Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

The initial sentence in "probability distribution" is terrible!!

Here it is:

In probability theory, a probability distribution is a function of the probabilities of a mutually exclusive set of events.

That is idiotic nonsense. I had no idea this article was in such profoundly bad shape. I'm going to have to think about how to rephrase this. If someone beats me to it, I will be pleased. Michael Hardy 17:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

... OK, now I've changed it. I was shocked by what I read. Michael Hardy 17:33, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Is it standard that the term "distribution" is restricted to measures over subsets of the real numbers, rather than the general case of measures over subsets of any possible space of outcomes (e.g., random curves)?  --Lambiam^Talk 18:19, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

The Encyclopaedia of Mathematics considers a probability distribution to be any probability measure of a probability space.[1]  --Lambiam^Talk 18:27, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what's standard, but my old copy of Feller's book says that distribution functions are "non-decreasing functions which tend to zero as x → −∞ and to 1 as x → ∞." That seems to imply that a distribution function is defined in terms of a random variable that can only assume real values. On the other hand, I only have vol. 1 of An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications. DavidCBryant 18:48, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, of course obviously there are vector-valued random variables, and permutation-valued random variables, etc. etc. etc. I've now modified the first sentence accordingly. Michael Hardy 20:56, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

My impression was that "distribution" refers to something more complicated than a density function, but not as complicated as a measure. You use it with the Riemann-Stieltjes integral#Application to probability theory. JRSpriggs 06:22, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Protect geometry?

I put the article Geometry on my watchlist about three weeks ago. In this time, there have been multiple acts of vandalism committed on that page, from blanking and replacing it with expletives to inserting childish non-sense that the contributor considers to be amusing. Almost without an exception, these edits were performed by anonymous users, and some anonymous users (at least one of them with a history of vandalism more extensive than many an editor's list of contributions) targeted the page repeatedly. It is easy enough to understand why is this happening: this is one of the most high profile mathematics articles. Precisely for that reason I think it should also be a model article, not alternate between the states of being an encyclopaedic article and the latest in the junkyard.

It's true that it does not take too much effort to revert an unwelcome edit. However, should we just shrug and carry on, apathetically reassured by technical convenience of reverts, or can we take a more pro-active approach? My assessment is that in this case, at least, the nuisance of the anonymous vandalism far outweighs the modest benefit of having occasional serious anonymous editor contribute. What do other people here think of protecting or semiprotecting Geometry, as has been done in the past with Mathematics and other popular articles? Arcfrk 03:08, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey! Some of us like having geometry in the junkyard! (Not disagreeing with your point, just amused by your wording.) —David Eppstein 04:10, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Geometry in a junkyard ("thrackles"?!) is not the same as throwing junk into "geometry". :-)

I, too, have watched the unending stream of petty vandalism, and would support semiprotection. (Full protection seems unnecessary.) --KSmrq^T 04:50, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Somehow my previous comment disappeared: Yes, I think, semiprotection would be a good idea in this case. Jakob.scholbach 05:01, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree. While we're at it, the incidence of vandalism edits at Randomness is also high (1.6 per day, compared to 1.1 per day for Geometry, measured over the last 100 edits), presumably because the perpetrators pick, predictably, a "random" target for their random actions.  --Lambiam^Talk 05:35, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I applied for semi-protection of Randomness recently. It was denied (as most of my requests are) on the grounds that there was not enough vandalism to warrant action. Read that to mean that we waste less than two hours per day reverting it. By the way, KSmrq again wiped out another person's edit (Jakob.scholbach's) and did not fix it. JRSpriggs 11:49, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The criterion is heavy and continued vandalism. It is continued, the question is what is heavy? Charles Matthews 12:15, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The problem with semiprotecting articles is that it doesn't get rid of annoying vandals - it just moves them elsewhere. If only a few articles are protected, the vandals will just pick an unprotected one. If a large enough number of articles became semiprotected, it seems possible that the vandals would just start getting usernames, which are free anyway. On the other hand, semiprotection goes against the idea that "anyone can edit" and may discourage new productive editors from joining.

So the traditional standards for semiprotection are very high. Except in cases of libel or copyright violation, the traditional standards want the vandalism rate to be so high that it cannot be dealt with via watchlists and manual reverts.

I think that there is shifting opinion about semiprotecting articles. If you watch WP:RFPP you will see that some admins have lower standards, and the people requesting semiprotection have much lower standards, than what has been required. Maybe in a few months the standard could be lowered some.

