User talk:Michael Hardy

This user is one of the 40 most active Wikipedians.

• User talk:Michael Hardy/Archive1
• User talk:Michael Hardy/Archive2
• User talk:Michael Hardy/Archive3
• User talk:Michael Hardy/Archive4
• User talk:Michael Hardy/Archive5
• User talk:Michael Hardy/Archive6

Rota quote on multisets?

Hi Michael, I'm trying to track down a quote on the multisets page which I think you added back in September 2006. On that page it says that This fact led Gian-Carlo Rota to ask "Why are negative sets multisets?". Do you happen to remember where you ran across that? I would really like to find a reference for it. Thanks! Vince Vatter (talk) 00:10, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I believe in 1998 or '99 he had a paper in the Mathematical Intelligencer that included that. I seem to recall that in three consecutive issues of the Intelligencer there were papers by him, which were lectures he had given at a coference. I think it was in one of those. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:37, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! I will look in those. Vince Vatter (talk) 01:18, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

Greatly appreciate your improvement of the Hadley's_theorem page, and suggestion noted. Ta! Extcetc (talk) 05:22, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

An Honored Newbie

Man thank u not undoing my edits but cleaning up "some clupsy notation". I'm very new yet, but for I can't believe in my eyes about the article (logarithm) , I investigate the history, as I expected my edits were in the history, my edits were elementary but this very same reason is why I want to hear from u. There is nothing common about the start of the article (which u did I think) and the current situation. I don't mean that it should be as a text book. But what does "this result implies that all logarithm functions (whatever the base b) are similar to each other. ". Similar??. I also want your op about my edits(which are very basic as I admitted) Oz an (talk) 22:42, 7 July 2010 (UTC)oz_an

I've done an edit concerning the part about similarity. Similarity means having the same shape. See similarity (geometry). Michael Hardy (talk) 02:50, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you very much for help with stacked exponents. Rick Norwood (talk) 16:43, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Dual vector space symbol

Hi, do you know how to type in LateX the little v-like symbol commonly used for duals (e.g. dual vector space)? Thanks, Jakob.scholbach (talk) 16:49, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried \vee as in: $X^\vee$. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:39, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

"Phenomena"?

You said ...

The Cambridge Dictionary includes this: "The term is now generally used to label the phenomena that a variable that is extreme on its first measurement will tend to be closer to the centre of the distribution for a later measurement." Does it really say "phenomena" instead of "phenomenon"?

Yes, the version I have (2nd Edition) does say "phenomena". I don't have access to a later edition. Melcombe (talk) 09:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Re

Hi, Michael Hardy. I'm working on the article at the moment. It should be up in a day or so. PasswordUsername (talk) 05:15, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Can you suggest a math field for abstract rewriting system?

I guess that since mathematicians were involved in the origins of the concept it could be tagged with wikiproject math as well. But I'm not sure in which field to categorize it... Pcap ping 09:43, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Korowai

Hello there. Thanks for your additions to this article. Could you please add references to it - preferably as in-line cites. many thanks --Merbabu (talk) 05:28, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Question

Just curious, why did you add a discussion line on the article page of Wikipedia:Conflict of interest (I have reverted it!) instead of the talk page? --Dave1185 (talk) 21:23, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I did not add it there instead of on the talk page. I clearly stated my position on the talk page. I will soon edit that section of the article accordingly. Tags saying the appropriateness of a section is disputed belong at the beginning of the section, not on the talk page. It's the same as with tags disputing the accuracy of articles.

Accordingly, I've reverted your reversion. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:11, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

• Ah... I see what you mean now! Btw, I do monitor your page for a reply after I left a message, so there's really no need to go to mine and do a double job. Thanks! --Dave1185 (talk) 22:26, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Just wanted to thank you

for moving GADT to proper caps. I wanted to request the move, but I always found that requesting a move on the official channel was rather cumbersome, so I get a fit of laziness whenever I'm supposed to do it. Pcap ping 19:29, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome.

(Official channels aren't always the only way to do something.) Michael Hardy (talk) 19:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

MacRobert-E function

Many thanks for helping launch the MAcRobert-E function article. The URL for the article currently is <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacRobert_E_function> while that for the Meijer-G function is <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meijer_G-function>; the latter uses a hyphen "-" where the former uses an underscore character "_". I think this should be unified one way or the other unless there is a good reason for this difference.

62.180.184.4 (talk) 00:23, 20 August 2009 (UTC).

Another question

Mike, could you please take a look at this: Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts#Continous flouting of civility by User:Starstylers (especially his edit summaries/history) and give me a honest opinion of what you think. Just so you'd know, there are 3 editors (myself included) who all felt that Starstylers need to clean up his act, as he's been very obnoxious and rude to almost everyone he disagrees with (especially to me, User:Merbabu and User:Davidelit). Even when evidence are abound to indicate that he's pushing his point of view on certain article pages here on Wikipedia, oftentimes he would labeled us with all sorts of names instead of working together to come to a common consensus. And quite frankly, his disruptive behaviour is hurting Wikipedia on a few wikiproject such a Singapore, Indonesia, Papua and Kopassus, take a look at them and you would certainly notice issues with neutrality (NPOV). --Dave1185 (talk) 04:55, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

A question sill unanswered after 4 years on this wiki

See Talk:Anonymous_recursion#.22anonymous.22.3F. Pcap ping 01:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

The same issue appears at Fixed point combinator; I've elaborated my objection there since that article gets more love. Some people appear deeply convinced that one must have named functions in lambda calculus and that the fixed point combinators help us get rid of the names. Or something like that. I don't quite comprehend their line of reasoning. Pcap ping 05:48, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I figured out what these guys mean. Pcap ping 07:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at Wuhwuzdat's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

WuhWuzDat 12:39, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Tiger graph

Michael, the article was created in January 2007, and you formatted it a day ago. However, I think it should be deleted because it is an original research that's open to interpretation. If you agree, please delete it the proper WP way. Thanks. Giftlite (talk) 20:15, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for some pi

Although I consider myself quite intelligent, I sort of never took a liking to math any more difficult than high-school level, and so when I see things like a sigma and x (or k) to the limit as it approaches zero or k! -- I immediately shut down. Fortunately, the third article you suggested doesn't have any of those things until the third section, so I may read up to there. Conceptually, though, I think math is wonderful, hence my recent questions that stir my fancy -- I just need them explained so that I can understand them :) Thanx for your help! DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 23:59, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the articles

Thank you so much for giving me links to Faulhaber's formula.--Email4mobile (talk) 00:47, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Popoviciu's inequality

There seems to be another inequality concerning convex functions known as "Popoviciu's inequality" (see [1]). In fact, it seems that "Popoviciu's inequality" usually refers to the other one. Shreevatsa (talk) 15:02, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, for now I've moved it to Popoviciu's inequality on variances. Can you create an article on the other one? That could be called "Popoviciu's inequality", and it would bear a disambiguation link at the top:

This is not about Popoviciu's inequality on variances.

(or words to that effect). Then we can sort out the incoming links to the two articles. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:36, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I've created the short article Popoviciu's inequality. Please take a glance at it with your excellent eye for formatting errors and the like. Actually, there seems to be yet another Popoviciu's inequality also from 1965, that is similar to Hölder's inequality, but the one in the article (about convex functions) seems to be the most common one. Cheers, Shreevatsa (talk) 17:34, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

I suggest to merge these inequalities (together with Bhatia–Davis inequality and others) into variance bounds or similar, see here for sort of a survey.

It doesn't make sense to include the Popoviciu's inequality article created by Shreevatsa in anything called "variance bounds", since that's not what it's about. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:55, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, I meant Popoviciu's inequality on variances. (Igny (talk) 22:58, 26 August 2009 (UTC))

You suggested merging "these" inequalities. The word "these" is plural; it implies more than one. I thought you meant the two inequalities attributed in the article titles to Popoviciu. So now it's unclear what you meant by "these". Michael Hardy (talk) 23:20, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Type theory articles of interest to mathematicians

Apparently, I've managed to convince at least one mathematician that type theory as used in computer science, and programming languages in particular, is "the same" as the one from mathematics. Since computer scientits "took over" type theory in the '70s by greatly expanding the topics that they consider to be part of this theory, I've suggested during that discussion that a {{distinguished subcategory}} be created to flag those articles that are also (or especially) of interest to mathematicians, so they wouldn't have to wade through that many computer science related topics. Since you seem to have the time to go through type-theory-related articles (wikistalking!), perhaps you could make that subcategory and add the appropriate articles to it. I wouldn't dare decide what is and what isn't of interest to mathematicians from Category:type theory. (Initially Arthur Rubin wanted disjoint categories for math and CS type theory. As far as I can tell he's not interested in following up on the discussion anymore.) Thanks, Pcap ping 07:47, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

By the way, wanna laugh your socks off at the impertinence/ignorance of some computer scientist? (I can't believe that Springer let that book get published with the claim sticking out in a box like that, not in some obscure footnote...) Pcap ping 08:12, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

He probably "missexpressed" himself given that English is not his native language. On the next page he does give credit to mathematicians for inventing the concept. He's actually quite clueful later in that he explains that the concrete implementation of a type as done in implementations of programing lanuges is a model of a type. And he gives models other than sets, e.g. Dana Scott's lattices. Pcap ping 09:30, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I am considering writing an article on type (type theory) because data type is currently linked in most type theory articles instead of just "type" even in really odd contexts like function types. "Data type" means different things to different people. The definition we have at data type is actually that of an abstract data type, (which has existential type), or rather just a set model thereof, so it's quite unsuitably linked in many places. Pcap ping 09:30, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

By the way, if look at the source cited in our article on data type, you'll see how misleading our article is. It changed "Data type as set of values with set of operations", which is a topic amongst others in type theory (different models exist) to "A data type [...] is a set of values and the operations on those values." Many article on computer science around here are way more sloppy and misleading than that, so I'm not really surprised. Pcap ping 09:38, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Carleson's theorem

Hey, thanks for your edits at Carleson's theorem - the typesetting looks much better now, without great bulges on certain lines. I had experimented with scriptstyle/textstyle commands to achieve this goal, but with little success, and I hadn't realised that the HTML equivalents available were as extensive as they seem to be. I was just wondering if you had information on how widely supported (operating system/web browser-wise) some of these symbols are? (and apologies if this is just a newbie question) I found the article Wikipedia:Mathematical_symbols now, which is helpful, but while it states at the top that the symbols given should work on "most browsers", WP:MOSMATH even suggests as an example that it might be wise to avoid the use of ∈ for compatibility reasons (under "Special symbols"). Do you have any further information? Thanks! Tcnuk (talk) 09:13, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Error

Thank you for picking up my error and replacing it with something suitable. It was completely absurd, yes. I just saw an image wanting of a caption and added something brief based on what I thought I was seeing in the diagram. I'll attempt to be more careful in future. Best, —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 16:24, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks (mostly) for edits of "Product Integral"

Hi Michael

Thanks for your edits of Product Integral ... mostly. I disagree with your thoughts on type III (dx-less) product integrals, but am not in a position to argue the case. Perhaps in the future.

Regards,

Daryl Williams (talk) 01:30, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome.

I don't think I ever saw the "Type III" integrals; I came along long after those were expunged from the article. I looked at the history and they didn't look quite right as they stood, but I'd have to think about that further. (Actually, the limit looked as if it would always diverge in any reasonable casses. Maybe that can be fixed by rephrasing it somehow—I don't know.) Michael Hardy (talk) 02:10, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

about parentheses

Dear Michael, I have a question of wiki-style:

$\textstyle\log(x)$ vs $\textstyle\log\,x$

$\textstyle\mathrm{Re}{(\alpha)}$ vs $\textstyle\mathrm{Re}{\,\alpha}$

and so on. Using both in the same article according to aesthetics is acceptable? I found no clue in the MOS, but I see you are quite careful in these matters, so I'd like to hear your opinion. My point is that in some cases parentheses are just too many... Best, --pma (talk) 12:51, 7 September 2009 (UTC).

I don't have strong preferences between the two forms above when taken out of context, but I think in some contexts I would prefer one or the other. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:50, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

My bad

Regarding my recent edit of that article that used to be about detecting imaginary roots of a quadradic, sorry for my error and thank you for pointing it out to me.

You are doing a great job, keep up the good work. I never thought that this article contained very much in the way of original research, and like others I seem to remember a high school algebra teacher explaining about how when the parabola did not touch the x axis, that this meant that the intersection was imaginary. Maybe it was a circle and a line, I can't be sure, but he seemed to be arguing in a graphical manner for the existence of imaginary numbers.

A concept that I really did not appreciate at the time.

TeamQuaternion (talk) 01:52, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Order Dab

It's truly a shame that you are involving yourself in that matter without understanding Dab & MoSDab beyond the point where you have to ask about {{SIA}}. We have colleagues who may choose to remedy that, but even if your tone and manner inclined to me to doing so, i'm flying to the Alps today, and it is a truly attractive prospect that i'll have forgotten this matter existed before a realistic temptation to do anything about it can arise.
--Jerzy•t 17:35, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

OMGWTFBBQ, Michael Hardy, you've lived all your life for nothing. You don't even being to comprehend the depths of WikiProject:Disambiguation, seee-yaaa from the ALPS. Sorry, I could not resist. Pcap ping 18:08, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

You could have just pointed Michael to WP:SETINDEX instead... Pcap ping 18:24, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Whatever may be the facts concerning "SIA" and WikiProject Disambiguation, the result that Jerzy brought about was irrational and perverse. If we should have a list of organizations called "orders", it seems clear that we should not achieve that result by moving the order disambiguation page to that title and then deleting all of its contents and writing that new page over it. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:40, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Covariance

Hi, I was wondering if you could provide me a brief explanation of why you deleted the example computation of covariance? I would like to fix the errors. I am referring to the page as it looked on this date:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Covariance&oldid=307487127

Awaterl (talk) 08:01, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

The example is written in such a way that I have to guess what was meant, and if construed literally is quite badly wrong. First it says

Take the two random variables to be:

${\color{blue}X} = \begin{bmatrix} x_1 \\ x_2 \\ x_3 \\ x_4 \end{bmatrix} = \begin{bmatrix} \color{blue}1 \\ \color{blue}2 \\ \color{blue}3 \\ \color{blue}4 \end{bmatrix} \qquad {\color{red}Y} = \begin{bmatrix} y_1 \\ y_2 \\ y_3 \\ y_4 \end{bmatrix} = \begin{bmatrix} \color{red}3 \\ \color{red}3 \\ \color{red}4 \\ \color{red}3 \end{bmatrix}$

At first it looks as if random vectors is meant. In that case the covariance would be a 4×4 matrix. Then it looks as if what is meant is constant random vectors. In that case the covariance would be the 4×4 matrix of zeros. Finally after taking the whole thing in to account, I begin to suspect that what was intended was that the two random variables take values equal to the four components in the random vector with equal probabilities. Finally, it seems to be saying the expected value of a random vector is a scalar. What was actually meant was the average of the components of the vector. When working with data sets consisting of finitely many discrete observations, that sort of matrix notation is used, but I've never seen the expectation operator used in that way. I think once I've deciphered it, I can see that the computation is correct, but it not only requires deciphering, but also is wrong if the notation is construed in the usual ways. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:12, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Uniqueness for Weierstrass transform

If F(t) is a constant function F(t)=c, is it true that f(t)=c almost everywhere? I guess more generally that if F1 and F2 are the transforms of f1 and f2 and F1=F2, then f1=f2 almost everywhere, but for what I'm doing, I only need the simple case where F is a constant. It seems to be true by applying the inverse of the transform, but the article is not clear about when the inverse exists. Is there a formal theorem that would apply?John Lawrence (talk) 15:33, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Your second statement is correct if it holds when F1 = 0. I believe that is correct, and I suspect if I thought about it for a few minutes, I could give either an argument or a link to a Wikipedia article where it's found. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:50, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I suspect your first proposition (and maybe your second) follows from an exercise in William Feller's famous book on probability. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:50, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

User:Linas

I hate to give the impression of canvassing, but Linas is clearly not going to listen to editors/admins he does not have much respect for. Perhaps you could have a word with him and advice him to calm down and stop using invectives that will only get him blocked or even banned? Linas already got blocked, block extended, and locked from his talk page too, plus there's already an ANI thread where some asked for his banishment. I already asked User:CBM to contact Linas, but then I recalled Carl wants to avoid the appearance of cabalism amongst Math editors, so he might choose to stay uninvolved. Thanks. Pcap ping 19:47, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your helpful comments on the Inverse bundle! I now see the point of these vague descriptions at the beginning of mathematical articles. Cheers Guygurari (talk) 11:58, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Equation arrays

How might one include an equation array in Wikipedia? In LaTeX I would type

\[ \begin{eqnarray*} 
a &=& bc \ , \\
b &=& cd \ .
\end{eqnarray*} \]

to get an unenumerated equation array. Where the ampersands surrond the things on each line which will be lined up in the final output. I've tried to use the eqnarray and eqnarray* enviroments on Wikipedia, but it won't compile. Any suggestions? ~~ Dr Dec (Talk) ~~ 15:39, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Minnesota Meetup

---

2009

Proposed date: Saturday, October 10. Details under discussion.

Please share this with anyone who may be interested.

---

Delivered by Jonathunder (talk) 21:33, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Mergeto

Thanks for your note, resolved. Rich Farmbrough, 22:56, 18 September 2009 (UTC).

Referencing

Hi Michael Hardy! An article you have been involved with has been tagged as being in need of further sources to avoid being deleted. If you can help with these issues please see Talk:Double-barrelled name.

