User talk:Toby Bartels/2005

Notation for the empty set: "{}" vs. "∅"[edit]

Of course, people that are interested in æsthetics are free to discuss their personal preferences as much as they like; I have my own opinion on this matter, which I'd be happy to chat about

I would like to get your opinion on this topic. What symbol do you prefer and what is the reason ? In case you use both symbols when do you use which symbol and what is your reasoning ? MathMartin 19:37, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I generally (in handwriting, or in printed material produced by TeX) prefer the special symbol "∅". Especially in a context where there are many brackets, "{}" can get lost. (Using "{ }" alleviates this somewhat.) Also, since I can be very pedantic with my notation, I know that "{}" doesn't really follow the pattern established by "{a}", "{a,b}", "{a,b,c}", etc (count the commas); so if I must use an exceptional symbol anyway, then I may as well go all out. Similary, I like to have a special symbol for the empty list (that is the sequence of length zero); this symbol is less standardised, but I tend to use "*" (another common alternative is "ε").

However, the case for "{}" is stronger in a context like Wikipedia. First of all, there are of course the difficulties in getting "∅" to show up, as people have been discussing on the Wikiproject talk page; and there are issues (however ephemeral they may be) of making the text look nice. Also, in a hypertext environment, we want to avoid using more symbols than necessary, so that people don't have to look up their meanings if they read pages in an order that we don't expect. Thus I would never use "*" for the empty list in Wikipedia (at least not without good reason and an explanation), since this is not fully standardised; but even the more standard "∅" for the empty set really should have an explanation wherever it's used.

I don't know how consistent I've been in the past, but I think that on Wikipedia, I would want to give an explanation for either symbol; just a brief "where "{}" is the empty set" or "where "∅" is the empty set" (at the first mention) would do. Not only does this give the perfect opportunity to link; it also means that I don't have to decide if the reader is likely to recognise the symbol. (Even "{}" can be hard to recognise, even to a reader familiar with set listing notation, since it's a degenerate case. For the uninitiated, degenerate cases are often tricky -- setting aside the matter of the number of commas.) For maximal beauty, I'd probably use "{}" inline but "∅" (in the form "<math> \varnothing </math>") for displayed TeXvc. (I never use TeXvc inline, so that wouldn't come up.) So that's the bottom line.

Of course, I would never want to put any of this into the official suggestions on the Wikiproject page; it's entirely unnecessary.

-- Toby Bartels 11:05, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer. Sorry for the really long delay, I somehow missed your reply on my watchlist and then forgot about the topic. Your explanation did not really clear things up for me. But a comment from User:Miguel did. See my post at User talk:Miguel.

As for the comma pattern one would have to write { }, { ,a}, { ,a,b} instead of { }, {a},{a,b}.MathMartin 18:17, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, I really don't agree with Miguel. "{}" and "∅" are both names for the empty set; in other words, {} is the empty set, and ∅ is the empty set. I like to write the "logical commas" (as I call them) as "{}", "{a,}", "{a,b,}", etc; but your way is just as logical. ^_^ -- Toby Bartels 04:34, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

Call for AMA election[edit]

AMA Member Advocate,

There's a poll currently in the AMA Homepage about making a new AMA Coordinator election. Please, cast your vote there (though it's not mandatory). Any comments you have about this, write it on the AMA Homepage talk page. Cheers, --Neigel von Teighen 18:43, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Proposals for AMA Membership Meeting[edit]

As AMA Coordinator I am requesting that suggestions be placed on Wikipedia:AMA Membership Meeting plans for our first membership meeting, to be held in the near future, (hopefully before any election occurs.) Since we have never had any kind of "official" meeting we need to discuss how this will occur (i.e. Wiki pages or IRC channel), how it will be structured (i.e. meeting agenda) and if there will be any "chair" to supervise the meeting and meeting "secretary" to write up minutes or keep some kind of official record of what transpires. Thanks in advance for your input and your continued work as an advocate. — © Alex756

OFFICIAL AMA MEETING NOTICE[edit]

The first AMA Membership meeting will be held on Sunday January 23, 2005 at 19:00 UTC on freenode IRC channel #AMA. That is 2 PM Eastern NA Time, 11 AM Pacific NA Time, and 8 PM Central European (Amsterdam/Stokholm/Warsaw/Venice) Time. All members are invited to attend. — © Alex756 19:40, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Logs of first AMA Membership meeting[edit]

You may view the log of the first meeting on the following two pages: Wikipedia:AMA IRC Meeting log (1-23-05) (first hour) and Wikipedia:AMA IRC Meeting log (1-23-05) Pt II (remainder of meeting). If you are interested in commenting on the agenda of the meeting please do so here: Wikipedia:AMA Meeting (suggested topics).