And they keep promising that "any day now" the German wikipedia will start experimenting with stable versions, which may also reduce vandalism. CMummert · talk 13:48, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be consensus among the editors that it is worth trying to semiprotect Geometry, but a caution from CMummert that it may contradict the current practices of Wikipedia's administrators. While I agree with him that protecting the page does not solve the problem of vandalism completely (e.g. the vandals that have been turned away can still cut their favourite four letter words on their desk in their classroom), I do not believe that this point is relevant for the question at hand. Of course, it all depends on how you interpret the purpose, but here is my statistical analysis of last 100 edits of Geometry, between 20:52 March 27 and 17:14 May 10:

• 2 bot additions of links
• 2 major edits (I expanded the article)
• 3 minor edits (corrections of a single word or sentence)
• 93 edits that are either acts of vandalism, addition of irrelevant information, or reverts.

Thus, over the last 100 edits the vandalism rate is 93%, while the major editing rate is 2%. To answer Charles Matthews's question, I believe that the situation can be accurately described as heavy vandalism. Now, it's true that there are fewer than fifteen attacks per day on that page, but does anyone seriously believe that unprotected status of that page contributes in any meaningful way to its development? If anything, I would conjecture that several well respected editors, while having the page on their watchlist (judging by the promptness of their reverts), choose not to contribute, given the present environment. Ksmrq indirectly confirmed it about a month ago on this very talk page. It is demoralizing to realize that the 'right for anyone to edit', which in this case translates into the opportunity for any dim-wit who has learned to swear, any pupil frustrated with his maths lessons, and anyone bored with encyclopaedic articles to vandalise the page, trumps the reasonable expectation of serious contributors to Wikipedia that their efforts to improve the content are supported in a meaningful way. Just to give you one example of how vandalism disrupts normal editing process, I stumbled across interesting pieces of text that had been a part of the text a while ago, but are no longer present. Given the vandalism rate, I do not have time to work with the page history to trace what has happened to those pieces of text.

Conclusion: if we adapt the pragmatic point of view that our goal is to improve the content of Wikipedia, then semiprotecting Geometry (while not solving the ills of the society as a whole) would be a valuable action towards accomplishing that goal. And conversely, leaving the article unprotected, as a punching bag for all sorts of vandals, sends the wrong message about Wikipedia's priorities. Arcfrk 08:07, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you. Now if we could just get the people at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection to agree. JRSpriggs 10:51, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Any admin can protect or semi-protect a page; this does not require action or agreement of some kind of people "at" the requests page.  --Lambiam^Talk 12:59, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that Arcfrk's argument is very compelling, but I understand the arguments against protection as well, which are based on the Wikipedia Foundation policy that anyone can edit here. If this issue were limited to Geometry, I would semiprotect it right now. The main concern I have about protecting Geometry is: how many other articles would end up protected if the same standard was used on them? On my watchlist, I know Randomness would. CMummert · talk 13:25, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I asked about this here this morning, and there are a couple of replies in favor of (at least temporary) semiprotection. I am quite willing to protect Geometry, but I want to know how many more pages are going to be requested before I start sliding down any slopes. CMummert · talk 23:57, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I did mention Randomness.[2] But if all editors who have Geometry on their watchlists now add Randomness to it, I think we can manage for the next couple of weeks. :)  --Lambiam^Talk 09:45, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd agree with semiprotecting this temporarily, say for a week. About the fact that this is a slippery slope, that's correct. Well, the wiki model is evolving, some limits to editing may turn out to be necessary, although of course articles should be semiprotected only when necessary and not for too long. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:58, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I have semiprotected Geometry for two weeks. C Mummert · talk 05:30, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

So, what's on your watchlist?

Perhaps I'm being naive, but it seems to me quite unwikipedian to go around protecting articles. Wouldn't a better way be to have some kind of shared watchlist for heavily vandalized articles? Is there already such a facility that I don't know about? If not, someone could just provide a list of problematic articles in their user namespace (or even in Wikipedia/Wikipedia_talk namespace). Others could add articles as the need arose. Silly rabbit 11:52, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

There's no shared watchlist. About which articles are vandalized, it is usually high profile ones, like mathematics itself, then the math portal and all its subpages, and then, well geometry. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:25, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

