Talk:Least-squares spectral analysis

Move proposal

I propose that Vaníček analysis be moved to Least-squares spectral analysis, a more descriptive, neutral, and widely used and known term for the topic. The article has a lot of good well-sourced information on a notable topic, but is written in a biased way aimed apparently at making sure that Vaníček is the main name associated with the method, and that the contributions of others are denied or minimized. It written by a WP:SPA who has not denied that he is Vaníček's ex-student who wrote the thesis that's used as a source to verify such POV statements as that the "method has been mistakenly called by some the Lomb-Scargle or simply the Lomb method." Dicklyon 16:11, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I am rather surprised by these allegations. First of, you first call me an expert and then YOU arbitrarily pick (out of at least five names for the same method) the one that YOU deem to be "a more descriptive, neutral, and widely used and known term". Here is a perfectly logical explanation for my way of presenting the method's name by using just two references (while stating that the name you selected has many references but without stating those specifically -- this doens't mean that the name you picked has more references than the name as I stated it -- don't mix apples and oranges!): the reason why I included only the first known (from 1970-ies) and the last known (from 2006) reference that cited the method as Vanicek's, was that I hoped this would have been sufficient for an encyclopedia type of article. If you insist, and if you are some kind of authority as you seem to be, I can provide a reference that calls the method "Vanicek's" for every single year between 1970 and 2007! But why flood the article like that? Second, why are you assuming that not admitting to be some person means you are actually that person? This makes no sense to me. Last -- before accusing me of making up the word "mistakenly", please do read the reference first, before passing accusations like these. I am not here to be insulted like that.

I appreciate the comment you made on the method authors' biography (I just included the biography source in there, so you should check it). But it seems to me like your contributions to the method article are made not in good faith (not to mention you are not an expert, as you indicated yourself), but in order to say just about anything that comes across your mind. It doesn't seem to me like improvements can be made like that. Please use your powers sparingly. I am here to improve the Wikipedia in the aspect of geodesy, not to waste time and energy fighting you. You should also read the link on biographies that you stated to me: see in there what the Wikipedia inventor says about the Wikipedia rules that obstruct improvements to Wikipedia: he says -- IGNORE THEM. --Geoeg 20:18, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I have no power, just trying to help wikipedia be the best it can be, and to learn new stuff along the way; I assume that you would want the attention to your article that you brought by linking it from a whole bunch of signal processing articles. You, on the other hand, seem to be a WP:SPA, and you'll written an article that's very slanted. I'm proposing we fix that; I don't see why you would question my good faith here; check my contribs history.

But let's talk about the article, instead of making it personal. Don't you think the widely-used generic name would be more appropriate? Here are some book refs you can check to see how frequently it is called what; compare these and these and these. Dicklyon 00:17, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Indeed let's. By the way, the links you provided list mostly articles, not books. Now to the point: when you don't use dash, the number of returns increases hundredfold or more (I counted in hundreds). So one gets this and this, returning the number of papers that properly credit Vanicek for his method.

So now it turns out that not only you pretend to be an expert on something you are not, but you also use biased Google searches to make a point. I have no idea what your real intentions here are, but by now you do seem like you are taking this personal because I caught you making those mistakes. Why don't you just cool daown, and stay away from the whole thing? Leave it to someone more skilled, I'm sure there are skilled editors out there who can actually add to the discussion. --Geoeg 02:42, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The searches were to illustrate what the method is called. I would certainly not suggest that Vanicek should not be given full credit for his contributions. But you've written the article in a way that specifically denies credit to the other contributors. If you review those search hits you found, do many of them call it Vanicek analysis? or Vanicek method? or Vanicek spectral analysis? No, they don't; and that's what I was illustrating by the searches I showed you. So stop confusing the history and credit with the naming; we should represent the method by what it's most often called, and list alternative names as alternative; including the Lomb and Scargle and whoever else it may be called after. And I have not pretended to be an expert on any of this. Dicklyon 02:53, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

"Illustrate" is a convenient word with numerous meanings... But back to the point: is that why you now bolded those other names used for the same thing? Strange reasoning, because in that case you also forgot to delete the word "mistakenly" for Lomb and Scargle (as you seem to be there advocate?). Of course, you'd be in conflict with regulations then, since that term was properly cited... --Geoeg 03:20, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea what you're referring to. Dicklyon 03:27, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

You sure you don't? Here it is: a paper may refer to Vanicek in a context, it doesn't have to name the method precisely either "Vanicek method" or "Vanicek analysis". Here are some of the infinitely many possibilities: "method by Vanicek", "as Vanicek showed", "as it was demonstrated by Vanicek", "analysis technique by P. Vanicek", "spectrum was computed after Vanicek", "data were assessed using Vanicek's", "Vanicek has developed", "Vanicek derived... You get the point? --Geoeg 08:53, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The question is not whether the name exists. I think we can all agree that both Vanicek analysis and least squares spectral analysis are used in the literature. The question is, which is used more often? A Google hit count has its drawbacks but it is one way of establishing popularity of a term. --Zvika 10:57, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

No, that's not the question, but a question for there are various criteria according to which relevance can be assessed. Who says that simply counting of the exact phrase is the criterion of all criteria? For instance, I could pose following "weighted" criteria, and easily claim that they are superior to just simply counting the phrases (quality before quantity!): (1) Only references that most closely approach the uniform distribution (say, per year-window) over 38 years since the method was invented, or, if you insist on counting why not try this (more fair to the author): (2) Only references that credit Vanicek, regardless of the order of the words they use to credit him, or say (3) Only references that mention the method during mid five years since the method was invented (sort of moving average). To me, Vanicek analysis is the common and simplest denominator for all the possible versions. Besides being a nonjudgmental choice (people have already called it after the inventor, so we're not rediscovering America here are we), it is also linguistically justified and simple -- compare with Fourier analysis. --Geoeg 14:55, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and it would be prefectly appropriate for you to call it Vanicek analysis in all your own publications. But in wikipedia, our job is not to decide what it ought to be called, but rather to report on it in terms of what it is called. And applying Vanicek's name as part of the name of the method is actually rather rare, though he is almost always given credit for originating it. Your own POV, however, jumps out at us in your writings, when instead of following the historical credit given in refs such as Press, you rewrite the history slanted to Vanicek as "Although these latter authors claim no new method (for instance, abstract in [9]), the Vaníček method has been mistakenly called by some the Lomb-Scargle or simply the Lomb method, as well." This is what we need to work on neutralizing, and it's clear that you'll need help from other editors to get around your Vanicek-centric view. I think it's fair to presume that you are an ex-student of his, most likely the author of the cited thesis, since you didn't bother to deny that; so why not fess up and help us make progess? Dicklyon 14:59, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't have any such publications. Also, I am not trying to decide on anything here; did you read my previous post at all? In a nutshell: Vanicek method has already been called that, and your potatoes-counting assessment is, if not worse, then at least as good as any other assessment is. As I already told you, if you have a problem with the word "mistakenly" then remove it... if you dare judge a scientific reference, that is. But as far as other semantics is concerned, be my guest. The only one who is jumping at us here is you, with your "identify yourself... identify yourself" (the more you sound like a broken record the more fun it is to ignore your illegitimate requests). But since this isn't funny any more, here it is: I deny it. Of course, the reason why I "didn't bother to deny that" is because I was not supposed to. I'll take "Vanicek-centric" as a compliment. --Geoeg 16:04, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

What is it?

