopes - List of B5 polytopes - List of D5 polytopes - Uniform polyteron
- 6-polytope - List of A6 polytopes - List of B6 polytopes - List of D6 polytopes - List of E6 polytopes - Uniform polypeton
- List of A7 polytopes - List of B7 polytopes - List of D7 polytopes - List of E7 polytopes - Uniform polyexon
- List of A8 polytopes - List of B8 polytopes - List of D8 polytopes - List of E8 polytopes - Uniform polyzetton
- Uniform polyyotton
- Uniform polyxennon (someone above suggested we stop at 9D)
Also of greater significance seem to be those mentioned in Template:Polytopes which are the "Fundamental convex regular and uniform polytopes in dimensions 2–10"
- 5-cell - 16-cell - Tesseract - Demitesseract - 24-cell - 120-cell - 600-cell
- 5-simplex - 5-orthoplex - 5-cube - 5-demicube
- 6-simplex - 6-orthoplex - 6-cube - 6-demicube - 1_22_polytope - 1_22_polytope - 2_21_polytope
- 7-simplex - 7-orthoplex - 7-cube - 7-demicube - 1_32_polytope - 2_31_polytope - 3_21_polytope
- 8-simplex - 8-orthoplex - 8-cube - 8-demicube -1_42_polytope - 2_41_polytope - 4_21_polytope
- 9-simplex - 9-orthoplex - 9-cube - 9-demicube
- Uniform 10-polytope - 10-simplex - 10-orthoplex - 10-cube - 10-demicube
- n-simplex
The various honeycombs seem to be of some significance including:
- 3D/4D: cubic honeycomb, alternated cubic honeycomb, quarter cubic honeycomb...
- 4D/5D: tesseractic honeycomb, demitesseractic honeycomb, pentachoric-dispentachoric honeycomb
- 5D/6D: penteractic honeycomb, demipenteractic honeycomb, Hexateric-dishexateric honeycomb
- 6D/7D: hexeractic honeycomb, demihexeractic honeycomb, 2 22 honeycomb
- 7D/8D: hepteractic honeycomb, demihepteractic honeycomb, 3 31 honeycomb, 1 33 honeycomb
- 8D/9D: octeractic honeycomb - demiocteractic honeycomb - 5_21_honeycomb - 2_51_honeycomb - 1_52_honeycomb
- 9D/10D: 6_21_honeycomb - 2_61_honeycomb - 1_62_honeycomb
Beyond that I don't know enough about the subject to know which ones deserve special pleading.--Salix (talk): 06:45, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- (I added most the other primary honeycombs above.) Tom Ruen (talk) 07:20, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- Here's another question. One of the ways we establish notability of a number is if there have been published papers about it. Which of the polytopes (or classes of polytopes) not listed above has gotten a lot of research interest? Ozob (talk) 11:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- Ozob, that should probably read "any research interest". I would ask it differently- what pages contain ANY references in ANY published research. Upon finding those pages that don't meet that criteria, look for unique statistical or coincidental correlations that relate to unique patterns. (e.g. ...is the only xxx to contain yy vertices with zz overlaps in the bb projection basis). This answer is certainly above the low bar precedent example in the 213_number where the only notability is listed below:
- Area code 213 is one of the first three area codes created in California. This was the primary telephone area code for Los Angeles County, California during the 1960s and 1970s. Eventually it would be reduced in size mostly to cover the downtown area of the city of Los Angeles. See also 818, 714.
- 213 Lilaea is a main belt asteroid.
- 213 was the name of a hip hop group, active 1990-2004.
- ...
- If no unique correlations such as these can be found to exist - then move it out. Jgmoxness (talk) 15:16, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- OK then, any research interest. Please, show me even a coincidence involving these objects. Ozob (talk) 17:56, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- As in the 213_number example, where its GNG stems from the number showing up as a unique and verifiable enumerated NAME of a member of a set- the main asteroid belt (or is a verifiable member of the set of first LA area codes). So taking Dmcq's proposed example for lack of notability using the same low bar, the Truncated 5-simplex, one can easily demonstrate it as being a unique and verifiable member of a set:
- a truncated 5-simplex is THE ONLY uniform 5-polytope with 30 vertices,...
- Even more interesting, it shows up in the abstract of published research [2]
- Jgmoxness (talk) 18:48, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- p.s. On that paper, and a similar one,[3], looks a truncated k-simplex lattice is like the quarter cubic honeycomb of 3D (k=3), with cyclic A~k-1 Coxeter group symmetry, with two adjacent rings, a honeycomb with k-simplex, truncated k-simplex, and bitruncated k-simplex facets. (Not currently listed!) Note: I'm not 100% sure how a lattice is defined, but it seems to be more a set of points in space, while a honeycomb is defined by the convex regions (as polytopes) between the lattice points. Tom Ruen (talk) 19:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- OK then, any research interest. Please, show me even a coincidence involving these objects. Ozob (talk) 17:56, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- Ozob, that should probably read "any research interest". I would ask it differently- what pages contain ANY references in ANY published research. Upon finding those pages that don't meet that criteria, look for unique statistical or coincidental correlations that relate to unique patterns. (e.g. ...is the only xxx to contain yy vertices with zz overlaps in the bb projection basis). This answer is certainly above the low bar precedent example in the 213_number where the only notability is listed below:
- Here's another question. One of the ways we establish notability of a number is if there have been published papers about it. Which of the polytopes (or classes of polytopes) not listed above has gotten a lot of research interest? Ozob (talk) 11:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- WP:OTHERSTUFF is no argument for keeping something, that would just lead to Wikipedia being a dumping ground for the most useless of trivia as everyone thinks theirs is more interesting. If somebody wants to stick an AfD on 213 please feel free to go ahead, I'll just sit on the sideline for that as for instance I can see that 213 is the 9th entry in Levine's sequence which grows especially fast and is mentioned in My Favorite Integer Sequences by Sloane [www2.research.att.com/~njas/doc/sg.pdf]. And for the numerologists 213 is one of the six different permutations of 1 2 3 which also sums to six and multiplies to six so giving the number of the beast :) Personally I feel it should just have been stuck into 210 like 218 was and there should be citations anyway. What should be done is what Tom Ruen is trying to do which is to find some decent reason for keeping separate articles complete with citations. Personally I'm happy with all the list of type article for starters. Dmcq (talk) 09:44, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
What about merging rather than deleting? For example merge the content of Bipentellated 8-simplex into 8-simplex, rather than simply deleting it. In order to prevent the article from becoming too long, tables such as Bipentellated 8-simplex#Related polytopes could be made collapsible. Of course citations directly describing these polytopes would be needed such that no original research is required to extract the presented information. For example, there should be a source that calls the Bipentellated 8-simplex by this name, otherwise the most common name used by the sources should be used I think. As I don't have access to most of the references used in the Polytope articles, unfortunately I could not help with that. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 14:48, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
- There is already a partial merge, List of A8 polytopes does contain some details of Bipentellated 8-simplex which shows its Coxeter diagram and orthogonal projections. The only information which is not in the list are the number of faces and edges and the coordinates of the vertices, an a couple of lines in the intro which state a few properties.--Salix (talk): 15:24, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
- I also considered merging, but as the 8D families show, the amount of uniformation, numbers and images, becomes too large. You could make groups B8 uniform polytopes (quasiregular), B8 uniform polytopes (truncations), B8 uniform polytopes (cantellations), B8 uniform polytopes (runcinations), B8 uniform polytopes (sterications), and have one section per polytope, each of which could have tables and larger images, BUT it only reduces the number of articles, but a huge cost of making it slower to download articles AND loading images that won't even be looked at.
- On the issue of notability per article, that's why I went down to polyhedra for consideration. Like the 75 uniform compounds, from ONE paper, with no other references and individual articles for all. Like Compound_of_twelve_pentagrammic_crossed_antiprisms_with_rotational_freedom. That's a nice descriptive article title, but is it notable? Most are tiny stub articles. A few have interesting information that relates them to others, and some have coordinates.
- I suppose one measure for notability is cross-referencability. If an article is only linked to the source list (like most or all of the uniform compounds), then its not defendable. BUT then we have shared properties between the compounds and stars, and they ARE cross referenced, and its annoying to cross reference from one huge table to another huge table, and just see tiny images in each. An
- Similarly for the Johnson solids, 92 polyhedra, again, all compiled from a single paper, and all have individual articles. Perhaps 20% of them might be cross-linked, and the other 80% are only referenced from the original list. But some articles have unique information (like coordinates) that can't be put into a simple table, so that might be "appended" to sections after a summary table, with an anchor link in the table. BUT if this approach is done, if the "nonnotable 80%" are deleted, some one in the future is going to get the great idea to expand them all back out as articles, or one favorite that looks pretty, so how is this process managed?
- On uniform polytopes, if the Johnson truncation prefixed names are not notable like, Bipentellated 8-simplex, we could use Coxeter's truncation notation t1,6 8-simplex, or Conway's ambo notation 1,6-ambo 8-simplex. At least the number notations make it clear they are apart of a numeric sequence. Whatever the naming convention, they all map back to ringed Coxeter diagrams which are graphical in nature and can't easily be made as names. Tom Ruen (talk) 20:57, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
Two envelopes problem, two children problem
Having fought for two years on the Monty Hall problem, almost getting banned from wikipedia for OR and COI, I am looking for a new brawl, and am getting stuck into the two envelopes problem. Have been accused of gross arrogance and incivility within one day (practice makes perfect! I didn't want to waste time with ritual dances but went straight to the nitty gritty). There is a big problem with that page, that a lot of people have been writing up their own common sense solutions (both sensical and nonsensical) but almost no one actually reads the sources. I just wrote up two mainsteam solutions to two main variants of the two envelopes problem, both "out of my head", ie without reliable sources. (Very evil, very un-wikipedian). After all, I have been talking about these problems with professional friends for close on fourty years now, and setting them as exam questions, talking about them with students, without ever actually carefully reading published literature on the problems.
Maybe some of you folk here can get access to some of those papers in journals where you have to pay a big tax to the publishing company before you can actually read the pdf. That would be useful.
Looks like the two children problem is equally much a mess.
Of course I could be completely wrong that what I think are the solutions to the two main variants of the two envelopes problem are indeed the solutions, or for that matter, are correct at all... Richard Gill (talk) 08:14, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- Someone made the links. The latest contributions to the Talk page for two envelopes problem are mostly by me. And two of the sections of the page itself were hurriedly and entirely written purely as uncited "own research" by me: [4], [5].
- Well: I think I report the accepted wisdom / folklore in my community. What does the community think? What are the good references? Richard Gill (talk) 13:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- It may be useful to compare and contrast the featured article (already seven years ago!) "Infinite monkey theorem". Which articles on puzzles, etc, may accomplish what that one does? and why not ;-)
- I have posted some long comments related to Richard Gill's enterprise at Wikipedia talk: WikiProject Statistics#Two envelopes problem, two children problem, where he posted in duplicate this morning, and some more at Talk: Two envelopes problem#Lead thoughts.--P64 (talk) 20:01, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well: I think I report the accepted wisdom / folklore in my community. What does the community think? What are the good references? Richard Gill (talk) 13:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- I have collected my thinkings on the two envelopes problem on my Talk page at [6]. This must all be known. References??? Richard Gill (talk) 14:52, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
Boubaker Polynomials (Summary)
From the three pages: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Boubaker_polynomials, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boubaker polynomials (2nd nomination), and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boubaker polynomials (3rd nomination) it seems that two facts are admitted by everyone :
- The main criticism was initially about Notabilty and references, nothing more.