The closest thing is the "Related changes" tool, on the left side of the screen. If you go to one of the field subpages of this table and then select "related changes" you can get a list of changes made to the pages there, like this [3]. It's not quite the same as a watchlist because multiple changes to the same article are shown. C Mummert · talk 15:37, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I ask because I have noticed that some (perhaps) not-so-obvious pages seem to fall into the same category. For instance, mean seems to be a mid-level target for the odd vandal now and again. And, although it certainly scores lower on any quantitative assessment of vandalism than geometry, mathematics, etc., it's also a lesser concern to editors wary of the problem of vandalism in general. Personally, I'd be happy to put any article that seemed to be in modest trouble (such as mean) onto my own watchlist. Silly rabbit 16:05, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

A few more pages I've seen frequent vandalism on: Pythagorean theorem, Buoyancy, Fibonacci number. —David Eppstein 16:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Algebra seems to be attacked as much as Geometry, although, amazingly, unlike the latter it undergoes productive development at the same time. Arcfrk 06:08, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

It would be trivial to create a "shared watchlist" of vulnerable pages: create a page as subpage of this WikiProject, listing links to those pages, and ask people to consult "Related Changes". Charles Matthews 14:02, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

More interesting would be a "shared patrol-list", which answers the question "has someone whom I trust reviewed the most recent changes?" That way, I can avoid reviewing something that you've already reviewed and let pass. linas 00:05, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Mathematics article assessment

Thanks to the efforts of several editors, the assessment of mathematics articles using the {{maths rating}} template is now considerably more useful and worthwhile than it was before. I thought it would therefore be helpful to summarize the current system and its benefits, and to encourage editors to add ratings to existing and new articles.

The maths rating is a template which can be placed (by anyone) on the talk page of any mathematical article to summarize its quality, importance and field, and suggest improvements that could be made.

What can article assessment do for you? The maths rating system is useful for directing our efforts towards improving the mathematics coverage of wikipedia. It also helps us to monitor the progress of this WikiProject. Although assessment is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself, it is a useful way to organize and monitor our efforts.

Recent improvements to the system mean that articles with maths ratings are now included automatically (with comments) in many useful tables. For instance, you can see the ratings for articles in your field (e.g. algebra), you can find stub class articles (listed by importance) to improve, or articles considered to be vital to the project rated by importance and quality. Rated articles about mathematicians are listed in a sortable table and there are also tables of theorems and conjectures and historical articles, sortable by field. All rated articles are listed in these tables (which are updated daily). They are also automatically included in a a hierarchy of categories. Every table or category has a navigation bar that links easily to any other.

What can you do for article assessment? There are many ways we can all improve this scheme to maximize its benefits.

• Add the {{maths rating}} template to the talk page of an article. For example, when creating a new stub, why not also start up the talk page with a maths rating?
• Add or update data in {{maths rating}} templates. There are may articles whose importance or quality is unassessed. Take a quick look at the assessment scheme and assess or reassess an article today!
• Add comments to an article with a maths rating. There is a whole category of mathematics articles which have no comments. A signed comment helps even just to date the maths rating, but even better, it can provide a summary of suggested improvements for the article that other editors can read.
• Add extra information about mathematicians. To make sortable tables, the dates, surnames, and primary fields of mathematicians are needed. It is too difficult to deduce these from page contents, so they are stored in a special format. Just click on the links in the mathematicians table to add or update these data.

Finally, you can contribute by making suggestions here or at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 on how the scheme can be improved further. Many thanks. Geometry guy 01:39, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

As yet to be added mathematics articles

In my quest to assess every mathematics article I came across several articles that were in the purview of this Wikiproject that had not been placed under its supervision. This troubled me and I would like to know what can be done to add these articles to our project efficiently. The articles I have found thus far are Mandelbrot set and Lorenz attractor but I am sure there are more out there.--Cronholm144 18:52, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

You mean, articles without the Project Math banner on their talk pages? Just do what you did to Mandelbrot set, add one there. Also, add a mathematical category (e.g. Category:Fractals) to the article itself if it should have one and doesn't. —David Eppstein 19:02, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

According to the table of assessed mathematics articles there are about 1000 assessed articles. On the other hand the list of mathematics articles contains about 15000 articles. Previous discussions have not supported the automatic tagging of these articles (see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive_18#.7B.7BMaths_rating.7D.7D and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive_24#Tagging_math_articles) and have suggested that assessing all these articles might not be a sensible goal. However, the current assessment coverage is rather haphazard, and I would encourage editors to add maths ratings to any articles which they consider to be important to the project. Geometry guy 21:08, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I've started going through the A-Z of mathematics articles (there are 13216 of these, but there are also mathematicians and nonalphabetical articles). I thought it would be useful to add maths ratings with importance and field to some of these articles to make the coverage less patchy. This is mundane but straightforward to do using WP:AWB because the field and importance can usually be judged approximately from the title alone. Fortunately, I am being supported by other editors, especially Cronholm, who are keeping tabs on me and filling in quality gradings (I have also added quite a few quality gradings myself). My ratings are a very rough and ready assessment, but I think it is more useful to have someone's opinion rather than none at all. My motivation is that it will be easier to judge issues such as importance when articles can be compared in the many tables that have been created.