Theorem of repeating decimal

Please refer to Talk:Repeating_decimal#Theorem of repeating decimal. What is your opinion?--Ling Kah Jai (talk) 13:05, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Re: Page move

It's to name it like other similar articles; they can be seen in the Introductions category. They are all named in a similar fashion. But yes, I have indeed given the article an incorrect title, and have now renamed it accordingly. Gary King (talk) 03:05, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

dx

Hello there. I understand your post about the definition of dx not making sense in terms of integration. For computational purposes I agree that dx should be treated like an infinitesimal quantity. This is adequate enough for someone who has started learning calculus. However, for someone like me who is sufficiently familiar with calculus and yet has not gone up the level of differential forms etc, I believe that using dx makes no sense in regard to differentiation and integration. Differentiation can very well be done without any reference to things like dy and dx, and in integration we merely need the fundamental theorem of calculus. (dx might denote the measure function or independent variable but that's all.) The only place we seriously encounter dx is in differential equations and they make sense if I take Anton's definition of dx being a variable. So I feel that at the amateur level this definition is somewhat useful.

After having said all that let me add that I am a mathematical novice and your opinion will be of the highest value for me. Regards--Shahab (talk) 08:42, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at Skittleys's talk page.
Message added 20:39, 10 October 2009 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Empirical mean?

I guess you're the one who first made it redirect to sample mean? It now points to arithmetic mean. Anyway, could you pls have a look at this question on its discussion page. Because that plea had inspired only one (not particularly helpful) reply ages ago, I tried to obtain a better one with this note to its author, User:Igny:

(Sorry this is nearly a year old, but...) in talk:arithmetic mean#empirical mean I seconded Hv's objection to an unexplained redirect. Consider the situation of a Wikipedia user who is reading the article on principal component analysis or the one on empirical measure and encounters the term empirical mean but is unfamiliar with it. Such a user would likely click through the link and find himself inexplicably confronted with an article not about emprical means, but about arithmetic means.

Your reply to our perplexity was a suggestion to read about empirical measures. The first problem with that reply is that, residing as it does on a talk page, it will likely never be seen by our hapless user. A further problem is that even the article to which you referred us does not unambiguously define empirical mean. And the worst problem with your suggestion is that the empirical-measure article may well be where some of our hapless users encountered the unfamiliar term to begin with!

I'd fix the problem if I thought myself qualified, but I don't. So I'm appealing to you to do so. Could you please edit the arithmetic mean article to make clear (1) why any user expecting to land on an article about empirical means ends up here instead and (2) the meaning of empirical mean, or at least the relationship between empirical and arithmetic means.

Thanks in advance.—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 01:59, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

No dice. Could you by any chance help to patch this gap? Regards.—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 16:19, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, thanks for repairing the redirection. But the other problem remains. People reading various articles who encounter one term (namely empirical mean) and click on it to learn more will still find themselves dumped at an article about a different term—now instead of wondering if the term is synonymous with arithmetic mean they get to wonder whether it's a synonym for sample mean.

Request... could you either add something like "also known as empirical mean" in the first line of the article on sample means or else add some explicit discussion of the similarities and differences between these two topics that we are left to infer do bear some mutual affinity.—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 12:42, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at Skittleys's talk page.
Message added 09:45, 14 October 2009 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Skittleys (talk) 09:45, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Super-root

As you have recently contributed to the article and seem to have enough knowledge on the subject to make a fair judgement on whether it's notable or not, you may have an opinion of its suggested merge with tetration. If you do please discuss it here, as the consensus currently seems to be in deadlock, and this is causing a large edit war across both articles. Robo37 (talk) 18:31, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Question for you

at Talk:Faà di Bruno's formula. Dewey process (talk) 22:39, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Re: Too much TeX

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at Nbarth's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

(Actionable reply, if you could comment – thanks!)

Merger of Sudbury Valley School and Sudbury school

I have proposed the merging of Sudbury Valley School into Sudbury school. If you would like to vote on the merger, please visit Talk:Sudbury school#Merger Two. PYRRHON  talk   19:03, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Talkback: Indecomposable

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at Nbarth's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

clarification

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at ShelfSkewed's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Balanced prime

Thanks for weighing in at Inset number. For unclear reasons I typed 47 instead of 53 as second term into OEIS...Nevertheless, we do have a fair stub at Balanced prime and this name is uncommon, so I took the opportunity to delete it per the brand new speedy deletion criterion A10 that i actually opposed. If you have further comments on the article, the deletion or the CSD, let me know or comment at the appropriate talk page.--Tikiwont (talk) 15:08, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Talkback: Harish-Chandra

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at Nbarth's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Suggested changes to Monty Hall problem

You are invited to join the discussion at talk:Monty Hall problem#Changes suggested by JeffJor, Martin Hogbin, and Glkanter. Rick Block (talk) 04:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC) (Using {{Please see}})

Re: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Catalog of articles in probability theory

Hi, Could you please reconsider the tone of your posting at the above AfD, I found it a little rude. I'm sure that wasn't your intention. Also, could you please remove the long list of other articles that haven't been nominated for deletion, as it disrupts the conversation and makes replies to your questions difficult, and note that the article in question is "Catalog of articles in probability theory", not "List of mathematics topics". The problem I had with the article is that it cannot be edited in the usual way due to a notice on the page and a bot which edits the article based on markup on the talk page (hence non-standard). This isn't compatible with our editing policies. However, I have removed this restriction (see the previous lead on the article) and proposed a compromise and I am more than willing to withdraw my nomination. If after you have removed the long list you leave your questions I will answer them at the AfD. Thanks, — Preceding unsigned comment added by Verbal (talk • contribs)

"The problem I had with the article is that it cannot be edited in the usual way due to"

...and a problem I have with your nomination of this article for deletion is that you nowhere explained in your proposal for deletion that there is any problem with editing. You should make your case in your proposal. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:17, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I seem to have annoyed you, and that was not my intention. I myself removed the restriction after some comments on the AfD made clear that the bot wouldn't break the article, and I was yet to post about this at the AfD (due to real life getting in the way). Please see the old lead which explicitly banned normal editing. I'd rather you didn't refer to me as "Verbal", but simply Verbal. Feel free to ask me questions on my talk page. Thanks, Verbal chat 17:30, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't have guessed that there was a problem with manual editing by reading your deletion proposal; it looked as if you simply wanted to delete an article because it looked a bit unusual to you. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:11, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Pentti Linkola

I noticed that you did some work on this article, and would like to expand it to include his recommendation (in Can Life Prevail) that the UN develop hit squads to target large urban population centers (with neutron bombs as I recall), and also the discussion on the 9/11 terrorists being "superior moral human beings" for their actions. Understanding that this is a BLP, that NPOV is important, and that including secondary sources is nearly impossible as they are difficult (at best) to find, what is your feeling on this? Nobody's M P (talk) 16:54, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I had thought the reason for using secondary rather than primary sources was to indicate that a concept is in standard use, rather than only that the original author used it. That doesn't seem to apply to a situation like this. But I'm not really familiar with the discussions on that. If you can cite reliable sources showing that he proposed those things, I think they should be included. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:58, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Help with dermatology-related content

I am looking for more help at the dermatology task force, particularly with our new Bolognia push 2009!? Perhaps you would you be able to help us? I could send you the login information for the Bolognia push if you are interested? ---kilbad (talk) 01:07, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Fourier transform on finite groups

I have some questions about the Fourier transform on finite groups article, and since you have edited every math-related article on Wikipedia, I decided to ask you.

What are the irreducible representations of G? Irreducible representation redirects to Simple module, which, despite being English, I have trouble understanding. I can guess – but if I guessed right, then there shouldn't be any d_i in the inverse formula. It's supposed to be the "degree" of the representation, which is supposed to be the size of the matrix, according to Fourier transform on finite groups. Considering the elements expressed as permutation matrices over the set of group elements, diagonalized into block-diagonal matrices and calling each block-diagonal matrix a representation of the element, the given formula becomes correct if the d_i is omitted from the inverse. (Sorry if my use of the terminology is incomprehensible.)

As an example of what I'm arbitrarily guessing I'm supposed to do, the dihedral group D₄ has generators m, n, where m² = n² = (mn)⁴ = I. The action of m and n on the set (I, m, nmn, nmnm, n, nm, mn, mnm) is then:

$m = \begin{bmatrix} 0&1&0&0&0&0&0&0\\ 1&0&0&0&0&0&0&0\\ 0&0&0&1&0&0&0&0\\ 0&0&1&0&0&0&0&0\\ 0&0&0&0&0&0&1&0\\ 0&0&0&0&0&0&0&1\\ 0&0&0&0&1&0&0&0\\ 0&0&0&0&0&1&0&0\end{bmatrix}, n = \begin{bmatrix} 0&0&0&0&1&0&0&0\\ 0&0&0&0&0&1&0&0\\ 0&0&0&0&0&0&1&0\\ 0&0&0&0&0&0&0&1\\ 1&0&0&0&0&0&0&0\\ 0&1&0&0&0&0&0&0\\ 0&0&1&0&0&0&0&0\\ 0&0&0&1&0&0&0&0\end{bmatrix}, P = \frac1{\sqrt8}\begin{bmatrix} 1& 1& 1& 1& 1& 1& 1& 1\\ 1& 1& 1& 1&-1&-1&-1&-1\\ 1&-1&-1& 1& 1&-1&-1& 1\\ 1&-1&-1& 1&-1& 1& 1&-1\\ 2& 0& 0&-2& 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 2&-2& 0& 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0& 2& 0& 0&-2\\ 0& 0& 0& 0& 0& 2&-2& 0\end{bmatrix}$.

The matrices P^-1mP and P^-1nP are block diagonal with 4 1x1 blocks and 1 4x4 block. Are the irreducible representations of D₄ (reading the blocks of P^-1mP and P^-1nP):

$\rho_1(m) = \begin{bmatrix}1\end{bmatrix}, \rho_1(n) = \begin{bmatrix}1\end{bmatrix}$

$\rho_2(m) = \begin{bmatrix}1\end{bmatrix}, \rho_2(n) = \begin{bmatrix}-1\end{bmatrix}$

$\rho_3(m) = \begin{bmatrix}-1\end{bmatrix}, \rho_3(n) = \begin{bmatrix}1\end{bmatrix}$

$\rho_4(m) = \begin{bmatrix}-1\end{bmatrix}, \rho_4(n) = \begin{bmatrix}-1\end{bmatrix}$

$\rho_5(m) = \begin{bmatrix}0&1&0&0\\1&0&0&0\\0&0&0&-1\\0&0&-1&0\end{bmatrix}, \rho_5(n) = \begin{bmatrix}0&0&1&0\\0&0&0&1\\1&0&0&0\\0&1&0&0\end{bmatrix}$, or am I guessing wrong? If my guess is right, then erasing d_i from the inverse gives the right result. I can't find an easily understandable article which says clearly what to do, so I'm guessing.

Thanks – Κσυπ Cyp   23:55, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, it seems I'm not that good at diagonalizing sets of matrices... My ρ₅ could be simplified to two identical blocks of $\rho_5(m) = \begin{bmatrix}1&0\\0&-1\end{bmatrix}, \rho_5(n) = \begin{bmatrix}0&1\\1&0\end{bmatrix}$, which is consistent with the d_i factor in the article. If each block of NxN matrices happens to be duplicated N times for some reason I don't yet understand, then it would explain the need for the d_i factor... In which case there isn't any question left for you to answer. Κσυπ Cyp   17:36, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I haven't worked on every math article, and this one isn't my strongest point. But if you take it to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics, you'd probably get some reasonable replies fairly quickly. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:14, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Regarding move

This edit undid User:Good Olfactory's move. I strongly agree with your version of the title. The MOS:ENDASH section of the manual of style clearly needs to be adjusted. Sławomir Biały (talk) 02:43, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Too many capital letters

On my user page you commented:

Please look at this edit. Wikipedia:Manual of Style clearly requires lower case in this context. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:07, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I salute the effort to make such corrections. I also applaud the provision of a link to the source of motivation for the change. As a robot who feels no human emotion, I'm all down with that.  :P

But as a meta-comment, I'd say that one has to be a little careful of turning off sincere human editors with a personally-directed nitpick. If you look at the meat of my changes, I rewrote an entire introduction to make it clearer: see changes. You changed exactly 4 characters. I may think that's a good change, but still...a lot of wiki is about how we motivate each other. And I'm especially concerned about how new users (who are sensitive to criticism) would feel if they had made such an edit and that's all the feedback they got! Alas...

So thank you for the correction. But I think in my case (and the case of anyone who's been around wiki a while) you can just make the change and document the "why" in the changelog, we'll see it and absorb it there. The user talk page is a better place to emphasize how grateful we are to each other for making the whole thing better, with a little bit of "hey, check out this link, it may help in the future" tacked on.

Best, Meta Metaeducation (talk) 09:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Orbital integral

Actually, I tajgged it as being like an essay or personal reflection. It looked like an essay do I tagged it - simple. Jezhotwells (talk) 12:41, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Fundamental lemma of Langlands and Shelstad

I find that edit odd too. I was trying to move a full stop before references and may accidentally have edited an old version. I am not attached to the content. --Rumping (talk) 20:53, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at Intelligentsium's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Intelligentsium 01:06, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

 ?

Hello, why you change the name of the articles ? — Neustradamus (✉) 21:51, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Today I moved Victor White to Victor White (flying ace) for the purpose of distinguishing him from another person with that name, and in order to make Victor White into a disambiguation page. I also moved a couple of articles that began with the words "Diffie-Hellman" to titles beginning with "Diffie–Hellman", because Wikipedia:Manual of Style prescribes that way of using dashes. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:00, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

ANI

You are mentioned at the Administrators' noticeboard. ZooFari 07:18, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I clicked on the link you provided and it doesn't link to anything that mentions my name. Please try again. Michael Hardy (talk) 07:20, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Scroll down. ZooFari 07:23, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

It's Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#User:Michael Hardy and frankly yor remarks in both links appear to be somewhat condescending. While I have no idea what promted your remarks, the aim is to rise above any provocation. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 07:38, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Hola :)

Español: Hola amigo wikipedista podrias mejorar el articulo Deysi Cori (This appears to be English Wikipedia's first article created in the year 2010). Saludos Globalphilosophy (talk) 01:29, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Double redirects

Thanks for the information (and help) concerning double redirects. Ulner (talk) 18:24, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Mathematics#How_to_factorise

Hi Michael. Feel free to argue against me, but please keep cool and do not call me (nor anybody else) silly. Regards. Bo Jacoby (talk) 23:19, 3 January 2010 (UTC).

I called some particular comments of yours silly. That is how they appear to me. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:28, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Nevertheless, it is out of order. And unfair too. I might have given the OP (and even you) some new information. Some mathematicians avoid solving algebraic equations if possible, not noting that numerical factorization of a polynomial is very easily done by computer. Bo Jacoby (talk) 14:46, 4 January 2010 (UTC).

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at -m-i-k-e-y-'s talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

What is part of mathematics

Michael, you may be interested in the following discussion, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Computational complexity theory as part of "mathematics". Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:11, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Why plural?

Yes, thanks. My error. I have corrected it. --Epipelagic (talk) 18:54, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

MOS:HYPHEN

Michael, I left you a reply (in agreement with you) at Talk:Open_source_software#Move. I hope the consensus is that such controversial changes can be undone. 91.187.66.243 (talk) 23:18, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I would like a debate — Neustradamus (✉) 23:36, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

If anyone objects to the proposed move, and remains silent about their objections for more than three months after it's proposed on the talk page, then the only way they're going to be drawn into a debate is to actually move the page. Since no one's objected after more than three months, I've gone ahead and moved it. Of course, starting a debate was not my reason for moving it, but if anyone wants a debate, maybe this is what will bring that about. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:51, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Well done. I see the user I hadn't mentioned here by name, has now popped up here too. Unfortunately, as you will see from his recent contributions, Neustradamus (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · edit filter log · block user · block log) has been unhelpfully removing hyphens from a lot of other articles containing adjectival phrases that should be hyphenated, e.g."free software licence" etc. It would be a lot of work manually undoing his edits using the Undo button, and obviously, I don't have access to the efficient admin-only revert tools. Would you mind going over his recent contributions to revert the changes? Thanks. 91.187.66.243 (talk) 00:27, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

OK but have you see the revert ? Compare the license name after and before ? Now there is for example: "The GPL requires any derivative work that is released to be released according to the GPL while the BSD licence does not" (If I see a good license source : http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php it is license) and other ... so we must put the good name, you are not okay with me ? — Neustradamus (✉) 00:42, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I find it very difficult to communicate with you because of your poor English. You seem to be either ignoring or not understanding what everybody has already told you on your talk page and elsewhere. What is your point? 91.187.66.243 (talk) 00:53, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

It is strange, only you have a problem, it is clear, before there are good license names and after not (it is only a "c"/"s" problem if you do not see) — Neustradamus (✉) 01:02, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure "revert" is more efficient than "undo" (but let me know if I'm missing something). As far as I know, it has to be done with each article separately. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:33, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I vaguely remember reading somewhere once upon a time that there is an admin-only mechanism for reverting en masse an editor's edits within a specified range of dates and times, but I am probably wrong about that. I'll just have to undo his edits manually. Thanks anyway. 91.187.66.243 (talk) 00:39, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Possibly you are right but I haven't used that. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:43, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the tool turned out to be (admin) WP:ROLLBACK. 91.187.66.243 (talk) 12:59, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

...and as I've said, as far as I know, rollback works only one article at a time. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:23, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, although this apparently works as an addon that can automatically revert all of the edits listed on any page of Special:Contributions/Username. 91.187.66.243 (talk) 21:57, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Which just got used on this very talk page. Pcap ping 13:28, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

OK because before I was a vandal or a bad guy... for information I added a reference "(or free software licence in commonwealth usage)", but the article is not good yet... but now it is in progress — Neustradamus (✉) 00:53, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Now it is clear for you about open-source, this conversation has been of some improvement :) now you can rename:

• List of free and open-source software packages (done)
• Free and open-source software
• Open-source license (done)
• Open-source hardware (done) — Neustradamus (✉) 01:16, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

but I see Open Source on the official Open Source Initiative website : http://www.opensource.org/licenses — Neustradamus (✉) 01:27, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

That others do not know how to punctuate is not sufficient grounds for repeating their errors.—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 14:28, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Predicting number of items in a set

For your information, see Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Mathematics/2010_January_6#Predicting_number_of_items_in_a_set_.28statistics.29.

