Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics

First, an important note for everyone to remember: some Wikipedians have come together to make some suggestions about how we might organize articles about mathematics. These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obliged to follow them. This WikiProject is not prescriptive. If you do not yet know what to write, or how to write it, these suggestions may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write and/or improve mathematics articles! See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics) for a detailed discussion of issues related to writing mathematics articles on Wikipedia. Project scope This WikiProject aimed originally to organize articles in the area of mathematics; in its broadest terms, this may include overlap into the areas of physics, computer science, operations research, and other areas. The initial goals of this WikiProject were to: provide a standard "bare bones" format for mathematical articles provide useful links for article writers provide a location to discuss issues relating to this section of Wikipedia provide standards for mathematical notation using wikified HTML/TeX. The List of mathematics articles is used by contributors to keep track of changes to the entire content of mathematics in Wikipedia, in a fashion similar to the more general "Recent Changes" link. If you add new articles which are at least remotely related to mathematics (including biographies of mathematicians, and so on), please add them to that list, so that everyone can review / add to / mercilessly savage your contributions. A lists of topics for subdisciplines can be found at the list of mathematical topics. Update 2006 This project was started in 2002; not surprisingly things have moved on. For example the scope of this project would not now include many physics pages, outside some aspects of theoretical physics. The 'house style' of mathematics articles is now reasonably well established. The main issues for WP Mathematics are now probably the following. Keeping track of, by listing and categorising, all relevant articles. There are over 10000 of them (it does depend on how one counts areas such as statistics, cryptography and so on). The overall organisation is pretty much in place, by now. There is now a bot that catches newly-categorised pages, so adding even an approximate category is important. Bringing stubs up to a reasonable standard. There are always plenty of pages that are definition-only. It is always good to add motivation and examples. Developing 'core articles' into good expositions. As anyone who teaches the subject knows, the gap between stating some true facts, and really putting over a topic, is quite large. Here we can consider also the need to add history and proper attributions. Expanding coverage to bring the subject up to date. This is a huge task, so the main requirements are patience, and not to be discouraged. Much of the advanced material is still really from the 1950s. Hoaxing There has been some of this; most Wikipedians, naturally enough, don't feel qualified to pronounce on articles purporting to be mathematical. If not us, who? Report anything suspect on the talk page of this page. Charles Matthews 16:55, 3 January 2006 (UTC) Some issues to think about Probably the hardest part of writing a mathematical article (actually, any article) is the difficulty of addressing the level of mathematical knowledge on the part of the reader. For example, when writing about a field, do we assume that the reader already knows group theory? A general approach is to start simple, then move toward more abstract and general statements as the article proceeds. The structure described below is one way of achieving this. When you need to describe a concept in terms of some other concept (for example, explaining rational numbers in terms of integers), be sure to: Add a (prominent) link to the relevant article (in this case, integer). As with other Wikipedia articles, avoid duplicate links. If it makes sense, add a very quick (and naive) explanation/description (in this case, "positive or negative whole numbers" might work). If the relevant article has not been written yet, then create a good stub, and list it on the list of mathematical topics (see below) - the odds are good that someone will expand on it. Since some terminology varies from author to author in the literature, you can check the Wikipedia article on an ambiguous term (if one exists) to see what usage is established here (or to see if you want to try to change that). It's worth a bit of time to just peruse what's already in the 'pedia; this will give you a feel for what type of information is already available, and how much detail you need to provide. See Wikipedia:WikiProject General Audience for a project whose goal is to help make articles more accessible. Scientific citation guidelines provides guidance for writing readable and well referenced scientific and mathematical articles. Conventions The following pages attempt to describe certain conventions for articles with mathematical content. Please read, comment on, improve, criticize, and if appropriate, follow these standards. Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Conventions - Working list of terminology conventions. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (theorems) Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics) Wikipedia:Algorithms on Wikipedia (proposed) Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines Classification There is no one single, prescribed method for classifying mathematics articles. Both the lists and the categories have grown organically, rather than being imported. See also areas of mathematics. List of publications in mathematics There is an effort to organize a list of important publications in many areas of science. Such a list captures the major achievements in each field and might be a valuable asset for one trying to learn a new field.The List of publications in computer science is the oldest and most mature list and might show the goal of the lists. The rest of the list needs many more contributions. Please help improve the mathematics related lists: List of publications in mathematics List of publications in statistics List of publications in computer science

A Tesseract Portal:Boxheader Mathematics portal How to help — open tasks and things to do Contributors — a list of project participants. Please introduce yourself. Articles List of mathematics articles — containing approximately 31444 articles Recent activity on mathematics articles Editor resources Manual of style for mathematics Conventions — naming and terminology conventions Subpages and subprojects PlanetMath Collaborations Math Wikipedia 1.0 Mathematical Graphics Discussion pages Main discussion page Proofs — discussion on proofs and proof style Motivation — discussion on the issue of motivation of mathematics articles Mathematics reference desk Things to do Looking for something to do? There are several places on Wikipedia where mathematics related requests, suggestions and tasks have been collected together: What Where Suggest or edit a mathematics article needing attention Pages needing attention: Mathematics Request or write a mathematics article Requested articles: Mathematics Request or provide an image Requested images: Mathematics Expand a mathematics "stub" Mathematics stubs Suggest or edit a redirect which could have its own article Redirects with possibilities: Mathematics Help move PlanetMath content onto Wikipedia PlanetMath Exchange Add or find a "missing" mathematics article Missing: Mathematics Turn a "red link" blue Mathematical redlinks Maintain the mathematics portal Portal:Mathematics Review current mathematics activity Current activity Help resolve a dispute Requests for comment: Mathematics Ask or answer a question about mathematics Reference desk: Mathematics Suggest nominations for collaboration Mathematics Collaboration of the Week Help grade maths articles for Wikipedia 1.0 Wikipedia 1.0 Graded articles Mathematics articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 9 4 12 4 2 31 FL 2 1 3 FM 64 64 GA 15 22 56 86 9 188 B 125 267 532 409 54 1,387 C 53 553 1,039 1,333 652 3,630 Start 67 2,424 6,467 2,499 11,457 Stub 99 5,055 1 1,142 6,297 List 2 14 72 194 7 68 357 Draft 1 137 138 Category 1,739 1,739 Disambig 5 11 43 59 File 307 307 Portal 2 2 Project 1 25 26 52 Redirect 1 4 36 484 697 1,222 Template 1,011 1,011 NA 1 6 7 Assessed 205 932 4,277 14,071 4,040 4,426 27,951 Unassessed 19 686 705 Total 205 932 4,277 14,090 4,040 5,112 28,656 WikiWork factors (?) ω = 114,124 Ω = 4.96 Featured articles As of January 31 2007, there are thirteen mathematics articles which are featured articles (date featured in brackets, bold articles have appeared on main page): Prisoner's dilemma (4 April 2002) Trigonometric function (20 December 2003) Infinite monkey theorem (29 September 2004) Margin of error (12 October 2004, under review) Monty Hall problem (23 July 2005) Carl Friedrich Gauss (4 August 2005) Blaise Pascal (19 August 2005) Game theory (6 December 2005) Marian Rejewski (19 January 2006) Cryptography (2 July 2006) Leonhard Euler (8 October 2006) 0.999... (10 October 2006) Polar coordinate system (31 January 2007) Featured pictures Mandelpart2.jpg at Mandelbrot set, by Evercat Mandel zoom 00 mandelbrot set.jpg at Mandelbrot set, by Wolfgangbeyer Buddhabrot-deep.jpg at Buddhabrot, by Evercat Lorenz attractor yb.svg at Lorenz attractor, by Wikimol Tetrahedral group 2.svg at Symmetry group, by Debivort Villarceau circles.gif at Villarceau circles, by Kieff Pi-unrolled-720.gif Pi Unrolled at Pi, by John Reid Tesseract.gif at Tesseract, by JasonHise Former featured articles former featured articles as of January 24 2007. Ordinal (4 April 2002 — 19 January 2004) Statistics (4 April 2002 — 19 January 2004) Pythagorean theorem (4 April 2002 — 21 March 2004) Illegal prime (28 August 2003 — 13 July 2004) Computational complexity theory (4 April 2002 — 23 August 2004) Vacuous truth (6 January 2004 — 20 September 2004) Triangle (May 10 2004 — 3 March 2005) Fractal  (12 July 2004 — 15 September 2005) Algorithm (24 July 2002 — 28 May 2006) Eigenvalue, eigenvector and eigenspace (16 October 2005 - 19 September 2006) Ackermann function (18 December 2003 — 21 October 2006) Regular polytope (18 November 2004— 23 January 2007) Good articles Good Articles, as of January 29 2007. Mathematicians: Cantor, Georg Hilbert, David Turing, Alan Mathematics: Calculus Derivative Euclidean geometry Hilbert space Homotopy groups of spheres Klee's measure problem Mathematics Nash equilibrium Order theory Ordinal number Pythagorean theorem Quadratic equation Sylvester's sequence Znám's problem Puzzles: Rubik's Cube Candidates for Featured Article or Good Article status As of January 29 2007 there are no mathematical candidates.