- The debate deviated to Editing Wars, some nonsense vandalism and odd behaviour.
Now the matter is neither the correctness; nor the mathematical value, these are problems of specialist as discussed in the accessible and verifiable academic refernces i.e. Meixner-Type Results for Riordan Arrays and Associated Integer Sequences, Chapter 6: The Boubaker polynomials (by Paul Barry, Aoife Hennessy and Modelling Nonlinear Bivariate Dependence Using the Boubaker polynomials (by E. Gargouri-Ellouze, N. Sher Akbar, S. Nadeem)... The real matter is about notability, which is quite admitted by the 3680 hits there [7]adn 163 there Scholar Publications along with the academic and encyclopedic publications. So please give your opinion on this particular question: Notable or Not-Notable. Thanks Rirunmot (talk) 19:03, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- My feeling is that, per WP:NPOV, an accurate article on the Boubaker polynomials would have to start out as saying something like "The Boubaker polynomials are a sequence of polynomials, a trivial variant of the Chebyshev polynomials, which due to relentless self-promotion by Boubaker and his colleagues have taken on an alternative name." Can we find adequate sourcing to support language like that? If not, then perhaps in the interest of primum non nocere we should say nothing at all. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:33, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- I disagree. We can note that all the references which claim mathematical value are by B, and note that it doesn't have mathematical value. That doesn't mean we can't have an article, but it should note both that there is no established mathematical value and that it's a trivial variant of the Chebyshev polynomials. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:51, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- I disagree too. I spent a lot of time on the references... Saying (as per the message of Arthur Rubin) that the refernces are from B or X is quite nonsence because the provided references are REACHABLE, and Simply VERIFIABLE even by a 7-years kid...So the single question is Notable or not Notable, it is not the standard of WP to state on Value or link to Chebyshev, this is up to specialists in the academic arenaRirunmot (talk) 21:07, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- For notability, we would need, at the least, evidence that someone other than B was using the term. No such evidence has been presented. Even if some "evidence" were presented that others were using it, due to B's known use of pseudonyms in publications, we would have difficulty verifying that, unless it was used by a well-known mathematician. But I don't agree that notability is enough. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:06, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- I didn't say the references to B or X are nonsense. I said that they are evidence of non-notability, and are not evidence of established mathematical value. If they are published in real peer-reviewed journals, that still doesn't provide evidence of notability or relevance to any real field of mathematics, only of accuracy. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:14, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- I disagree too. I spent a lot of time on the references... Saying (as per the message of Arthur Rubin) that the refernces are from B or X is quite nonsence because the provided references are REACHABLE, and Simply VERIFIABLE even by a 7-years kid...So the single question is Notable or not Notable, it is not the standard of WP to state on Value or link to Chebyshev, this is up to specialists in the academic arenaRirunmot (talk) 21:07, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- There is a terrible error!! In the proposed page there is no mention about any particular relevance to any real field of mathematics !!! , just the simple (referred) sentence :
- The Boubaker polynomials have yielded several integer sequences in the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS). They have been widely used in several applied physics fields as Cryogenics, Biology,System Dynamics ,NonLinear Processes,Approximation Theory ,Thermodynamics, Mechanics,Hydrology , Molecular Dynamics ,Thermo-Physics , Manifolds , Functional Analysis... ,
- So they seem to be multi-field items, no problem with relevance ...
- About Notability, Arthur Rubin seems not interested in verifying the references,let's help him, i.e. ref 8 [8], The authors, Eminent Professor Paul Barry et al. Website presents as Chapter 6: (p 23): The Boubaker Polynomials... In i.e. Reference 15 [9] , Professor A. Yildirim Homepage presents (page 40) the boubaker polynomials as a tool for solving nonlinear science problems... and so on ...
- I see from Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Boubaker polynomials that someone has recently tried to recreate the page. I also see from User:Rirunmot/User:Rirunmot/subpage10 and User:Rirunmot/User:Rirunmot/subpage11 that you, Rirunmot, have copies of the just created French Wikipedia article fr:Polynômes de boubaker and what is probably an old copy of the Italian article (they've deleted and protected the article so it can't be recreated). And you've started canvassing for support for recreating this article [10].
- Surely you know this will not go well. I suggest that you drop the subject. Ozob (talk) 22:48, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- Stay cheerful, dear Ozob!!, you do not add so much information... The page exists in [11]since 2007 with no problem with notability or so...
- The debate here is about notability of the page [User:Rirunmot/User:Rirunmot/subpage6] , so you can kindly give your opinion about that.Rirunmot (talk) 23:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- I attempted to ask the French Math Wikiproject about Boubaker polynomials. It seems however that they loathe them so much that their anti-vandal bot Salebot revert edits with the phrase "Polynômes de Boubaker" on sight. Nevertheless someone noticed my edit, and less than a quarter hour after I posted, fr:Polynômes de boubaker was deleted.
Is there any reason not to lump Rirunmot with all the blocked users in Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Mmbmmmbm? —David Eppstein (talk) 06:47, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Boubaker Polynomials (to:DRW)
Thanks Yoenit ! The link you provided here allows concentring debates of serious contributors (efforts and time) on the simple question: Sourced or not? --Rirunmot (talk) 09:35, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Sockpuppet investigation
I have opened a sockpuppet investigation at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mmbmmmbm. Ozob (talk) 11:44, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Gill polynomials
How to become a famous mathematician
- Find a famous family of polynomials (e.g. Hermite, Chebyshev, ...)
- Replace x by 2x
- Check if you did not hereby hit another already existing family; if so simply repeat (replace x by 2x, again)
- Rewrite the differential equation, generating equation, etc, etc, accordingly
- Look for applications of the old family of polynomials. Every single application of the old polynomials, by appropriate substitution, yields an application of your new family
- Publish the applications in appropriate hardly refereed electronic journals which provide publishing outlets for those who cannot publish in the serious journals, get yourself a degree and a professorship, if necessary at some only virtual university, get yourself students who write yet more articles about your polynomials
- Write an article about your polynomials on wikipedia
Seriously, maybe this trick ought to be explained in the appropriate article on wikipedia. Then the article on Boubaker polynomials can simply refer to that article and to the article on Chebyshev polynomials. Similarly the article on Chebyshev polynomials can refer to this trick-article and mention Boubaker polynomials as an example. Richard Gill (talk) 16:22, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
PS the topic is clearly ignotable rather than notable (cf infamous, igNoble, ignominious, ignorable) Richard Gill (talk) 06:08, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
Reliability of MacTutor
I'm used to treating MacTutor History of Mathematics Archives (i.e., http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/) as a pretty reliable source for history of mathematics, especially of the biographical kind. But is it? If so, how do we justify that? The context is that William Connolley at Talk:History of calculus asked if it's just some blokes' web page. I am tempted to say, based on our article, that it has won many prestigious awards for online content. But how do historians of mathematics rate it? Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- While I have personally found MacTutor history pages to be valuable, it is hard to rely on it alone as it is not refereed. On the other hand, they tend to provide many sources, and in general it is possible to trace the information. As a rule of thumb, I would say material based on their history pages should not typically be deleted, but a tag should be attached that it would be preferable to have a refereed source. Tkuvho (talk) 14:02, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- As far as the specific link criticized by Connolley, it is indeed by a bloke. It's not their regular history page. Tkuvho (talk) 14:10, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- I see. According to Charles Matthews, Connolley's link was to a student paper, so I think clearly not reliable. My overall question about the rest of the site remains, I guess. We even have a template {{MacTutor}} for this site, which is linked on many many biography articles. It seems important to get some clarity on where we stand with the site in general (and which parts of it are reliable, if any). Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- Only biographies listed at http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Indexes/Full_Alph.html are reliable, I think. Tkuvho (talk) 14:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- That seems like a reasonable rule of thumb. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- Only biographies listed at http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Indexes/Full_Alph.html are reliable, I think. Tkuvho (talk) 14:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- For instance, they do have a biography of Bhaskara II at http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Bhaskara_II.html, which has nothing to do with a bloke named Ian Pearce. Tkuvho (talk) 14:55, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- (edit conflict)As it happens I was just thinking about that the other day. According to our article they've won awards from some respectable publications such as Scientific American. It's also associated with the University of St Andrews which has been around for some 600 years, not some fly-by-night diploma mill. Our article does accuse the site of content bias, though I don't know if there is anything to back up that claim. To me, the material linked from their main indices (Biographies, History Topics, Additional material, and Famous curves) should be regarded as reliable. Whether it's encyclopedic or not is a different issue. I would hope we have an article corresponding to each article on the biographies index, but some of their other articles are somewhat essay like and we shouldn't be covering them on WP.
- We have a page for mathematical referencing resources, it seems to me that the results of this sort of analysis should be added there for future reference. It not just MaxTutor but MathWorld, Springer EoM, Cut-the-Knot, OEIS, etc. For example we have links to OEIS a large number of pages, but I wouldn't regard it as a reliable source because basically anyone with an internet account can add their own entries (somewhat like like WP, we don't regard ourselves as a reliable source either). I started work on this idea (here) but kind of made a wrong turn at the start and am rethinking how to best do it.--RDBury (talk) 15:26, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- Sidenote: While it's true that anyone can register for an account, every sequence in the OEIS must be approved by an Editor-in-Chief before appearing on the site. Usually it's reviewed by an Associate Editor as well. So it's not like Wikipedia. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:49, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- On the other hand, the OEIS is never an indication of notability, because it seeks to include sequences that are not appropriate (too narrow) for Wikipedia. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- I'd probably put it [MacTutor] on a par with MathWorld, or maybe slightly more reliable. MathWorld also doesn't have any real oversight as far as I am aware, and its articles on many topics are deeply erroneous. Yet a lot of editors (mostly non-mathematicians) seem to feel like it is reliable. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- The errors I've seen are minor, do you have example of "deeply erroneous". Much of the material is taken from a published reference and by WP standards at least those parts are reliable. They do have a form you can fill out to report errors, but though I've used it several times nothing was ever done about them as far as I know. Of course it could have been me that was in error. On OEIS, I'm going by an incident a while ago where, as I recall, there was an editor who was trying to generate references to an article. He submitted the sequence to OEIS and it appeared there a day or two later. So maybe you have to get editor approval but I'm not sure how thoroughly they check the math.--RDBury (talk) 20:31, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- (If anyone is interested, User:CRGreathouse has responded on OEIS here; I defer to the opinion of someone with more direct knowledge.)--RDBury (talk) 03:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- The errors I've seen are minor, do you have example of "deeply erroneous". Much of the material is taken from a published reference and by WP standards at least those parts are reliable. They do have a form you can fill out to report errors, but though I've used it several times nothing was ever done about them as far as I know. Of course it could have been me that was in error. On OEIS, I'm going by an incident a while ago where, as I recall, there was an editor who was trying to generate references to an article. He submitted the sequence to OEIS and it appeared there a day or two later. So maybe you have to get editor approval but I'm not sure how thoroughly they check the math.--RDBury (talk) 20:31, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- I'd probably put it [MacTutor] on a par with MathWorld, or maybe slightly more reliable. MathWorld also doesn't have any real oversight as far as I am aware, and its articles on many topics are deeply erroneous. Yet a lot of editors (mostly non-mathematicians) seem to feel like it is reliable. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
MathWorld's problems are usually omissions rather than errors, but for instance its Lattice article is hopelessly confused. (It seems to be trying to imply that all partial orders are lattices and that all lattices are distributive and modular). And Cubic Lattice links to and is linked from the wrong kind of lattice. My general preference is to link to MathWorld as an external link, and to check the MathWorld article to make sure there aren't important aspects of the problem or important references that we're omitting here, but not to actually use it as a source. On the other hand, I've never encountered any problems with MacTutor, and RDBury's description of the OEIS process makes it sound clearly within what we accept as reliable. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:36, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- Check out Ian Pearce's piece on Bhaskara at MacTutor. It is a major problem. Tkuvho (talk) 04:45, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- You mean this? Because that's clearly (even in the title) taking a soapboax position. But when I refer to MacTutor it's primarily in their biography section, e.g. this and this. I don't think their other sections are as good. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- Also not that the linked article by Ian Pearce is not part of the MacTutor reference. Although these student projects are hosted on the same domain, they are not link to from within the MacTutor hierarchy.