Regards Bo Jacoby (talk) 13:03, 13 January 2010 (UTC).

diagonalizing a matrix?

Michael,

A question -- Suppose I had a plain-old ordinary matrix A with matrix elements A_ij such that A_ij = f(i*j) for some function f, and i*j is simply the ordinary product of the two indexes ... this is a symmetric matrix -- are there any "well known" theorems that can be applied to such a beast, beyond that which normal symmetric matricies might have? Anything that can be said about its eigenvalues, or the act of diagonalizing such a thing? I need a kick to get my brain started thinking about this -- I think I once saw something, but can't remember what. Thanks linas (talk) 23:08, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Gravity set

An editor has nominated one or more articles which you have created or worked on, for deletion. The nominated article is Gravity set. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also Wikipedia:Notability and "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion(s) by adding your comments to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gravity set. Please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate.

Please note: This is an automatic notification by a bot. I have nothing to do with this article or the deletion nomination, and can't do anything about it. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 01:12, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLPs

Hello Michael Hardy! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 1 of the articles that you created is tagged as an Unreferenced Biography of a Living Person. The biographies of living persons policy requires that all personal or potentially controversial information be sourced. In addition, to ensure verifiability, all biographies should be based on reliable sources. If you were to bring this article up to standards, it would greatly help us with the current 419 article backlog. Once the article is adequately referenced, please remove the {{unreferencedBLP}} tag. Here is the article:

1. Richard Milner (fiction writer) - Find sources: "Richard Milner (fiction writer)" – news · books · scholar · JSTOR · free images

Thanks!--DASHBot (talk) 20:09, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Move to 1947–48 Australia rugby union tour of the British Isles, Ireland, France and North America

I have moved this back to the original name. The British Isles includes Ireland whereas Britain does not. The article could arguably have British Isles in the title and omit Ireland but this would cause problems from the Irish. This naming has previously been discussed by WP:RU. noq (talk) 01:06, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

The main purpose of the move was to change the hyphen to an endash. The hyphen is incorrect according to WP:MOS. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

... I see: you've moved it to a new title it never had before, with an endash rather than a hyphen. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:23, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Cantor's first uncountability proof

I hope you don't mind that I closed the discussion thread at Talk:Cantor's first uncountability proof between you and an IP editor. Of course you can unclose it if you would like, but it seems to me that the discussion is going downhill, rather than uphill, with more conceptual misunderstandings rather than fewer, and the IP editor's remarks are becoming more personally directed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:01, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Isosceles triangle theorem and Logic Theorist

Just a heads up, I read the reference (see [2]) you gave for the Logic Theorist proving the Isosceles triangle theorem and it didn't seem to me that it said what you added to the article, see the talk page for details. I blanked the section since it seemed like the actual story was rather boring, but maybe I'm misreading it. The article in general is still a work in progress since the proofs are mess, I'm working on them though.

Also, I largely rewrote and expanded pons asinorum which is closely related. There are a few nicely worded phrases that I can't take credit for though. See the talk there for why I didn't merge the articles.--RDBury (talk) 00:12, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

<math> versus html

Dear Michael, I have noticed your inline typographical corrections to some of the articles I have recently edited, like changing $z\in D$ to z ∈ D. I had earlier tried to work with this html style, but then switched to just using <math> all the time, for two reasons:

1. The html looks disgusting, not balanced (for me) by the fact that its size fits the text more (though is often still not perfect). Actually, since some inline math formulas cannot be substituted by html, the sizes and shapes of math symbols vary all the time, which is really a huge problem, I think.

2. Learning and remembering the html encryption and the pain to decipher what others wrote do not seem worth the time and energy of the editors. I'm not actually capable of reading your html edits, and I'm pretty sure there are many mathematicians who don't contribute to Wikipedia because of such (real or imagined) barriers.

Instead of coming up with innovative ways of making more readable html substitutes for math, like the crazy ƒ for f, we should all use <math> just as $ in TeX, and hope that soon someone will fix this problem with html. In a year or 50, but it should eventually happen. Using <math> all the time might bring the date of the solution closer, since it will be more obvious to more people that something is to be fixed.

Of course, you might disagree with my first point, that's a matter of personal taste, but the fact that you actually changed my edits suggests to me that there might be some strong style consensus about this matter. Is there anything like that? That consensus should obviously be questioned, then... :-) Maybe I should bring this up on the project page? And may I just revert your edits? (Of course, I would put back the other changes you made, like intro sentence structure.)

Thanks, --GaborPete (talk) 06:33, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, I see what Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(mathematics) says about the issue: try to use html when possible, but do not rewrite other editors' texts, because it seems to be a highly emotional issue. It is... :-) --GaborPete (talk) 06:05, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

helping with wikiproject statistics; odds page

Hi Michael,

Thanks for all the work you clearly put into math and statistics! I've been using wikipedia for years as a resource in both of those areas, and find it very helpful.

I do sometimes find things in statistics articles that seem unclear (especially for a layperson) or, less frequently, erroneous. For instance- the odds article has mistakes, as well as overlap with other articles. However, I'm hesitant to edit b/c my knowledge of statistics and probability are very limited, and I'm brand new to editing wikipedia.

If one jumps in and changes things in reasonably basic stat/probability articles, are false or poorly done edits generally noticed and repaired quickly? If not, what would be the fastest/best way to make a suggestion for an edit known to more experienced editors who could verify that what I'm saying makes sense, and that it fits with the organization of statistics coverage that the current stat editing core has in mind?

More broadly, I'm interested to learn more about wikiproject statistics and how an amateur stat enthusiast could get involved.

Thanks, Kathryn Tzvia (talk) 12:22, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Hello. Possibly posting at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Statistics, or in some cases at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics, would be the best way to run suggestions past others. In many cases the articles own talk page could also be used. How well the latter approach would work may depend on how many people are watching the article. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:00, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

PI-ring

Hi, can you do that magic that eliminates the < m a t h > tags in the article polynomial identity ring ?  franklin  19:58, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Especially those places where there is a subset symbol are terrible.  franklin  20:00, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

It seems, franklin, you don't agree with my view, two comments above, that html is worse than <math>... In the polynomial identity ring article, I can understand the complaint, but I still think this is not a good enough reason to use html... Also, I think that the typesetting Z<X₁, X₂, ..., X_N> in the lead of that article is unacceptable for two reasons: 1. it starts with the inequality Z<X_1, not with an opening bracket of any sort; 2. what is Z? Looking at the link free algebra, my guess is it's the integers, but I'm not sure. So, definitely $\Z\langle X_1,X_2,\dots,X_N\rangle$ should be used, no html. --GaborPete (talk) 05:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Anyway, could you please reply, Michael, to my questions above, so that I can continue working on those articles? --GaborPete (talk) 05:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

re Can you suggest a math field for abstract rewriting system?

mean-end analysis

- vampares

Your Puzzle

Hey thanks for making useful edits to Florida Association of Mu Alpha Theta! By the way, I believe that the answer to the puzzle on your User Page is that a space between the plus sign and the letter "e". I did not look at the code! Tell me if I am correct. Thanks, Dragoneye776 (talk) 20:15, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Hello. That's correct as far as it goes, but the more interesting question is whether you can figure out the difference between the TeX code in one case and that in the other, and why that difference ought to have that result. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:45, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm guessing here but I think that instead of letting TeX use the default spacing for Mathtype, you instead use "\," to make the space especially small, or even "\!" depending on the exact size of the space you want. Dragoneye776 (talk) 01:42, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

That's far too easy. It's actually nothing of the sort. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:42, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Tidying up Representation (mathematics)

Thanks for catching the nits! I'm so glad that there are Wikipedians out there who patrol the vast sea of content and are sensitive to such fine points as consistency in capitalization and the nuances of puncutation.

When creating those references, I had shuddered to use a hyphen: well trained by Knuth and Lamport, I really wanted to use the en-dash, but it had failed to register that there is a way to do so. Your speedily replacing my barely tolerable hyphens is greatly appreciated.

I also appreciate stumbling across the tip on your user page about simplicity of linkitude. Although, again, I was (perhaps [[subconscious]]ly) aware that simple plurals could be formed that way, it hadn't dawned on me that this fact almost guaranteed that suffixification of arbitrary length was likewise supported. (Sad to say, though, that hyperinfixism does not enjoy similar support.)—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 14:16, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

PTSD editing - Thanks!

Michael - just caught your minor editing of PTSD - to which I have been, and will be, devoting considerable portions of my free time (it's my professional specialty, and the article needs upgrading). My immediate reaction: Oh, this guy knows how to edit. Some excellent minor but non-trivial catches.

I do hope you'll visit the article often and continue to assist in quality control. I try to edit very tightly myself, but doing that consistently to one's own stuff can become a bit of a challenge. One goes blind, after a while. Fresh, well-informed, eyes are very welcome. THANKS! Tom Cloyd (talk) 19:45, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Apologies about poorly written questionFundamental Domain

I'm a freak on Wikipedia--I only know basic cut and pasting, I'm bad at citationing and linking. I find the squiggles hard to see and confusing.(But at the least I could have titled the question.) I hope to learn editing skills soon. Best Wishes, Rich (talk) 05:19, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Expand tags

Expand tags indicate that there is discussion on the Talk page about what the editor thinks is too thin and what sorts of information is expanded. Such comments should really accompany those tags, because otherwise they're so vague as to be useless (IMHO, of course). Could you toss in a few sentences to explain your reasoning, and guide future editors? - DavidWBrooks (talk) 20:36, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Bollinger Bands

Please restore the listing for Bollinger Bands to its correct nomenclature, "Bollinger Bands", from the change you made to "Bollinger band". A survey of the literature will show that they are almost universally referred to as Bollinger Bands. For example, see the standard college textbook on technical analysis, Technical Analysis: The Complete Resource for Financial Market Technicians, Kirkpatrick/Dahlquist, 2007, ISBN 0-1315311-3-1, pages 291-292 and 646. TradingBands (talk) 16:29, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Is there a reason why the plural should be used in the article's title, notwithstanding the general norm that titles are singular (with certain exceptions)? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:26, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, looking at google books, using the search term "Bollinger band" (I think it's a case-insensitive search), I find this page using lower case, saying "After prices cross the expanded lower Bollinger band, wait for them to rise back above the lower band; then[...]". And this one: "When a price is probing an upper or lower Bollinger band,[...]". I also find some using capitals, and using the singular. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:32, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

On Google I get 865,000 hits for Bollinger Bands and 210,000 for Bollinger Band. Clearly Bollinger Bands is the preferred usage by better than four to one. In addition, for Bollinger Bands every Google item on the first page has both Bs capitalized except for the Wikipedia entry. The first page of the Google search for Bollinger band also has every entry with double caps except one and all entries except one are plural. Finally the Bollinger band search page does not include the Wikipedia entry. Please return the Wikipedia listing to the standard usage, Bollinger Bands. TradingBands (talk) 15:34, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

too speedy

Sorry, I was a careless when cleaning the 'prod' log : I relied on someone else's tag: [3] and didn't read the text carefully. I agree that it should have gone through regular AfD as OR. Do you want me to restore it? - Altenmann >t 19:05, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

My question on Trig identities

Sorry, badly phrased, what I meant for that information to be for was to help do the first few steps of the question What I actually need is: How do you fully simplify (cos²x/sinx)+ sin x? Wolfram has the answer at csc x, but no proof so I've no idea why. Danrules2 (talk) 06:11, 7 March 2010 (UTC) Thankyou tremendously, I knew I'd missed something crucial... didn't know it was so simple as the basic trig identity :( Danrules2 (talk) 06:26, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

visiting Hardy/Tukey

I tweaked the two numbered citations. Forgive me if that is contrary to the purpose of such a user page.

How do you type from the keyboard that script lowercase "l" (letter ell) which appears all alone on one line near the bottom of the article? Its function may be to avoid confusion with "1" (numeral one) in some fonts. Is there another for uppercase "O" (letter oh)? --P64 (talk) 02:01, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Hello. I've never typed that one; I've just copied and pasted. Except within TeX, in which case it is \ell (but you'll have figured that one out if you clicked on "edit" and looked at what was typed there). Michael Hardy (talk) 05:11, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Coxeter-Dynkin diagram graphics

Hi, you appear to be a regular contributor to the Coxeter–Dynkin diagram article. Hoping that you feel able to contribute to the discussion over SVG vs PNG formatting for these diagrams. We are trying to establish a consensus to end a reversion war, and there are literally hundreds of instances to sort out. 83.104.46.71 (talk) 19:12, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Proof by contradiction

Hello. I saw your paper Prime Simplicity you referenced at Talk:Furstenberg's proof of the infinitude of primes, and I must thank you and Ms. Woodgold for writing it. The unnecessary use of proof by contradiction annoys me, so I'm glad to see this article. Even more than a proof by contradiction of Euclid's theorem, I especially hate the mongrel version that first assumes all primes are listed, then considers the new number, shows that it is not divisible by any of them, and instead of stopping (we have a contradiction already!), still argues that the new number must be either prime or divisible by some prime not in the list, making it all needlessly confusing. Anyway, thanks. :-) Shreevatsa (talk) 05:45, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. This means that there are now three people (other than those I've mentioned it to) who've read our paper (as far as I know). Michael Hardy (talk) 17:28, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Request

Hello, I'm not registered user, so I couldn't rename articles. I saw - you were the last one who modified "Marsaglia polar method" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsaglia_polar_method - Could you, please rename it to "Box-Mueller polar method" or something. It was titled so by George Marsaglia, but he was not the first one, who proposed this method it was proposed by J. Bell in 1968 (http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=363397.363547 J. Bell: 'Algorithm 334: Normal random deviates', Communications of the ACM, vol. 11, No. 7. 1968) and then modified by R. Knop in 1969 (http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=362946.362996 R. Knopp: 'Remark on algorithm 334 [G5]: normal random deviates', Communications of the ACM, vol. 12, No. 5. 1966). The described in wikipedia form is the form of Knop. Thanks in advance, Vladimir —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.132.153.25 (talk) 17:37, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Talkback on User talk:Starblind's page

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at Starblind's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Just in case you haven't seen it. I wondered if you might even respond to the comments there? -m-i-k-e-y-^{Talk / C} 15:06, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

April 1st DYK

Hi, I've noticed that you are involved in editing the DYK template, and sorry for troubling you, but I've come across a humorous fact (and inserted it under "personal life") about one of the Chuckle Brothers:

In April 2007, while on holiday on the Greek island of Kefalonia, Paul broke his nose and received cuts and bruises when he lost control of his motorbike after suddenly braking to avoid a sheperd and his flock of goats. British tourists who stopped at the accident, instead of helping him out, shouted out the Chuckle Brothers' catchphrase: "To me, to you."

Problem is I only have computer access at college, and for some reason the spam/porn filter is preventing me from accessing the suggestions page. Could you suggest it on my behalf? I'd be eternally grateful, Brutal Deluxe (talk) 16:45, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

WPM thread

The civilization is collapsing all around you, and all you can think is an endash? Arcfrk (talk) 16:57, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Occasionally I find that preventing the collapse of civilization requires attention to some detail or other besides endashes. (E.g. the pronunciation of "Euler".) Michael Hardy (talk) 18:29, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

"an Euler"

Re: this, this, and this. The comments for these edits seem a bit harsh to me. Determining whether to use "a" or "an" is not always clear, and it can vary by pronunciation. Since "Euler" has only one correct pronunciation in English, you are definitely correct. But in the spirit of WP:DONTBITE and WP:PERSONAL, I do wish you would be less harsh when correcting such trivial errors. (I suppose I'm also violating Don't be a dick by even commenting on this!) In any case, thanks for all the work you do on Mathematics articles. Best wishes, Jwesley₇₈ 20:51, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

The problem with wrapping my brain around the idea that some people who are editing math articles, and some college-bound high-school graduates, might not have heard of Euler, is going to be something of a challenge. The math curriculum consists of lying to students, telling them that math consists of useless clerical skills. But that's not the curriculum I was brought up with. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:12, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

It's amazing the huge holes that exist in the basic knowledge of many "college educated" people. I remember when I was a CS undergrad, I had an instructor (might've only been the GA) who wasn't sure how to pronounce "Euler"! He began the class pronouncing it correctly, but when somebody challenged him on the pronunciation, claiming that it might be "yoo-ler", the instructor said he wasn't sure! Sadly, I find CS grads often have an inadequate knowledge of Mathematics (especially considering the amount of knowledge necessary to really understand core CS material). Even more sad is the fact that many schools have CS faculty members that think better/more Mathematics training is *not* needed! Jwesley₇₈ 04:35, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

EDI

You recently renamed the main and talk pages for "Electronic Data Interchange" to "Electronic data interchange". I have worked exclusively with EDI for well over twenty years and have *never* seen it referred to other than using the fully capitalized form. I am not confident enough about using Wikipedia to revert your changes, but I would be grateful if you would do so. Chrisj1948 (talk) 11:21, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I've moved it back, but I have these comments:

• Why all those plainly incorrect capitals in section headings that I fixed? Those insisting on capital initials in the title would be more credible if they didn't do that.
• In at least two places in the article it was written with all lower-case initials before I ever touched the article. Hence if you have never seen it that way, then you didn't read the article before my edits.
• Before editing the article I googled the phrase and found both forms.