Without interfering with your fascinating mutual bashing above, I would like to ask if one of you could add a section to the article here, to explain what it actually is. I mean a technical explanation (equations and all) of what you do when you do "Vanicek analysis" (or whatever you end up deciding it should be called). Right now the article describes historical background, some "properties" (which are more like an advertisement), and applications, but doesn't say what I have to do to perform Vanicek analysis. I think this will also make it easier to reach consensus on what is the most common name in the scientific community for this method. --Zvika 06:13, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I haven't studied it enough to know the details yet, but this book gives a pretty good description. Basically, choose sinusoid coefficients to minimize the sum of squared errors at the data points, for every frequency of interest. What's not clear to me is what should be the frequencies of interest, and what to do about the fact that the sinusoids may not be orthogonal when considered just at the data points. There are standard techniques using big-matrix algebra for fitting sums of non-orthogonal functions to samples, so once you decide what the frequencies of interest are, it should be easy enough; it doesn't have the regular structure that makes the FFT possible, which is why it's computationally more expensive. I'm sure it's all explained in there somewhere, and I'll let you know if/when I figure it out. Dicklyon 06:48, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and did I really sound like I was bashing? Sorry. I tried to gently determine what was behind his single-purpose-account behavior, but he didn't cooperate; I tried to keep it civil and on topic, and made constructive comments on how to improve the article. Should I back off? Dicklyon 06:50, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, you (again) don't read Wikipedia regulations, otherwise you would have noticed that there is nothing wrong with "single-purpose-account behavior", even if that was the case here (which it isn't, see my other contributions on geodesy). So you just proved (again) that yes -- you are bashing. Your comments were anything but civil, starting with your inquisition-style interrogation as to my identity. As soon as I refused to "show you my ID Mr. Officer", you started your bashing thing. --Geoeg 08:47, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Zvika: more explanations including the technical ones are coming as soon as I have time, hopefully this week. I had no idea that people could get so impatient around here -- as if a Wikipedia printed edition is scheduled and deadlines have to be met. By the way, I don't see how technical details such as formulae could solve the naming dispute; the method has been called Vanicek's continuously ever since it was invented almost forty years ago. Finally, Dicklyon has started bashing first, unsatisfied with my identity being hidden from him (and they say Wikipedia can be edited by everyone), so I'm sorry if it sounded like I'm bashing too. --Geoeg 08:47, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I am not being impatient, merely pointing out that this is a 1000-word article, yet I only began understanding what it is about after Dick's one-sentence explanation above. The technical details are necessary because, without them, I don't know what the method is, and so I can't say whether or not I know it by another name; all I can say is, I've never heard of Vanicek analysis (and neither have any of the four textbooks I've looked at so far).

As for bashing, Geoeg, I suggest you try to calm down. Dick has been an editor in WP for a long time and has contributed significantly to a large number of articles. That does not give him "powers" as you insinuate, but it does make your accusations of bad faith seem far-fetched. While he might not have always been civil (I don't think the vandalism templates were appropriate), he really is trying to help out. Please try to see his side of the argument as well. --Zvika 09:56, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

And I never questioned Geoeg's right to anonymity. I politely asked if he would reveal more about himself and/or his relationship to the subject because if he would then it would make it much easier to address the questions of WP:COI and WP:POV. I pointed out to him that as an anon WP:SPA with apparent close connection to the subject, his work would necessarily be subject to close scrutiny. That's the way it works. Dicklyon 13:36, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

As I said at the beginning, I have no problem with scrutiny. I just couldn't imagine that anyone would be enforcing some regulations so rigidly, but at the same time arbitrarily ignoring other relevant regulations, as well. Not to mention the use of term "vandal", and other blunders. But I guess we are all humans... --Geoeg 14:55, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Indeed we are. I felt the vandalism warning was appropriate after the removed of the tag again after I explained that that was inappropriate. If there's a more effective way that I should have used to get your attention to that problem, please let me know. And I'm not sure what you mean by enforcing regulations; I have no powers of enforcement, and wikipedia mostly doesn't have regulations; but I do try to help follow guidelines, and I'm usually pretty flexible. But when new editors get stubborn, so do I. Dicklyon 15:02, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Just to remind you, and for the record, it was you who started it -- with your illegitimate "ID yourself" requests. That's the source of your taking it personal (see my denial above). About the method name: I propose that it remains as is, because it is (A) linguistically acceptable, (B) scientifically correct, (C) properly referenced (regardless of a criteria choice for assessing those references' weights), (D) not precedent-setting (see Fourier analysis). As to the Vanicek page, I propose either (A) the removal of the tag along with the removal of the specific parts of his biography you have problem with, or (B) leaving the tag along with "citation-needed" tags on each part of his biography you have problem with. --Geoeg 16:04, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

When I asked on your talk page "Were you his grad student?", was that illegitimate? I thought it was a reasonable way to put the issue up front for discussion. Dicklyon 22:28, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it was. And not only that: while attempting to invade my privacy, you put a pressure on me via misuse of your Wikipedia privileges/access. I am not sure if Wikipedia has a regulation on this, but I am quite certain that the US Criminal Code does. --Geoeg 00:20, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

You may want to review WP:THREAT, because if you do that again you'll be out of here. Dicklyon 03:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Are you threatening me? --Geoeg 16:33, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, sort of. I'm trying to make it clear that if you do that again, I will report you and ask for you to be banned, as I should probably have done the first time. Dicklyon 21:45, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, do what again? I was under the impression that you were pressuring me to reveal my identity to you, and that you were threatening me with legal action (sort of). Where did I threaten anyone with anything?????????????? --Geoeg 23:10, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Images

Unrelated to the above: I would appreciate if anyone could please advise me as to the appropriate source of freeware or otherwise acceptable images? I would like to place a more attractive image at the top of geodesy page. The way it is right now, I think that many people who open the page get easily repelled (by that obsolete photo) rather than attracted to the subject. (And I would hope Wikipedia is in business of spreading free knowledge). Unfortunately, scanning through internet pages is reality of the fast-paced world we live in. --Geoeg 16:04, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I have just found that Wikipedia has a compiled list of such links. --Geoeg 18:22, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

This might also help: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Good luck.