- The MacTutor reference itself is directly linked to from the department of mathematics homepage. This is a reference that is published and thereby endorsed by St. Andrews University. As such, as far as reliability is concerned it is on par with published books on the topic. If this cannot pass a WP:RS, than we should stop using basically any published source.TR 11:01, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- You mean this? Because that's clearly (even in the title) taking a soapboax position. But when I refer to MacTutor it's primarily in their biography section, e.g. this and this. I don't think their other sections are as good. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- As I already mentioned above, I have personally found MacTutor generally reliable. However, since we are not talking about a refereed publication, there will always be an ambiguity as to which of their pages are legitimate and which, bloky. It is still not clear to me where to draw the line. Why do they post these student projects at the same web address? Tkuvho (talk) 11:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well I'd assume because they vetted them and found them correct and useful for others to read. Being a scholarly refereed source for WP (or other authors) is not really a primary concern or goal of MacTutor, that's our problem. Clearly we cannot treat those student project as reliable sources, however they still might be useful as external links and their quality probably still matches that of many "popular" math articles being published in newspapers, general interest (non math) journals, and even less prestigious teaching/educational journals/publications. --Kmhkmh (talk) 11:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- As I already mentioned above, I have personally found MacTutor generally reliable. However, since we are not talking about a refereed publication, there will always be an ambiguity as to which of their pages are legitimate and which, bloky. It is still not clear to me where to draw the line. Why do they post these student projects at the same web address? Tkuvho (talk) 11:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
Well I'm not math historian, but so far I found MacTutor relatively reliable on the topics I've used it for. It is indeed an expert website that has won some rewards and was also reviewed/described in math or science journals. It is definitely not just a website hosted by some bloke, to very least it would be a self published by notable experts (both principal editors/maintainer are math profs at one of UK's top rates universities (St. Andrews), where the project is hosted rather than on some private webspace/account). Most of their articles are carefully sourced and so far I've discovered only minor errors as you might find them in reliable/reputable literature as well (typos, small mistakes with non european dates, small errors in graphics). In particular as far as historic subjects are concerned I'd consider them much more reliable as MathWorld, which however I still consider as a reliable source for WP.
It is might be wortwhile to note however, that both editors are not trained (math) historians afaik. So they primarily compile material (available in English) written by others. In cases where an larger historic context knowledge might be required (in particular being able to read original sources in foreign and ancient languages) that can lead to errors. This might matter in individual biographies for (historic) non European mathematicians and related math topics. But then again this problem exists for many math sources we consider as reliable as well (any historic information in regular math textbooks, normal mathematician writing on historic subjects, etc.).--Kmhkmh (talk) 11:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- Peer review is no guarantee of correctness, either. Experts in any field know of journals which largely consists of peer-reviewed rubbish, and journals which largely consist of fairly reliable material. Journals make editorial decisions concerning interest, relevance to the field, etc. Referees sometimes see big errors and hence published papers in reliable journals tend to have smaller errors only, but often plenty, and occasionally fatal errors. Finally the author themself is responsible for the "truth" of what is written in his or her articles.
- More or less established mathematicians can easily author books and get them published by very reputable publishers. Such books are only globally reviewed. No one goes through checking every derivation or computation or reference, line by line. The already established reliability of the author is supposed to be enough guarantee of reliability. Fortunately in mathematics we can always in principle check everything, and mistakes get discovered and known and acknowledge and if possible corrected.
- Hence whether or not MacTutor is peer-reviewed seems to me to be quite besides the point. I do know many researchers in the history of mathematics who regularly cite the site ;-) and use its resources. I've always found it very useful myself and on those occasional occasions when I had independent historical info, it seemed to be correct. Richard Gill (talk) 15:12, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
- I challenge you to produce a peer-reviewed book containing the kind of rubbish found in the Ian Pearce piece at MacTutor. Tkuvho (talk) 15:23, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
- What parts/content if Pearce's piece do you consider rubbish exactly?--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:18, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
- Can we just get clear that the Pearce page under criticism is on the domain turnbull.mcs.st-and.ac.uk, not the MacTutor's mcs.st-and.ac.uk? If we are going to have this argument that the MacTutor "brand" is somehow contaminated because of student project work posted at a related domain, which I think is basically not a fair attitude, it should at least be in the context that it is very easy to tell apart the pages that are being used for a different academic purpose. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:04, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
- What parts/content if Pearce's piece do you consider rubbish exactly?--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:18, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
- I challenge you to produce a peer-reviewed book containing the kind of rubbish found in the Ian Pearce piece at MacTutor. Tkuvho (talk) 15:23, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
- Here is another interesting item. The page Bakhshali manuscript contains a footnote, currently number 1, which reads as follows: "Ian Pearce (May 2002). "The Bakhshali manuscript". The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Bakhshali_manuscript.html. Retrieved 2007-07-24." If you follow the link provided, you indeed reach an article on the Bakhshali, but one authored by... J O'Connor and E F Robertson. Tkuvho (talk) 10:13, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
- Bhaskara's contribution to mathematics is beyond dispute. Pearce's claim that Bahskara's calculus was not inferior to Newton's is unsourced ("rubbish", in fact) and shows that he is interested in ethnomathematics rather than history. There is a large consensus in this thread that MacTutor's student projects are not reliable. Tkuvho (talk) 02:54, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
Well going to the thread it seems to me we all agree that student papers hosted on MacTutor are not to be treated as reliable sources, that however the regular MacTutor entries can be treated as such.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:35, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
In the phase-type representation section, where τ is mysteriously chosen to be (0,1,0,0); am I right to assume that that is the initial condition? In other words, does the system start in state two? The end of the article needs a lot of explanation. It starts off nicely, but then there's jumps to using some scary looking formulas, lots of technical language, and zero explanation. There is a link to another article, but that doesn't help at all. — Fly by Night (talk) 15:19, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- As it says at Stochastic_matrix#Example: the cat and mouse, "...with a cat in the first box and a mouse in the fifth one at time zero". This starting state corresponds to state #2 as described. JRSpriggs (talk) 20:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well, I'm sorry, but that's still very convoluted. That state is a 1×5 matrix in the original set-up, and is implicitly carried forward into further subsections without any further mention. That illustrates my comment that the "...article needs a lot of explanation." It doesn't explain the mysterious appearance of a 1×4 matrix called τ. There is a link to another article, but articles should be as self-contained as possible. There is zero explanation. I only knew what τ was because I understood the topic of the article. Isn't the idea of an encyclopaedia to help those that do not already understand? — Fly by Night (talk) 23:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well, you know more about this article than I do since I read today it for the first time.
- However, it is apparent to me that the fifth position was dropped from the matrices because it was not helpful in the calculation. In particular, if it had been retained then he would have had to use
- instead of
- to represent the event that the mouse is still alive.