Michael Hardy (talk) 17:13, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Firstly, thank you for reverting to the capitalized form! As to my rash use of 'never'; you are quite right to hold me to task over that and I stand chastised :-) I am biased by virtue of being an EDI professional, and thus the documents I look at tend to be official reference documents rather than general popular commentary. The lower case in the EDI article itself is, I believe, incorrect usage, but the article itself whilst having many good parts is not a good reference. I think it indicates that Wikipedia needs to be treated as informative but not authoritative. If I ever get time I will perform a total re-write; there are far too many minor problems with it for anything less to be satisfactory. I notice that you do a lot of good work on Wikipedia, and I hope this particular minor issue has not discouraged you at all. Chrisj1948 (talk) 19:06, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

The Word Alive

Forgive me, I feel really compelled to use caps lock. THE ARTICLE HAS BEEN DELETED THREE TIMES, AND PROTECTED FROM RECREATION, AND TWO TIMES SOME ADMIN HAS COME ALONG AND MOVED A CLEVERLY NAMED ARTICLE UNDER THE ORIGINAL TITLE (The Word Alive). I'm not blaming you or anything, I can't expect you to check the logs every time, but at this point I'm really sick of requesting deletions for this article. ×××BrightBlackHeaven^(talk)××× 21:07, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Move request

Could you delete hypergeometric function so I can move hypergeometric series there? My speedy deletion request was declined for frivolous reasons by someone knows nothing about the topic, and I cant be bothered to argue with him about it. r.e.b. (talk) 16:20, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the fast response! You might want to hold off changing redirects until I've finished rearranging the hypergeometric articles, as a few of them should go to generalized hypergeometric function instead. (This area used to be a total mess: the hypergeometric function article was mainly about the generalized hypergeometric function, and meanwhile the information about the hypergeometric function itself was scattered among about 6 other articles.) r.e.b. (talk) 16:49, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

a little harsh?

Michael, your recent edits on NBD seem a little harsh, especially since the editor is an IP. If it annoys you so much to respond to questions like this, it might be best to let someone else do it. 0¹⁸ (talk) 21:51, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Holographic Holographic Metamorphic Math Math

I've reverted this user's contributions twice now. One other editor has also reverted his change. He's adding content relating to "Holographic Holographic Metamorphic Math Math". I think it's approaching the threshold for vandalism, but I'd like a second opinion. Justin W Smith ^talk/_stalk 02:32, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

It's nonsense incorporating some mathematical terminology. I was a bit surprised by the contrast between a couple of details the seemed moderately clever and the stupid mangling of the grammar at one point. Definitely there's nothing of encyclopedic value in it and it's clearly not a good-faith attempt to add such content. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:09, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject: Math/Typography

Hi Michael,

As I recall, you are keenly interested in mathematical typography (on Wikipedia), and we’ve previously discussed this (2009 Oct 31/Nov 1), where I suggested making a WikiProject on the subject. I have now done so, at WP:WPMATHTYPE, which I’ve announced at WP Math discussion. You are both welcome and cordially invited to weigh in and share of your expertise, and I’ve kicked off discussion with the topic we were discussing (and that is near to your heart, as I understand), namely that texhtml is too big. Enjoy, and look forward to working with you (et. al.) on this!

—Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 09:24, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

pdf

pdf can stand for either. So it's not wrong; it's not even less ambiguous since CDF's are just called cumulative distribution function. It's just one convention.--Louiedog (talk) 21:20, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

It's not a convention that probabilists and statisticians use. This is a good example of why Wikipedia should not be considered authoritative. Besides, the function you referred to in the article was a probability density function, the bell-shaped curve. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:40, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Augmental homology

An article that you have been involved in editing, Augmental homology, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Augmental homology. Thank you.
Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Radagast3 (talk) 12:09, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Your edits to Changeover and List of production topics

Why did you redlink Sequence dependent setup? YouAndMeBabyAintNothingButCamels (talk) 12:49, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

That was a punctuation correction. If I'd noticed it created a red link, I'd have correct the article's title at that time. Now I've done so. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:32, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh, OK. Thank you. YouAndMeBabyAintNothingButCamels (talk) 02:18, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Legibility of maths pages

"Which pages did you have trouble reading?" you asked.

I tidied up one in particular - Formal system about a year ago (June 15th 2009), replaced the html with LaTeX because it really was impossible to decipher what it meant. But that section was removed in Sept 2009, so it's irrelevant now. --Matt Westwood 18:52, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

k-median

yes - my definition was not right - but it's fixed now, i notice. mukerjee (talk) 05:46, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at Sławomir Biały's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

AfD nomination of Erotic Torture Chamber

An article that you have been involved in editing, Erotic Torture Chamber, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Erotic Torture Chamber. Thank you.
Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Kenilworth Terrace (talk) 17:18, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Images of Julia and Mandelbrot sets

An editor has nominated one or more articles which you have created or worked on, for deletion. The nominated article is Images of Julia and Mandelbrot sets. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also Wikipedia:Notability and "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion(s) by adding your comments to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Images of Julia and Mandelbrot sets. Please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate.

Please note: This is an automatic notification by a bot. I have nothing to do with this article or the deletion nomination, and can't do anything about it. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 01:14, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Multivariate normal distribution‎

I'm not sure the addition of the multiple issues template to Multivariate normal distribution‎ was genuine. The originally added version had been copied and pasted from Spoletorp, a now deleted article that I had nominated at AfD.[4] User:KrodMandooon seemed to take exception to the nomination. At the AfD he made a number of bad faith allegations, and then started harrassing me on my talk page, for which he was blocked.[5] He has also added a {{Citation needed}} template to Multivariate normal distribution‎,[6] but I'm suspicious that was as disingenuous as the addition of the multiple issues template. However, not knowing enough about the subject I'm unable to determine whether it actually needs a citation. --AussieLegend (talk) 23:32, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Boxed text in latex

Hi Michael. How did you get those neat boxes of text under the equal signs in this document? (Igny (talk) 00:37, 3 May 2010 (UTC))

First the following code comes before \begin{document}:

\newcommand{\toplabel}[2]{\mathrel{\mathop{\mathstrut{#1}}\limits

^{\/% \/ is Vital!

\makebox[5pt]{\parbox[b]{80pt}{\centering

#2\par $\downarrow$\par }}}}}

\newcommand{\botlabel}[2]{\mathrel{\mathop{\mathstrut{#1}}\limits

_{\/% Vital!

\makebox[5pt]{\parbox[t]{80pt}{\centering

$\uparrow$\par #2\par }}}}}

 %

 % Usage:

 %

 % \toplabel{\leq}{By d'Umbrella's Theorem}

 %

 % \botlabel{\leq}{By d'Umbrella's Theorem}

 %

Then one does things like this:

$$

\lim_{h\to 0} \frac{f(x + h) - f(x)}{h}

=\lim_{h\to 0} \frac{2^{x+h} - 2^x}{h}

\botlabel{=}{\ovalbox{just algebra}}

\lim_{h\to 0} \frac{2^x 2^h - 2^x}{h}

\botlabel{=}{\ovalbox{just algebra}}

\lim_{h\to 0} \left( 2^x \cdot \frac{2^h - 1}{h} \right)

\botlabel{=}{\ovalbox{$\begin{array}{l}

\text{because }2^x\text{ remains} \\

\text{constant as }h\to 0

\end{array}$}}

2^x \lim_{h\to 0} \frac{2^h - 1}{h}

$$

The code was written by Donald Arsenau in response to a question I posed in a usenet forum. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:12, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, that is very helpful (Igny (talk) 02:28, 3 May 2010 (UTC))

MVN

The page looks excellent. It is quite impressive. And yes - while much is standard textbook material ... some is not ... and perhaps that is the point ... formulae are being given without reference or citation or derivation/proof, and in the absence of same, it is not clear if such formulae are 'original' or if they are sourced. And if they are sourced, where/what is the source? It would be helpful if the source could be provided. All the best. KrodMandooon (talk) 06:26, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Format fixes

Thank for fixing the format issues in Line coordinates. Since you seem to be checking all the new articles, you should know that I recently did a lot of editing on Homogeneous coordinates, so it's essentially a new article now.--RDBury (talk) 14:23, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Discussion: Merging the articles for "Hyperplane" and "Flat"

• Hyperplane
• Flat (geometry)

I'd like to discuss the possibility of merging these two articles. Your opinion on this matter is welcomed: Talk:Hyperplane#Merge to Flat (geometry) Justin W Smith ^talk/_stalk 20:41, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Pythagoras' theorem

Hi Michael: It's time for an expert opinion here. I'm concerned that Staring's proof may be circular, as indicated in the caveat (note number 11). An alternative proof may be free of this difficulty. What do you think? Brews ohare (talk) 17:56, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

BTW, see this topic on the article Talk page. Brews ohare (talk) 18:15, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

My concerns over circularity are gone, but your comments on this section still would be welcome. Brews ohare (talk) 21:59, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Allan variance

You should be aware that you and User:Materialscientist is making opposing editorial changes on - and –. See the talk pages of us for other commments. I don't have a problem with - or – but I don't want continous edits between them. Can you two agree in a discussion on Talk:Allan_variance I would be very happy if you two could discuss it on the talk-page, agree on a common resolution and then we stick to it. Many thanks for your editorial contributions. Cfmd (talk) 17:59, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Could you do an re-evaluation of the article from the context of the statistics project? I think the article has progressed significantly since the last review and I would value the input from such a rating to see what I could improve. Cfmd (talk) 01:17, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

impolite?

I was under impression that the construction like [[Ordinary Least Squares|OLS]] or [[independent and identically distributed|iid]] are perfectly acceptable, and in fact preferable to use for very common abbreviations. If a person known what those letters stand for it saves him/her the time needed to read the entire phrase. If a person doesn't know the abbreviation, he/she can just mouseover it and the full name will be shown in the tooltip. // stpasha » 04:16, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Merging article Bracelet to Necklace (combinatorics)

I'm recommending that the article on Bracelet (combinatorics) be merged into Necklace (combinatorics).

I saw that you had previously edited one (or both) of these article. You're invited to participate in the discussion here: Talk:Necklace (combinatorics).

Thanks, Justin W Smith ^talk/_stalk 15:13, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for adjusting the typography etc. of my contributions, I'm getting a little better at Wikipedia each time.

Optimering (talk) 06:52, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Advice for cladogram

Hello Michael, I would like to ask you for an advice with a cladogram (Computational phylogenetics). I wanted to add a cladogram for genera in Semisulcospiridae, but there are two available cladograms in the source reference. Parsimony analysis image and Bayesian analysis image and these two images differ. I think that corresponding articles are Maximum parsimony (phylogenetics) and Bayesian inference in phylogeny (and the third method is Maximum likelihood). I am not very familiar with these statistical methods so I can not decide, which image will be the best, or better for the encyclopedia. Is there an universal answer for this? Now I suppose that it is important what method was used for creating of the image, but I found no this information in documentation neither of Template:Clade nor of Template:Cladogram. It seems that this information is not used even in biological articles containing cladograms. --Snek01 (talk) 21:30, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Amazon

See here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html  7  03:58, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry---you're wrong and you didn't read my question very well. You CANNOT use that page without a valid order number.

Please: Use your head!! It is BECAUSE OF my attempt to use EXACTLY the page you're pointing to that I concluded you can't contact amazon. I was completely explicit about this. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:58, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Wow - I did use my head. I used it to try to help you on WP for a question completely unrelated to WP. And, despite your use of caps and exclamation points I tried it again, and it worked again. See File:Temp_temp_-_Hardy.png - perhaps you need to select the "other" category? In any case, good luck.  7  06:19, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

It appears you have resolved your issue. I am going to mark File:Temp_temp_-_Hardy.png for deletion. Regards.  7  01:35, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

N=1 fallacy

As you may see on the talk page, I don't think the concept is notable and couldn't find reliable sources to verify usage of this after 2003. Since I'm an anonymous IP, I can't put the article up for AfD but I do believe that it's the ideal course of action at this point since no one can or cares to rewrite the article to make understandable. Would you care to nominate it for deletion or do you believe the article can still be rescued somehow?--70.80.234.196 (talk) 14:03, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Pareto principle

Thank you for correcting my post. Your change clarifies the meaning.

I made slight change of "is assigned the same value" to "have equal shares." This more closely ties parenthetical example to antecedent "something is shared" and changes passive voice to active voice.

Thanks again and regards.

Gac0000 (talk) 23:05, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Controversial edits

Hello! I see, one day you were editing the Vandenbergh effect article, could you please figure out if these edits are correct or not. I find it quite hard to believe that the incorrect date was present in the article since its creation in 2007, but have failed to find any reliable online sources on it. Thanks in advance, --Microcell (talk) 17:55, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

I did some edits to bring the article into compliance with WP:MOS, but I don't actually know this topic. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:13, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, sorry, but maybe you know how to handle edits like these (when both sources are unverifiable for unaware editors) or whom to address in order to check the info for certain? --Microcell (talk) 18:24, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the helpful hints on math punctuation and italicization! Duoduoduo (talk) 14:50, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at Cnilep's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Feedback help?

Michael, despite having a degree in Mathematics, my skills are quite rusty. An editor created a draft article and asked for feedback here. Any chance you could take a look at it, or pass it along to someone who could help - I see some promise, but, at a minimum, some copy edit needs. Whether the content is worth while is beyond me.--SPhilbrickT 16:33, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your correction on the article I wrote, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Configuration_graph and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SO_(complexity) ; for information I did SO because there already were FO, ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FO_(complexity) and since FO used to be a stub, I had plenty of stuff on it. I guess if you did read SO you may want to have a look at FO too. Especially, I would be curious to have answer to the question I leaved on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:FO_(complexity) . Anyway: thanks againArthur MILCHIOR (talk) 10:46, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Dynamic Technical Analysis for Financial Markets

The French version of DTAFM was deleted yesterday. I'm not too sure how to proceed in here (AfD of prod?). Could you help or act? Many thanks, --Anneyh (talk) 10:33, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Revision to Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri articles

I noticed that you have revised either Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri or Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire.

I intend to revise those articles following the Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines. There are more details on the discussion pages of those articles. I'd be interested in any comments you have. It would be best if your comments were on the discussion pages of the two articles.

Thank you.

Vyeh (talk) 11:06, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

six cross-ratios

Hi Michael, Thanks for your edit there. I moved the page to my talkpage so as to avoid losing the material. There is a number of independent remarks concerning the six cross-ratios that should have their own sections. For example, the remark concerning the fixed points of the order-2 Mobius transformations that turn out to have fixed points precisely the orbit of the harmonic ratio. In a separate page, this poses no problem, but too many subsections at the cross-ratio page itself would clutter up the table of contents. What would be the best way of handling this? Tkuvho (talk) 08:16, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Naming of single-nucleotide polymorphism article

Hi Michael, I notice you renamed this article from single nucleotide polymorphism back in December of 2008. I write to get a sense for why you added the hyphen. It seems to me that it is not necessary in this case; single modifies nucleotide which modifies polymorphism, rather than single-nucleotide being a compound modifier of polymorphism. It makes sense either way but in these cases it seems the custom is to omit the hyphen unless it is necessary to clarify the meaning. -Cwenger (talk) 01:49, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

I believe the traditional way of using hyphens is worth saving. More later..... Michael Hardy (talk) 19:17, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Galton–Watson process

I agree with you that the jargon tag is inappropriate. My guess is that the notation on the definition is what led to this tag though. The notation is not fully explained. As it is written it looks like it is the sum of sequences rather than elements of sequences. The superscript and subscript in the definition need to be explained better, so that anyone who has some basic probability training can understand the definition. Is it that each \xi^(n) is a new sequence of n iid variables and the j, in \xi^(n)_j, refers to the element of the sequence. I have no training in stochastic processes, so I could be wrong on my interpretation. Thanks --MATThematical (talk) 21:31, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Bessel function

Just for the record: do you oppose replacing <references /> with {{Reflist}} in this article? —bender235 (talk) 17:12, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Context: Bender235 has been going around large numbers of articles making this change via AWB. I noticed these edits when they overlapped with our math articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:25, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm neutral on that issue. I am not familiar with the specific pros and cons. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:21, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Pro: the template allows multi-column reference lists, which is useful for 20+ notes

Con: reduces the font size to 90% (only a con for certain users, including CBM)

That's it. --bender235 (talk) 19:49, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Continuous-repayment mortgage

Hi

If you have a moment, could you take another look at this article and critique the Maths. Probably much of it needs pruning and the article could say most of what it needs to say a lot more economically. But I'm not sure what should stay and what should go.

Thanks.

Neil Parker (talk) 15:00, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

"some minor edits for now; at some point I'll print this out and mark up the page with my comments and then come back here and do some substantial editing".

Much appreciated.

Neil Parker (talk) 09:57, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Abstract polytopes

You have previously contributed to the Abstract polytope article. If you feel able, please contribute to the discussion on Notation, where I am hoping to resolve a long-standing dispute. Many thanks in anticipation. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 14:46, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Attribution of names

Hi Michael, Does our Manual of Style have any specific guidance on how to attribute a named result to a particular mathematician? In the article Taylor series, for instance, should we just be piping a link to the first occurrence of the word "Taylor", or should we include a sentence like "It is named after the English mathematician Brook Taylor." I'm referring specifically to this edit, where someone seemed to think that it was better to include as little information as possible about the originators of the theorem. I'm inclined to disagree with this edit, but I have not reverted it since User:Bo Jacoby has already locked horns with me over several other questionable edits of his, and I have no wish to be called out yet again. Still, our manual of style seems to be annoyingly silent about this issue. (It does suggest, rather vaguely, to "include some names and dates" in the lead, but this isn't particularly focused advice.) Perhaps it is high time to do something about this. Sławomir Biały (talk) 10:38, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I definitely prefer the longer form, and I suspect I could make an argument for it if I worked on it. I usually, but not always, use less the a full sentence. E.g. I write

In mathematics, Xmith's theorem, named after John Xmith, states that....

etc. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:50, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Maturity road mapping

Hi, you tried to help with this article in the past, so you might want to comment at AFD. - Fayenatic (talk) 20:37, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

rank-2

Putting hyphens before numbers, such as changing rank 2 to rank-2, is not a good idea as it is too easily confused with rank −2 r.e.b. (talk) 13:04, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Chronological censorship

An article that you have been involved in editing, Chronological censorship, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chronological censorship. Thank you.
Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:47, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!!!!

