Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

Gen Rel Intro

Introduction to general relativity has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.

List of Cambridge mathematicians

I would like to make a major edit to the list. I propose making a table, as in here. (feel free to edit my draft!) Randomblue (talk) 12:03, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me. I would not have a column for each of the different chairs, probably just a single Chairs column. I'd probably also have class="wikitable" in the table def as it look better than html table format. See Help:Table. --Salix alba (talk) 12:27, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Salix, I've made just a single "Chairs" column. Is there a way of using the class "wikitable" without changing the way the data is inputed? Randomblue (talk) 15:41, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I've changed the tables to be sortable. To let people get back to the original ordering, you might like to make the names {surname, forename}, or add a sequence number column to the left. Jheald (talk) 21:27, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Good idea, thanks Jheald. Randomblue (talk) 21:52, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

"Studied at" would be useful. Also, "head" or "head of house" is the general term. Richard Pinch (talk) 22:22, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

This could get quite long: see for example Category:Senior wranglers and Category:Second wranglers. Richard Pinch (talk) 22:27, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok for the new columns. Yes, it will be relatively long. Maybe some sort of break down would be useful. What about a page for every century? Randomblue (talk) 22:55, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Sadly the list specification is too vague. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:00, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Tessarine non-admin closure of deletion discussion was premature

Please comment at the review page. Katzmik (talk) 08:58, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Um, there doesn't seem to be a section for it. Are you sure you completed the nomination? But really I'd invite you to rethink it -- "interrupted discussion" is not really a reason not to close, and it was clear that no one besides (possibly) the nominator was supporting deletion. Any other disposition suggested, such as "merge", is actually a form of "keep", and therefore leaves no issue for AfD; this can all be handled on the talk page. --Trovatore (talk) 09:13, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, I followed the instructions and placed the appropriate widget at the beginning of the article itself. Katzmik (talk) 09:20, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

There are four steps listed at Wikipedia:Deletion review#Steps to list a new deletion review. I think you've only done step 1. But really I'd reconsider. Maybe you interpreted the closure as saying a merge is now not permitted, but I don't think that's true; it just means that the article will not be deleted. You could even boldly redirect it somewhere without merging any content, and that's still not deletion; while it might be frowned on at this point if you did it without discussion, the discussion doesn't have to happen at AfD, which is about deletion. I don't think there are any serious issues to raise at DRV. --Trovatore (talk) 09:38, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

The "Keep" looks to have been entirely appropriate to me, and the discussion appropriately conducted. I don't think you've got a leg to stand on. Jheald (talk) 09:37, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Jheald. Also, when referring to deletion discussions, please supply a link: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Tessarine. Geometry guy 10:08, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes the keep close was appropriate at that time. There may be a case for merging the article into History of Quaternions, but that option came up too late in the discussion to get a good hearing. A discussion on merging does not need a full AfD or a deletion review and can be carried out on the talk page of the article. --Salix alba (talk) 13:06, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think this kind of keep sets the wrong kind of precedent, but I don't feel strongly enough to pursue this in a quixotic fashion. It is very easy to score brownie points with fellow editors by consistently voting keep, but how is one to weed out walled-garden pages? Katzmik (talk) 13:29, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

There is a difference between disagreeing with the community decision and disagreeing with the closure. Deletion Review is for when you disagree with the closure, that is you think the community actually decided something different from what the person closing the AFD put. In this case the community clearly decided to keep the article, so DR is inappropriate. If you want to delete the article, you'll need to go through AFD again, not DR. I suggest waiting a month or so at least, otherwise people won't even consider it, even then I doubt you're likely to change people's minds. --Tango (talk) 13:04, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Please re-read my previous comment. Katzmik (talk) 13:14, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it's helpful to do so. We get that you don't like the outcome (I don't care either way). Tango's explanation is correct. Deletion review is for when you think the deletion procedure was mishandled, not when you don't like the way it resulted. As for the "walled-garden" syndrome, that's something that's been part of Wikipedia for a long time. The deletion policy is very lenient on what constitutes keep or no consensus; that among other reasons is why something like the BLP policy had to be enacted, and since I don't think you were around for that, let me say you'd be surprised at what an uproar that caused ("What? You can't delete my biography about a slightly notable stamp collector/businessman which contains a scattering of minor local newspaper references alleging child molestation!") There are numerous cranky articles on Wikipedia. One that comes to mind is Illegal_number, where I basically destroyed any argument in favor of it on the talk page. But I doubt it will be deleted any time soon. At least with tessarine we have actual real references and citations. --C S (talk) 19:02, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

TeXnical issue

Apparently it's the fact that the letter p goes below the line that causes the subscript under "sup" to be lower than that under "inf". But it seems to me that in this case one ought to prefer them to be at equal levels. Is this a flaw in TeX's perfection?