- Also is just a short hand to add up the probabilities that the mouse is still alive after 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... time periods. JRSpriggs (talk) 00:34, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- Brilliant… now we're getting somewhere. That sort of explanation is what I was hoping for someone cold add to the article. But, how do we know that that det(I−T) ≠ 0? After all, the identity matrix itself is a valid stochastic matrix. That needs some justification. What do the higher order momenta represent? I too read the article for the first time myself today. That last section needs work, that's why I posted here. I'm a mathematician, but that last section lost me. Would you care to add some explanation along the lines of what you have just posted? I remember someone once telling me that the result of mathematical study is that hidden truths become obvious. (That's why "dropping" rows was apparent to you and me.) I'm sure some people working ergodic theory would call that article trivial and obvious; but what about a 13 year old high school maths student that wanted to expand his/her knowledge? The latter are exactly the group that we want to reach out to. We need to make mathematics more accessible. — Fly by Night (talk) 01:51, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- This is a geometric progression for linear operators, the sufficient condition for invertability of is — Kallikanzaridtalk 03:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
Hilbert's eighth problem
Someone spammed my department's list with a link to the article on Hilbert's eighth problem. The claims on the page seem dubious and there are no sources to speak of, but I'm only just dipping my toes into Wikipedia and don't feel comfortable deleting a ton of stuff. Could someone pass definitive judgement? --Dylan Moreland (talk) 03:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for the heads up. I reverted to an older version but it's very stubby and could stand a lot of improvement. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:18, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- Hilbert's first problem redirects to Continuum hypothesis; shouldn't this redirect to Riemann hypothesis? CRGreathouse (t | c) 04:45, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- But Hilbert's 8th also included the Goldbach conjecture and the twin prime problem, not just Riemann. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:12, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- It's not clear to me that Hilbert's 1st should redirect to the CH page. If you look at what Hilbert actually said, it's a little ambiguous whether the problem is limited to CH. The first part seems to be about CH (in the weaker, no-intermediate-cardinality form), but the second part is about whether the reals can be wellordered (which of course follows from the stronger form of CH, the version). I kind of think in an ideal world we would have a separate Hilbert's first problem page that discussed these matters. I don't know whether there are any good secondary sources, though. --Trovatore (talk) 05:33, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- Such redirects are "historically illiterate", I would feel. As part of upgrading the whole Hilbert problem area, they should certainly be reconsidered. (For one thing, you have to have an axiomatic set theory before CH is meaningful as a conjecture. We have Hilbert to thank, generally, for such clarifications. But I meander ...) Could we have a rating done for all those Hilbert problem pages, so that we know the worst? Charles Matthews (talk) 21:27, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well, no, I don't agree with the parenthetical. CH was meaningful in Cantor's framework, which was not axiomatic. --Trovatore (talk) 21:30, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- I have to agree with "Trovatore" on this one. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:47, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well, no, I don't agree with the parenthetical. CH was meaningful in Cantor's framework, which was not axiomatic. --Trovatore (talk) 21:30, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- Such redirects are "historically illiterate", I would feel. As part of upgrading the whole Hilbert problem area, they should certainly be reconsidered. (For one thing, you have to have an axiomatic set theory before CH is meaningful as a conjecture. We have Hilbert to thank, generally, for such clarifications. But I meander ...) Could we have a rating done for all those Hilbert problem pages, so that we know the worst? Charles Matthews (talk) 21:27, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- It's not clear to me that Hilbert's 1st should redirect to the CH page. If you look at what Hilbert actually said, it's a little ambiguous whether the problem is limited to CH. The first part seems to be about CH (in the weaker, no-intermediate-cardinality form), but the second part is about whether the reals can be wellordered (which of course follows from the stronger form of CH, the version). I kind of think in an ideal world we would have a separate Hilbert's first problem page that discussed these matters. I don't know whether there are any good secondary sources, though. --Trovatore (talk) 05:33, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- But Hilbert's 8th also included the Goldbach conjecture and the twin prime problem, not just Riemann. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:12, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- Hilbert's first problem redirects to Continuum hypothesis; shouldn't this redirect to Riemann hypothesis? CRGreathouse (t | c) 04:45, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
Indian History of calculus
Please help verify an existence claim for Indian derivatives in the 12th century. Tkuvho (talk) 10:55, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- I heard David Mumford give a lecture on this once. According to him, they had extremely well developed theories of calculus for trigonometric functions, including Taylor series and the differential equation y′′ + y = 0. They'd done all this so that they could do astronomy, and they did astronomy for religious reasons. But they didn't pursue calculus for any other type of function. Ozob (talk) 11:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- I haven't read it yet but you might begin with "Was Calculus Invented in India?" by David Bressoud, College Mathematics Journal, Vol. 33, No. 1, Jan., 2002. College mathematics journal usually has nice is a nice expository articles and the references in that article should give more details. If it helps is opening sentences are: "No. Calculus was not invented in India. But two hundred years before Newton or Leibniz, Indiana astronomers came very close to creating what we would call calculus." Though he is speaking about a time somewhat after the 12th century. Thenub314 (talk) 19:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- An IP just added a massive diatribe against Bressoud at Talk:Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics. Tkuvho (talk) 20:23, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
MOS and consistency b/w Hilbert space, Inner product space
The articles on Hilbert space and Inner product space use:
- different symbols (F vs. K) for the base field
- different styles (blackboard bold vs. bold)
The first is easy enough to fix (If one agrees that they should be the same symbol for consistency of notation between related articles, which I think they should be) but the Math MOS only states:
- "...An article may use either boldface type or blackboard bold for objects traditionally printed in boldface. As with all such choices, the article should be consistent. Editors should not change articles from one choice of typeface to another except for consistency."
which I read to mean it's OK to change for consistency *within* an article, but not strictly OK to change one to the other for the sake of consistency *between* articles. Thoughts? Thanks. BrideOfKripkenstein (talk) 21:01, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- I don't think the symbols for, say, a field should be made consistent in related articles. Doing this is just error-prone, time-consuming and may also upset those who have to clean up later. The same holds, I believe for consistency of different articles with respect to styles. However, of course, within an article, everything should be consistent, where possible. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 14:06, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
whole number
A new account (not, I think, a new editor) is trying to make whole number something other than a disambig page. My opinion is that there is no content justifying an article. Please comment at talk:whole number. ---Trovatore (talk) 23:58, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- I've responded there. Things have gotten kind of heated, so I'm hoping that having an uninvolved party (or a few) explain things calmly and with reference to wikipedia policies and the like, in the spirit of Wikipedia:Third opinion, might at least help him see why he is getting reverted. Kingdon (talk) 01:55, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
- The current situation is a little bit clumsy. Whole number refers to integer and natural number; the former doesn't contain the phrase "whole number" anywhere, while the latter lists whole number in the "see also" section as though it should be an article. I think it's appropriate that there are some references somewhere to demonstrate that the phrase "whole number" is indeed used in all three senses mentioned. Where else would such references logically go, if not on the whole number page? Jowa fan (talk) 08:08, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
- Those things are not really the concern of an encyclopedia. --Trovatore (talk) 20:59, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
- Oh wait, I see my comment was a bit unclear in context. Certainly avoiding confusion is a proper concern of an encyclopedia, so editing integer and natural number in such a way that they deal appropriately with the locution whole number is a defensible option. What I mean is that discussion of the phrase whole number in isolation is not an encyclopedic concern. --Trovatore (talk) 21:06, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
- The current situation is a little bit clumsy. Whole number refers to integer and natural number; the former doesn't contain the phrase "whole number" anywhere, while the latter lists whole number in the "see also" section as though it should be an article. I think it's appropriate that there are some references somewhere to demonstrate that the phrase "whole number" is indeed used in all three senses mentioned. Where else would such references logically go, if not on the whole number page? Jowa fan (talk) 08:08, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
Multiple mathematicians on AfD
See
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Karl-Theodor Sturm, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Emil Hilb,Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephan Luckhaus,Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ernst Hairer,Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/K. David Elworthy, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Xue-Mei Li, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abhinav Kumar, and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alison Miller, and please weigh in. Several of these could use more mathematical expertise. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:15, 7 May 2011 (UTC)- I've struck from the list those that have been closed already, so people don't waste time clicking on them. Tijfo098 (talk) 10:01, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
Lamé's equation
At Lamé function, we find this:
- Lamé's equation is
- where A and B are constants, and is the Weierstrass elliptic function.
and then:
- By changing the independent variable, Lamé's equation can also be rewritten in algebraic form as
- which after a change of variable becomes a special case of Heun's equation.
But it doesn't say specifically what the change of variable is. Can some add that information? Michael Hardy (talk) 15:42, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
- How about ? (Just a guess). Richard Gill (talk) 16:24, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
- Richard Gill appears to be right. Do the substitution, have some fun with the chain rule (and logarithmic derivatives), and use the facts in sections Weierstrass elliptic function#Differential equation and Weierstrass elliptic function#The constants e1, e2 and e3. I have no reference for this though, if that's what you're looking for. RobHar (talk) 02:49, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
- I already started fiddling with this, and concluded that if it's right then it's probably fairly trivial, even if laborious, and then other things were demanding my attention. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:17, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
- Exhaustive discussion in Ch. XXIII of Whittaker and Watson; old references at p. 555 in my edition. (What do they teach in schools these days?) Charles Matthews (talk) 11:44, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
- OK, Charles, I volunteer you to edit the article accordingly. Click here: Lamé function Michael Hardy (talk) 15:29, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- Richard Gill appears to be right. Do the substitution, have some fun with the chain rule (and logarithmic derivatives), and use the facts in sections Weierstrass elliptic function#Differential equation and Weierstrass elliptic function#The constants e1, e2 and e3. I have no reference for this though, if that's what you're looking for. RobHar (talk) 02:49, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
Mathematical physics FPC
See Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Quantum Harmonic Oscillator.--RDBury (talk) 23:34, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
Mathbot has been blocked from editing "List of mathematics articles"
Mathbot has recently been blocked from editing List of mathematics articles (actually the {{nobots}} template was added to these lists). There is a discussion about this at User talk:Oleg Alexandrov. Apparently the reason is that Mathbot adds disambiguation links to these lists. Mathbot is essential to the proper working of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity page, which many mathematics editors rely on. What do we think about this? Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:29, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
- Apparently Mathbot will simply ignore the {{nobots}} tag. Still, if for some reason this is escalated, it seems like a good idea for the project to be aware. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:53, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well, I'm concerned how quickly he acted (using AWB to mass edit all the lists first and only posting a talk page notification of his action afterwards) while invoking MOS as "policy"—that kind of attitude ends in front of ArbCom. However, he is only one admin and WP:WHEEL should prevent any real damage should he rush to some other decisions. Tijfo098 (talk) 14:58, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
- I think he probably just didn't realize the purpose of these lists. It seems like every so often, someone suggests moving the lists to the project namespace, so they're exempt from this kind of trivial nitpicking. The editor in question suggested moving the dab pages to a separate list. This list could even be maintained in project namespace—it seems like a win-win situation. I, for one, think we should be discussing this possibility. Although it could be that there are good reasons against it. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:11, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
- I dropped a note on the (apparently unmonitored) bot talk page several days ago, and followed up with a similar request on the owner's talk page before I took any action. I indicated that I only placed the nobots tag on the lists as a temporary measure - to avoid the bot undoing the disambiguation work I had done - until a solution could be arrived at in this matter. I think the proposals to keep the maintenence lists in project space, or in any case to keep a maintenance list for {{mathdab}} pages in project space, is eminently sensible, particularly because the maintenance lists as they stand are indiscriminate collections of all links tagged with any kind of math category (therefore containing not only disambig links, but redundant redirects). If other articles need to link to a list of mathematics articles, a separate set of lists could be maintained in article space with a more discriminating set of links. Please look to the methods emplyed by other Wikipedia projects which have conducted bot-assisted maintenence without needing to maintain direct links to disambiguation pages from article space. I'm sure an efficient solution can be found for this problem. Cheers! bd2412 T 13:55, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
I am sure we can work something out if everyone makes an effort to be nonconfrontational. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:17, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
- Seems silly to in effect robot edit the lists because one has the idea another robot is wrong without discussing with the robot owner first. Just stopping the robot is the usual first action if one thinks a robot is going badly wrong. It wasn't even badly wrong by the reasoning. Can we be confrontational, can we can we? Dmcq (talk) 17:47, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
- I had a look at the discussion and a reasonable suggestion there I think is to keep the list in project space. Also the list should probably include maths categories I think even though categories don't normally include much on the page itself. Dmcq (talk) 17:59, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
- That seems reasonable to me. But I know we've had this discussion before, probably more than once. I don't know if there is some arcane reason these pages need to be in mainspace, or if the idea simply got shelved. Someone needs to look in the WT:WPM archives. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:00, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