Thank you Michael! The question I asked at Bessel's correction had been driving me insane for ages! - 114.76.235.170 (talk) 23:02, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Listing numbers

Sorry, I don't know how I missed your edits and your question. Listing numbers (at least in connection with Peirce) can be found by searching on "Listing numbers" Peirce. Arthur Burks mentions them in his s:The New Elements of_Mathematics (review_by_Burks) linked in the footnote at the very end of the paragraph containing "Listing numbers" in the CSP wiki. It's been a while since I read about Listing numbers (and I'm not a mathematician), otherwise I'd try to briefly say what they are. I remember that they were involved in topology. The Tetrast (talk) 17:28, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
Update: I found something, see http://www.google.com/search?q=%22who+have+heard+of+J.B.+Listing%22 , it's Hilary Putnam in "Comments on the Lectures" in Reasoning and the Logic of Things (a lecture series by Peirce, with intro & commentary by Kenneth Laine Ketner and Putnam): "Today there must be very few topologists (if any) who have heard of J.B. Listing, whom Peirce considered to be the discoverer of topology.⁷⁰ However, the Listing numbers are perfectly good topological invariants (Peirce's "first Listing number" would today be called the zero-dimensional Betti number). ...." The Tetrast (talk) 17:52, 12 August 2010 (UTC).

Although I remember this issue, I didn't remember which article it was about. It now appears you're talking about an edit summary to Charles Saunders Peirce that I wrote on July 25th. To be continued..... Michael Hardy (talk) 18:02, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I've linked "Listing numbers" in the Peirce wiki to Johann Benedict Listing, where I've added about Listing numbers along with a footnote with a reference. The Tetrast (talk) 18:32, 12 August 2010 (UTC).

Um, why have you undone the Peirce wiki link of "Listing numbers" to Johann Benedict Listing? (And why no explanation in the edit line besides the word "link"?) The Johann Benedict Listing wiki is where people will find out something about them. Why link instead to a nonexistent page? It seems unlikely that anybody is about to start a wiki on Listing numbers, unless you plan to do so yourself. The Tetrast (talk) 19:29, 12 August 2010 (UTC).

The Listing number article now exists, although it's still just a stub. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:48, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you kindly! The Tetrast (talk) 16:15, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Minus signs and en dashes

I know your an experienced Wikipedian, so I'm feeling a little uncomfortable lecturing you, but please make sure not to confuse minus signs (−) and en dashes (–) in article titles (like here). No offense! —bender235 (talk) 17:05, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Apparently I was confused that day. Thanks for straightening this out. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:36, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your sharp eye.

I just saw an edit you did in which you changed hyphens in journal article page ranges to en dashes, which I have now done in my Intelligence citations bibliography and which I will do during updates to other source lists to share with other Wikipedians. Thanks for drawing my attention to that issue. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 16:17, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

The correct name is "Wirtinger derivatives" and not "Wirtinger derivative".

Hello, Michael Hardy. First of all thank you for your edits to the latest entry I have created (formerly Wirtinger derivatives, now Wirtinger derivative), especially for the smart use of   in order to improve the aesthetic appaerance of the inline mathematical formulas: however I had to revert your edits since you left the entry in a mess. But this is not the main reason I have decided to write you: the main reason is that your arbitrary move of the former entry Wirtinger derivatives, to the new one Wirtinger derivative is simply wrong. Effectively Wikipedia:SINGULAR#Name_construction remarks that page names should be singular, except for nouns that are always in a plural form in English (e.g. scissors or trousers) and the names of classes of objects (e.g. Arabic numerals or Bantu languages): well, Wirtinger derivatives belong to both of this exception classes. At first, I thougt that they did not belong to the fist one (i.e. that the plural locution "Wirtinger derivatives" was not common english usage), since the correct attribution to Wilhelm Wirtinger is mainly (but not exclusively) used by European scientists in their native language or in translations (see for example Fichera (1986, p. 62) or Martinelli (1984, p. 12 and 86) or Henrici (1993, p. 287, 294,298, 300)), but a rapid search on Google show me this is not the case. "Wirtinger deivatives" scores 320, while "Wirtinger derivative" scores only 87 (or shuld I say 86+1?), but the most important thing is that most of the 320 scores refer to definitions of the concept, indicating a really common English usage: I cite only only the two books (Cherry & Ye 2001, p. 31) and (Zwillinger 1997, p. 269), as examples. Of course, I have no dubt that Wirtinger derivatives belongs also to the second exceptions class, since even when they are definded without the attribution to Wirtinger, they are always defined as classes of 2 or 2n operators, whose members, identified with the locution Wirtinger derivative with respect the variable (or conjugate variable) z_j, are used to construct the basic operators of the theory (or the related differential forms) like the arabic numerals are used to construct numbers: see Hörmander (1990, p. 1, 23) as an authoritative example. If you find my considerations reasonable, please support my move request to the original name of this entry. Best regards, Daniele.tampieri (talk) 15:47, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

• Cherry, W.; Ye, Z. (2001), Nevanlinna's theory of value distribution: the second main theorem and its error terms, Springer Monographs in Mathematics, Berlin: Springer Verlag, pp. XII+202, ISBN 978-3-540-66416-1, Zbl 0981.30001, http://books.google.it/books?id=u59tM4mSUQsC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q .
• Fichera, Gaetano (1986), "Unification of global and local existence theorems for holomorphic functions of several complex variables", Memorie della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di Scienze Fisiche, Matematiche e Naturali, 8 18 (3): 61–83, Zbl 0705.32006 .
• Henrici, Peter (1993) [1986], Applied and Computational Complex Analysis Volume 3, Wiley Classics Library (Reprint ed.), New York - Chichester - Brisbane - Toronto - Singapore: John Wiley & Sons, pp. X+637, ISBN 0-471-58986-1, Zbl 1107.30300, http://books.google.it/books?id=vKZPsjaXuF4C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q .
• Hörmander, Lars (1990) [1966], An Introduction to Complex Analysis in Several Variables, North–Holland Mathematical Library, 7 (3^rd (Revised) ed.), Amsterdam–London–New York–Tokyo: North-Holland, ISBN 0-444-88446-7, Zbl 0685.32001 .
• Martinelli, Enzo (1984), Introduzione elementare alla teoria delle funzioni di variabili complesse con particolare riguardo alle rappresentazioni integrali (Elementary introduction to the theory of functions of complex variables with particular regard to integral representations), Contributi del Centro Linceo Interdisciplinare di Scienze Matematiche e Loro Applicazioni, 67, Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, pp. 236+II, http://www.lincei.it/pubblicazioni/catalogo/volume.php?lg=e&rid=33233 .
• Zwillinger, Daniel (1997) [1989], Handbook of differential equations (third ed.), San Diego: Academic Press, pp. xxiii+801, ISBN 978-0-12-784396-4, Zbl 0912.34001, http://books.google.it/books?id=YD4PL0GZgOcC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q 

Re: convergence in probability

Ah, okay, thank you for clearing that up for me; I thought X_n was the n:th random variable rather than the average of the n first random variables. I guess that is what happens when you don't read the whole article. :) --Kri (talk) 23:53, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, my bad again. The article doesn't mention anything about average values in this case; {X_n} can simply be any sequence of variables that get more and more predictable (a bit simplified) for increasing n. --Kri (talk) 00:05, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Histogram

I would be happy if you could take a look at Histogram and the discussion page, where user Cyclopia makes IMO strange and incorrect edits. Nijdam (talk) 14:21, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Transverse Mercator

Many thanks for your careful copy edits (on my sections) but I hope you haven't wasted to much time on editing the new section added by Zukas. His tex material was( and is still) pretty awful. I'm not sure that he understands what he is doing and I am minded to remove this section; it is no more than a curious diversion from main stream theory. I shall be having a session on this page shortly. I intend to give more details of current developments. Peter Mercator (talk) 22:34, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Tidying expressions

Thanks for your careful eye tidying details traffic equations and balance equation. Gareth Jones (talk) 23:23, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Multifactor Design of Experiments Software

Michael, thanks so much for cleaning up my article at the bottom and also pointing out that it was an orphan. I believe (I'm a newbie) I have corrected it, and therefore removed the "orphan" comment, but please do feel free to look and verify. Again, thanks! (Another Minnesotan BTW...)Agatecat2700 08:49, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Request for statistics article review

A new editor has written an article Multivariate kernel density estimation and requested feedback. The editor seems to have basic Wikipedia style under control; it needs the review of someone familiar with the field. (I'll also crosspost a couple specific editors.) x-post with Math Reference Desk--SPhilbrickT 21:15, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Geshe Tenzin Zopa

A tag has been placed on Geshe Tenzin Zopa, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a very short article providing no content to the reader. Please note that external links, "See also" section, book reference, category tag, template tag, interwiki link, rephrasing of the title, or an attempt to contact the subject of the article don't count as content. Moreover, please add more verifiable sources, not only 3rd party sources. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content. You may wish to consider using a Wizard to help you create articles - see the Article Wizard.

Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. If you plan to expand the article, you can request that administrators wait a while for you to add contextual material. To do this, affix the template {{hangon}} to the page and state your intention on the article's talk page. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? • 08:33, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Ref Desk and grammar

Michael,

I recently boxed one of your comments at WP:RD/H. As you may be aware, the Ref Desks have been wrestling with the issue of whether and when it's appropriate to correct grammar for some months now. A general consensus has emerged that correction for correction's sake, particularly when there's no room for misinterpretation, is to be avoided. A gentle note of correction to the poster's talk page should be fine, but I hid your comment largely to prevent it being a flash point for yet another dramafest on this issue. — Lomn 13:29, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't know why some people are so touchy about grammatical things like that, even though they can disagree about politics or religion or education without suffering any spiritual bruises. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:45, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Leibniz

I reverted the German pronunciation of Leibniz to [ˈlaɪbnɪts] for the reasons given in the talk page. If you have a source that confirms that [ˈlaɪpnɪts] is also a legitimate German pronunciation, please add it back in alongside [ˈlaɪbnɪts]. --Iceager (talk) 17:52, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Catholic Church

Hi Michael, Would be interested in doing any work on this article? It seems to be in bad shape. There is a discussion on the talk page to put it back to 'start class,' and an article of this importance, should have made it to FA by now. I don't edit there, but I will start. I saw your article on Mysterii Paschalis which I like very much, and wondered if you'd be interested in helping fix the situation over there. Even the photos are lacking. I don't think, as it reads right now, a reader would understand what the Catholic Church is from this article. If you've not the time, then perhaps you know of others who might be interested? Thanks.Malke 2010 (talk) 19:31, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I disagree

Your comment about "exchangeable random variable" doesn't make much sense to me. Logically, if you can have a "sequence of X's", then you can have an "X" which is sensibly defined as "one of a sequence of X's". Certainly, whether or not you think singular "exchangeable random variable" is incorrect, you understand what is meant, and if you do a search on "exchangeable random variable" you will see plenty of examples in the singular with exactly the semantics I just described. In other words, whether or not you prescriptively think such usage is "incorrect", descriptively speaking it obviously exists and is well defined, so there seems little point to me in insisting that the Wikipedia article be named according to the plural when the standard practice is to use the singular whenever it exists. Benwing (talk) 05:33, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Looking at the first several google hits, I'm failing to find what you say is there. Can you point to one or more specific pages on which you find that usage? Your comment that starts with "logically" is specious. Two say two or more random variables are exchangeable is to assert that a certain relationship among them exists. How can that apply to just one random variable in a way that's not vacuous? Michael Hardy (talk) 12:47, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

www.proba.jussieu.fr/mathdoc/textes/PMA-890.pdf

"Take π ∈ P an exchangeable random variable and define a family of. Pn-valued processes Πn(·) as follows"

www.math.ens.fr/~catoni/homepage/vapnik.pdf

"For any θ ∈ Θ, any ω ∈ 􏰈X × Y􏰉(k+1)N , any positive partially exchangeable random variable λ, any partially exchangeable random variable η,"

www.unc.edu/~normanp/AEJsub1.pdf

"Proposition 2 Suppose that θ6 is an exchangeable random variable and that there exists C 'n( such that C7 'n( 1 C 'n( for all j - 2"

projecteuclid.org/DPubS/Repository/1.0/Disseminate?handle...1

"Consider an n dimensional exchangeable random variable X = (-XΊ,.. . ,Xn). Shaked and Tong (1985) suggested that larger dependence of X is associated with ..."

www.springerlink.com/index/u2043254v6568430.pdf

"Ramamurthy and Sengupta [4] and Ott and Shanthikumar [3]. In addition if. (Y1,..., Yc) is an exchangeable random variable one has (see Ott and ..."

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/000530360.pdf?abstractid=230833

"final endowment is described by an exchangeable random variable, which allows for aggregate risks. They show that efficient risk-sharing can be attained ..."

Granted, there aren't as many examples of such singular usages as plural usages. Also, I see that according to WP:PLURAL, the use of the plural here may be warranted. Benwing (talk) 06:33, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Apparently at least some of the quoted authors above mean a random vector whose scalar components are exchangeable. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:19, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

HELP

Very indebted for Michael Hardy's corrections in the article Computation of radiowave attenuation in the atmosphere!--Thuytnguyen48 (talk) 18:03, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Confidence interval

Please take a look at the recent edits on confidence interval. Nijdam (talk) 20:55, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Again: I'm not pleased at all with the present introduction on confidence interval. Nijdam (talk) 16:09, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

BWV 48

You tried to improve BWV 48, but please note that the links to the free scores work only with the minus-sign, and I wonder if the name shown should be different from the link. But for the moment I just restored the link. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:49, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

You must have meant only with the hyphen. (I disapprove of using hyphens as minus signs in non-TeX notation.) Michael Hardy (talk) 21:14, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Question

I do not understand some idea : [7]. As such, Legendre polynomials can be generalized (In what way?) to express the symmetries of semi-simple Lie groups (not SO(3)?) and Riemannian symmetric spaces. (not euclidean ?) Can you explain me it? Thank you very much. Gvozdet (talk) 21:06, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I think you should post this question to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics. I think I've done some edits on that article, but the particular assertion you quote probably goes beyond what I know about the subject. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:32, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Meetup

In the area? You're invited to the
Minnesota meetup
	Date: 31 October 2010
	Time: noon
	Place: Midtown Exchange Global Market, East Lake Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota 44.9493°N 93.2612°W / 44.9493; -93.2612

Herman ring

		The Original Barnstar
		Thanks for helping improve that new article!  Chzz  ►  10:07, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

It's always great when we ask people for help and actually get some!

I'd like to put that one in for a "Did you know..." nomination (WP:DYK) within the next few days; my main concern, however, is that it is a bit tricky for a non-expert to understand; it could really do with a more 'general' introductory sentence or two, just to say what it is.

So if you do get a chance to edit it further, please do; we've got a few days before the DYK deadline (has to be 'new' to qualify, within 5 days of creation, and it was created on 14th).

Thanks again!  Chzz  ►  10:07, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:30, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Inline TeX in Analyticity of holomorphic functions

I know you did that because you thought the line wrapping looked bad, but from my perspective, the slash are hardly visible in the HTML version of the formula.--Netheril96 (talk) 03:48, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Proof that 22/7 exceeds π

ive replied on the talk page. Ive also not put the tags back on becasue i turst youd be going over to correct it anyway, thus making thee tag not worthwhile ;)(Lihaas (talk) 03:50, 18 October 2010 (UTC)).

Thanks and a Question

Hey, thanks for the capitalization fixes on the Lie conformal algebra page I started. I have a question, though. All the math sections appear as pictures of some sort except for one, which appears as text (e.g. you can highlight individual characters). How do I fix this?

Thanks! Myrkkyhammas (talk) 16:14, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Refugee Churches

Just a comment after your recent edits of my draft article on Justus Velsius: At that point in time (i.e. mid-16th century) there were not only English refugee churches, but French and Dutch refugee churches as well. Frankfurt harbored both English and French refugee churches, and Calvin came to Frankfurt to mediate among the French refugee churches, not the English ones. Robert Horne was the pastor of the English refugee church in Frankfurt, and mediated the exchange between Velsius and Calvin; later on Horne returned to England and became bishop of Winchester.
btw, Velsius was a highly controversial figure, and stirred up unrest wherever he went. After he was thown out of Frankfurt he went a.o. to London, where he caused an uproar at the Dutch refugee Church there; then he returned to Holland where he was jailed for many years, and ended his carreer as a faith healer. It is going to take some time to get this straight. JdH (talk) 12:35, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Reply

You have a reply on my talk page regarding Goblin --5 albert square (talk) 11:48, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Move NATO phonetic alphabet?