$\inf _{n\geq 0}\,\sup _{m\geq n}x_{m}\,$

Michael Hardy (talk) 01:24, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

In TeX I would use this syntax:

\mathop{\rm inf\vphantom{p}}_{m<n} \mathop{\rm sup}_{m < n}

but this does not work in Mediawiki's texvc. I don't know how to achieve this effect in texvc. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:48, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Corrected my typo - this needs to use vphantom instead of phantom to avoid extra horizontal space. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:11, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Knuth discusses it in the TeXBook, I think, and of course considers this sensitivity to letter depth a feature (naturally, he proposes a workaround for when it is not a feature, probably the one Carl did). However, considering the extent of our handicap in typesetting here, I think this is not something we can reasonably expect to fix: altering this behavior is essentially the definition of the \phantom command, and since we don't have that, by definition we can't make the change. There is one other command, \raisebox, available in LaTeX normally but, of course, not here, that would also work (as it does much the same thing) were it not for this abridgement. None of the other spacing commands produces vertical space within a line, and besides, all the vertical space functions are unrecognized because we don't produce multiline documents here. Ryan Reich (talk) 02:47, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Jitse's bot

Does Jitse's bot function only when Jitse Niesen is around? At Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity we observe that no new math articles have been created, nor any added to AfD, etc., etc., for more than five days. Is there no one who can arouse the bot from its coma while Jitse is on vacation? Michael Hardy (talk) 16:35, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

An interesting view of priorities! :-) I would say that when Jitse is too busy for Wikipedia, he is definitely not on vacation....--C S (talk) 18:47, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Manifold Destiny proposed for deletion

Claimed BLP violation(s) and WP:COATRACK. VG ☎ 22:52, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Algebra timeline

Someone moved Timeline of algebra to Algebra Timeline, with the incorrectly capitalized initial T. I moved it to Algebra timeline with lower-case t. Before fixing all the double redirects, maybe we should consider whether the first page move makes any sense. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:27, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I prefer "Timeline of algebra". CRGreathouse (t | c) 21:17, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I support Michael Hardy's move back to Timeline of algebra like most "Timeline of ..." articles. The user posted to Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 September 17#Rename article but ignored most of the advice and gave a confusing argument about being in its own category. Maybe it referred to being alphabetized under Algebra in categories but a sort key [1] is a better way to achieve that. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:04, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Piergiorgio Odifreddi's bio

I've flagged it with {{POV}} because it seems to focus too much on controversies, lawsuits etc. If somebody knows more about Odifreddi's bio, please have look at the article. To me he's best know for his books on recursion theory, but I probably have a narrow perspective. VG ☎ 21:46, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the offending sentences. Geometry guy 22:11, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Theory of continuous composition

Somebody added a link to Function composition pointing to an article about the "Theory of continuous composition" hosted on on another wiki. I've not heard of "continuous composition" before, the linked article seems unpublished stuff that didn't make much sense to me, so I've reversed the addition. VG ☎ 23:29, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

>>I apologize, what you say is correct. My article is about my own work. MandelZoom in sourceforge is a little demostration applied to MandelBrot fractal to see soft colour field due to real composition, but that's original stuff and after reading the wiki policy, I have understand that's wrong to include here. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.25.164.213 (talk) 14:26, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Userbox?

Hi, I have just recently joined this WikiProject. I was wondering if we already had a userbox for this project or if I should create a new one. Thanks, feel free to reply on my talk page. --electricRush (talk) 01:51, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

{{User WikiProject Mathematics}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:56, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! --electricRush (talk) 02:07, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Problem of Apollonius for FAC

Problem of Apollonius, a geometry article written by WillowW is up for FAC, here. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 15:41, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Minimum distance estimation

Perhaps I'm just missing something, but do we have an article on minimum distance estimation? -- Avi (talk) 20:46, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Maybe this is irrelevant, but maybe try the distance formula? --electricRush (T) (C) 01:08, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I do think that's irrelevant in this case. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:22, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we don't have one. You might want to bring this up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Statistics. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:22, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Done, thank you. -- Avi (talk) 02:49, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Vector (geometric)

There is a RM to make the dab (directd quantity). This rubs me the wrong way; it seems to me that most of the fumbling at vectors since Hamilton has been caused by this contradiction in terms.

But do come and discuss it; you may convince me. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:27, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Is "Actuary" a mathematics article?