--Bob K 23:02, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Opinion of 3O

As a simple 3O browser I'd like to weigh in. I think a cool-down period is in order here. Let's try and back off and get some perspective. This is a Wikipedia article, and as impressive as WP is it's not worth adding all this aggravation to your lives. Threats were made and words were tossed... let it go. I'm going to go do some research, let's all look for a way to step back and take a breath. Padillah 12:32, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

While you do that, it seems like minimum good will to remove at least some of the naughty repellant-tags on Petr Vaníček and Vaníček analysis (because Dickhawk has attacked both). Right now, the two pages look like a Christmas tree...in July. In the mean-time, here is some food for thoughts: please check out J. Tuzo Wilson Medal and ask yourself how many recipients of the highest geophysics recognition in the second largest nation on Earth (therefore: a geophysics world power) actually do have their biographies on Wikipedia? Answer: a mere 30%! If various hawks are allowed to continue massacring every new biography of a scientist just because it was not featured on MSNBC, then I am afraid there is no point to further discussions here. In that case, all Wikipedia pages about geophysics and geodesy would cease being serious. Speculations on whether they too are based on a popular vote would start creeping in. --Geoeg 18:48, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok. Several things: personal attacks, such as calling someone 'dickhawk', have no place on wikipedia. Neither do thinly veiled legal threats, as I've mentioned here. Comment on content, not people. The same thing goes for the tags. They have been placed because editors feel there are legitimate issues. Those issues should be addressed, as wikipedia does operate by consensus. (While experts do make many valuable contributions, their arguments aren't intrinsically worth any more than anyone else's. Merit rules the day, and the best argument/evidence wins). And on that note, as much as I'm loathe to use google for determining importance, "Vaníček analysis" has 6 google hits whereas "least-squares spectral analysis" has 504. That would seem to me to support the move, unless there's significant reasons (backed by reliable sources) not to.

(Also, for the sake of neutrality, I do feel I should add that comments about your possible identity were inappropriate. A discussion of COI does not need to attempt any privacy violations). --Bfigura ^(talk) 01:49, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Since you insist on the exact phrases count: Google search returns about 100 pages with the exact phrase "Vanicek spectral analysis", plus some 100 returns as well for "Gauss-Vanicek spectral analysis". Why are some 500 so much better than the competing 250? Even in the way you (Dicklyon) stated the argument (selective non-weighted counting), in most Google returns done in your way the long name has no dashes in "least squares", and the four initial letters are actually capitalized. So the present version ("Least-squares spectral analysis") is actually the least acceptable one according to the rule you (Dicklyon) suggested?! Finally, I hope someone will remove at least one of the tags from the author's biography page as there is no point of having such a scarecrow in here, is there. --Geoeg 04:02, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Forget the Google counts; I never proposed looking at counts, and only suggested looking at book hits, since they tend to be much more reliable than web hits (books usually have the benefit on an editor). As to capitalization, wikipedia has a guideline about that: WP:NAME. As to the hyphenation, see hyphen#joining; it is very common for authors to violate the general rule, and some editors even explicitly allow it, but I prefer to follow it, to give the reader a good clue to the structure of the phrase. If it appears in any reasonable proportion of book hits (as it does), then I'm pretty confident that it's a correct and acceptable way to punctuate. If you disagree, then propose a move. Dicklyon 04:16, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

There are 20 returns without the dash v. 10 returns with the dash, in the Google book search you used. So based on your own criterion (which is fine by me), and given that there is no regulation giving your preferences priority over my preferences, as the page author I ask you to please remove the dash at your earliest convenience. Also (less relevant though) I believe that the dash actually decreases the number of search returns. If you are unable to comply with this request, please let me know and I will remove it myself. --Geoeg 14:02, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

My own criteria include "forget the counts" and "any reasonable proportion of book hits". When have I ever suggested looking at google hit counts? And there's no dash. Did you read the hyphen#joining that I referred you to? As I said above, if you want to propose a move, do so; start a new discussion section. Dicklyon 14:17, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Call it an Indian Tiger if you like. The "book hits" come from Google Inc., do they not? So it's 20:10 in favor of no dash option. Please remove the dash (hyphen or whatever) or I shall do it. The regulation you cited is irrelevant as it refers to a style that is a matter of one's preference. I already explained this to you. Your preference is not any older than mine as the page author. --Geoeg 15:49, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

As I noted above, I don't think google hits determine notability. However, they do tend to reinforce my view that there's a more appropriate and neutral title than the Vanicek version. It seems that the most commonly used name is the least-squares one, so it makes the most sense to me. (I'll try and back that up with an ISI Web of Knowledge citation report at some point in the future, since that would be the definitive way of determining the more common name for this sort of thing). As far as the POV/COI tag on the author's page, I'll go look and see if it's still needed. Best, --Bfigura ^(talk) 04:51, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that ISI would be a good measure. Looking forward to your report. --Geoeg 14:02, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I've removed request for sources and notability tags. Notability seems to be established, and the article seems sourced. (If more sources are needed, maybe a {{FACT}} tag could be added to indicate what needs sourcing?). PS: Will copy this comment to the author's talk page. Cheers, --Bfigura ^(talk) 05:10, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

You're referring to the Petr Vanicek article I presume, since this page never had such tags; it has been well sourced from the beginning; just not neutrally sourced, which is what the COI tag was about. Dicklyon 06:13, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Just for the sake of clarity & completeness: my response is on the Vanicek talk page (since that seemed the logical place to continue the discussion). Cheers, --Bfigura ^(talk) 06:37, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can see, the tags are still there? Also, I don't see any new posts by you on my talk page? --Geoeg 14:02, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Was that directed at me? Sorry, by author's talk, I meant Vanicek's talk page. Best, --Bfigura ^(talk) 16:27, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Double Redirects