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:NATO phonetic alphabet#Move?. — Joe Kress (talk) 08:27, 9 November 2010 (UTC) (Using {{Please see}})

math check

there is a political math page (Gallagher Index), which is rather poor. I may be a psephologist but im not a mathemagician. i was wondering if you could review the relevant part or know of it in general to better source it.

ps- also, your wikiproject banner is a little off. for some reason the regular {{WikiProject Maths}} doesn't work (it links to somethign that would probably never be used), and math is also singular ;)Lihaas (talk) 00:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

The best work on this area is by Friedrich Pukelsheim, who apparently has influenced or at least been heard by EU officials. The probability-distribution work is goes back to Diaconis and Freedman and even further to Mosteller & co. I would think that Balinki and Young's book on apportionment would be needed on such an article. Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 00:54, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

New meetup

In the area? You're invited to the
Minnesota meetup
	Date: 20 November 2010
	Time: 1:00-3:30 (click here for full agenda) R.S.V.P. by Nov. 17 for free lunch + parking
	Place: Minnesota History Center 345 Kellogg Blvd, St. Paul, Minnesota 44.95°N 93.1055°W / 44.95; -93.1055

Not supported by the text??

Correct. Lying along the boarder is not the same as defining the border which is what the categories are for. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:37, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, but

as I mentioned on the discussion page, Keep Your Shirt On! :) This was just paste of an entire section cut out by one of my stalkers from another page, where of course it made sense in context. I moved the dasterdly material to its own page, as suggested, and as soon as I get a chance I will put in the parts to a standalone entry that you and I both agree it needs.Edstat (talk) 23:17, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

For clarity, I prefer comments on the discussion page of the article that the comments refer to, as opposed to an editor's talk page.Edstat (talk) 23:19, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I've now done the first edit all the way through, although I'm sure others will now jump in to edit it. Sorry for the multiple saves, I have't mastered using the sandbox so it is safer to make incremental saves.Edstat (talk) 19:39, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Edstat's "shame on me"

Hi Michael!

Would you look at my talk page, where editor Edstat wrote "shame on me". I replied but could use a second opinion about my civility. I also added a single-purpose account template by him. If my reply is inappropriate or the template is inappropriate, then I would authorize you (and implore you) to remove anything inappropriate. (I am sorry but I have to go, now, to sleep.)

I'm sorry to leave this message, but I have to sleep. I also thought that you have been helpful to Edstat, so you were a neutral person.

Best regards, but apologetically, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 00:50, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I was invited to help improve the ANOVA page. The topic on underlying assumptions was incomplete, so I added a referenced addition that applies to the factorial layout. Keifer.Wolfowitz deleted it. I assumed in good faith K.W didn't like the place it was inserted, even though it was a discussion of underlying assumptions, and moved it to another section that, although not on assumptions, was specifically about the factorial layout. He again deleted it with the caustic Edit summary: "off-topic promotion of Sawilowski again". The "again" is a reference to Kiefer.Wolfowitz's stalking of any page I edit where he routinely deletes, gets angry, makes personal attacks, etc.

For the case at hand, Kiefer.Wolfowitz deleted something that was appropriately referenced, and he explained on his talk page his justification: Why, he is a statistician!

I'm done working on any page that he edits or stumbles onto. I'm done with mathematicians and mathematical statisticians who insist on ignoring the lessons learned in the past 30 years by applied statisticians. I won't by bullied or stalked anymore, because as long has he and the various editing cabals continue making wikipedia their personal playground, I'll spend my time doing some else.

Actually, I came to your talk page for an entirely different reason, and if we work fast, maybe we can get something done before I get wikified again. On the Anova on Ranks page (which, of course, was a wholesale delete by Kiefer.Wolfowitz from the ANOVA page (he never bothered to read the history pages, or he would have realized I didn't start that section - others did!), my concern is that the "logic of the F test" section is really a redo of what is on the ANOVA page. I came to this page to ask you if you think it should stay, or if the reader should be referred to the ANOVA page. (My opinion is it should stay despite being redundant, because the ANOVA page is so filled with sillyness it is just about useless - just ask anyone in a stat class what they get out of the page - I have).Edstat (talk) 14:10, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Edstat, you have made the same complaints today and yesterday on my talk page, and on the ANOVA article talk page, at least. Could you try to write only on my talk page, so that others can follow the discussion (if they have a masochist personality). It might be useful for a Wikibreak for you and me both, okay? Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 14:20, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Jordan–Schur theorem, citing Speiser

I haven't cited Speiser directly there because I'm quoting there what Curtis and Reiner say about Speiser's result. I haven't had a chance to track down Speiser's book yet. The citation for the book, which I'll include as soon as I get a copy, is Speiser, A. (1937). Die Theorie der Gruppen, von endlicher (3rd ed.). Berlin.  I don't think I should include the citation until I've actually read it and can get the relevant page numbers, etc. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:29, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Notablity

Note that when I tagged the math article for lack of demonstration of notability and lack of references, it was a 3 sentence unreferenced stub. It looks much better now, and I have no objection to your removal of the tags, since it appears to satisfy the general notability guideline. For future reference, please read (or reread) WP:N. Your statement that it is notable because famous mathematicians edited it is completely irrelevant to notability as Wikipedia defines it, since we require multiple reliable and independent sources with significant coverage of the subject, and are unimpressed by claims of credentials. Thanks. Edison (talk) 21:04, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand. I am aware that evidence of notability must appear in the article rather than in the edit history. But the edit history sometimes provides evidence that such details can appear in the article in the near future, because those who edited the article are people who would know what information to add to the article and are continuing to work on it. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:14, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Do you recall the "Essjay controversy, in which an editor claimed that he had such fine credentials that what he wrote should go unchallenged? I heard an echo of that in your statements that if folks you trust and admire edited an article, then the subject should not be tagged on notability grounds. I still disagree, if that is what your intent is. Any person knowledgable in a field can draft an article in his own sandbox until it meets basic notability standards, complete with references, before moving it to main space. I have done that many times, as opposed to posting a poor stub and leaving it for myself or others sometime later to add references. A tag is not a threat or a condemnation of the article or its editors, but rather the noting that some more work is needed, as was the case here. Edison (talk) 18:57, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I didn't say it should not be tagged; I said it was why I removed the tag. It can make sense to tag an article and to remove the tag later. This is not comparable to the Essjay situation because in that situation the only reason to think the person had the credentials was his assertion. In this case it's easily verifiable. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:47, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

References matter; "verifiable expertise" of editors does not, in any way, establish notability. I would, however, note the editing history and perhaps the claimed expertise of an editor in deciding whether to tag some amazing new article as a possible hoax. Thanks again for your courtesy in letting me know you had removed the tag. Edison (talk) 20:09, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

quasisymmetric functions

Thanks for improving the page entitled ring of quasisymmetric functions. After making the page and learning more about wiki pages, I realized I should have named it quasisymmetric function so that other people could link to the page in future documents in the most natural way. If you could make this change, I would be much abliged. I don't see how to change the page title.

Sbilley (talk) 00:46, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Sbilley's proposed title is misspelled, with 7 consonants in a row. In college mathematics or engineering classes, a miss was a good as a mile, and sometimes got zero credit. Edison (talk) 02:37, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

"Edison", I doubt that you ever were denied credit for something like that. More likely you wrote something like

"$\scriptstyle f'(5) \,=\, 0$ because $\scriptstyle f' \,$ is a derivative and 5 is a constant, and the derivative of a constant is zero",

and then you thought the grader was splitting fine hairs when you got no credit for it. I've seen many students do things like that. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:04, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Shyamala Rajender

Hi Michael, I noticed your post about the new Shyamala Rajender article at the Chemistry WikiProject. Just FYI, since the article is a BLP, someone will rapidly challenge it as unreferenced and propose it be referenced or deleted. So, I advise you add some references soon. Regards. EdChem (talk) 05:23, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Merger of symbolic computation with computer algebra system

You may be interested in Talk:Symbolic computation#Merger with computer algebra system. Yaris678 (talk) 17:23, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Negative_multinomial_distribution

If you feel you can provide a unbiased, technical and scientific review on the Negative_multinomial_distribution article please read this talk page. A couple of users have attempted to simplify the NMD description and in the process have introduced a number of technical errors. I believe we may need to revert the content to the 11 November 2009 version by User:Atama, if not earlier. Thanks. Iwaterpolo (talk) 18:48, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Defining a continued fraction with an "infinite expression"

I'd appreciate your input in this discussion of the current lead in of the continued fraction article. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 20:09, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Mishy-phen

The article Mishy-phen has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

recently invented term which does not appear to have any great currency or circulation.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion.  pablo 15:57, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Nomination of Vita (rapper) for deletion

A discussion has begun about whether the article Vita (rapper), which you created or to which you contributed, should be deleted. While contributions are welcome, an article may be deleted if it is inconsistent with Wikipedia policies and guidelines for inclusion, explained in the deletion policy.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vita (rapper) until a consensus is reached, and you are welcome to contribute to the discussion.

You may edit the article during the discussion, including to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 17:05, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Anova on Ranks

Hi. I asked another editor on their user page a question about the section on explaining the F test but after a few weeks I got no answer. Although I think it helps to understand what is ANOVA on Ranks by taking a few sentences to explain (in a non-mathematical way, ulike the confusing ANOVA page) what it is. However, the explanation may be unnecessary by simply referring the reader to the ANOVA page. If you have a chance, could you please take a look at that page and see if you think the section "Logic of the F test on means" is necessary? Thanks.Edstat (talk) 14:13, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

convention on the sign of Bernoulli number B₁

Hi Michael -- I'm wondering how best to clean up the article on the Bernoulli numbers, and I thought you might be able to give me some advice.

Currently the article is rather confusing, since it uses two different conventions for the sign of B₁, but with the same symbol, with some rather unsystematic remarks here and there which convention is being applied in each case. In some cases the conventions are distinguished by an additional argument and in others they aren't. In trying to get to the bottom of this, my first impression was that B₁ = − 1 / 2 is in fact the "conventional convention", and that B₁ = + 1 / 2 was mostly being pushed by User:Wirkstoff (e.g. [8] and [9]), with a POV tendency to call the B₁ = − 1 / 2 convention "unfortunate". (See also Talk:Bernoulli_number#No_neutral_point_of_view_-_removed_paragraphs and the link provided there.)

I had arrived at the conclusion that the article should use the "conventional convention" B₁ = − 1 / 2 and only mention the other one as an alternative, and should not keep switching between the two and treating them as equally notable, as it currently does, mainly due to Wirkstoff's edits. However, then I came across this edit you made in the article on the Euler–Maclaurin formula, where you state that the Bernoulli numbers are the values of the Bernoulli polynomials at 1 -- this corresponds to the convention B₁ = + 1 / 2 (whereas B₁ = − 1 / 2 corresponds to the Bernoulli numbers being the values of the Bernoulli polynomials at 0). So I wanted to ask you whether you intentionally used that convention, how notable you think it is and how you think these different conventions should be treated in the article on the Bernoulli numbers. Thanks for any insight you may be able to provide.

(To make things even more complicated, there appears to be a third convention, which treats the even-numbered Bernoulli numbers as a sequence with half the index -- this is used e.g. in de:Bernoulli-Zahl and also in my Taschenbuch der Mathematik ("Handbook of Mathematics") by Bronstein. I guess this convention should also be mentioned?) Joriki (talk) 06:15, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I seem to recall there was some occasion in one article to follow that other convention. So maybe your edits should be implemented and the other one should be mentioned only where there's an occasion for it. More later...... Michael Hardy (talk) 18:49, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Telescoping series

Thanks for your note and the correction. I agree that your new version with "this" inserted is better than what I'd written, but the previous version without "this" was at least misleading, if not wrong. "Regrouping" isn't formally defined in the article, and I took it to mean something like "rearrangement" -- I see now that it's intended to mean only placing parentheses around groups of terms, i.e. effectively taking some subsequence of the sequence of partial sums, and with that meaning it's true that "regrouping" depends on the terms converging to zero, but since "regrouping" isn't defined I think "this regrouping" makes it clearer -- alternatives would be to write "this kind of regrouping", or briefly define what's meant by "regrouping".

Have you had a chance to further look into the Bernoulli number convention problem?

Joriki (talk) 01:13, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello. I haven't looked at that closely in the past few days. Pretty soon.... Michael Hardy (talk) 05:16, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Sociology membership

I see that within the last year you have made at least one substantial comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sociology, but you have not added yourself to the project's official member list. This prevents you from, among other things, receiving our sociology newsletter, as that member list acts as our newsletter mailing list (you can find the latest issue of our sociology newsletter here). If you'd like to receive the newsletter and help us figure out how many members we really have, please consider joining our WikiProject and adding yourself to our official member list. Thank you, --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 13:42, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Indexing sums

Hi Michael!

I want to consult Wikipedia's leading mathematical-notation maven.

The article on the Shapley–Folkman lemma is written in only Wiki-markup, for simplicity. However, I don't know how to put proper display subscripts on the summation-symbol; now it looks like in-text LaTeX style.

Finally, the article's Good-Article review is nearing its completion, and would especially benefit now from any advice or criticisms you may have. Thanks again for fixing my bad hyphens some months ago!

Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 03:35, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I LaTeXed the equations formerly troubling the WikiMarkup language. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 18:50, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

MOS: Italics for sets?

I misunderstood a suggestion, which was correct. Sorry to Jakob for misunderstanding and mis-representing his sound advice. (My eyesight isn't the best.) Apologies to all! Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 19:30, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I hide the mess, which may be useful for other editors, however.

 

The reviewer (for GA-article status), Jakob.scholbach, cited the WP MOS and told us to use italics for variables but not for sets or the real numbers. (My reading of the MOS then concur with his, although you can read my initial concerns on the article talk page.) Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 18:59, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I quote from the talk page:

In the image caption of the Minkowski addition (and anywhere else), only mathematical variables should be italicized. For example Q1+Q2=[1,3]×[1,3] should be Q1+Q2=[1,3]×[1,3].

I'll check this. LaTeX uses different conventions.

I don't think so. Even if it does, WP:MOSMATH is quite explicit about this (see especially the subsubsection "Variables"). Jakob.scholbach (talk) 12:16, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

I followed your suggestions. I am sorry if I missed any wrongly italicized sets. Also, I consistently used the WP-hypertext formatting, and removed all LaTeX, for consistency. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 04:26, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Done! Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 16:45, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

End of quotation. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 19:02, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I am very much inclined to disagree with [Kiefer.Wolfowitz's misrepresentation of J.s Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 19:30, 16 January 2011 (UTC)] Jakob.scholbach on this one. Here's something in TeX:

$\sup_{x \in A} f(x). \,$

The A is italicized. Can anyone cite something in one of the style manuals that says this shouldn't be done? Michael Hardy (talk) 19:06, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Jakob.scholbach is wrong. Here's what WP:MOSMATH says in the "sets" subsection under "variables":

Sets are usually written in upper case italics; for example:

A = {x : x > 0}

would be written:

''A'' = {''x'' : ''x'' > 0} .

Michael Hardy (talk) 19:09, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks again, Michael. I am relieved that WP style conforms with mathematics tradition and the recent ISO declaration of mathematical typesetting. Cheers, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 19:11, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

"Myers-Briggs Type Indicator" is a publication. It is spelled with a hyphen, not an en dash. Could you undo the changes you made, please? Thanks! ThreeOfCups (talk) 03:50, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

If it's a publication, I'd have guessed it would be italicized like a book title. I think I might solicit additional opinions...... Michael Hardy (talk) 03:53, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

It's a trademarked term. Here are links to the official websites of the Myers & Briggs Foundation and the publisher, CPP, showing it with the hyphen:

http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/

https://www.cpp.com/products/mbti/index.aspx

ThreeOfCups (talk) 04:02, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Blanche Charlet Article

Michael Hardy,

Article: Blanche Charlet.

Would like to invite you to the discussion on Blanche Charlet. There has been a discussion started on her talkpage and would like your feedback. Adamdaley (talk) 00:12, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Off-Broadway

I see that you have edited Off Broadway before. Please see the discussion on the talk page, as well as the recent edits, and comment if you wish. Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 04:20, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion

I've just proposed Independent scholar for deletion. Kitfoxxe (talk) 21:28, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Hello.

You reversed my correction related to ORTHONORMAL matrices.

I think you should do some research or consult true mathematicians. In physics as in econometrics, it is a habit to call orthogonal matrices which are really orthonormal. This is because they usually work with normalized vectors or automatically normalize vectors and matrices. But the true mathematical definitions differ as a perfectly orthogonal matrix, which is not normalized is NOT its transpose-inverse.

Simple example:

A = [1,2 / -2,1], is ORTHOGONAL and its transpose is At = [1,-2 /2,1] BUT: A.At = [5,0 / 0,5] is obviously not the identity matrix.

There atre two different names because there are two different objects.

Physicists and economists may call it what they want, but in mathemetics, orthogonal does not mean orthonormal.

raphaelcohen@xplornet.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.127.216.162 (talk) 22:17, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I am a mathtematician and I first encountered the term orthogonal matrix in a geometry course for which the text was Snapper & Troyer's Metric Affine Geometry. I've since seen this definition relied on in many papers, books, seminar and colloquium talks, and in other courses that I took later. I would seem to make sense to call these "orthonormal matrices" instead of "orthogonal matrices", but the latter name became standard in the 19th century and has been so ever since. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:39, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

PS: Also see orthogonal group, in particular where it says the orthogonal groups over the reals are compact. Obviously they wouldn't be compact if your proposed definition of "orthogonal matrix" were relied on. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:41, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

PPS: You might want to pursue this issue at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:43, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Richard Milner (fiction writer)

The article Richard Milner (fiction writer) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

WP:N -- Can't find any reliable, secondary sources that provide in-depth coverage of this author or either of his two books in order to establish notability under WP:GNG nor WP:AUTH. (Not a BLP, I suspect the preface to one of the books is enough to establish his death in 2003.)

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. j⚛e decker^{talk to me} 08:41, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Ptolemy's Theorem

Hi

Your cleanup on this article noted. Thanks.

Neil Parker (talk) 13:47, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Continuous repayment mortgage

Hello Michael

Many thanks again for another cleanup operation on the above article. I will endeavour to read the necessary conventions you refer to. Apologies for creating extra work for you.