- One of the earlier discussion(s) is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive 20#Suggested move of List of mathematics articles. In any case one possible reason for not performing such a move is that other article-space pages link to it, and would not be allowed to after such a move: these include several other related list articles, but also non-list articles including logic and geometry. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:26, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
- That seems reasonable to me. But I know we've had this discussion before, probably more than once. I don't know if there is some arcane reason these pages need to be in mainspace, or if the idea simply got shelved. Someone needs to look in the WT:WPM archives. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:00, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
- I had a look at the discussion and a reasonable suggestion there I think is to keep the list in project space. Also the list should probably include maths categories I think even though categories don't normally include much on the page itself. Dmcq (talk) 17:59, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
- It doesn't really seem appropriate to me for logic and geometry (or really any article, except maybe mathematics itself) to link to this list. RobHar (talk) 00:12, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
- The Lists of mathematics topics links to it, at that is as it should be. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:09, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
- It doesn't really seem appropriate to me for logic and geometry (or really any article, except maybe mathematics itself) to link to this list. RobHar (talk) 00:12, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
I see that some lists were moved to project space after Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of mathematics articles (J-L) and move discussion (now) recorded at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (A-C) Presumably not all of them?? Tijfo098 (talk) 09:37, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
I don't like the idea of putting it in the project space. Especially if other article-space pages could not link to it. The list is mainly for browsing, and at most secondarily for navigating. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:08, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
- It has been proposed before that two lists be maintained; one for maintenance purposes which could be maintained in project space, and could permissibly have indiscriminate links such as direct disambig links, redundant redirect links, and other things that lists in article space are not supposed to have (under the theory that Wikipedia is not a collection of indiscriminate links); and a second, more user-friendly list maintained in mainspace. bd2412 T 22:03, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
- I would prefer one better-maintained list over two. CRGreathouse (t | c) 23:39, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
Okay, I went ahead and took care of this:
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (0-9)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (A)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (B)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (C)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (D)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (E)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (F)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (G)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (H)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (I)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (J)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (K)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (L)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (M)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (N)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (O)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (P)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (Q)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (R)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (S)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (T)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (U)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (V)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (W)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (X)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (Y)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (Z)
Now all you need to do is direct the maintenance bot to use these indiscriminate lists for its maintenance tasks. I will be glad to improve the organization of the alternate lists remaining in mainspace. I noticed that most of them are about twice as long as the recommended article length, which may make page loading difficult for people with older computers and on older computer networks (particularly our most vulnerable users in third world countries). I'd be glad to attend to that while otherwise restructuring these lists into a user-friendly format. Cheers! bd2412 T 23:48, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
- So basically you completely ignored the project discussion above (including the fact that you're breaking other Wikipedia rules by creating links from article space to WP space by this move) and went ahead and did it your way? —David Eppstein (talk) 00:02, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- What move? I didn't move anything, and I created no cross-namespace redirects. Please investigate for yourself, before you accuse others of breaking rules. bd2412 T 00:43, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- Ok, you performed a copy-and-paste move instead. Another no-no. And what do you think making two copies of the lists will accomplish? It's not possible to maintain these lists manually; they're too big. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:05, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- [Intellectual property attorney hat on] Cut and paste moves are only inappropriate if they deprive editors of attribution under the GFDL; these lists contain no creative content, and were assembled by a bot, not a person; they are entitled to no protection. [Intellectual property attorney hat off]. Furthermore, as you just pointed out, these lists are too big to maintain manually - there is no way they should be in article space if their existence in article space presents a problem like that. Wikipedia is not a collection of indiscriminate lists, and these lists are exactly that, too big to even be opened in some browser windows. What I would like to see is a more appropriate collection of narrowly targeted lists in article space that would actually be useful to someone looking for something, not just a wall of links. It has been explained to me that the reason all of these links, even the duplicative or deceptive ones that do not lead to math articles, must be kept on the list is that they are being used for maintenance purposes. No one has explained why lists used for maintenance can not be kept in project space, with a more appropriate set of lists in article space. I am very confident that we can come up with a solution that achieves all of this while taking those two or three hundred unnecessary disambig links off of the list of links requiring repair, so we won't have our hard working disambiguators (who I can personally attest are worthy of respect in this project) wasting their time fixing links that will only be made into errors again by a bot. bd2412 T 01:18, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- It is false that these articles were assembled only by a bot; they require occasional manual intervention to remove inappropriate entries. Anyway, you're sidetracking my point above, which is: what gives you the right to ignore any attempt at building consensus in the discussion above, unilaterally declare that we will do things your way, and go ahead and do it? It seems easier to simply ignore wikilinks from these lists while you're busy fixing dabs, rather than declaring them to be errors and going to great lengths to eradicate them. Anyway, the dab policy explicitly says that some links to dabs are ok, so your claim that all such links must be eliminated is also clearly false. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:25, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, David, intentional links to disambiguation pages are ok iff they are piped through a "foo (disambiguation)" redirect, per policy (arrived at by a thoroughly debated community consensus-building process) at WP:INTDABLINK. I have no technical problem with disambig pages being on these lists if they are piped in this way. There is simply no way to remove these from the "what links here" pages that hundreds of disambiguators count on to fix errant links, including errant links in math articles (which I presume you would like to see fixed). Cheers! bd2412 T 01:34, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- Let me see if I understand your position: You changed the lists of mathematics articles so that the only links to disambiguation pages were to a page or a redirect ending in (disambiguation). You did this because this is recommended by WP:INTDABLINK. You later added {{nobots}} templates to prevent Mathbot from undoing your changes. Am I correct?
- Assuming that I am correct, here is a response: Wikipedia:Disambiguation is an editing guideline, not a policy, and therefore occasional exceptions apply. I believe that the list of mathematics articles is one such exception. The list has a simple format and simple purpose: It lists all of the mathematics articles, with no attention to kind, for users who wish to browse. It furthermore serves some internal purposes. To fulfill both of these purposes, especially the last one, it is necessary that the lists be a faithful representation of what is stored in WP's databases. It's been suggested above that this second purpose should be performed by a second set of lists in project space. However, to facilitate browsing, we would still have to maintain the lists in article space. Therefore we would need to maintain two sets of lists. But having two sets of lists would lead to confusion and error. Our solution is to claim an exception to WP:INTDABLINK and to maintain the lists in article space. We believe that this is the least bad option, even considering the violation of WP:INTDABLINK.
- I have the feeling that you aren't satisfied by this, but I'm not quite sure why. I think it has something to do with how disambiguators do their work. I've never done that kind of work, so I'm not sure what the issue is. Can you explain it to me (slowly and carefully, since I think few people here have done that kind of work)? Ozob (talk) 02:26, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- There is indeed more to it. Disambiguators are distributed editors, like everyone else here. They work individually and independently, seeking out and repair bad links (and most disambig links are indeed bad links, taking people to pages like Mercury and Greek when Mercury (planet) and Greek (language) are the intended targets. Usually, a disambiguator will find a disambig page with a number of links and use the "what links here" page to follow and fix all links in mainspace. It's impossible to know whether such a link is one of the rare intentional links unless that link has been piped through a "foo (disambiguation)" redirect, so it shows up on the "what links here" page as coming through such a redirect. For example, see the what links here page for Greek, which has a half dozen intentional incoming links. A random disambiguator is saved the time of chasing down those half-dozen intentional links and trying to figure out how to "fix" them. To put the whole of the problem in perspective, we have a daily report on the number of links to address, which indicates that as of today, there are over 97,000 disambig pages with incoming direct links, and more than three quarter of a million links to be fixed. New disambig pages and new links are added every day, and to be honest, we bust our tails every month and are barely breaking even. If any of our top disambiguators let up for a few days, we fall behind. Nevertheless, through this persistent effort, and in part through our policy of piping intentional disambig links so disambiguators don't waste time looking at them over and over again, we have made progress. So, every little thing we can do to clear away the chaff helps us to avoid wasting time running after intentional links. Going through the history of these pages, other disambiguators have "fixed" some of these links in the past [12], [13], and will continue to do so in the future. We can't just teach disambiguators not to edit these pages because there is no telling who will decide to take up such work. Instead, these pages will continue to show up as direct links on the "what links here" page of every disambig page pointing to them, and will prompt disambiguators to spend time trying to "fix" them by piping them through the "foo (disambiguation)" redirect. A number of proposals have been put forward to address this - teaching Mathbot to ignore disambig articles altogether, keeping the maintenance lists in article space, keeping disambig links on a separate page where they can be attended manually. There must be some alternative in that group, or some variation thereof, that will work for everyone. bd2412 T 03:14, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, David, intentional links to disambiguation pages are ok iff they are piped through a "foo (disambiguation)" redirect, per policy (arrived at by a thoroughly debated community consensus-building process) at WP:INTDABLINK. I have no technical problem with disambig pages being on these lists if they are piped in this way. There is simply no way to remove these from the "what links here" pages that hundreds of disambiguators count on to fix errant links, including errant links in math articles (which I presume you would like to see fixed). Cheers! bd2412 T 01:34, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- It is false that these articles were assembled only by a bot; they require occasional manual intervention to remove inappropriate entries. Anyway, you're sidetracking my point above, which is: what gives you the right to ignore any attempt at building consensus in the discussion above, unilaterally declare that we will do things your way, and go ahead and do it? It seems easier to simply ignore wikilinks from these lists while you're busy fixing dabs, rather than declaring them to be errors and going to great lengths to eradicate them. Anyway, the dab policy explicitly says that some links to dabs are ok, so your claim that all such links must be eliminated is also clearly false. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:25, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- [Intellectual property attorney hat on] Cut and paste moves are only inappropriate if they deprive editors of attribution under the GFDL; these lists contain no creative content, and were assembled by a bot, not a person; they are entitled to no protection. [Intellectual property attorney hat off]. Furthermore, as you just pointed out, these lists are too big to maintain manually - there is no way they should be in article space if their existence in article space presents a problem like that. Wikipedia is not a collection of indiscriminate lists, and these lists are exactly that, too big to even be opened in some browser windows. What I would like to see is a more appropriate collection of narrowly targeted lists in article space that would actually be useful to someone looking for something, not just a wall of links. It has been explained to me that the reason all of these links, even the duplicative or deceptive ones that do not lead to math articles, must be kept on the list is that they are being used for maintenance purposes. No one has explained why lists used for maintenance can not be kept in project space, with a more appropriate set of lists in article space. I am very confident that we can come up with a solution that achieves all of this while taking those two or three hundred unnecessary disambig links off of the list of links requiring repair, so we won't have our hard working disambiguators (who I can personally attest are worthy of respect in this project) wasting their time fixing links that will only be made into errors again by a bot. bd2412 T 01:18, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- Ok, you performed a copy-and-paste move instead. Another no-no. And what do you think making two copies of the lists will accomplish? It's not possible to maintain these lists manually; they're too big. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:05, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- What move? I didn't move anything, and I created no cross-namespace redirects. Please investigate for yourself, before you accuse others of breaking rules. bd2412 T 00:43, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- I should mention that I'm involved with WikiProject Disambiguation (or at least I watch their Talk page and post there reasonably frequently), so I think that disambiguation is important. But not only do I not see what purpose is served by these changes, I don't see any sort of consensus for them.† The response has been quite universal: the page has a special purpose and should be kept the way it is.
- Now there's no agreement on the proper location of the pages, so a bulk move of the pages, although probably not prudent at this point (needs more discussion!), would have been understandable. But reverting and template-blocking the bot seems clearly inappropriate, and creating new pages seems unhelpful -- I assume the purpose was to give yourself (viz., bd2412) carte blanche to alter the existing pages as you prefer.
- † No doubt bd2412 would say that the consensus is embodied in INTDABLINK, but of course that is merely a general policy and not a discussion of the particulars of the case at hand. Pointing there is no more productive than pointing at IAR.