There seem to be a fair number of double redirects created as a result of the recent page moves. (See here). I'm going to try fixing them to point here, since I can't think of a good reason to have double redirects. Cheers, --Bfigura ^(talk) 04:56, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there are numerous redirects that were made to catch all the common misspellings of Vanicek; it doesn't actually hurt anything that they are double redirects, but there's a bot that will typically fix them within a day anyway, so don't spend too much energy on it. I already replaced the links that matter. Dicklyon 05:01, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh well, done already. TOo bad I didn't read that a bit ago. --Bfigura ^(talk) 05:05, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

3RR

It would seem that WP:3RR is also about to apply here. Everyone, please slow down, and remember: we have plenty of time before we have to worry about hitting the editorial deadline. (Again, I have no interest in whether or not the current version is the right version, but this needs to be settled through consensus, not via edit warring). --Bfigura ^(talk) 17:10, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

What can I say? You saw I was ready to let it calm down, but he has just brought some partial reinforcement with him, and it is now two of them doing exactly the same thing as Dicklyon: frantically looking for more regulations that they interpret rigidly. I only wish they used that much energy on editing the actual two pages. --Geoeg 23:00, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I've actually done some significant improvements to the page's lead and history sections, replacing deprecating statements about Scargle with actual quotes that better characterize his contribution. The reverts of Geoeg along the way are a distraction, to be sure, but I have not asked anyone to come help me. I had made a neutral request for a third opinion, as anyone can do. Dicklyon 23:42, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

This is exciting: we finally see that indeed you can contribute something of value to the actual article(s)! Imagine all the contributions you could have made if you actually were editing the pages instead of talking enormously lot of how they should be edited... You should really take this as a compliment, and an incentive to keep on doing good, not talking on how its done. --Geoeg 00:27, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I do! Dicklyon 01:03, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

POV pushing

Geoeg, your point of view that Vanicek needs to be featured much more prominently than Lomb and Scargle is getting old. Please stop pushing it. You can decide to bold all their names, or none, but you can't pick and choose, and you can't disparage some of them in the lead. It's not rocket science to understand this simple concept of wikipedia that the viewpoint of the article should be neutral. If you find a significant view in published papers that Scargle deserves less credit than Vanicek, present it and reference it; but you can't do it based on your own biased interpretation of the few words you choose to pay attention to in one reference; your interpretation is original research and thus not part of what the article should be based on. Dicklyon 03:14, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

First, note it's not the page title we are discussing right now. Second, you (again...) use selective editing: I said it clearly in my edit comment that you can have it either all-names-bolded but with in-lead note on Scargle "method's" self-denial (he denied it himself), or you can not have the Scargle's thing called a method i.e. bolded (and, by extension, the Lomb's too because his paper brings even less novelty to the Vanicek's method than Scargle's does). At the same time, bolding of Vanicek method remains unquestionable in either case for Vanicek invented a scientific method just like Fourier invented his, now known as Fourier analysis, so that Vanicek analysis is the only legitimate competitor with the present page title (LSSA). How difficult is that to grasp (and it sure is not rocket science either): Vanicek has claimed a new method, while Scargle denied that his report meant the same. --Geoeg 04:23, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

It is indeed very easy to grasp what your POV is, but your interpretation of the sources is not neutral. Dicklyon 04:52, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind repeating this to you one more time: stop with your pointless allegations and control your imagination. The only POV here is your own rigid interpretation of all possible regulations you have ever read. --Geoeg 13:31, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

In a cooperative enterprise, guidelines for behavior, goals, style, etc., are important in helping the community converge on a good result. Your refusal to read and respect those guidelines is at the base of the problems you're having here. I'm trying to help you learn, but you have decided not to listen to me. So maybe you should try editing some other articles for a while and listen to others that you are not yet predisposed to ignore. Dicklyon 15:22, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

How do you know I "refuse to read..."? Did I say that, or were you standing next to me and observing whether I read something or not? What do you mean by "you decided not to listen to me", are you my supervisor here? I don't know why you try to sound like someone on Wikipedia paycheck. That all takes imagination, I suppose. --Geoeg 15:59, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Least-squares fit to sinusoids and Fourier analysis

Geoeg, in your recent diff, summarized as (Undid revision 163989322 by Dicklyon (talk) You again prove your ignorance, like when you claimed FA is least-squares.), you changed "based on a least squares fit of sinusoids to data points" back to your original "based on a least squares fit between data and trigonometric functions". Can you explain why you prefer that text? And why you choose to use the edit summary for personal attack instead of for summarizing your edit? Please review WP:ES#Use of edit summaries in disputes. Dicklyon 14:47, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

More selective memory: you forgot to mention I also said the change depicted your ignorance like when you claimed Fourier analysis was a least-squares technique. --Geoeg 15:05, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I believe I did quote your statement to that effect immediately above. I further elaborated that I don't understand why you are using edit summaries for personal attacks instead of for summarizing your edit. Let's be clear: my ignorance is not really much an issue for talk-page discussion; please review the box about what a talk page is for, at the top. As to the specific issue of whether Fourier analysis is equivalent to a least-squares fit of sinusoids to data, it's not clear to me why you disagree with all the references on this point; they are all clear that in the case of equally spaced data, a DFT is equivalent to a Lomb/Scargle periodogram or least-squares fit to a set of sinusoids orthogonal on the data interval. Dicklyon 15:20, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Here is news for you: all spectral analysis methods applied on the sama data give the same result. Why in the world would that mean that the methods are same? Second news for you (in scientific terminology): the example you state means that the Lomb/Scargle "method" is merely a special case of the Vanicek scientific method. As I said already, it takes imagination that you don't seem to lack indeed. --Geoeg 16:19, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

In what sense is that true? It's not literally true, because an easy counter-example is methods that give different frequency resolutions, such as a DFT vs. Welch method.

--Bob K 23:54, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

In what sense is what true? There are several statements in the above. --Geoeg 03:38, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

The statement: "all spectral analysis methods applied on the sama [sic] data give the same result".

--Bob K 03:44, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Note I said "on the same data", which then includes all data. The example you stated is biased as the latter of the two methods you stated is not strict (it does not operate over all data simultaneously which by definition must introduce processing errors). So what was your point? --Geoeg 00:58, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

• And what "definition" is that?
• You didn't previously mention "simultaneous", so as I said, your statement was not literally correct. That is my point... I wanted you to clarify, as you have now done.
• What about a DFT with one window function and a DFT with another window function. How do you construe them to give the "same result"?