Greatly appreciate removal of "too complex" tag - don't think my modest level of Maths is anywhere near deserving such!

Neil Parker (talk) 17:43, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Categorical bridge

The article Categorical bridge has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Tagged as being unencyclopedic since April of 2008. See talk page.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Guy Macon 04:16, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

BTW, I am walking my way through all the articles with technical tags and will, no doubt, run into math articles again and again, so any criticism or correction of the way I have handled the first few would be very much welcome. Thanks! Guy Macon 05:42, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Mean of a function

Hi. I have added some text giving an intuition for the mean of a function:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mean&oldid=415287430#Mean_of_a_function

Would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks.

Awaterl (talk) 08:27, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

"Bloch wave - MoM Method" page

I think I may have inadvertently undone some of your style changes, not realizing they were done for compliance with Wikipedia standards. I'll go back and put things back the way you had them, but I may not get everything... perhaps a second look on your part may be a good idea. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.51.245.17 (talk) 07:29, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I think you probably got everything. Thanks. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:12, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposed rename

This is just to let you know that I have place a proposed rename at Talk:Sum of squares, an article you have previously be concerned with. Melcombe (talk) 09:51, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Gilbert Model article

Hi Michael, I saw the comment you left in the body of the Gilbert Model article. I moved it to the talk page as a matter of course. I don't have any expertise in the field and don't think I can make the changes you suggest--but why don't you do it yourself? Leoniceno (talk) 06:07, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Hyphenation question

Michael, I hope you'll humor a silly formatting question. In the phrase "X-Y-plane", what is the correct kind of dash/hyphen/etc. to use? Also, is "XY-plane" better? I think not, because it suggests that X and Y are multiplied, but maybe this is pedantic. Mgnbar (talk) 19:03, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I write xy-plane, but I've never thought through the issues nor researched prevailing usages. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:08, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Where

You asked where the use of a capital "W" on mid-sentence "where"s comes from. In my experience this arises from auto-correct facilities in word-processors such as "Word", where a mid-sentence displayed equation is treated as if that were the end of a sentence and where the option to auto-capitalise the first letter of a new sentence is switched-on. Melcombe (talk) 09:27, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. That plus inattention seems to explain it. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:04, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Fuzzy matrix theory

I think I shed some light there. Perhaps you can form an opinion now? Thanks, Tijfo098 (talk) 18:17, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

equations

hi. Regarding your recent changes to N-sphere: Can you point me to discussion/policy that justifies use of text formatting for displaying inline math symbols rather than using the math tag/environment? - Subh83 (talk | contribs) 06:25, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

It's been discussed repeatedly over the years at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics, and I suspect also at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (mathematics). Among the matters discussed are the terrible alignment, thus:

blah blah blah $e_2\,$, e² blah blah blah

and the fact that punctuation gets pushed to the next line as the window geometry varies, thus:

(for example, $\int_0^\infty 1\,dx$

) and so on and so on

(and similarly with commas, periods, etc.) and the gross mismatches in size, whereby $x^2\,$ is three or four times as big as x² (this is browser-dependent, I think).

I'll see if I can find particular discussions, although making an exhaustive list of them is probably impossible. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:59, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. Although I think the use of serif font is important for math formulae (my comment at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(mathematics)#Request_for_comments:_serif_vs._sans-serif). - Subh83 (talk | contribs) 22:41, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

There is this template:

in general it uses at most 2 − 2/W times as many levels as necessary.

Michael Hardy (talk) 02:16, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Gopala–Hemachandra number for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Gopala–Hemachandra number is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gopala–Hemachandra number until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. —Mark Dominus (talk) 16:25, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Bicycle and motorcycle dynamics

Thanks for taking a look at the article. I would like to see it be as good as possible, so I have a couple of questions for you.

• It looks like you altered the rendering of some symbols but not all. Did you do just what you had time for, or is there a deeper reason?
• On my browser, the inline LaTeX looks just fine and produces a perfect match for the sympols used in formulae. Switching between LaTeX and HTML, however, produces things like $v\,\!$ vs v vs v, where the first rendering seems barely recognizable as equivalent to the third to me. Is there a better option, or I just being too picky about the wrong thing?

Thanks again for your help. -AndrewDressel (talk) 14:21, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Two italicized "v"s are both recognizable as italicized "v"s, but when TeX is used in an inline setting, the the characters often appear three or four times as big as the surrounding letters, and they align badly (e.g. too high or too low, or in the expression "v.", the period ends up on the next line, etc.). And you get things

like this: $e^2\,$, $e_2\,$

where the two "e"s should be at the same level but are not. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:56, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Responding to Tuesday's help desk question

I tool me a while to find this, but it you solve for the tangent in your expression you obtain (essentially) formula (7) here.--RDBury (talk) 15:34, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Interesting.

Thank you. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:57, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Rexer DM survey notability dispute

Hello. I am disputing the notability tag added by User:Melcombe to the Rexer's Annual Data Miner Survey article. Do you know of any other independent, reliable sources that demonstrate the topic's notability? Thanks. --Luke145 (talk) 20:21, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

nowrap

Since you seemed to get agitated about nowrap in this edit, let me say first that I sympathize; often there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the use of nowrap. But let me just say two points in favour of nowrap, if properly used for math formulas. First it is maybe easier to type, and read in the source, x = 0 than x = 0 (not so convincing in fact if you can get &nbsp; by clicking). Second, nowrap is ideally suited to be replaced by 'math' so x = 0 changes into x = 0. This is often what I do mechanically when see nowrap in text I'm editing (usually for other reasons). Marc van Leeuwen (talk) 10:11, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I never objected to the use of nowrap. I objected to the weird way in which it was used without proper spacing, when the whole point of nowrap is to allow such spacing without upsetting the format with line-breaks. Michael Hardy (talk) 13:34, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

why work on deleted page?

Hi Michael, non-Newtonian calculus will soon be deleted, as per the deletion discussion, hope you are aware of this. Tkuvho (talk) 16:53, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Breaking images

Please be more careful when inserting en-dashes. Your recent edit to Horace Trumbauer broke the display of two images, because you changed hyphens to en-dashes in the filenames, which of course only works if you also rename the images (which you didn't do). --Zundark (talk) 21:39, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry—I try to be attentive to that. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:10, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Using lists .

Your list of mathematics terms interests me, as I have used a list of 1,000 of the most common mathematics terms used in primary and secondary school mathematics student textbooks (and OER textbooks like: CNX and CK12's materials)to study how and where they are being used since 1970. The spreadsheet format that I use gives a very quick understanding of the distribution of these terms. The website www.k-12math.info provides the information. I wonder is anyone at Wikipedia looking a primary school mathematics content? It seems ever page progresses to higher mathematics - way beyond a primary school educators interest.

Jim Kelly —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jkelly952 (talk • contribs) 00:16, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Archaic Greek Letters and all that

I have, as you might know from off wiki discussions, been recently trying to improve Texvc. I am starting to get the impression that lots of things that people find annoying about it are not reported as bugs, so if anything occurs to you feel free to drop me a line directly. I am well aware of the big issues, image alignment, and I recently became aware that the image cache never expires (which means some bugs have technically been fixed, but since the images never get re-rendered, the correct rendering never gets passed on to the viewers.

But aside from these issues that occur to you let me know. Mostly I would like someone to talk over my ideas with. I was thinking what is really needed is an <imath> tag for inline math. Even if initially it just renders things with a single dollar sign, it seems necessary to have a distinction between the two if we would like to improve everything as a whole. But maybe that is just me.

Also I would be curious what you think about the choices it makes about which symbols are suitble for rendering as simple html. To me many things should probably include spaces that do not. But issues like -3 give me pause. You don't want − 3 to start rendering as − 3, um... wait those appear the same maybe I should fix that. Well hopefully I made the point a little care should be take at times. So it is always helpful to bounce ideas off other people and try to get a sense of what fixes are important to the community. Thenub314 (talk) 02:54, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

If the "imath" tag can be well-designed, it would certainly be a substantial contribution. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:09, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I am glad to see this finally came through, but sad to see I caused lots more problems with my other patches.  :( Thenub314 (talk) 23:05, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Merge discussion for Isolated prime

An article that you have been involved in editing, Isolated prime , has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 19:54, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

RFC on combinations

Michael Hardy, I see you're a mathematician. I found the use of falling factorials jarring and less than useful on the article on combinations, and submitted an RFC. Since you have expertise in math, I thought I would solitict your comments there. Thanks. Ann arbor street (talk) 16:11, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

LZ77 LZ78 article

I added a new section to the discussion for this article.

Talk:LZ77_and_LZ78#This_article_needs_some_corrections

Rcgldr (talk) 21:13, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

LZ78 section needs correction and perhaps a rewrite, but I'm not sure who to consult with. The patent reference should be moved elsewhere or removed. In the case of hardware, LZ77 is more popular than LZ78 because it's much easier to implement. For example, if I remember correctly, the patent algorithm description for LZ77 (LZ1) is about 5 pages, while LZ78 (LZ2) is about 14 pages. Rcgldr (talk) 15:15, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Copulas

Hi Michael Hardy. As you are one of the most active wiki-mathematicians and you once made some edits to the article Copula (statistics), I would like to ask you about something. I would like to develop and improve the latter article. Started with that on sunday, but got completely reverted by some guy who calls probability theory a small subset of statistics... I dont want to start an edit war. could you have a look at my edits and comment? or even better, if you have some time free, help editing? that would be great! I dont insist on the renaming, but the content revertions i do not understand. regards, Philtime (talk) 19:02, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles

In light of your participation in the discussion(s) regarding the treatment of disambiguation pages on the "Lists of mathematics articles" pages, please indicate your preference in the straw poll at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:55, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:46, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Palm calculus

Thanks for commenting on the stub on Palm Calculus. I'm glad you don't disbelieve the assertion :) I've made the first sentence clearer (it studies the relationship between conditional and time-average probabilities, not simply the former in isolation). Could you please remove the "disputed" tag, but leave the "expert needed" tag? Also, it doesn't really matter who Palm was, but I have added his first name anyway... LachlanA (talk) 02:06, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

mess in Random Matrix article

Hello,

it seems that my revision of the random matrix article created an even bigger mess than what was there before, so I need some help/advise from an experienced wiki-person. Basically, the article is now my version, which is far from perfect by itself, with pieces of older versions inserted at arbitrary places by users who feel (perhaps correctly) that I erased important topics. If you would have time to have a look at the article, it would be great.

Thank you very much, Sasha (talk) 18:54, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot!!!

Sasha (talk) 18:10, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Main page appearance

Hello! This is a note to let the main editors of this article know that it will be appearing as the main page featured article on June 5, 2011. You can view the TFA blurb at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/June 5, 2011. If you think it is necessary to change the main date, you can request it with the featured article director Raul654 (talk · contribs) or at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests. If the previous blurb needs tweaking, you might change it—following the instructions of the suggested formatting. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page so Wikipedia doesn't look bad. :D Thanks! ۞ Tbhotch^™ & (ↄ), Problems with my English? 04:03, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

The logarithm of a number is the exponent by which a fixed number, the base, has to be raised to produce that number. For example, the logarithm of 1000 to base 10 is 3, because 1000 is 10 to the power 3: 1000 = 10³ = 10 × 10 × 10. Logarithms were introduced by John Napier in the early 17th century as a means to simplify calculations. They were rapidly adopted by scientists and engineers to perform computations using slide rules and logarithm tables. These devices rely on the fact—important in its own right—that the logarithm of a product is the sum of the logarithms of the factors. Logarithmic scales reduce wide-ranging quantities to smaller scopes. For example, the decibel is a logarithmic unit quantifying sound pressure and voltage ratios. Logarithms describe musical intervals, measure the complexity of algorithms, and appear in formulas counting prime numbers. They also inform some models in psychophysics and can aid in forensic accounting. (more...)

General minimum distance(GMD) decoding listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect General minimum distance(GMD) decoding. Since you had some involvement with the General minimum distance(GMD) decoding redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Inks.LWC (talk) 05:21, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

thanks for all the cleanup!

Sasha (talk) 06:41, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Saros vs. saros

'saros' w/o the capitalization is indeed correct. (refer to "Totality, by Espinak, et. al.) There are probably thousands of instances with the wrong capitalization. I figured to just roll with it, but I think you've appropriately determined that it is not a good idea to capitalize a noun that is not a proper noun. --TimL (talk) 22:44, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

as to your (M.H.) question, who is Saros, see [French wiki page]: it is just a Greek word (after a semantic shift). Sasha (talk) 23:22, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I find it done both ways on the web. If some convention requires capitalizing it even though it's not anything like a proper noun, I think that should get explained in the article, otherwise reasonable people will wonder who it's named after: someone named Saros, but what's his first name and where's the Wikipedia article about him? Michael Hardy (talk) 03:07, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

In the Oxford American Dictionary and any other dictionary I've looked up 'saros' in, it is a common noun. I don't think this is about convention, but proper grammar. NASA's entire eclipse website capitalizes 'saros' (probably only because the sight has no professional editor), that doesn't make it right. Interestingly, the same author of NASA's eclipse website, in a published work (the above mentioned book "Totality") does not capitalize 'saros' or if he did, it was simply edited. --TimL (talk) 12:06, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Opinion?

Cf. en:Talk:Monic polynomial#A separate article; no dummy iw-links. Best, JoergenB (talk) 18:06, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Edits to Meridian arc

May I just say that the use of a mid-height dot for the decimal point was traditionally taught in British schools. It preserves the distinction between the decimal point and the full stop, a distinction which helps when a decimal number occurs at the end of a sentence. I would certainly raise the decimal points in handwritten work. The use of the same symbol for both is laziness in English although normal in, say, German. Furthermore, the distinction of phi and varphi is a matter of taste, not of substance. I simply preferred to use phi in my major rewrite of this article since I find varphi rather inelegant. Neither of these edits added to the content of the article but I shall not trouble to undo them. Peter Mercator (talk) 16:33, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

The use of the middot as a decimal point fails to preserve the distinction between that and the other frequent use of the middot for multiplication. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:44, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Integer broom topology

Thanks for your recent edits. I was wondering about the change from Integer Broom to integer broom. I thought about this myself, and then decided that because it's the name given to the space then it should be in capitals. We write Coca Cola and not coca cola, after all. — Fly by Night (talk) 03:36, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Hello? — Fly by Night (talk) 03:47, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

(Doesn't strike me as comparable to Coca Cola. Anyway, certainly Wikipedia is generally sparing in the use of capitals.) Michael Hardy (talk) 03:52, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Names always have capital letters like Michael Hardy for example. I know a man called Michael Hardy, I have a Ford card, I bought a can of Coca Cola, we consider a topological space called the Integer Broom. I'm just wondering why you changed it when it goes against standard English usage. What is/are the relevant section/s of WP:MOS and/or WP:MOSMATH? — Fly by Night (talk) 03:56, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Can you please review

Hello,

I did found an extension for binomial distribution and I need someone to review it and tell me is it really novel as I didn't find anything like it anywhere.

Thanks Ofermano (talk) 03:35, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Italic in HTML

Hi,

what is the convention you adhere to regarding Greek italic? I thought that variables should be italic, whereas π=3.14 should be plain, but you corrected me a couple of times.

Thanks, and sorry for the chutzpah (on behalf of someone like me who has just learned what is the MOS) — I am asking in the hope that if I learn the conventions, it will eventually save your time too.

Sasha (talk) 18:14, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

In non-TeX mathematical notation, I've tried to follow the rule of italicizing precisely the things that would be italicized in TeX. Thus:

$\lambda \Lambda \pi \Pi \sigma \Sigma \,$

You see capital Greek letters not being italicized, but lower-case Greek letters in italics. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:25, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

PS: I'd write π = 3.14 with spaces before and after "=". I usually make them non-breakable spaces. Or I might write π = 3.14, using the "pi" template. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:25, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

thanks! Sasha (talk) 18:43, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I've raised this point at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Italicizing_Greek_letters_in_mathematical_notation with a view toward emending the manual at WP:MOSMATH. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:46, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

thanks again. I will follow the correspondence there. Sasha (talk) 06:02, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

I have looked at the revised version; in the example there the constant 3.14 is still π (not italic), as opposed to π denoting a variable. In our discussion above, you used italic in both cases. Do you think this should be changed in MOS too? Thanks again (and 10 more times in advance for the times I will probably bother you with different issues in the near future), Sasha (talk) 10:25, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

pentagram map editing tips.

Hi Michael, thanks for those tips. I'll try to use them next time I do some editing. RichardEvanSchwartz (talk) 19:55, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Re:Max-min inequality

Ah I didn't realise that format was in the other articles as well. The reason I tagged it as unencyclopedic is because there was so little content, I thought it was inappropriate for Wikipedia. I never looked at the other articles (as I discovered the max-min equality article while patrolling Special:Newpages) to see if they had the same format, but at least many of the other articles have more content. Have a nice day, SwisterTwister talk 04:47, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

By format I was talking about the math display. SwisterTwister talk 22:00, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Question about requesting reviews

Hi Michael Hardy. Is the best way to request review for a mathematics article to post a request at the talk at Wikiproject Mathematics page? I know you have looked at the first paragraph of a few of my articles (but perhaps not enough to delete the "unreviewed article" flag). I was hoping to get them reviewed so that the flag would be deleted sometime soon, and I would appreciate any input on how to speed up this process. Maybe you know someone especially interested in reading algebra articles? Good day: Rschwieb (talk) 14:15, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

That's probably the best place to ask people to look at it. Unlike the talk pages of most WikiProjects, people read that page and post to it every day. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:47, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, and thanks for the formatting improvements! Rschwieb (talk) 12:30, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Common logarithm

I mentioned an old bad edit of yours at Talk:Common logarithm. Maybe you have a good fix. Dicklyon (talk) 04:25, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Amy Winehouse

Thank God there's someone else who's sensible in this place. I spent the last 15 minutes trying to replace that bloody em-dash with an en-dash but kept getting edit conflicted. BigDom 17:00, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

John Edward Anderson

You are right, there are two articles about him now. John Edward Anderson and John Anderson (philanthropist). I'm absolutely sure they were the same man. Calle Widmann (talk) 19:33, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Synthetic logic for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Synthetic logic is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Synthetic logic until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. Ozob (talk) 01:32, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

suspicious article

Hello Michael,

as usual, I need some advise. I have bumped into the article Boris Katz; it seems a good candidate for deletion (or at least major revision), but I am not sure which tag to place. The obvious issues are a) notability, b) hidden advertisement in the article, and c) no secondary sources. Could you please have a look?