- CRGreathouse (t | c) 02:54, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- I am trying to explain why it is general policy. Disambiguators fix bad links in math articles too, and I'm sure you don't want to impede them from being able to do that quickly and efficiently. I indicated when I put the nobots template on the pages that it was a temporary measure until we could sort out a solution, because Mathbot kept re-adding the direct disambig links (and mindlessly adding them in addition to the piped redirects that I had already created, so that there were now two sets of links to the same disambig pages). I specifically chose to not block Mathbot entirely, because I can see that it performs other useful tasks, and since it is the only bot that edits the math lists, temporarily restricting those lists to human editors seemed like the least disruptive way to prevent mindless duplication of disambig links while a solution was reached. I have proposed a number of routes which will alleviate this problem, and have offered to do all the work needed to implement them aside from the small task of refining the bot instructions, which other members of the disambiguation project can help with if needed. bd2412 T 03:48, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
This is getting very repetitive. I'm getting a very strong sense of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT from BD2412. Regardless of that, is there some way that the bot could be persuaded to link only to the "(disambiguation)" form of a mathdab page rather than whatever other form might also exist and regardless of which one is primary? That would seem to appease the disambiguators while still allowing the lists to function properly. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:11, 11 May 2011 (UTC)- That would be a fine solution. I find it distressing that you are getting WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, because I have been asked, and had to explain, several times in this conversation why this is useful to disambiguators (because it removes false positives), and why our "tools" can't be adjusted to ignore these links (because our primary tool is the "what links here" page, and intentional disambig redirects are the fix for that). If there is something else you think I didn't hear, please do point me to it, because I have yet to see a reason for not implementing some solution that would be beneficial to everyone here (this project included). I have offered several proposals that would both improve the utility of the lists for encyclopedia users, and preserve their utility for maintenance purposes. All I've been pointed to in return is a prior conversation in this project where it was acknowledged that these lists could be housed in project space, but which fizzled out with no resolution, and similar acknowledgment in this discussion that such a solution is feasible. bd2412 T 04:36, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well you wouldn't like if somebody from maths went to the disambiguation project and started changing things there just saying that had to be the way and pointing at some guideline here and saying what you did was making work here. If we proposed various ways you could change and you rejected them all and then we just did them regardless of consensus there you'd be annoyed. Dmcq (talk) 07:46, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- You're right. I've long known about the need to do something about Mathbot and its disambiguation links, but put it off for over a year because I didn't want to stomp onto another project's turf and demand changes. Especially at a project that has always been so helpful with fixing those oh-so-difficult mathdab links. (Seriously, this project is the best I've come across in terms of helping fix dablinks.)
- Like you say, it's neither sporting nor fair to demand maths to do all the work to accommodate the DPL project. But something does need to be done, and rewriting our scripts is an incomplete solution, since we can't possibly remove the math lists from "what links here". If it's possible for me to do all the technical work, and submit it for a Mathbot maintainer to review, I would be happy to give it a shot. --JaGatalk 08:57, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well you wouldn't like if somebody from maths went to the disambiguation project and started changing things there just saying that had to be the way and pointing at some guideline here and saying what you did was making work here. If we proposed various ways you could change and you rejected them all and then we just did them regardless of consensus there you'd be annoyed. Dmcq (talk) 07:46, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well my favourite solution would be the two separate pages one. I'm not sure how much manual work is involved in keeping the pahge in shape but it would be best if duplication of that effort could be minimised. For instance a number of files in project space could be generated for different things and then the article space version could transclude a selection. So the real question I see is how much and what type manual editing is wanted? As to the complaints from the dab group I'm sure there must be some way of marking links as deliberate and not to be changed. In fact I'd like to see that better described as there certainly have been cases where I've felt it was far more appropriate to point only at a redirect rather than a redirect target because the redirect might be written as a proper article at some stage. Dmcq (talk) 10:13, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- There is a way to mark disambig links as deliberate: WP:INTDABLINK. To implement it, we need to get Mathbot to use, for example, Sampling theory (disambiguation) and not Sampling theory (it currently lists both at List of mathematics articles (S) for some reason). I'm willing to help figure out how to make it work. I don't think it will be difficult. --JaGatalk 17:52, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- Dmcq, I am in complete agreement with you, particularly if the maintenance lists must have direct links to disambig pages to function. I think this would have the added benefit of allowing the mathematics project to present something in article space that would be better for our end-users than the unfriendly wall-of-links lists currently sitting there. As I have indicated before, I'll be glad to do the heavy lifting on this (and JaGa has offered to assist with whatever bot work is necessary. bd2412 T 22:16, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well my favourite solution would be the two separate pages one. I'm not sure how much manual work is involved in keeping the pahge in shape but it would be best if duplication of that effort could be minimised. For instance a number of files in project space could be generated for different things and then the article space version could transclude a selection. So the real question I see is how much and what type manual editing is wanted? As to the complaints from the dab group I'm sure there must be some way of marking links as deliberate and not to be changed. In fact I'd like to see that better described as there certainly have been cases where I've felt it was far more appropriate to point only at a redirect rather than a redirect target because the redirect might be written as a proper article at some stage. Dmcq (talk) 10:13, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
Here is an idea. Perhaps we could put a Wikipedia:Editnotice on each of the list of mathematics articles pages. It could say something like:This list is automatically generated.Changes to this list may be overwritten by User:Mathbot. To change something on this page, leave a note at User talk:Mathbot.That would stop most people from editing the lists. But it wouldn't prevent manual maintenance and it wouldn't require maintaining two lists. Ozob (talk) 12:20, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
Re a comment by David Eppstein: if we link to redirects instead of linking to the pages themselves, it makes the "related changes" tool not work for those pages, because "related changes" only looks at links, it does not bypass redirects. This is one reason the lists need to link directly to the desired pages. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:54, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
My current opinion, by the way, is that the people who go around changing dab links need to find a way to whitelist these lists. In the end: If they are editing manually, it is trivial to just skip these lists. If they are using a script, it is trivial to tell the script to skip them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:56, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- Currently, no "whitelist" exists for pages in article space to link directly to a disambiguation page. Creating a whitelist (btw not a trivial task) would not solve our problem due to "what links here", the primary tool used by dab de-linkers to clear dablinks. Further, there doesn't seem to be a reason for an exemption from WP:INTDABLINK; the lists are already littered with redirects, which are intentionally and correctly there, so having redirects in the lists is already an established and accepted practice. I know it's not very nice for one project to demand another make changes, so I'm willing to do all the technical work if possible. I don't know what more I can do. --JaGatalk 20:33, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- Wouldn't an edit notice would solve the problem? A disambiguator would find the list, click "edit" to attempt to fix it, and find the above notice. That would not save them the time it takes to reach the page and click "edit", but it would save them from making a lot of changes. Ozob (talk) 01:39, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- If people are doing this by manually clicking on "what links here" it is trivial for them to just ignore the lists of math articles. Human brains are good at that sort of thing. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:44, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- Human brains are also good at programming. Why not just fix the problem? --JaGatalk 05:31, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- Why doesn't an edit notice fix the problem? Ozob (talk) 10:36, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- I think an edit notice seems like a fine idea. This is particularly because there is no problem with the lists themselves; they need to link directly to each math page to function correctly. The main problem is finding a way to let disambiguators know to spend their time on other pages. If they are doing the disambiguation manually, the edit notice should point it out. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:22, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- An edit notice is definitely a good idea, but it doesn't solve our problem. Disambiguators live in a tool-assisted world; we couldn't fix thousands of dablinks per month without them. Most dabfixers will use a tool such as Enkidu, WikiCleaner, or AWB to go through a list of pages that link to a disambiguation page. (And these are all based on "what links here" so a whitelist does no good.) Since we are editing pages with a tool and not clicking "edit this page" in many if not all cases the edit notice will go, well, unnoticed. --JaGatalk 21:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- Also, regarding the edit notice, I'd say it's a great step but not enough. Pages in article space that, for all intents and purposes, cannot be edited by humans is non-intuitive. The disambig project won't be the first to have a problem with this, we're just the first to show up. I would suggest a similar warning template on the top of the article itself, and adding each list to a category such as "Bot-maintained articles" so other bot-runners will have something to work with in the future. --JaGatalk 21:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- They cab be edited by humans: if you add an article, the bot will respect it. What you can't do is remove a link to a math article and expect the bot not to add it back. That's intentional; the list should include every page categorized in one of the List of mathematics categories. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- Also, regarding the edit notice, I'd say it's a great step but not enough. Pages in article space that, for all intents and purposes, cannot be edited by humans is non-intuitive. The disambig project won't be the first to have a problem with this, we're just the first to show up. I would suggest a similar warning template on the top of the article itself, and adding each list to a category such as "Bot-maintained articles" so other bot-runners will have something to work with in the future. --JaGatalk 21:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- An edit notice is definitely a good idea, but it doesn't solve our problem. Disambiguators live in a tool-assisted world; we couldn't fix thousands of dablinks per month without them. Most dabfixers will use a tool such as Enkidu, WikiCleaner, or AWB to go through a list of pages that link to a disambiguation page. (And these are all based on "what links here" so a whitelist does no good.) Since we are editing pages with a tool and not clicking "edit this page" in many if not all cases the edit notice will go, well, unnoticed. --JaGatalk 21:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- Human brains are also good at programming. Why not just fix the problem? --JaGatalk 05:31, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
I pointed this out on a user talk page, but I don't know if it has been pointed out there. A key reason that these lists need to link directly to disambiguation pages is that the "related changes" tool does not bypass redirects. So this link [14] shows no changes, even though I did edit the disambiguation page that is indirectly linked from User:CBM/Sandbox. This link [15] does show the changes. We have no control over the "related changes" tool to make it bypass redirects. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:35, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- If the purpose of the lists is to serve project related maintenance and monitoring functions, and it must have this user-unfriendly wall of links to accomplish this, then why does it need to be in article space? A user visiting one of these pages will not know that a large number of links on the page are redirects linking redundantly to pages already linked to, nor will they know that many of the links are unannounced disambig links, that will not take them to the math articles they expect to see. In some cases, those disambig links lead to pages where math-related articles are buried in a pile of other things. As a rule, blocky wall-of-links type pages are ugly and inelegant, and could be maintained in a less visible location while something more logical and orderly could be set up in article space. bd2412 T 15:02, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- The list is also used for browsing, and it seems like the dab page issue is not serious enough to make it worth maintaining two lists instead of one. The criteria for inclusion is that the pages are categorized in a category in List of mathematics categories, or are particularly related to math even though not in one of those categories. The categories include "mathematical disambiguation", which is one reason that so many dab pages are on the lists. This is sensible; we want the lists to have a broad scope rather than a narrow one. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:47, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- If you don't want to do the two-lists solution, then I would like to look at Mathbot's code to see about implementing WP:INTDABLINK. All the work would be on me, so it would cost you nothing. Also, I wouldn't submit changes without review. And hey, maybe I'm not able to code the change, in which case you'd never hear from me again! :) --JaGatalk 21:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- I just explained above why that cannot work - it breaks the related changes tool, at least. This list is intended to link directly to the dab pages, not to bypass them via redirects. In principle it would be possible to make the Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity bypass the redirects, because that code can be edited, but the related changes tool is part of Mediawiki, we can't easily change it. But there is no reason to go to all this trouble; it's much simpler for humans to just ignore the lists when they look for links to dab pages. I have yet to hear a good reason why that would be difficult. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- P.S. even if we do update MathBot we would also have to update Jitse's bot that updates Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity. It's a significant amount of effort, which doesn't seem to have any strong justification. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:22, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- Since you asked, the reason why it would be difficult for humans to just ignore the lists when they look for links to dab pages is that there are a large number of people who engage in disambiguation work, some sporadically, and short of altering Wikipedia to make a permanent banner perpetually telling all Wikipedians, "don't edit the lists of mathematics articles", there is no way to keep people from making these fixes. I grant that a banner atop each section would keep people from further wasting their time, but we generally only put banners on articles needing repairs, and it is unseemly to consider a set of articles perpetually signalling the need for repairs that can never actually be made. How significant is the amount of work involved in updating the two bots at issue? We have already offered to do the work, and it is always worthwhile to test out solutions to see if they can be made to work, even if they are ultimately not the solutions implemented. bd2412 T 03:47, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- Unless you have access to change the source code of both Mathbot and Jitse's bot, you're not really in a position to "do the work". The suggestion to implement two separate lists seems like work that doesn't have general agreement anyway. Because there are reasons not to change the links to go via redirects, that work also would be premature at this point. Any changes to the system would need to be discussed and most importantly brought to consensus. There does not seem to be a consensus to change the lists at this point.