--Bob K 17:36, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Most methods give a smoother spectral estimate than the periodogram method. The Welch method uses all the data, but does smoothing by averaging periodograms of shorter segments. Other methods such as ARMA estimators give smooth spectral estimates from all the data as well. Surely you not seriously arguing this point, are you? Dicklyon 01:54, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Read what I said. Processing all data is not the same as processing segments of data. Which part of it do you not understand? Please avoid discussing issues that do not exist. --Geoeg 03:21, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I've read it, but I have trouble understanding why you're saying it. See for example the methods compared in spectral density estimation, or look in this book Time Sequence Analysis in Geophysics which also compares various methods. Even LSSA is at least two different methods that give very different results (Vanicek's original least-squares versus the Lomb/Scargle periodogram). Dicklyon 04:17, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

First, learn what a scientific method is. Then, we can discuss your slanted christening of a Scargle's simplification (of a method). --Geoeg 15:26, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Preface

So far this article seems like a preface. It's telling us what it's going to tell us, but it's not yet telling us. Michael Hardy 23:14, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

As I said somewhere on the talk pages, I shall be contributing more, time permit. But do not let that discourage you from contributing as well. --Geoeg 03:30, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

User:Athaenara

Athaenara wrote: edit comment, at 02:52 Petr Vaníček (diff; hist) . . (+29) . . Athaenara (Talk | contribs) (Subject probably passes Wikipedia:Notability (people). Template:COI2 applies: COI editing by User:Geoeg has been extremely disruptive & aggressive. Everyone who reads the talk pages can see that I have not been extremely anything. The use of that sort of lingo and aggressive attitude actually exposes you as an aggressive person, because, in case you have not noticed, you just attacked me personally instead of debating the issue (the articles), see personal attack. --Geoeg 03:43, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Athaenara's statement that "COI editing by User:Geoeg has been extremely disruptive & aggressive" was a plain observation on your edits, nothing about your self. Contrast this with your own personal comments on my attitude, competence, memory, etc., and your name-calling like "judge-and-the-jury wannabe", "dickhawk", etc. These are personal attributes and personal insults. See the difference? Dicklyon 05:28, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Go back and read the entire discussion on the respective talk pages. Because what you just did in the above is called selective memory. Examples of your insulting behavior (Note that behavior such as yours actually constitutes an insult) include but are not limited to: interrogation as to my identity, acting from position of power and false authority of Wikipedia's (threatening me with expulsion from Wiki), overly reverting edits from more than one editor while claiming Vanicek's biography page lacks sources and notability although three different editors told you there was nothing wrong with the page in those respects, pushing your POV based on misunderstanding of the subject you seem to want to contribute on (say, equating Fourier analysis with least-squares), and so on. --Geoeg 13:49, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

With the exception of my warnings that I would ask for you to be blocked if you repeated certain proscribed behaviors, my comments were generally about the article contents, not about you. My invitation for you to reveal your identity was a good-faith attempt to establish a collaborative relationship in which we would not have to speculate about the reason for the pro-Vanicek slant in your contributions. Please try to cooperate and we can move forward. Since it seems increasing likely that you are the person you say you are not, I invite you again to clarify; it will be easier to work around your WP:COI when we can address it openly. This is not a demand, of course, since you every right to maintain privacy if you so choose; see, however, WP:SOCK#Avoiding_scrutiny_from_other_editors, the official policy you infringed by using both a log-in account and an IP address to make edits that you tried to hide the relationship between. Dicklyon 15:57, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Scargle method or Scargle "method"?

Bfigura wrote: edit comment, at 19:33 (cur; last) . . (-73) . . Bfigura (Talk | contribs) (The phrasing contributions implies that they're adding onto an exising theory, not making a new one. So this sentence isn't needed, and is POV-ish. Removing. Bfigura, did you notice that Dicklyon has posted a paragraph (down the same page) with the exact quote from the Scargle paper? In there, Scargle says himself that he did not introduce any new method. Please see what a scientific method really is, before making your final mind on this. The reason why I insisted on that short note you removed is in that paragraph's contents (listing all of the alternative names for the LSSA method). Clearly, since the Scargle's paper does not bring a new scientific method, it is only logical to: (1) either have all the alternative names unbolded but with that little note you deleted, or, alternatively, (2) we should have only Vanicek method bolded (and perhaps Lomb method too, as Lomb did not state his report had not meant a new method) and without the specific note that you deleted. I think this is reasonable because that paragraph is not trivial as it may seem, i.e. it does not repeat what the one with the exact quote says, but it actually lists what alternative names are justified and what names are used in error. --Geoeg 04:07, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I expect he noticed that already. I posted the more complete quote in the history section with the idea that it would be a more complete and unbiased representation of what you were referring to. Your short snip in the lead seemed to have been designed to disparage his contrubition, consistent with your POV that Vanicek should get all the credit. It's generally better to be more positive and say what someone did, rather that what they didn't; the more complete quote gets at his contribution without being negative about it. The reader can interpret that through their own POV of course. Dicklyon 05:14, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Dicklyon is again mixing apples and oranges, like when claiming that scientist's (Vanicek's) notability can be established only if general-public media wrote about a scientist (see Petr Vaníček). So "generally better" is worthless as an argument in this case too: Scargle said in the Abstract what he said (about his report not being a new method) because he was an honest scientist who stated a scientific fact, and not because he was a masochist who enjoyed diminishing himself. Consequently, Dr. Scargle does not need anyone's help to protect him from himself. But Dicklyon just won't let it go and I don't know what to do next in order to stop this abuse. By the way, I got a message today in my Talk page that this article has been featured on Wikipedia main page, so I would like to thank everyone who earnestly contributed! Be it noted that it was not me who nominated the page. I reproduce that message below hoping I'm not in violation of some regulation somewhere (Dicklyon will notify me, I'm sure)... --Geoeg 18:51, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

On 12 October, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article least-squares spectral analysis , which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Indeed, I would say the tone of your edits here put you still in violation of WP:NPA. It would be better to explicitly state why you disagree with my statement that "It's generally better to be more positive and say what someone did, rather that what they didn't" than to characterize my point as "worthless as an argument". If you don't think that what Scargle said is sufficiently clear in the history section, please to work to improve it; but adding a small snip in the lead to try to support your POV that naming the method for him is a mistake is not a good idea. Dicklyon 20:50, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

The above congratulations tag was also signed by admin who posted the it. Why did you remove the signature? Again, his user name is Allen3. --Geoeg 22:14, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Did you not see my edit summary? I said remove imported signature that looks misleading here; because I was initially confused, thinking he had signed this page, and didn't want to propagate that confusion. Dicklyon 22:24, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