So far I have been through the letters A and B, which took about a day, so help would be much appreciated! I'm restricting myself to providing ratings for at most an additional 1/3 of the listed articles (there are certainly enough worthwhile articles to rate this many). Hence, if I don't run out of steam, the number of rated articles will increase from c. 1000 to c. 5000. I hope this is enough to provide a good cross-section of our coverage, but not too much to overwhelm the rating system (or other editors!).

I am making mistakes in this process: although I am trying to be careful, it is easy to add a rating to a redirect or a dab page, or rate an article which has already been rated. Please fix any mistakes you find. Furthermore, if in doubt I've tended to underrate an article's importance and/or quality, so please don't be offended if I have assessed your favourite topic as "low importance" or called your hard work "a stub". Uprate where appropriate! Even better, add to the article! Geometry guy 21:14, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Template:Numerical algorithms

The {{Numerical algorithms}} template appears to me as a rather indiscriminate collection of numerical algorithms, with a heavy bias towards root-finding algorithms. I don't know if it is necessary, and if it is, if grouping these together is any good. For example, it is of little use at Pseudorandom number generator and Fast Fourier transform. I would argue that it should be either thoroughly rewritten and posted on a different collection of articles, or otherwise deleted. Comments? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:56, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this navigation bar is useless (unbalanced, incomplete, and also inaccurate). That might, perhaps, be fixed, but in this case I don't understand what aim it could achieve that is not much better addressed by categories (for navigation) and a good overview at Numerical analysis.  --Lambiam^Talk 21:10, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

The obvious thing to do (and probably the least work) would be to move the template to "root-finding algorithms" and remove all the other stuff. Geometry guy 21:38, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Having looked at it, my first instinct is to delete it as a useless eyesore. While deleting from each article, add a category as Lambiam suggests. --KSmrq^T 21:43, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

OK. Jitse, our numerical guy, agrees too (on his talk page). I removed it from articles and deleted it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:39, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

One third and one quarter

I nominated these for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/One third, as not encyclopedic in my view. Comments on these articles are welcome there. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:00, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Mythical number

This survived AfD, although it could use a rewrite. Michael Hardy also suggests a new title, since this is not a class of number, but an essay on bogus statistics. Can anyone think of a good one? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:05, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Imaginary number? Seriously, I think that is how such made-up numbers that achieve mythical status are known. Plenty of Google hits with this meaning.  --Lambiam^Talk 00:03, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Michael seems to be thinking of something more descriptive, like unsourced statistical claims; or apocryphical, anecdotal, numerical.... to which mythical number would redirect. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:38, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the current title makes this a bit too much like a book ad. I'm not against citing the book, but centering the article around it is not a good idea. On the other hand, any alternative title should be in plain enough language not to be OR. Apocryphal statistics and anecdotal statistics both seem to capture the flavour of the article to me: the numerical aspect is reflected in the plain language meaning of the word "statistics". Geometry guy 19:09, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Which book?  --Lambiam^Talk 20:26, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, the cited reference reads a bit like a book title, but it seems to be an article. I still think the title revolves too much around one primary source. Geometry guy 20:34, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Collaboration of the "Week"

I don't mean to be a nag, but Theorem has been the CotW for at least a month. I think that participation in this collaboration had been a little spotty. We could rename it Cot-month or we could get theorem to FA. In any case I am tired of looking at theorem every time I log on and feeling guilty about the article :(. What do you think?--Cronholm144 05:44, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

See also the last time this was being discussed: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive 24#Wikipedia:Mathematics Collaboration of the Week.  --Lambiam^Talk 07:19, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

It looks as if some good ideas were thrown out, but that none of them were acted on. Perhaps the s/election of a coordinator would be a good start.--Cronholm144 07:32, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I would say that the Theorem CotW has been one of the better ones, the article has developed from Stub to Start or possibly B-class. In the first week very little happened and it then got a major reworking from GeometryGuy plus a couple of others.