- Since you asked, the reason why it would be difficult for humans to just ignore the lists when they look for links to dab pages is that there are a large number of people who engage in disambiguation work, some sporadically, and short of altering Wikipedia to make a permanent banner perpetually telling all Wikipedians, "don't edit the lists of mathematics articles", there is no way to keep people from making these fixes. I grant that a banner atop each section would keep people from further wasting their time, but we generally only put banners on articles needing repairs, and it is unseemly to consider a set of articles perpetually signalling the need for repairs that can never actually be made. How significant is the amount of work involved in updating the two bots at issue? We have already offered to do the work, and it is always worthwhile to test out solutions to see if they can be made to work, even if they are ultimately not the solutions implemented. bd2412 T 03:47, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- P.S. even if we do update MathBot we would also have to update Jitse's bot that updates Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity. It's a significant amount of effort, which doesn't seem to have any strong justification. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:22, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- I just explained above why that cannot work - it breaks the related changes tool, at least. This list is intended to link directly to the dab pages, not to bypass them via redirects. In principle it would be possible to make the Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity bypass the redirects, because that code can be edited, but the related changes tool is part of Mediawiki, we can't easily change it. But there is no reason to go to all this trouble; it's much simpler for humans to just ignore the lists when they look for links to dab pages. I have yet to hear a good reason why that would be difficult. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- If you don't want to do the two-lists solution, then I would like to look at Mathbot's code to see about implementing WP:INTDABLINK. All the work would be on me, so it would cost you nothing. Also, I wouldn't submit changes without review. And hey, maybe I'm not able to code the change, in which case you'd never hear from me again! :) --JaGatalk 21:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- The list is also used for browsing, and it seems like the dab page issue is not serious enough to make it worth maintaining two lists instead of one. The criteria for inclusion is that the pages are categorized in a category in List of mathematics categories, or are particularly related to math even though not in one of those categories. The categories include "mathematical disambiguation", which is one reason that so many dab pages are on the lists. This is sensible; we want the lists to have a broad scope rather than a narrow one. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:47, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- There was a suggestion to use an edit notice on the lists, which is only visible when editing; I don't think a banner visible to readers would be helpful. We do want people to edit the list of math articles to add math articles that somehow aren't there - we just don't want people to remove links to math articles. They can remove them, of course, but the bot will add the links back if the articles are categorized as math articles, with no permanent harm done. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:59, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- Oleg Alexandrov says that he will "be happy to implement whatever consensus solution emerges". This seems to suggest that he does not find a two-list solution to be technically problematic. However, consensus must be developed based on facts, not speculations. If editors oppose a two list solution because they believe that it would cost more in terms of effort than tagging the various sections and letting disambiguators discover the tag once they get to the point of making the edit, then a correct determination as to the efficacy of that belief can not be made unless we test that argument with a trial run of a second list. I really don't see why we wouldn't give it a spin to see how it works, as it can be changed back just ickly. In any case, control of the bots is irrelevant to the question of whether the current situation conforms with policy, and all of the arguments about "exceptions" to the policy against intentional disambig links leave out the fact that the exception is that such links are permitted in mainspace if done through the disambig redirect. Neither the imprimatur of a project nor the inability of administrators to edit the bot's source code legitimize the deliberate introduction of error into the system. bd2412 T 13:56, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- The current lists do conform to policy, full stop. There is no error, the links are intentional, and they are one of the forseen exceptions to the general principle not to link to disambiguation pages without the name "disambiguation". There is no unilateral policy that we may never link to disambiguation pages without "disambiguation" in the page name. Moreover, the banner at the very top of every MOS page, guideline, and policy says that there will be exceptions to the general rules laid out.
- Oleg Alexandrov says that he will "be happy to implement whatever consensus solution emerges". This seems to suggest that he does not find a two-list solution to be technically problematic. However, consensus must be developed based on facts, not speculations. If editors oppose a two list solution because they believe that it would cost more in terms of effort than tagging the various sections and letting disambiguators discover the tag once they get to the point of making the edit, then a correct determination as to the efficacy of that belief can not be made unless we test that argument with a trial run of a second list. I really don't see why we wouldn't give it a spin to see how it works, as it can be changed back just ickly. In any case, control of the bots is irrelevant to the question of whether the current situation conforms with policy, and all of the arguments about "exceptions" to the policy against intentional disambig links leave out the fact that the exception is that such links are permitted in mainspace if done through the disambig redirect. Neither the imprimatur of a project nor the inability of administrators to edit the bot's source code legitimize the deliberate introduction of error into the system. bd2412 T 13:56, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- There was a suggestion to use an edit notice on the lists, which is only visible when editing; I don't think a banner visible to readers would be helpful. We do want people to edit the list of math articles to add math articles that somehow aren't there - we just don't want people to remove links to math articles. They can remove them, of course, but the bot will add the links back if the articles are categorized as math articles, with no permanent harm done. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:59, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- I don't see any strong reason to "give it a spin". It's a waste of effort to develop a new system and then switch back to the old one. You still seem to be ignoring the issue that it's not hard at all for disambiguatiors to just ignore these lists when they edit. There does not seem to be consensus here to change the current system, apart from possibly adding editnotices. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:12, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- Our policy states
- I don't see any strong reason to "give it a spin". It's a waste of effort to develop a new system and then switch back to the old one. You still seem to be ignoring the issue that it's not hard at all for disambiguatiors to just ignore these lists when they edit. There does not seem to be consensus here to change the current system, apart from possibly adding editnotices. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:12, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
“ To link to a disambiguation page (rather than to a page whose topic is a specific meaning), link to the title that includes the text "(disambiguation)", even if that's a redirect – for example, link to the redirect America (disambiguation) rather than the target page at "America". ” - That is the ONLY way provided for intentional linking to disambiguation pages, and was arrived at by long-standing community consensus. To intentionally revert corrections conforming to that policy is vandalism. Full stop. bd2412 T 15:33, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- If you scroll to the very top of Wikipedia:Disambiguation, you will see: "This page documents an English Wikipedia editing guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply.". That applies to the entire page, including the part on disambiguation links. There is no policy violation in linking directly to dab pages when there is a good reason to do so, as there is here. We do not have absolute policies on Wikipedia, and "editing guidelines" are particularly far from absolute. As a disambiguator, it's up to you to make reasonable accommodation for the pages that will be the "occasional exceptions" to the dablink section of that page, rather than trying to eliminate all exceptions based on the false premise that every articles must follow every editing guideline to the letter. Wikipedia does not work that way, as admins like you and I should know. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- If we are going to make exceptions to policy, then the wiser route would be to just move all {{mathdab}} pages to their "foo (disambiguation)" titles, as we discussed on Oleg's page. That would be less grievous because (1) we already have many disambig pages which correctly sit at those titles (e.g. George Washington (disambiguation), so it would not appear out of place, (2) the community of disambiguators involved in disambiguation page moves is small and discrete (as a practical matter, since in most cases only admins can actually do the work), making it much easier to keep that community informed, and (3) it would not create confusion for disambiguators. I still think a two-list solution would be the best, as it would not require any exception be made to any policy (however strictly enforced), and the procedural change would only have to be made once. On a side note, whatever solution is arrived at, I still think the lists as they stand are unappealing and unweildy, and could be made much more elegant, but not in ways conducive to continuation of the current bot-editing regime. Also, as I mentioned in that discussion, there are a lot of {{mathdab}} pages that should be eliminated under WP:DABCONCEPT and WP:TWODABS, or for which a primary topic may be identifiable. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- If you scroll to the very top of Wikipedia:Disambiguation, you will see: "This page documents an English Wikipedia editing guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply.". That applies to the entire page, including the part on disambiguation links. There is no policy violation in linking directly to dab pages when there is a good reason to do so, as there is here. We do not have absolute policies on Wikipedia, and "editing guidelines" are particularly far from absolute. As a disambiguator, it's up to you to make reasonable accommodation for the pages that will be the "occasional exceptions" to the dablink section of that page, rather than trying to eliminate all exceptions based on the false premise that every articles must follow every editing guideline to the letter. Wikipedia does not work that way, as admins like you and I should know. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- That is the ONLY way provided for intentional linking to disambiguation pages, and was arrived at by long-standing community consensus. To intentionally revert corrections conforming to that policy is vandalism. Full stop. bd2412 T 15:33, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
You know, I think we would have found a solution that satisfies everyone long ago except for this vigorous opposition from Carl. I would gladly contribute to update Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity, for instance, but I'm sure Carl has a reason this cannot be done. The disambig problem can be fixed, if only you were willing to work with us instead of against us. --JaGatalk 16:04, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- I don't think such remarks are helpful. Paul August ☎ 02:25, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
- JaGa, would you be okay with the alternative of moving all of the {{mathdab}} pages to their "Foo (disambiguation)" titles? bd2412 T 16:19, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- Let me try to explain this again, more clearly, since you seem to have completely missed the point of Carl's objection. It is necessary to include all of the redirects in these lists, because only doing it that way will allow "related changes" to report changes in which someone edits one of the redirect pages (say, turning it into its own separate article). Moving disambiguation pages around will not change this, because it will not change the need to link to the other names. And while we're explaining things, there's something else I still don't understand, so perhaps you can explain it to me again. Exactly why is it impossible for the people working on disambiguation to ignore the math lists? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:26, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- Because we work with tools driven why "what links here" which we have no control over. BTW I'm perfectly fine with moving all mathdabs to (disambiguation) pages. --JaGatalk 06:25, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
- If the dab pages were all moved to end with the word "(disambiguation)" that would fix the problem that the disambiguators see, but it would violate the naming convention instead. There are hundreds of these dab pages, so I expect other people from the "name fixing" group would show up to complain about the wrong names being used. We do monitor redirects pages that are categorized as math, and we monitor math disambiguation pages, but not all redirects leading to math pages. Although that would not be difficult to make a list of. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:50, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- The naming convention is more flexible than the convention for making intentional links to disambig pages because naming of pages is purely aesthetic, while the linking issue is functional. Linking through a page name including "disambiguation" also serves something of an aesthetic purpose on pages like these lists because it alerts readers who are simply browsing that clicking this link will not take them to a regular article, but to a disambig page. As for 'people from the "name fixing" group' - well, my ears are burning a little, but the "people" you would hear from if it the proposition was objectionable would probably be me, as I am the primary communicator of such concerns to other projects. There are only four other people who regularly work on that aspect of the project (I mentioned before that since it generally involves page moves over existing pages, participation is basically limited to admins), and I can easily communicate a mathdab exception to them. Within the project as a whole, we have had some closely contested discussions of late as to whether all disambig pages should sit at a "Foo (disambiguation)" title, or even be in a "Disambiguation:" namespace, but we've never mustered a consensus for any particular change. bd2412 T 02:47, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
- If the dab pages were all moved to end with the word "(disambiguation)" that would fix the problem that the disambiguators see, but it would violate the naming convention instead. There are hundreds of these dab pages, so I expect other people from the "name fixing" group would show up to complain about the wrong names being used. We do monitor redirects pages that are categorized as math, and we monitor math disambiguation pages, but not all redirects leading to math pages. Although that would not be difficult to make a list of. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:50, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- Because we work with tools driven why "what links here" which we have no control over. BTW I'm perfectly fine with moving all mathdabs to (disambiguation) pages. --JaGatalk 06:25, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
- Let me try to explain this again, more clearly, since you seem to have completely missed the point of Carl's objection. It is necessary to include all of the redirects in these lists, because only doing it that way will allow "related changes" to report changes in which someone edits one of the redirect pages (say, turning it into its own separate article). Moving disambiguation pages around will not change this, because it will not change the need to link to the other names. And while we're explaining things, there's something else I still don't understand, so perhaps you can explain it to me again. Exactly why is it impossible for the people working on disambiguation to ignore the math lists? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:26, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- First, if it is necessary to monitor all pages, including redirects, then why are none of the existing "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects in the list, other than the handful I added myself? The rest are currently unmonitored, but adding them will bloat these lists even further. If the whole point of this exercise is being able to monitor "related changes", it seems to me that function is fulfilled just as well by just looking at the page of Changes related to "Category:Mathematical disambiguation" - whatever reports on related changes the bots need to convey, changes relating to disambig pages are there, except for those involving the removal of the disambig tag or the category itself. I have a proposal for the latter problem below.