The issue is a very simple one indeed: Scargle himself said there is no such thing as "Scargle method" so obviously it is a mistake to call it that. Dicklyon is pushing his POV that there is such a method; otherwise he would not mind my mentioning it explicitly (just as Scargle did). I hope Dicklyon will stop doing that, or I will have no choice but to request his ban. FYI: both Dicklyon and I were under 6-hour ban yesterday, at Dicklyon's request. I was wandering why he would request his own ban, until a while ago when I received the following threat from him, which shows that he is into business of setting traps around here. So everyone: in case I am gone from here for unexplained reasons, know I was banned and probably forever, thanks to his knowledge of various regulations and tricks he uses to set traps. --Geoeg 22:14, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

FROM MY TALK PAGE:

==3RR warning again==

"Geoeg, we're in danger of violating the three revert rule again today. You've removed tags from Petr Vanicek 3 or 4 times already in the last 24 hours, and I've put them back 3 times. If you remove them again, I will report you again, only this time I'll be careful not to be in violation myself. So settle down, and see if any of those others you mention care to take your side in this. Dicklyon 21:01, 13 October 2007 (UTC)"

3RR bans are usually brief, and I have no interest in getting you banned forever, just in getting your attention to wikipedia policies and guidelines. When I asked for you to be banned for 3RR I said "if you have to ban me, too, that's OK." So we got a break; now learn something from it and move forward. Dicklyon 22:22, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

See, 48 hours won't be so bad. And when you get back, I'll be on the road and unable to clean up after whatever you do at that time, for a few more hours at least. So do some self-reflection and make that time count, instead of investing in things that you know violate policy. For example, go to the library and try to find some independent sources to support the notability of Vanicek. Or take the time to read WP:NPOV, WP:OR, WP:NPA, WP:SOCK, and other things that will help guide you to work here collaboratively. Dicklyon 23:22, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

By your little game of setting traps (it turns out you have not even been away according to the many posts you created in the past two days), you just showed so much disrespect for the effort of an editor whose first Wiki article ended up featured on WP main page. Which happened not thanks to you, but despite you. --Geoeg 04:10, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Trigonometric functions?

Where it says "fitting of data with trigonometric functions" I've tried changing it to "fitting of sinusoids to data", which seems more precise and descriptive to me. Recent edit summary on revert said "VA is not function-bound". What am I missing here? Is this saying that Vanicek analysis includes spectral analysis by fitting functions other than sinusoids? What other trig functions make sense in this context? What am I missing here? Dicklyon 07:02, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Cosinusoids. --Geoeg 11:55, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I've never heard of cosinusoids. Sinusoids come in all phases; the suffix oid means resembling, or having the appearance of; that's why I said sinusoids; could have said sine and cosines, but since the method works with arbitrary phases, either by sin/cosine or other decomposition, or complex exponentials, the generic term sinusoids seemed reasonable, and more more specific than the vague "trigonometric functions". Dicklyon 14:28, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

So, if something does not have its own article on Wikipedia, it means it does not exist? LOL. Here, learn: http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~mjj/dspDemos/EE4/tutFT.html, or search Google for cosinusoid. --Geoeg 14:53, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem with those few who choose to introduce that term; but since we have an article on the more mainstream concept sinusoid, let's just use it. Dicklyon 14:56, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

One thousand Google returns are "those few" to you? I mean, given that it was you who established Google counting as the criterion when we were discussing what name should take priority, Vanicek analysis or Least squares spectral analysis... You have just outdone yourself! But seriously, how about writing a cosinusoid article instead, and so actually contributing to Wikipedia? --Geoeg 03:28, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I never recommended such a counting method. But if you want to look at counts, it's 100:1 in favor of sinusoid. Of course, many of those are probably the medical term, so take it with a grain of salt. Dicklyon 04:01, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

You used Google Books instead of plain Google, but the principle is the same. In any case: Extra! Extra! This just in! Math knows of no democracy! --Geoeg 03:35, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

By the way, please don't continue to bias the lead in favor of one contributor to the method; you are too close to the subject. If you continue to slant the article toward Vanicek, or add excessive references to his student Omerbashich, who you are evidently very close to, then I'll have to tag the article with the Template:COI2 tag. Dicklyon 14:45, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

No idea what you are talking about. By the way, two references could hardly be called excessive. --Geoeg 14:53, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Two things I'm referring to: (1) using full and bold name for Vanicek while unbolding and reducing to initials Scargle; (2) adding references to your own work to support statements such as that Scargles merely "simplified" the method. Dicklyon 14:56, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

(1) More like insisting on consistency than "reducing", but you do not seem to be reading edit comments field. (2) LOL. Did you not hear: all peer reviewed references were born equal. Unless excessively cited, of course. --Geoeg 03:28, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Expert request

Does anyone have access to Vanicek's actual papers? I'd like to see a good description of his method. I did a quick implementation of what I thought it was, in Matlab, but it doesn't seem to behave nearly as well as the Lomb/Scargle method, so I'd like to get more info an exactly what he said. The description in Mensur Omerbashich's thesis says things about it that appear to only be true of the Lomb/Scargle method, so I'm wondering what's up with that (it also has flatly false statements such as "there is a peculiar requirement in the FFT for the number of data in the series to equal to a power of 2", so it's easily discounted). Any experts on any of these methods? Anyone have the Wells et al. 1985 report "Least Squares Spectral Analysis Revisited"? Are they really just doing Lomb periodograms now, due to the least-squares fitting of many non-orthogonal sinusoids being so ill conditioned? Dicklyon 04:01, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

personal attack removed.

OK, I did some more looking. The Craymer 1998 thesis (linked in the article refs) actually has a good explanation of what I was observing. In particular, you can't use more frequencies than data samples and expect to get a decent answer; actually, when you try that, Matlab's solver has no trouble giving a solution that exactly interpolates the data points with a minimum sum of squared coefficients, but it's very badly conditioned and doesn't make a decent spectrum. Which agrees with Craymer's other point:

"...serious repercussions can also arise if the selected frequencies result in some of the Fourier components (trig functions) becoming nearly linearly dependent with each other, thereby producing an ill-conditioned or near singular N. To avoid such ill conditioning it becomes necessary to either select a different set of frequencies to be estimated (e.g. equally spaced frequencies) or simply neglect the correlations in N (i.e., the off-diagonal blocks) and estimate the inverse least squares transform separately for the individual frequencies..."

It appears that he is suggesting that when you want lots of frequencies close together, you need to back off to the Lomb/Scargle periodogram method. This agrees with my quick experiment. The thing that seemed contradictory in the Omerbashich 2003 thesis was where he seemed to be speaking of Vanicek's method but said:

...modeling assures that the spectral resolution (the number of spectral points) can be preset at will for a given band of frequencies, regardless of the record's composition. Then the more interesting parts of the estimated spectrum from within certain sub-bands can be truly, i.e., without additional data "massaging", zoomed into by re-computing the spectrum for the sub-band(s) only, again with an arbitrarily selected spectral resolution.