In light of this I think a week is too short a time for people to give a particular article much attention, a month seems a more reasonable time frame. If its longer than that things get sluggish.

Yes a new cordinator would be good, fancy a job? --Salix alba (talk) 08:04, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Who me? or Lambiam. All I would be good for would be bothering people on their talk pages. Lambiam, Geometry Guy, Salix, Oleg, Jitse, etc... would do a better job of it. (If they don't want it then maybe...) thanks for the consideration.--Cronholm144 08:18, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia runs on volunteers, so the best way to get something done is to do it (or organize it) yourself. You noticed something that moved you to speak, therefore you are the obvious choice for coordinator. :-) --KSmrq^T 10:10, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

All right then, I gratefully accept. I will get working on it in roughly 8 hours. I will keep my promise about soliciting help from everyone. I will see you on the talk pages;)--Cronholm144 10:21, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Bothering other people is exactly right as a job description, so we have a perfect fit. :) Good luck. By the way, perhaps someone (K.?) should tell User:Meekohi that we are grateful for his long period of service as the self-proclaimed moderator of the Mathematics Collaboration of the Week project, but that we have managed to find a self-proclaimed replacement, so that he can retire as such and enjoy his regained freedom to give his undivided attention to actually improving articles, rather than having to spend time on moderating such activity.  --Lambiam^Talk 13:42, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Update:

Good news everyone, for the first time since I have been here an article has received more than 4 votes:). This of course means that the time to change the article has finally come. The winner is Mathematical Physics a top importance article and one of the 7 or so main categories here at the WP:WPM. I am proud to report that this article, as per the COTW requirements, is in dismal shape (another nominee by the way), so making significant improvements should be easy. I would welcome any and all to help out with this article. Also, on a more technical note, I don't know how to change the template, so if someone could do that for me I would be very appreciative. Thanks to all--Cronholm144 01:01, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Done: for information, see Wikipedia:Mathematics Collaboration of the Month#Templates involved in MATHCOTM; the last two inks contain the current and previous collaborations, so you just edit the contents of them. Geometry guy 01:32, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I've now given the page a spring clean. In particular, I've moved around some of the templates, which were all over the place before. Also the page seemed to contradict itself about the rules, so I've attempted to rephrase them. Of course, The Coordinator is the ultimate arbiter ;) Geometry guy 11:00, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Algebraic bracket

Could someone have a glance at Algebraic bracket and this AFD entry? Needs expert comment on accuracy / worthiness for keeping. Thanks. Tearlach 02:21, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Nominate it for AfD. It has no context, and it's completely isolated on wikipedia. Such things are useful in deformation theory (see Gerstenhaber algebra), but if the need should arise, it's likely to be dealt with inline anyway. So, no harm done. Anyway, I objected to the term algebraic bracket ages ago. Silly rabbit 02:36, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd prefer to keep this as a reminder that there are algebraic brackets, and this is one of them. We don't delete orphans on WP: we find them a family. I've known the term "algebraic bracket" since my early postdoctoral days, when I spent some time thinking about them with a few experts. I'd be happy to move this particular instance to a more specific title, though. In the long run, "algebraic bracket" itself might be a nice dab. Geometry guy 03:29, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I am not at all sure it's a good title, but the concept is important, and the article seems to have plenty of references (in case you needed context). Definitely keep! Arcfrk 13:54, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I closed the discussion after the nomination was withdrawn. The article was moved to Nijenhuis-Richardson bracket. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 04:02, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Category:Jewish mathematicians CfD

This category was recently deleted as part of the general deletion of Category:Mathematicians by religion. However the case of Category:Jewish mathematicians was put forward for deletion review and its deletion was overturned. Consequently it is now being considered for deletion again. I encourage members of the maths project to contribute to the discussion here. Geometry guy 18:01, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

There is possibly enough consensus to delete this category, which would be in line with the deletion and/or absense of similar religious/ethnic categories for mathematicians. However, there are users with no particular expertise who stop by at CfD's like this with a political agenda. Can I please encourage everyone here to look at the page and express their view. The outcome really does have the potential to affect the quality of life for many editors here, as the recent discussions over Georg Cantor illustrate. Please remember, though, that this is not a vote: read the contributions of other editors and express your view with comments and justification. Geometry guy 23:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure that it makes any difference? I have spent enormous amount of time analyzing the previous discussions and their outcomes, and came to the conclusion that people with this political agenda and no particular expertise are very persistent, and have the proven ability to bring this category back to life. To me it appears to be a canonical example of метать бисер перед свиньями. Comparatively speaking, I would prefer reverting vandals at Geometry or Algebra, at least, it's more efficient if just as hopeless. Arcfrk 01:05, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