- As to why we can't just ignore these: we are facing the same technical constraints that you are. For the same reason that you can't use a "Related changes" page without having direct links on the page being watched, we can't use a "What links here" page to see which links are intentional. Sure, I could choose to ignore mathematics lists when I see them, as could JaGa. We could tell JustAGal and R'n'B, and our other most consistent participants. We can not control, however, what random editors who are not regular project participants will seek to fix, any more than we can control who will decide to change common spelling errors. There are hundreds of editors who fix disambiguation links whenever they happen to come across them, or who search for patterns of disambig links to fix without coming through our project page. We have no more control over what they see or do, and it does nobody any good if such repairs are automatically undone by a bot.
- User:Zundark thoughtfully proposed the solution of maintaining two sets of lists, and Oleg has indicated he would be happy to implement whatever solution we come up with. It occurs to me that it would not even be necessary to replicate the entire lists if we could simply add the "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects to the existing lists in article space (as is necessary if you wish to monitor redirects), and then instruct Mathbot to add direct links to those math-related disambiguation pages to a single list of disambig pages maintained in project space (or perhaps just to use the related changes key for the Category itself). Then you would have all links monitored with no actual duplication, and a minimum of fuss. Would that solution work for you? bd2412 T 19:23, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- The reason that "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects shouldn't be in the lists is that they are not categorized as math articles. We don't monitor all redirects to math articles, just pages that are categorized as math. The idea of splitting the lists into little pieces appears excessively complicated and fragile. Simply ignoring the pages when you look at "what links here" is simple. If random people edit the pages and the bot fixes them, no long-term harm is done. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:50, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- The list is already split into twenty-seven pieces, alphabetically and numerically, and already needs to be split further to accord with reasonable size constraints. If the fragility of maintaining separate lists was a genuine issue, you'd have one giant page running perhaps 1.5 MB. The long-term harm of bots undoing fixes by random people is that we end up with thousands of wasted edits, when the time and effort spent making those edits could have been spent making changes that would stick. By the way, it is David Eppstein's position, and not mine, that redirects need to be monitored. If you agree that redirects to disambig pages do not need to be included in these lists, then moving the disambig pages would be an acceptable solution. Cheers! bd2412 T 20:09, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- The reason that "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects shouldn't be in the lists is that they are not categorized as math articles. We don't monitor all redirects to math articles, just pages that are categorized as math. The idea of splitting the lists into little pieces appears excessively complicated and fragile. Simply ignoring the pages when you look at "what links here" is simple. If random people edit the pages and the bot fixes them, no long-term harm is done. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:50, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Musean hypernumber
The article Musean hypernumber is mostly the contribution of editor Koeplinger. A quick google scholar search reveals mainly a text "Modular parts of a function" by K Carmody - Applied Mathematics and Computation, 1990 cited by... one (1). Tkuvho (talk) 14:40, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
- "The range of applications envisioned by Musès of his hypernumber concept is grandiose: A full and complete understanding of all laws of physics (in particular quantum mechanics[6][19]), a description of consciousness in terms of physical formulations,[1][4][5] spiritual growth, religious enlightenment, the solution of well-known mathematical problems (including the Riemann hypothesis), and the exploration of para-psychological phenomena (e.g.[20])." Tkuvho (talk) 14:42, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
- Something immediately fishy is that all of the citations are to the journal Applied Mathematics and Computation. I only seem to get two relevant Google scholar hits for "musean hypernumber", both of which are to Applied Mathematics and Computation, one of which is from Carmody (one of the two sole proponents of this number system). I'd say deletion probably seems appropriate, since these do not really seem to have attracted the attention of mathematicians beyond their two proponents. It would help if we knew that Applied Mathematics and Computation was a rubbish journal. But it's published by Elsevier, and claims a 5-year impact factor of 1.23 [16]. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:07, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
RfC for Combination
This RfC discussion could use a another viewpoint or two. At issue is the use of notation such as
Another spring FPC
The second one week, see Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Simple harmonic oscillator. It is May after all.--RDBury (talk) 22:25, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
Patrick Billingsley
I've created a new article titled Patrick Billingsley. Billingsley died recently at the age of 85.
The article is imperfect. Work on it! Michael Hardy (talk) 17:14, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
Lists of mathematics topics
Our page titled Lists of mathematics topics (notice that it's plural: lists) is a magnificent thing, unprecedented in all of intellectual history, just as Wikipedia is. It is a former featured list. We should work on returning it to that status. As I recall, all that was needed was references. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:13, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
- Does this list include itself? This could be a magnificent introduction to a current area of research, as well :) Tkuvho (talk) 10:26, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- Don't tempt me to create List of lists of mathematics topics that do not include themselves. —Tamfang (talk) 15:20, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- It might be more in the spirit of Wikipedia to create a list of lists of lists of lists of articles on a particular topic Michael Hardy (talk) 15:28, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
- Don't tempt me to create List of lists of mathematics topics that do not include themselves. —Tamfang (talk) 15:20, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
FYI: Leibniz formula for pi
See Talk:Leibniz formula for pi#Requested move. Hans Adler 15:22, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- It seems that the discussion has been (inappropriately) closed. CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:48, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- That was the point of this notification. I am not sure how to proceed now. Restart? There seems to be no reason to close this discussion so soon, and there seems to be no reason for using the precedent of the pi article but not the precedent of numerous articles that have titles actually similar to the one under discussion. Hans Adler 21:37, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- The standard period is 7 days (Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions) and they can only be closed by no admins if there is clear consensus, which was not the case. I think a reopened request is the best way to proceed.--Salix (talk): 00:01, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- That was the point of this notification. I am not sure how to proceed now. Restart? There seems to be no reason to close this discussion so soon, and there seems to be no reason for using the precedent of the pi article but not the precedent of numerous articles that have titles actually similar to the one under discussion. Hans Adler 21:37, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- Hello, I am the closing administrator of the discussion; it was listed in the backlog of Requested Moves because it was more than 7 days old (8d 6hrs+). There was no consensus to move the page, but if you want another debate that's fine by me. Best, Skomorokh 10:48, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
I have noticed a recent trend to replace ordinary html formatted equations in articles with the {{math}} template. I noticed that our WP:MOSMATH barely mentions the use of this template (although some editors seem to act as though it is mandatory). Strangely, it does appear in Help:Formula as the only option for properly typesetting mathematics formulas. It seems like there should at least be some degree of accord between the recommendations of these two pages. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:55, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- Help:Formula only describes the use of <math> tag, not the {{math}} template. The tag <math> is what's needed for anything complex. The {{math}} template is useful I think for simpler inline formulas and it uses the same fonts as the <math> tag but it is possible to use the <math> tag for everything. Personally I quite dislike having inline html maths not using the {{math}} template as the letters are different, it cause one to refer to a inline and then in the out of line formulas for instance. Dmcq (talk) 19:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- I was referring to the table at the top, where the examples of "proper" formatting in html all use {{math}}. I think either should be regarded as acceptable, but this needs to be clarified somewhere. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:50, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
transclusion
“ Probably the hardest part of writing a mathematical article (actually, any article) is the difficulty of addressing the level of mathematical knowledge on the part of the reader. For example, when writing about a field, do we assume that the reader already knows group theory? A general approach is to start simple, then move toward more abstract and general statements as the article proceeds. The suggestions below are intended to help us achieve this. ” The above passage is part of the project page. An editor inserted the following comment, which I now move here. —Tamfang (talk) 18:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
I do not think, that such transclusions (e.g. explaining groups in an article about fields) improves an article.It may be useful to distinguish clearly between motivation and definition.Stephan Spahn (talk) 14:36, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- The advice following that did not suggest explaining the underlying concepts, it mainly talked about doing things simply and linking to required concepts. We certainly need to say why something is notable and expanding on that as motivation is a good idea I think. Dmcq (talk) 19:29, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Mathematical concepts named after geographic locales
A thread on mathoverflow compiled names of mathematical ideas named after places. I've listed them here: User:Michael Hardy/Named after places
Could this evolve into a Wikipedia article? Michael Hardy (talk) 15:27, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
- Unfortunately I don't think the doi does always work. At least, for example,
- Yeah I remember that discussion, I led it :p. But as a point of comparision, There's a bit more than 500 articles with links to the Project Euclid website (524 articles, as of 17 March 2001), well over the threshold for inclusion. However, if these links are truely redundant with DOIs (as in dois will always resolve to the same location), then it would probably be better to convert these urls do DOIs instead of giving them their own identifiers. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:59, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
- See a related discussion at Template talk:Citation#Many things about identifiers. I think the distinction between identifiers like MR and doi that have their own parameters and identifiers like {{ECCC}} that do not is the frequency of usage: how many project Euclid references do we have? In any case, it should work to use your Euclid template within the