OFFICIAL SECOND MEETING NOTICE AND REQUEST FOR INFORMATION[edit]

The second AMA Membership meeting will be held on Sunday January 30 2005 at 19:00 UTC on freenode IRC channel #AMA. That is 2 PM Eastern NA Time, 11 AM Pacific NA Time, and 8 PM Central European (Amsterdam/Stokholm/Warsaw/Venice) Time. All members are invited to attend. The coordinator is requesting that members submit the following information for the upcoming coordinator’s report:

How many individuals did you help as an advocate
What is the maximum amount of time you put into a case
Do you feel your work as an advocate was successful?
How can the advocacy program of the AMA be improved?

Thank you. Please submit your responses here: Wikipedia:AMA Coordinator/January 2005 Survey

— © Alex756 23:00, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC) (The Coordinator)

OFFICIAL THIRD MEETING NOTICE AND REQUEST FOR INFORMATION[edit]

The second AMA IRC Membership meeting was held on Sunday January 30, 2005 at 19:00 UTC on freenode.net IRC channel #AMA. Attending were Wally, Metasquares, Anthere, Sam Spade, and alex756 (coordinator). The log of the second meeting can be found here: Wikipedia:AMA IRC Meeting log (1-30-05).

The third AMA Membership meeting will be held on Saturday February 12, 2005 at 17:00 UTC on freenode IRC channel #AMA. That is 12:00 Noon Eastern NA Time, 9 AM Pacific NA Time, and 6 PM Central European (Amsterdam/Stokholm/Warsaw/Venice) Time. All members are invited to attend.

Separation axioms[edit]

Hi Toby. I know you've done a lot of work on the separation axioms, so I wanted to draw your attention to an issue I raised at Talk:Urysohn space. I just wanted your input. By the way, are we ever going to see the History of the separation axioms article that you promised? I would very much like to read it. Besides which, it would be useful for avoid issues like this in the future. -- Fropuff 16:09, 2005 Feb 3 (UTC)

I've replied on Talk:Urysohn space. Regarding History of the separation axioms, well ... that subject turns out to be more complicated than I anticipated, so I never got a clear idea of it before I was drawn on to other topics. But I think that I can whip up something stubby that will at least address the terminological points that I promised so long ago. -- Toby Bartels 00:55, 2005 Feb 8 (UTC)

I suspected as much. Still, I think even a stubby article on the history/terminology would help. Others can add to it later. I'll contribute what I can. -- Fropuff 05:01, 2005 Feb 8 (UTC)

Well, I've begun it! -- Toby Bartels 11:03, 2005 Feb 8 (UTC)

Moving images from Wikipedia to Wikimedia Commons[edit]

Hi. I'm a little confused about how to correctly move images from here to the Commons, without losing information or violating the GFDL. I've started a discussion at Talk:Wikimedia Commons#Moving images to the Commons, and your input would be appreciated. – Quadell ^{(talk) (sleuth)} 19:52, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

New Mathematics Wikiportal[edit]

I noticed you've done some work on Mathematics articles. I wanted to point out to you the new Mathematics Wikiportal— more specifically, to the Mathematics Collaboration of the Week page. I'm looking for any math-related stubs or non-existant articles that you would like to see on Wikipedia. Additionally, I wondered if you'd be willing to help out on some of the Collaboration of the Week pages.

I encourage you to vote on the current Collaboration of the Week, because I'm very interested in which articles you think need to be written or added to, and because I understand that I cannot do the enormous amount of work required on some of the Math stubs alone. I'm asking for your help, and also your critiques on the way the portal is set up.

Please direct all comments to my user-talk page, the Math Wikiportal talk page, or the Math Collaboration of the Week talk page. Thanks a lot for your support! ral315 02:54, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Bounded[edit]

Hi Toby. I saw your move of Bounded to Boundedness. That suprised me a bit. Could you make the case for the move? Oleg Alexandrov 15:57, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

See Talk:Boundedness for reply. Oleg Alexandrov 18:45, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Bounded again[edit]

First, some context.