By "modeling" he means also fitting some non-sinusoidal (non-trigonometric as he puts it, a term he inherited from Craymer) functions. It's easy to see how a least-squares fit of functions could include arbitrary other functions along with sinusoids, but that notion is inconsistent with the quoted stuff above that only works for the Lomb/Scargle periodogram method.

Coincidentally, Craymer also mentions the FFT power-of-2 thing, but doesn't make the mistake that Omerbashich made; he says it's most efficient when a power of two, which is true.

Anyway, I think I've got it figured out, but having some more eyes on it would help. It looks to me like the Vanicek method is essentially unusable due to its unpredictable conditioning problems, while the Lomb/Scargle method, the one in Numerical Recipes, is very robust; by the way, Scargle contributed the modification that Press uses to easily and exactly decorrelate the sine and cosine terms by phase shifting them.

Since Geoeg gets everything from the Omerbashich thesis (which he probably wrote), someone more independent and with less WP:COI is needed to provide some confirmation here and help tune up the article.

Dicklyon 03:25, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

HERE is the most relevant part of the two posts you keep deleting although these are just Talk pages (I suppose truth hurts):

You not only dismiss peer reviewed scientific papers off hand, now you started doing it with theses too. Coincidentally, Vanicek supervised both theses. Perhaps he should hand his Medal to you. LOL --Geoeg 03:12, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Requests for comment/User conduct

See WP:RFC/USER at Requests for comment/Geoeg. — Athaenara ✉ 02:00, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Please note that you are more than welcome to discuss all the objections you and your friend Dicklyon might have -- here on the Talk page. But I must tell you that your POVs are a no-go. You two are in minority here (roughly, four to two), and the LSSA article has been already featured on WP main page -- despite one-partite war you two started with edit battles, setting ban traps, passing allegations or otherwise abusing or misinterpreting WP regulations. From now on, I won't allow any changes, not even minor ones made by you two to either of the two major articles I wrote. Those articles are already good enough so they certainly can survive without your POV. --Geoeg 03:22, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, no. The four votes below mean those user agree with the two users who certified the basis for the dispute. (Which is why it says users who endorse this summary). So it would be 6 people who feel you are behaving in an inappropriate fashion. Further, threatening to not allow any changes is tantamount to disruption. Please stop. --Bfigura ^(talk) 23:32, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I am sorry, but I do not see any "four posts below". (Below what?) --Geoeg 00:46, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Try here. It's 5 now I think. (Users who agree with the summary written by dicklyon, that is). Best, --Bfigura ^(talk) 21:43, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Your out-of-the-blue change of position is rather interesting. Read the list (below) explaining why I will not answer to Dicklyon's traps that are so evidently based on his POV and imagination, as well as to his edit crusade against scientific references. The below list of his violations of WP regulations is extensive, and it is only getting bigger. I suppose everyone who endorses his traps sees no problem with his violations as listed below either. It is your choice. --Geoeg 15:20, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

LSSA content RFC

Request for Comment: We need help getting neutral and accurate description of the subject. See discussions above, mostly between just two editors.

What is it called?

There is a good 1972 ref calling it "Vanicek's method", but the only things I can find calling it "Vanicek analysis" or "Gauss-Vanicek analysis" are papers by Vanicek's 2003 Ph.D. student Mensur Omerbashich (and a paper by Cornette criticizing one of those papers). So I took out the variant names by our COI editor, and left "Vanicek method" with the 1972 ref. If anyone can find a source for the other names that is not from Omerbashich's recent naming campaign, we can put such names back with sources. But sourcing this mess to Omerbashich is right out. Dicklyon 06:23, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Strange, that Dicklyon avoided using Google this time? I mean, even a quick Google search returns at least one more references using the Gauss-Vanicek name: http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU2007/02549/EGU2007-J-02549-3.pdf Everyone, please note that the deleted 2006 reference is new, so even if it was the first time to call the method Gauss-Vanicek, the usage of that name can be expected to expend, as indicated from the above example. Therefore the two references Dicklyon (once again) arbitrarily deleted are back where they belong. --Geoeg 18:13, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

The Sepkoski conundrum

In the removed ref "A Gauss-Vanicek Spectral Analysis of the Sepkoski Compendium: No New Life Cycles", our bud Omerbashich (aka Geoeg) tries to show that Vanicek's method (actually the Lomb/Scargle method, it appears) can be applied to raw data in such a way as to avoid "new periods". He says the method's "application is undemanding, with little or no data preprocessing required". The data he's analyzing is the Sepkoski data, somewhat munged by Muller and Rohde, who were in the news for their discovery of a significant 63 million year cycle in genera data, or life diversity essentially. The Cornette paper, the only other place the term Gauss-Vanicek spectral analysis was ever used as far as I can tell, was a criticism on the reasoning of Omerbashich. Neither paper is particularly sensible, and neither is the original Muller and Rohde paper. Nobody ever steps back to ask what kind of preprocessing makes sense on such data; the subtraction of a cubic trend as Muller and Rohde did has no possible justification. And doing no preprocessing, as Omerbashich does, is also a bit absurd, as the data describe a truncated record of a mostly downward trend, so the big "step" at the beginning makes a 1/f^2 low-frequency spectrum that pretty much obscures any effect of a long-period fluctuation in the relative rate of change of diversity. The natural treatment for such data would be to convert to a growth rate, e.g. derivative of the log of the data, in which case the 62 million year cycle is indeed pretty prominent. But one can't decide what's "significant" without a decent model of what you're doing, and none of these guys have a decent model. One thing's pretty clear, though, which is that as Cornette points out, it doesn't really matter if you use Vanicek's method or not. If anyone else wants to look at these for tidbits that would improve the article, please do, or ask here if it's no longer obvious where to find them. As far as I can tell, these are not reliable sources for anything, but if anyone disagrees (other than the authors) please speak up. Dicklyon 07:36, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Your insinuations indicate you are totally blinded with rage. Too bad you take it personal. --Geoeg 15:09, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Obvious acts of vandalism by Dicklyon

Here is a short list of your acts of obvious vandalism (whether WP recognizes them as such is another issue), so I'll just let everyone to judge on their own:

- dispute peer reviewed scientific papers off-handedly while admitting you are not a scientist/an expert yourself (and even tagging the article, soliciting expert help)

- dispute doctoral theses off-handedly (same as in the above)

- impose your writing style (such as hyphenation, or in-text reference tag position, etc.)