Avraham (talk · contribs) just added Actuary to our list of featured articles, on the grounds that it has been a featured article since June 30, 2006 and it is a mathematics article (it has our template). But I question whether it is really about mathematics. Yes, actuaries use a lot of mathematics, but so do many other professions. There is no significant mathematics in the article. So I think that we should remove our template and remove Category:Mathematical science occupations from the list of mathematics categories. JRSpriggs (talk) 05:57, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. Obviously, the key issue isn't the amount or kind of mathematics used, but the social divisions that exist, e.g. physicists or economists are not mathematicians although the boundaries can get blurred. Actuarial science has a lot more to do with the academic establishment of mathematics than many other math-related disciplines. A common place to get an actuarial degree is from a math or stats department e.g. [2] or [3]), and many actuaries have a math or stats graduate degree background. --C S (talk) 06:21, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Bad template

template:math fails to provide proper spacing in expressions like 4 ≥ 3. I therefore expunged the template from an article, Dirichlet's energy, I just edited. I will do likewise with other articles in which I find it if this flaw persists. Michael Hardy (talk) 06:24, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Spaceing seems fine to me with template: E[u] ≥ 0 handcoded: E[u] ≥ 0. All it does change the CSS style to match that of the <math> tag, which has the effect of using a serif font. Spacing will match that of the new font, which may not have the same point size as a san-serif font. This is set by the browser preference.

I've found quite a few templates for formatting inline equations and collected them in Category:Mathematical formatting templates and nominated one {{Nth}} for deletion. Some of these seem decidedly dodgy.--Salix (talk): 07:16, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

We might actually want to fix the template instead of just removing it from article. Playing around with the css properties "letter-spacing" and "word-spacing" should let us get the desired result. (may be even better then obtainable through normal formatting.) While we're at it we should probably also add "white-space:nowrap", making the use of   unnecessary.

(note that the template only gets used in a handfull of pages of which only a few are in the article name space. So changing the tempate shouldn't break to much and that what is broken should be easy to fix. (TimothyRias (talk) 08:54, 25 September 2008 (UTC))

The template itself is not the place to do this. Possible in MediaWiki:Common.css, but test in Special:Mypage/monobook.css first. Applying the serif font happens in a non-wiki page [4]. Care needed as the template also affects <math> tag when its rendered in html. So <math>E[u]>0</math> is formatted using the same css style: $E[u]>0$.--Salix (talk): 09:27, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I had a look at what the template actually does, which is actually very little. It simply adds a span with class="texhtml". This class is currently way under defined in the standard wikipedia monobook (or rather the shared.css), it only adds a serif font and nothing else. This should probably be fixed. (the texhtml is actual the class applied to html generated by <math>, which currently will allow line breaks in the center of equations.)

Unfortantely, any change made to this class has to be done with care because it could break a million articles if done wrong. Still, I think a push should be made to actual have the texhtml class reproduce standard tex math mode behavior.

To summerize, it is not the template that is broken it is just the texhtml class that is bad. (TimothyRias (talk) 09:18, 25 September 2008 (UTC))

Merge Subnet_(mathematics) with Net_(mathematics)?

I have been working on the General Topology articles off and on for some time now. I just noticed that the main article Net_(mathematics) on net convergence in topology does not in itself define "subnet", but rather there is a separate article Subnet_(mathematics). It would seem natural to me to move the material from the latter article into the former article. What do others think? Plclark (talk) 07:25, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Good idea. Richard Pinch (talk) 08:04, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

E8 investigation tool

This article, which is proposed for deletion here, seems to have a couple of links that would be okay as external links in E₈. Someone more familiar with this topic should perhaps take a look at it before it's axed. VG ☎ 15:23, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps it could be merged into An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything which seems to be about the same thing. JRSpriggs (talk) 17:57, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

There's no useful content to merge: the two links are already at An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything and the rest is unsourceable opinion and OR. Geometry guy 18:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Notability and Director strings

A discussion (so far, very short) has been started on WP:NOTABILITY regarding an article I recently created. I am skittish about that forum, having been burned too many times by the non-science-oriented Wikipedia editors. I have urged that the discussion there be moved to here, as, here, we have both the domain experts, and the general cultural orientation, to deal with such things. If, for any reason, this starts turning into a large discussion, I would further like to move the debate to where the Physics, Comp Sci, and Biology communities can contribute, as these sorts of policy debates can, and do, have impact on all. linas (talk) 03:24, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I think your prior experience is making you overly-defensive about this whole thing, which is not good. Also, asking people to move discussions to specialized forums just make it seem like there's some cabal of science editors (I was surprised to see a well-known admin start making these accusations a while ago when CBM asked him to consult relevant content experts about future AFDs).