~~The disambiguation page~~ The new page (Bounded function) is great. However, the disambiguation page should still be at Boundedness, which is, of course, not in any sense a made-up word -- as evidenced by the fact that it is used! (I cited an example above.) -- Toby Bartels 04:41, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

I disagree, and I feel strongly about it. Would you like to post this on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics, so that we get more opinions? Please do not make unilateral changes before that; above, you had had one week to reply to my comment before I actually performed the move back to bounded. Oleg Alexandrov 04:55, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I take it back. The disambiguation page is terrible! Don't you know how to make a disambiguation page? You can look it up at Wikipedia:Disambiguation (particularly section 3) if you like. Since I've just gone through all the work of fixing all of the links to Bounded, and fixing the page Boundedness (which you left redirected the wrong way), and fixing the amazing distortion of grammar that you put through on Totally bounded space, I don't feel the least bit unjustified in that, after fixing all of that as smoothly as I could, the page has just now ended up back at Boundedness.

Dear Toby. You are not an easy person to work with. You had one week to say if you agree with making bounded into disambiguation. You did not say anything. Then, after waiting for one week, I performed the move, and I clearly asked you (above) to not rush back moving things again (that is, show me the same courtesy as I showed you). I said let us talk.

You however, did exactly the opposite of what I asked you, and unilaterarly did the move, and by disambiguating all the links, you made things pretty much irreversible. As such, please do not count on me to be involved in this discussion anymore. I hope that when we intersect in the future, it will be in more pleasant circumstances. Oleg Alexandrov 16:52, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand you. If you want to move it back to Bounded, then this is easy to do. Use Special:Movepage, and all of the links will continue to work properly. The only thing that requires an administrator's help to reverse (at least cleanly) is the existence of the disambiguation page. (This is a common situation, actually.) Since everybody is in favour of the disambiguation page, that's not a problem.

As for courtesy, I don't see how you showed me more courtesy by waiting a week before doing something that I'd already said would be a bad idea, and leaving things in a mess and requiring the use of administrator powers to change; than I showed you by not waiting, but leaving things in a situation that you could restore to your preference in a single action while keeping every link in working order.

-- Toby Bartels 21:23, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

~~You cannot claim you said it would be a bad idea~~ — (Now that I re-read the comments, I must say you are right.) When we had that discussion you agreed with us that "bounded set" and "bounded function" would be acceptable. So I had written "bounded function", and I asked all of you what to do next. You did not reply.

Now, you are right that I put "bounded" instead of "boundedness" in one place. My mistake; even if it did not deserve that comment I got from you.

Could you be more specific about what else I messed up. As far as I am aware, I had moved "boundedness" to "bounded set", then I made "bounded" into disambiguation. I know that some of the links should have been disambiguated, but that was not urgent. Did I miss something? Please be specific. Please. Maybe I am dumb, but I want a gentle explanation from you, and preferably without offensive statements. Oleg Alexandrov 23:09, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The monotonicity article[edit]

Hi Toby. I've written some comments and a proposal at Talk:monotonicity. I'd be interested in your thoughts. Paul August ☎ 17:07, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, and the Mathematics Project Participants List[edit]

Hi Toby, Thanks for your input on monotonicity. You may have noticed that I've gone ahead and made it a redirect to monotonic function. I now own a copy of Schechter's Handbook of Analysis and Its Foundations and I may tackle the "order convergence" article, when I have time ;-)

On an unrelated matter, after some discussion here, I've converted the "WikiProject Mathematics Participants List" into a table. It is now alphabetical, includes links to the participant's talk page and contribution list, and has a field for "Areas of Interest". I'm letting you know, so you can update your entry, if you want.

Paul August ☎ 22:48, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

Urysohn's Lemma[edit]

I moved Urysohn's Lemma to Urysohn's lemma, as I saw no need to have capital L. I fixed all the redirects. I saw only later that it was you who did either the move to Urysohn's Lemma, or otherwise some redirects to it. Either way, it seems you have an opinion about this issue, and I did not realize it until after the fact.