- interrogate as to one's identity

- pass allegations as to one's identity (dream on, but you will never find out)

- impose your imagination upon others, such as "your thesis" in the above

- misuse WP (blocking) procedures which mislead WP admins and other editors to have them enlist as supporting your POVs (as already recognized by this admin: User talk:Dicklyon#Least squares)

- use outright insults ("Sycophant" in the above, and others...)

- talk nonsense about the subject of the article you are desperately trying to "contribute" to (Talk pages Talk:Petr Vaníček and Talk:Least-squares spectral analysis are enough to demonstrate many such instances)

- mislead the reader by hiding in the article's lead (most visitors read only the leads) the fact that Scargle himself declared he had not invented a new scientific method and instead calling it "Scargle method" (sic)

- delete entire scientific references without discussing it first (post-announcing instead)

- make up regulations such as when claiming that a scientist's notability is established by popular vote and not by his/her peers, which is general knowledge obviously undisputed by any WP regulations

- impose Google (or Google Books) simple count of search returns as the measure of what a scientific method should be called in instances when there are multiple names

- impress your confusion on other editors (such as when citing two theses as being in agreement on trigonometric functions fit and not just sinusoids fit, and then, contrary to your own finding, reverting the article to mention just sinusoids)

- avoid issues altogether as soon as they are countered by logical reasoning that kills your "argument"

- act from position of power (so I thought for almost a week, only to realize you are just an editor)

- set block traps so that you can make more damage to the articles over the weekend since I clearly stated I have more time during weekend (you are repeating this for two weekends now; hardly a coincidence)...

... As you can see, despite all the interference from you and pushing your own POV as listed in the above, the article has been already featured on WP main page. So why did I not report any of the above abuses of yours to anyone yet, and officially requested your ban as of yet? Well, since you did not notice, each one of the above examples represents violation of one or more of WP regulations. And given how many you have committed, the above series of misbehaviors could easily ban you for a long period of time. You are lucky I am a pacifist. All I care about is to write good articles founded on scientific, peer reviewed facts. One would expect that an engineer would have the minimum courtesy to not fight scientific references on Wikipedia. But I guess you have the guts to do it. Funny thing how many editors (admins too) on WP seem to be tucking you in. --Geoeg 15:09, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Please note that there is no cabal. If everyone is disagreeing with you, you should consider the possibility that they may all have chosen to do so for rational reasons. (For instance, the possibility that your actions seem to be making you look like a tendentious editor.) If you wish to respond to Dicklyon, the best place to do so would be on the RfC/U. Thanks. --Bfigura ^(talk) 19:02, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Everything can be discussed here, so feel free to explicitly state your view on Talk page; no need to hide anything. I already said everything I had to say with the above list. If you or anyone else wants, you can state Yes (I endorse) or No (I don’t endorse) right below each bolded item, and then do the same for Dicklyon's items. Simple as that -- we take a vote, right here, right now! I promise to obey any decision of majority of editors, say after we gather 10 votes total. Fair enough? --Geoeg 23:44, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Further, statements such as You are lucky I am a pacifist are unproductive at best, and could possibly be construed as veiled threats. In either case, they have no place on Wikipedia. --Bfigura ^(talk) 19:05, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

"Veiled threats" -- WOW! I mean, where do you find inspiration for such negative imagination? You sound like someone who has been watching lots of B movies lately. If I followed that logic I could now call your labeling a "witch hunt".--Geoeg 23:44, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Recent edits

Geoeg's recent edits to the article have restored some of the problems with a POV based on his conflict of interest in favor of Vanicek. I'm going to hold off reverting for a while, seeking input from other editors. Also, he has still not responded to the user conduct RFC, so I'm not clear on why he is even allowed to mess with this article at all.

His two edits accomplished the following:

This diff added "...after Canadian geodesist and geophysicist Petr Vaníček (sometimes Vanícek spectral analysis or Gauss-Vanícek spectral analysis)", which:

• repeats Vanicek historical details in the lead, but no such details of the other contributors that the method is named for.

• adds new name "Vanicek spectral analysis," sourced to this report that that never calls it that but rather calls it by the already-mentioned name "Vanicek method" and "Vanicek Method of specral analysis" capitalized thus. Some tests of the Vaníček Method of spectral analysis

• adds new name "Gauss-Vanicek spectral analysis", sourced to an article by the only person to ever call it that, a Vanicek ex-student who is probably the same as Geoeg himself. In any case it is not neutral or reliable to say that the method is called something that is only referencable to the guy who made up the name while a student of the guy it's named for.

This diff

• replaced a sourced description of the usual terminology, "fitting sinusoids to data samples," with the less specific and backwards-expressed "fit between data and trigonometric functions", which is then referenced to Vanicek ex students only; apparently that's the language they preferred there, for unknown reasons. The reference to the more specific and more typical language (Birney) was removed from there, but is still used later (it actually says "fitting a sine function to the data" but clearly mean multiple sine functions of different frequencies and phases, hence sinusoids). The terminology "fitting sinusoids" is very commonly used (book examples). It's not a big deal, but leaving "trigonometric functions" where the function used are always sinusoidal doesn't make much sense, and is something that only ex-Vanicek students do, apparently.

• added POV note "(Note below that Scargle stated he did not invent a new scientific method.)" that contradicts the sourced details in the article about the fact the Scargle proposed the now-standard modification to Lomb's method. Nobody is claiming he proposed or invented a "new scientific method", so there's no need to refute that in the lead.

• removed section head "The Lomb–Scargle periodogram" for the section that says how the Lomb-Scargle method works; this is technical detail particular to this method, and doesn't belong in the history section.

On this talk page, (this diff), he also mentions a new ref ([1]) for the name Gauss-Vaniceck least-squares spectral analysis, which would be OK to add for that, but instead he adds back a reference to his own paper for Gauss-Vanicek spectral analysis, and to the response criticizing it, which naturally has to refer to his title and terminology.

I would appreciate input here from other editors. Should we just revert these? Or do you see other and better ways to move forward? Dicklyon 21:01, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I trust your judgment, based on editing many of the same articles. I know your intentions are unselfish and noble. Your arguments ring truer than Geoeg's, although he appears to be intelligent and a potentially valuable contributor. It is sad to see so much energy wasted on non-constructive conflict. Anyhow, you have my moral support. Please do whatever you think best. FWIW, a name like least-squares spectral analysis is a lot more useful to me than Vanicek analysis.

--Bob K 23:55, 22 October 2007 (UTC)