Thanks, Sasha (talk) 04:12, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I saw you improved it a bit.

Sasha (talk) 19:15, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Equidistant

Hi! I contested your prod of Equidistant, before realising you probably know at lot more about what you're doing than I do - sorry. If you nominate the article for deletion, I'll lend my support. Maethordaer (talk) 14:56, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Theorema Quartum

Hello Michael

In the article on Ptolemy's Theorem there are sections on 'Theorema Tertium' and 'Theorema Quintum' but so far 'Theorema Quartum' has been left out because it is not strictly an application of Ptolemy's Theorem. It is however a neat geometrical device for determination of sine of half angles. Would appreciate your opinion on including it for the sake of completing the detail on how Copernicus derived his table of 'half chords' (aka sine table).

Neil Parker (talk)

I'm going to need to dig the Almagest out of the library again at some point.... Michael Hardy (talk) 03:38, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Or check the Copernican section of Hawking's book: On the Shoulders of Giants, Hawking, S 2002, Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-101571-3. Alternatively if your 16th Century Latin is up to it: De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium: Liber Primus: Theorema Quartum.

Neil Parker (talk) 16:00, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

File:Circumcircle.angles.png listed for deletion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Circumcircle.angles.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:48, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

To Michael

Hi Michael, your attention is welcome here --Yamsahh (talk) 16:09, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Merge discussion for Generalized scale-free model

An article that you have been involved in editing, Generalized scale-free model, has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going to the article and clicking on the (Discuss) link at the top of the article, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Joe Schmedley^Talk 16:07, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Template talk:SmithDGRA

Hi Michael, I've (finally) taken a look at the comment you left on Template talk:SmithDGRA, and replied there. Paul August ☎ 12:59, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I've edited Praetor accordingly. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:50, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Context

Thanks for the suggestions on metric compatibility. I spent very little time writing that stub, just enough to prevent the link from shorting to the typeface page. If you have ideas for further improvements or know of a way of merging it into another page, then by all means go right ahead. Teply (talk) 21:15, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Mixed volumes

Hi,

thank you very much for the revision!

• "−" vs. "-" (and other violations of html-MOS): sorry, this was not on purpose

• "position" vs. "positions": I am not a native speaker, so I do not want to revert your change unless you approve it, but I think it should be singular rather than plural (I would write "the positions of the bodies", but only one "relative position").

• could you please explain the issue with spaces for png (at the end of a formula)? I do not quite understand what is the error I keep on making. I usually place a space between TEX and a punctuation sign (for aesthetical reasons that hopefully do not contradict MOS), how does this affect png?

Best regards, Sasha (talk) 19:41, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

I understand your point concerning "relative position"; I'm going to think about this a bit further. In things like

<math> 2 + 3 = 5 </math>

Some editors write

<math> 2 + 3 = 5 \, </math>

and the \, at the end is intended to force png rendering, so that it will look like this:

$2 + 3 = 5 \,$

rather than like this:

2 + 3 = 5.

When there is a comma or a period at the end, one does something like this:

<math> 2 + 3 = 5, \, </math>

so that it looks like this:

$2 + 3 = 5, \,$

but I've seen some people writing this:

<math> 2 + 3 = 5\, , </math>

or this:

<math> 2 + 3 = 5~, </math>

and my suspicion is that they do that because they've seen things like this:

<math> 2 + 3 = 5 \, </math>

and they conclude that some space is needed after the 5.

Michael Hardy (talk) 03:33, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed explanation!

I am usually adding the tilde (in my papers as well as in wiki articles) to have some space between the formula and punctuation. Sometimes it prevents confusion, e.g.

$24 = 4!~.$

versus

$24 = 4!. \,$

(one can make this even more dramatic with an exclamation mark:) I was not aware of the png issue, now I will keep it in mind.

Best regards,

Sasha (talk) 04:13, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Layman for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Layman is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Layman until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. S Larctia (talk) 19:30, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Lennard-Jones

...is one guy. Can you repair the mess you made here please? You can use the excess en dashes in ion–protein and ion–water instead. Dicklyon (talk) 04:06, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Apologies...

Thanks very much for all the millions of incorrect capitals you have corrected in a couple of articles I initiated (Defining equation (physics) and Mathematical descriptions of physical laws). I have a terrible quirk of using capitals for everything when I write titles and nouns. I never thought it mattered, but looking at other articles, they all only use capitals for the first letter. Apologies you had to waste all that time when you could be using it. You could have just told me off to correct them myself to be honest though - I wouldn't have minded. Yours and thanks again, Maschen (talk) 19:01, 12 September 2011 (UTC).

Layman

Since you participated in this recent AFD you might be interested in this follow up discussion.TMCk (talk) 14:41, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Cochran's C test

Michael, thanks for your constructive edit on "my" article about Cochran's C test! Ruben --Rtlam (talk) 11:41, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Theory TK of Visual Proportions

Michael Hardy, I would like you to read the new version of The Theory TK of Visual Proportions. --EspaisNT (talk) 17:32, 27 September 2011 (UTC) --EspaisNT (talk) 17:41, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Shapley-Folkman lemma: Featured Article Candidate

Dear Michael,

You are the best expert at formatting issues. The Shapley-Folkman lemma is being reviewed at FAC, and this would be a great chance to catch formatting errors or make any improvements.

Thanks for your past help.

Best regards,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 04:14, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi again, Michael!

The article has no opposes and three formidable supports, FA juggernaut Malleus Fatuorum and two experienced economists & Wikipedians (Protonk and Volunteer Marek). Protonk suggested that I renew my requests for volunteer reviewers.

The article has a section on probability and measure theory that may especially interest you.

Cheers,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 09:48, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your help!  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 17:08, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Erhan Cinlar and Christian Houdre

Hello Michael, You are invited to contribute to the sections of Erhan Cinlar and Christian Houdré to help us making it better. Thank you. AaronKauf (talk) 19:26, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Shailaja.k

Hi i noticed your edits on Dummy variable (statistics). There was some error in the changed equations. I have rectified them. also, about the paragraph that has been added on the dummy variable trap in the section "incorporating a dummy independent variable": i have explained the dummy variable trap in detail in the section "precautions in the usage of dummy variables". so can that paragraph be removed? it has been repeated. Thanks. Shailaja.k (talk) 20:12, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Grammar question

Could you chime in at Talk:Fixed point combinator#Requested move? Cheers, —Ruud 20:06, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

New Page Patrol survey

New page patrol – Survey Invitation Hello Michael Hardy! The WMF is currently developing new tools to make new page patrolling much easier. Whether you have patrolled many pages or only a few, we now need to know about your experience. The survey takes only 6 minutes, and the information you provide will not be shared with third parties other than to assist us in analyzing the results of the survey; the WMF will not use the information to identify you. If this invitation also appears on other accounts you may have, please complete the survey once only. If this has been sent to you in error and you have never patrolled new pages, please ignore it. Please click HERE to take part. Many thanks in advance for providing this essential feedback. You are receiving this invitation because you have patrolled new pages. For more information, please see NPP Survey

Proposed deletion of Manifold (automotive)

The article Manifold (automotive) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Page no longer needed; Incomplete disambiguation (see WP:INCDAB]]). Items have now been merged with Manifold (disambiguation) where they will be more easily found.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. France3470 (talk) 13:58, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

hello michael the genius i just added a few topics to index of wave articles, should i add wave equations to it, how do i add that topic page to another page as a add on. user shawn laser lightning plasma — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shawn laser lightning plasma (talk • contribs) 09:07, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Pythagorean

I notice you have created List of things named after Pythagoras, which seems to be a content fork of Pythagorean. I was tempted to add a speedy tag, but perhaps I am missing something?-- 202.124.72.91 (talk) 06:44, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

In some cases, like list of things named after Leonhard Euler or list of things named after Bernhard Riemann, there should be a page with that title. In this case, maybe there are reasons to merge the two. I'll ponder this further. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:08, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Joan Francés Fulcònis

Hello, I added two references on this article (the edition listed in the bibliography was in fact a critical study of the primary souce - Fulconis' incunable - and the result of a thesis dissertation that I added). As an Occitan Language writer, Fulconis was studied by Robert Lafont, an occitan critic whose main work on occitan literature I listed in the bibliography. I copied a quote from this book and quickly translated it, but this translation definitively needs to be revised since, as you can see, english is not my mother tongue.

Please tell me if the could be enough.

Sincerely, --Lembeye (talk) 12:28, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Usage share of operating systems

There is an ongoing poll on consensus in using median. As You commented in a related discussion, I would ask You to vote there. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 16:44, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Statistical proof

Hi Michael. You might like to check what is happening to Statistical proof since you've been there before! Tayste (edits) 01:44, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Multivariate Normal Distribution

I'd also invite your comment on the Talk:Multivariate_normal_distribution#Building_a_consensus page regarding how to best to present the MVN in the positive definite / non-negative definite cases. Marc.coram (talk) 06:30, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Joan Francés Fulcònis

Hello, please, may I ask you if, with the sources I added, you think it could be possible to remove the tag concerning sources. Thank you. Sincerely. --Lembeye (talk) 13:06, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think I'm the one who added that tag to the page. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:31, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry and thanks.--Lembeye (talk) 13:46, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

out-of-context so-called "definition"

How is anyone who doesn't already know all about the t-distribution supposed to understand this when you omitted all explanation of what t values are and the fact that this applies to populations that are normally distibuted? Michael Hardy (talk) 14:06, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the above. I see your point. I took the definition from a standard text but I guess it was out of context. If you could add the examples of scenarios where T-Test can be use and where it can't be used, it would be great. Thanks--History Sleuth (talk) 22:18, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Geometric function theory

You might have noticed that I am adding quite a lot of content on this topic, particularly on univalent functions. So far that subject is in a very poor state. Adding the content takes time and involves a series of inter-related articles, that could possibly at some stage become a wikipedia category. In particular there is at present no adequate material on singular integral operators (Cauchy transforms) on curves. I intend to write that material in the near future. I would appreciate it if you could please not tag articles as orphans or for rescue in the immediate future, as it sends out a very mixed signal. Up until now, very few others have added content in this subject. (Of course, Oded Schramm was an expert contributor.) Please be more patient. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 12:05, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Latex and mbox

I've come across the essay against the use of \mbox which you appear to have written. It is good to know that \text can be used in <math> formulas in WP, and I will do so when convenient. However, I think the essay does not properly represent the role of \mbox in LaTeX, and when I started using \text as you suggested I was in for a surprise: namely the macro \text is not defined in basic LaTeX. After playing around a bit I found out that it is actually a functionality added by the amstext package (loaded through amsmath). For WP (and stackexchange) it is OK, since amsmath is apparently loaded when processing math formulas. However, when your essay is trying to educate general LaTeX users, I think that it should be a bit more nuanced about this, and at the very least mention that a package is required for getting \text to work.

Also I don't get the point you make when you say "When LaTeX is used in the normal way, as opposed to being used on web pages, \mbox does not have the effect of causing things to appear in text mode; nor is that its purpose". It certainly does break out of math mode (so spaces no longer are ignored, and many other changes of handling occur), and takes over the attributes of the surrounding text mode (it will for instance use text italics if you happened to be inside a theorem). In fact as far as I can tell \text does quite the same things, except that it tries to adapt intelligently (and no doubt somewhat expensively) to the place in the formula in which the text appears. Indeed, I've checked the definition, and apart from size fiddling, \text ultimately reduces to an \mbox (or more precisely, both reduce to an \hbox primitive), Really, if the purpose is to put some side condition in text to a displayed equation, where logically one would want to match the text surrounding the display, I don't see any reason why using \mbox should be considered inferior to using \text.

Just one more related point, I've found that in WP both \mbox and \text have the annoying limitation of not allowing to switch back to math mode as one would do in LaTeX (the limitation is really in the lexing rules for math formulas). So the following fails:

:<math>\binom nk=0\qquad \text{if $k<0$ or $k>n$}</math>

and one has to revert to the ugly

:<math>\binom nk=0\qquad \text{if }k<0\text{ or }k>n.</math>

Note that in StackExchange one can use the former in displayed math (but not in text math; although it is hardly useful in text math, I find this curious). Marc van Leeuwen (talk) 13:02, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

question about line break

Hi,

is there a way to prohibit a line break between ℓ and its indices in the formula ℓn
p? MOS does not even mention nbsp, even less so the (deprecated) nobr et cet.

Thanks, Sasha (talk) 03:54, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but the "nowrap" template comes to mind. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:23, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

thanks! Sasha (talk) 20:14, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Typesetting summation indices

Hi. I was referred to you by Trovatore. I am hoping you could help me typeset a summation with a multiline subscript index. Usually when using LaTeX I use the \substack command but unfortunately Wikipedia can't parse it. I am trying to create a sum where the index is n = 0 with the additional condition n odd. Also, when using \mbox for the "odd" part the text is rendered larger than the rest of the condition. Your advice would be appreciated. Thank you. NereusAJ (talk) 05:55, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

I think I've used "smallmatrix" for that: \sum_{\begin{smallmatrix} i \ge 0 \\ i\ne 6 \end{smallmatrix}}

$\sum_{\begin{smallmatrix} i \ge 0 \\ i\ne 6 \end{smallmatrix}}$

Michael Hardy (talk) 21:58, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. NereusAJ (talk) 02:27, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Grain Boundary Strengthening - Subgrain Strengthening

Dear Michael,

I made an edit on the stated article Grain Boundary Strengthening in the subsection "Subgrain Strengthening". I saw that you had written that the Hall-petch relation breaks down at subgrain sizes of approximately 0.1nm. This seemed rather unphysical (as it is about the size of an atom...) so I read the article you cited. It stated that the Hall-Petch relation broke down at around 8µm and the λ^{-1} broke down at 0.1µm, so I assumed that you had made a typo and you really meant 0.1µm, as this was the length scale discussed in the article. Is this true, do you agree with this change?

I look forward to hearing your opinion.

Yours sincerely,

Gloriphobia (talk) 13:27, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I did some copy-editing on that article, but I don't recall that I changed anything about that. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:25, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification

Hi. When you recently edited Ellis–Numakura lemma, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Lemma (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:37, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Polygon/polytope density - merge articles and rename

Proposed at Talk:Polytope density — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:33, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks! — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:46, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification

Hi. When you recently edited Smooth completion, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Function field (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:43, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Nevanlinna theory

Hi,

Pym1507 has recently expanded the article Nevanlinna theory (to my modest opinion, it is now very nice and readable). Could you please have a look at the formatting and other conventions?

Thank you very much, Sasha (talk) 23:53, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Descriptive statistic(s)

It is also a count noun with a singular form: the arithmetic mean is one statistic that can be used in summarizing a data set, the median is another such statistic; these two statistics are each generally much more useful for descriptive purposes than the mode. Note that the term descriptive statistic is actually used in this sense in the article. But I agree that the mass-noun sense of descriptive statistics is more common than this count-noun sense, and is the meaning covered by the referenced textbook.  --Lambiam 10:11, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification

Hi. When you recently edited Hierarchical Dirichlet process, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Bayesian (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:00, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Linking to Scholarpedia

• Fnfal (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · edit filter log · block user · block log)

Hello Michael. I have the impression you might be a participant in Scholarpedia. See the contributions of Fnfal, who is adding links to Scholarpedia to a lot of fluid mechanics articles. It seems there might be some way WP could cooperate with those folks, but Fnfal's activity risks being seen as conventional spam. Generally, Fnfal adds links to work by Gregory Falkovich. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 17:35, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I clicked on several of his recent edits and didn't see any in which he added links to Scholarpedia. If they're in the external links section and link to relevant articles, how do they risk being seen as spam? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:46, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have written down the diffs that I found. Since I can't reproduce my original finding, I started over by scanning through all the 485 links from Wikipedia to Scholarpedia that still exist and most of them seem fine. It is always embarrassing when the Scholarpedia article is better than ours! EdJohnston (talk) 03:39, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification

Hi. When you recently edited List of statistics articles, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Bayesian (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:45, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

This is one of those (rare?) instances where it's a good idea to link to a disambiguation page from something that's not just a redirect. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:05, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Creating article

Can you help me with my article so that it appears better on Ramanujan's master theorem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramanujan%27s_Master_Theorem (Sumitkumarjha75 (talk) 04:05, 23 January 2012 (UTC))

Disambiguation link notification

Hi. When you recently edited Method acting, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page The Method (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:14, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Newbie thanks you for bringing to her attention that we use sentence case in headings

Thanks for cleaning up the headings on the box counting page. I'm new...I'll get it right eventually. Akarpe (talk) 18:17, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

tb

Hello, Michael Hardy. You have new messages at PamD's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Disambiguation link notification

Hi. When you recently edited Goncharov conjecture, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page K-group (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:47, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification

Hi. When you recently edited Picard–Lefschetz theory, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Critical point (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:39, 22 February 2012 (UTC)