That said, if you disagree, let us please consult before you move things back. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 01:29, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Converted to PNG[edit]

Images Image:Regular.gif and Image:Normalspace.gif have been converted to PNG, and are now listed in WP:IFD. --Fibonacci 20:01, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Split metric space into metric (mathematics) and metric space[edit]

Hi,

I have split metric space into metric (mathematics) and metric space. User:Fropuff does not like the split. It would be nice if you could provide your opinion at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Metric_space#Split_metric_space_into_metric_.28mathematics.29_and_metric_space ]. --MathMartin

AMA Meeting Proposal[edit]

Hi! I put together a proposal for another AMA meeting that I'm hopeful you can chime in on. --Wgfinley 20:16, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

For a change from mathematics, you could revisit Wikipedia maori[edit]

http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Toby_Bartels

Now about 270 articles, some even scientific. We do have Spaniards and Germans and various Asiatic people doing interwiki links, but there's probably more to be done. You could edit the links on your User page so that they don't just go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Kind regards

Robin Patterson 11:24, 11 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Baire category theorem[edit]

* (BCT1) Every non-empty complete metric space is a Baire space. More generally, every topological space which is homeomorphic to an open subset of a complete pseudometric space is a Baire space.

* (BCT2) Every non-empty locally compact Hausdorff space is a Baire space.

Note that neither of these statements implies the other, since there is a complete metric space which is not locally compact (the Baire space of irrational numbers), and there is a locally compact Hausdorff space which is not metrizable (uncountable Fort space). See Steen and Seebach in the references below.

Yes, but this does not say that there is a locally compact Hausdorff space X such that there does not exist a complete pseudometric space Y for which X is homeomorphic to an open subset of Y. Can you prove this stronger statement? Revolver 10:05, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

LA-area meetup[edit]

There is an LA-area Wikipedia meetup being planned for Monday, July 25, 2005 at 7:30pm. For more info, see User:Eric Shalov/Wikimeetup. FYI: User:AllyUnion is (was?) also at UCR. BlankVerse ∅ 08:01, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Human Rights Servey on Wikipedia (The final post of I_sterbinski)[edit]

Dear all,

Wikipedia was recently a subject of intensive research of an huge international human right organization. A team of people from different nationalities and ages were acting on Wikipedia for 20 days, investigating previously noted anomalities of Wikipedia free editing and forming a final report, which (between the others similar reports) will later be a guide to all future moves of the organization concerning Wikipedia. Acting under an account of a real person, their privacy is to be held private. Therefore, very few private information will be revealed.
Also, this is a result of the lack of final possition of the organization concerning Wikipedia and human rights, which was still not formed.

The team's final post on Wikipedia, where they explain their actions can be found on the following addresses:

The team would like to thank to all the persons who took part in the correspondence with us.
We also want to appologise for keeping our identity secret for a longer period.

Best regards,
Aleksandar, Biljana, Asparuh, Christos, Valjon, Michael and Ana Luiza
I sterbinski 01:47, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

AMA Request for Assistance - An Advocate Needed[edit]

Could you please help?

I have been a positively contributing editor of the polygamy article since the end of last year, with numerous amounts of knowledge on the subject. However, I have subsequently been attacked by POV anti-polygamists who have undermined the article with their POV agenda and who now consistently prevent me from editing anything in it since the end of April. I have produced volumes of evidence of the abuse in the TALK pages, which anti-polygamists have even attempted to hide by "archiving."

On July 18, 2005, I made an AMA Request for Assistance - An Advocate Needed, requesting AMA help from Kmweber. They quickly agreed to help, but needed a few days due to a new real world job. As of this writing, I have yet to ever hear from them again (which is starting to concern me at this point). That's why I am now seeking your help, if you are willing. (As you can see, I am a patient person, but recent events of abuse have given me need to speed up the process, if possible.)

Recently, in the ongoing dispute, while we were in the middle of a resolution process, someone else interfered and "offered to help." When I was not willing to accept their interference due to specific concerns, they ignored me and started an entire new set-up. All which had preceded that interference had then become ignored. Instead, I was falsely accused of refusing to seek rsolution. Then a Requests for comment/Researcher99 page was created and I was fully set-up.

I have made a chronology there to bring you up to speed on all of the relevant history of the problem. I know it's a lot to read, but I have really been through a lot! I really do need a sincere and dedicated AMA's help.

Could you please help? If you could, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks.

Researcher 00:01, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please vote on list of lists, a featured list candidate[edit]

Please vote at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of lists of mathematical topics. Michael Hardy 20:34, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Template/Workshop[edit]

You, or any Wikipedia user, can contribute your suggestions and comments to the /Workshop page of any active arbitration case. Comments on evidence or proposals can help in understanding the import of evidence and in refining proposals. Proposed principles, findings of fact, or remedies may be listed on /Proposed decision and form part of the final decision. Fred Bauder 19:37, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Eventualism[edit]

Have you thought about joining the AIW's eventualist subgroup (founded by me)?

Canadianism 00:50, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]