Articles sourced to several peer=reviewed papers with a decent amount of citations are never AFD-able. I'm sure the NOTABILITY people know that. In this case, it seems like you ran into a fairly inexperienced editor on the director string talk page. There's no need to sound the alarms. In any case, I've never had any problems raised by writing papers about well-sourced recent concepts. For computer science type things, you might need a few more sources than a purely math concept that is published in a well-established journal, but I really doubt people familiar with the notability guideline would try to delete or urge deletion of a concept with even a handful of sources. In fact, people have generally fought back against that when science-minded editors try to delete some crank idea.

One last comment. Director string credits a 2003 paper by three authors, but I find the concept is due to a 1988 paper by two other authors with 34 citations on Google Scholar (one of the citations is the 2003 paper). So it seems the concept is older and more established than you thought, which more or less renders the point moot. --C S (talk) 07:11, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Meanwhile, Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:compromise seems relevant to the question of notability in specialist areas. Richard Pinch (talk) 07:15, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

It would probably be better to use Talk:Director string for the discussion, and just announce it here. That takes a little load off this board, and it also reduces and concerns (misplaced or not) about cabalism. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:31, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Making mathematics articles more accessible to a general readership

Please visit Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Easy as pi? to see a discussion about making mathematics articles more accessible to a general readership.
-- Wavelength (talk) 16:15, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I've looked at the discussion which is rather unwieldy. Is there a specific proposal, if so could you clarify it on the VP page. On the general subject it is something we are well aware of and we do take seriously and strive towards, although it is a huge task. --Salix (talk): 16:39, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Wavelength, if you wonder why there has been no response in the last ten days, have a look at WP:TLDR. It may not apply literally here, but the principle fits. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:35, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you both for your comments. I have added sub-subheadings, including some which indicate the presence of proposals. Some sub-subsections are still long, because I decided not to split any post into more than one sub-subsection. Generally, the very long posts were made my me, and I probably would have separated them into smaller posts at that time, if I had anticipated that I would be adding sub-subheadings. I named one subsection "Subsection 0" for consistency with the other numbered subsections. There is already a link to "Subsection 5" from Talk:Mathematics; otherwise, I would probably rename the numbered subsections by increasing each number by one.

-- Wavelength (talk) 02:26, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

(In the second last sentence of my previous message, I corrected "sub-subsections" to "subsections".)

-- Wavelength (talk) 13:00, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Just so the project people know, one of the proposals in question would mandate lots of silly little boxes saying things like "A knowledge of calculus would be helpful in understanding this article/section/formula." Since the merits and demerits of this have been discussed here before, those of you with strong feelings on the matter may want to make your opinion known at that thread. siℓℓy rabbit (talk) 14:06, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Or better still, keep quiet rather than revive the proposal. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:11, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh noes, another war of notations

Curly vs. straight at Talk:Binary_relation#Symbols_for_Binary_Relations. VG ☎ 16:45, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Category:Numerical integration and Category:Mathematical components on CfD

Category:Numerical integration is being proposed to moved Category:Numerical quadrature at CfD 16/9 and Category:Mathematical components is proposed to delete at CfD 24/9. Comments welcome. --Salix (talk): 17:00, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Dimensional space

Can anyone make any sense out of the article titled Dimensional space? The first sentence is at best very vague, and the proposed example in the second (which is the last) sentence makes me suspect it may be just nonsense. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:39, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Seems to be the only thing making non-Newtonian calculus non-trivial. It obviously makes sense, but whether it's interesting or has a serious application is open. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:48, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

The way to make sense out of it is the usual one - reliable sources. Richard Pinch (talk) 06:55, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I wrote that page poorly, I've now redirected that page to dimensional analysis although the latter needs to be expanded to include use of dimensional analysis in mathematics, statistics,operations research, fractals, dimension theory and dynamical systems. Delaszk (talk) 10:35, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Notability of individual papers

I was thinking of creating articles for a few of Emile Lemoine's best-known papers, when I realised that I wasn't entirely sure whether they warranted articles. The notability guideline is as vague as can be about this, and I don't really know how to judge a paper's notability. Something such as Ars Magna clearly deserves an article, while I'm sure we can all think of works that do not. The papers, however, which I'm specifically asking about are Sur quelques propriétés d'un point remarquable du triangle and La Géométrographie ou l'art des constructions géométriques. Anyone's thoughts? Nousernamesleft (talk) 18:58, 27 September 2008 (UTC)\

Have a look through Category:Mathematics literature which should give you some idea. --Salix (talk): 20:09, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I can certainly find works which I would deem less important in there, such as Formulario mathematico, so I think I'll go ahead and write the articles. Nousernamesleft (talk) 20:52, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, whoops, I missed the importance of that work - it's a lot more important than the articles I'm suggesting. I'll keep searching. Nousernamesleft (talk) 20:54, 27 September 2008 (UTC)