For the sake of clarity, the Russian text above means "throwing pearls to the pigs", which is is used in English too, I think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:29, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

"Pearls before swine" but I think my generation is losing this and many other great colloquialisms,:( Anyway I don't believe we should ever allow this kind of thing to encroach on the wonderful place we have created here, fight to protect it, lest we lose it.--Cronholm144 03:12, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

A twist of irony that; here's the line as it appears in the King James Version of Matthew VII, verse 6:

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

In generations past, reading literacy was often built on a text found in many homes, so such phrases were familiar; but Matthew may have been less popular in Jewish homes.

As for the obsession some have to classify people according to Jewishness, I have expressed my sentiments in the Cantor discussion. Next I suppose we'll be forced to nationalize Leonhard Euler, who spent more time in Russia than in Switzerland. And after that we'll be counting toes. It's an idiotic waste of time; but the human race, like a human infant, is slow to mature. --KSmrq^T 04:01, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I take your point, but I think it could. Not only are there essentially no other similar mathematics categories, but also there are essentially no similar subcategories of Category:Jews by occupation: Category:Jewish scientists exists, but there is no Category:Jewish physicists, Category:Jewish biologists, Category:Jewish chemists, and so on. These persistent people have a general goal, but not a specific focus. If this the maths cat goes away, there is no more reason to recreate it than any of these other subcats. My best guess would be trench warfare at Category:Jewish scientists, but even that would leave many of us a little more in peace to get on with improving maths articles. So please don't be despondent! Geometry guy 01:59, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

To KSmrq: Thank you for the full quotation. It is one of many good sayings from Jesus's Sermon on the Mount.
To People in General: Please provide translations to English for any quotations you provide in a foreign language (except perhaps French which is so close to English). JRSpriggs 10:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Arab mathematicians

One of the arguments that keeps arising in these debates is the existence of Category:Arab mathematicians, which seems superficially similar to Category:Jewish mathematicians, at least to those who can't be bothered to go and see what is actually in the category. Of course, the arguments for this similarity are flawed, but it is not as easy as it could be to squash them for a couple of reasons.

1. At present Category:Arab mathematicians is a subcategory of Category:Mathematicians by nationality, and does not contain many important Category:Persian mathematicians. This suggests it could be renamed Category:Arabian mathematicians to eliminate the controversy. In that case, though, it should be about mathematicians of Arabia. And essentially it is up until the time of Al-Jayyani (989–1079). From then on, though, the listed mathematicians all lived in what was then Al-Andalus, and is now Spain, or (in a couple of cases) Morocco.
2. In contrast to Jewish mathematics (and Category:Jewish mathematics), there does exist Arabic mathematics (and Category:Arabic mathematics). However, the first of these links redirects to Islamic mathematics, and Category:Islamic mathematics is offered as the "correct" category for the second (does this need a CfD?). This seems an unfortunate choice to me!

These are rather thorny issues. I have raised the second one at here, also partly because I think there has been a misunderstanding about the meaning of the adjective "Arabic", which doesn't refer to people (that would be Arabian or Arab) but language, literature and culture.

For the first issue, is it worth creating Category:Al Andalus mathematicians or are there other ways to clarify this point? Geometry guy 17:16, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion both Category:Arab mathematicians and Category:Persian mathematicians should be deleted. Modern day mathematicians are better placed in Category:Iranian mathematicians, Category:Saudi Arabian mathematicians, Category:Egyptian mathematicians, etc. In the case of historical mathematicians it only creates an artificial and unnecessary split (no to forgot that a significant portion of related biographies can't, with certainty, be placed in any one of them.) I've categorized most of the biographies currently under those two categories in Category:Arabic mathematics/Category:Islamic mathematics but this has the drawback that it doesn't separate the biographies from the other topics. —Ruud 17:39, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Certainly not all "Islamic" mathematicians after 1079 lived in Spain. See for example Jamshīd al-Kāshī or Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi. —Ruud 17:39, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Clear, but both of the examples are Persian. Just out of interest, can you come up with Arabian examples? Geometry guy 19:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Al-Khalili and Ibn al-Shatir came from Damascus. Not sure if that would make them Arab or Syrian, though. —Ruud 20:32, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

There are some more from that period in Category:Spanish mathematicians, I think, including at least one Jew. I am in favor of a category that collects together mathematicians from the Arabian mathematics period (whatever you want to call it) and that has a name that includes islamic Spain but unambiguously excludes modern mathematicians from the same places. —David Eppstein 17:30, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree, this is a possible way forward. It almost surely not a good idea to identify such "arabic mathematicians" as Spanish, although the whole issue of geographical vs political nationality is also rather thorny. Geometry guy 19:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

If there is a category for mathematicians from the Islamic/Arabic civilization, wouldn't "Category:Arabic mathematicians" be a better name? To me the primary meaning of "Arab" refers to ethnicity, and "Arabian" to the geographic area. "Arabic", on the other hand, refers foremost the language and its script, which was used as the Lingua Franca in which the mathematicians of Islamic civilization wrote their works, just like scientists in Christian civilization used Latin.  --Lambiam^Talk 19:06, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree with that: also Arabic refers to literature, which is quite appropriate in this case. Geometry guy 19:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Also see the two quotes at User:Ruud Koot/Arabic mathematics#Terminology. Here Toomer argues for the term "Arabic mathematics" and Berggren for "Islamic mathematics".

Most linked to math articles

I made a list of math articles which are most linked to from other math articles. The list is at User:Mathbot/Most linked math articles.

My goal was a metric for assessing the importance of math articles. I think the higher an article is on this list, the more important it probably is, and the more crucial is for it to be in good shape. This is imperfect of course, but is better than not having anything.

Also, I emphasized articles which have not yet been rated as part of the WP:1.0 project. That may help with tagging. Hope this is useful. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:03, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Very much so, I will get on these first--Cronholm144 03:10, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree this is very useful, thanks Oleg :) Of course it is not a perfect metric, as well-linked articles are more likely to be in good shape, and therefore less in need of help. So it is definitely worthwhile (though very boring, sigh) to go through all of the articles. Probability and statistics is particularly under-represented in the assessment scheme. Is there a champion out there? Geometry guy 19:53, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

References

Hey everyone, as you may know Geometry guy and I are working on categorization of the various Math articles. I have noticed in rating my first hundred or so that there seems to be a recurrent lack of references on various articles ranging in class and importance from stub to B and low to high. Is there anything that can be done about this? I for one have about four gigs of electronic mathematics texts and would be willing to upload them to a central location for use by editors. Let me know what your thoughts are on this. Thanks--Cronholm144 04:20, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, references are important. Google books is an awesome resource for finding references.

There are also a couple of tools which allow one to format references given the ISBN; template builder, and my own tool (the latter is slow and produces code which always needs tweaking, but is useful as a backup). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:28, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

These are all good tools but unfortunately Google doesn't allow for easy reading, I.E. it only shows snippits of the work. The cite tool is good, but If the author doesn't have a usable ref, it won't work quite as well. I just would like for there to be a way for editors to be able to actually cite the material, rather than to just list titles in the bibliography.--Cronholm144 04:55, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Right, it just offers a few pages. But if you know what you search for, and go through a few books in the list of results (or search through the given book for more pages), you can learn a lot of stuff and is much more efficient than digging through a real book or visiting the library, I think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:44, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

We do have a project-page devoted to referencing Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Reference resources. Your electronic text sounds interesting, not being attached to a university put most online journals out of my reach, however I can see problems with copyright and licences if these are put in a public space. --Salix alba (talk) 07:50, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I have created a page that list the references that I can provide in text form, most are DjVu or PDF. User:Cronholm144/List_of_References Be warned the list is rather extensive. I hope you all take a look. Just E-mail me and I will send you the required material...but only if I know you. My E-mail is in my UBXes under basics. Hope I can be of service!--Cronholm144 06:05, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Since I have not posted the texts themselves on an open site I think this is alright... anyone here know copyright law?

Relations on a set of three elements

I wonder, what do people think of Relations on a set of four elements, Relations on a set of three elements, and Relations on sets of two elements and less. Surely a lot of work has gone into them, but is such content encyclopedic? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:52, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

They provide simple concrete examples of e.g. partial orders, total preorders, reflexive and irreflexive relations, etc., and also which combinations of properties are possible (at least for these small sets). For an active reader it is not too difficult to verify everything. (If something is unclear for the readers, you are welcome to add clarifications, of course. If something is unclear for yourself you can ask on the talk page.) The overviews can give a lot of insight. I do not see why they would not be encyclopedic.--Patrick 06:57, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the content is pretty good but it may be a violation of WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE. Specifically number 6 which states that:

Textbooks and annotated texts. Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not a textbook. The purpose of Wikipedia is to present facts, not to teach subject matter. It is not appropriate to create or edit articles which read as textbooks, with leading questions and step-by-step problem solutions as examples. These belong on our sister projects Wikibooks and Wikisource

Perhaps the content of this articles could be condensed and placed into the Relations article as an alternate solution.--Jersey Devil 08:04, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Except for the "See also" links at Transitive relation, the present collection is a mini-walled garden of orphaned articles with names that are totally implausible as search terms. Concrete examples of various types of relations, as well as information on their counting sequences, is useful if provided at the respective articles. Just like (for example) Strict weak ordering has a section The number of weak orders (meaning: on a finite set), Binary relation could have a section "The number of binary relations (on a finite set)" to which these redirect. Although the corresponding sequence is in OEIS (sequence A002416 in the OEIS), it is not identified as such, so apparently not terribly notable as such, but such a section could contain a list of See also's, like for example to Strict weak ordering#The number of weak orders.  --Lambiam^Talk 09:55, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

The textbook claim may best be countered by regarding these articles as classification results. However, because the validity of this content could easily be challenged (e.g. as WP:OR, even though these are elementary verifications), it is vital that sources are provided. Also, the articles could usefully be merged under a more helpful title, reorganised, and written in a more encyclopedic tone. Geometry guy 10:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I think merging all this into Relation (mathematics) would not be appropriate, as this verbose descriptive stuff would overwhelm the Relation (mathematics) article which should focus on the concepts only and a few examples. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:05, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

That was my concern too (it would be the article binary relation, by the way). I started with a section of transitive relation, but for the same reason I split it off.--Patrick 15:11, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I decided to nominate these pages for deletion as unencyclopedic. The deletion debate is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Relations on a set of four elements. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:38, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Just to clarify my previous comment: I was referring to merging these articles with each other, rather than into any existing article. I'll raise this at the AfD. Geometry guy 12:25, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Combinatorial mathematicians have spent quite some effort on counting various types of relations, and it would be possible to base a separate article on that, but who is going to write it? The approach I outlined above is still quite feasible.  --Lambiam^Talk 07:43, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Lambiam; Patrick has now added a section Binary relation#The number of binary relations, sourced using OEIS. It seems to me that a fair amount of the material from the three articles could be used to provide a main article for this section (so that it does not overwhelm Binary relation), perhaps called Binary relations on a finite set, and sourced in the same way. Geometry guy 12:25, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Portal updates

I'm going to be away from Wikipedia for a few weeks and I haven't had time to update the Mathematics portal. It will go bust next Monday unless someone updates it. Every week the portal looks for a new article of the week at a specific page. These pages need to be written ahead of time. Specifically, someone needs to fill out

• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 21
• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 22
• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 23

You can copy the basic structure from Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 20. Just pick your favorite article and write a short blurb about it. Pictures are good. You can see a list of articles already featured at Portal:Mathematics/Featured article archive. -- Fropuff 07:03, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Some potential choices, culled from a discussion at the Reference desk proceeding from a request for an interesting math topic for a high-school presentation:

• Pascal's triangle
• Interesting number paradox
• Fractal
• Zeno's paradoxes
• Tic-tac-toe
• Topology
• Cardinal number
• Ordinal number
• p-adic number
• Platonic solid
• Minimal surface
• Monty Hall Problem
• Nomogram
• Analog computer
• Map projection

 --Lambiam^Talk 19:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Differential equations

A recent edit of Differential equation expanded the article by adding a section Rise in importance during 20th century. I believe that it's a wrong article for this type of material (or wrong material for this type of article?), my concerns are summarized here. Can some experts in differential equations and/or numerical methods, please, take a look? Arcfrk 01:43, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Articles listed at Articles for deletion

• Relations on a set of four elements (AfD discussion)

Please contribute to the discussion. Uncle G 09:05, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Relations on a set of three elements above. Geometry guy 12:07, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

POLICY DEBATE: Use of mathematical and other examples in articles

I have opened a debate on the use of examples in Wikipedia articles (mainly focusing on computer source code and mathematical proofs, equations, etc.). It seems to me that many examples currently in Wikipedia violate Wikipedia policy, so I believe we need to either clarify or change the situation. Depending on the result of the discussion, this may result in a number of examples being summarily removed from articles!

Please reply there, not here, if you wish to contribute.—greenrd 11:08, 18 May 2007 (UTC)