Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

Erdős number‎ categories nominated for deletion

This is the third nomination and with the concerns last time that the Math WikiProject wasn't notified I'm making sure you are the first to know about it this time around. __meco 13:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Please note, "endorse" vs "overturn" at the deletion review page

At the Deletion Review Page, where folks are discussing wether to overturn the deletion of the Erdos Number Categories, some folks are voting "endorse", with comments suggesting they mean "endorse the category". Unfortunately, "endorse" in this context means "endorse the closure of the ballot to delete", i.e. the deletion. I think most of us want to vote "overturn". There are examples of both kinds of votes, with clarifying comments, at that deletion review item and in other items near it. We certainly can't show any consensus if we vote mistakenly :-) Thanks, Pete St.John 19:18, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

---

The crazies have won, Erdős number categories are no more. See the archived discussion, where the summary is

• The result of the debate was delete. I honestly don't have time to explain every reason why. Strength of argument lends to those who wanted to delete. For the vote-counters, many of the "keeps" relied on the argument "nothing has changed since the last time", which isn't a strong argument at all, and certainly pales to the arguments that the delete people brought up. There were some good arguments on both sides, but as I said, the ones who wanted to delete had the stronger argument. Kbdank71

In other words, the fact that we have made the same arguments so many times we did not see the need to repeat them counted against us! Whatever one thinks of the category, this is an absurd justification for deciding the debate. If there are strong arguments on both sides, the correct result is keep, from lack of consensus. --KSmrq^T 16:15, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

It's fine to disagree with the closure of a CFD, but labelling those who you disagree with as "crazies" is a breach of WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:36, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

It is, indeed, a breach of civility as defined in Wikipedia terms. Then again, continuing to bait someone who's obviously frustrated with the decision is not exactly a wonderful thing to do. This would be a good moment for you to back off. --Bogwoppit 11:46, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

In a probably forlorn attempt to stop another pointless fight, I will point out that Erdos numbers are nothing but a joke, one of the points of which is to fool people into taking them seriously. There sure seem to be a lot of people who have not yet figured this out. R.e.b. 16:59, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

If they're a joke, that's no reason not to take them seriously. The point is that it's a cultural meme. No one takes them seriously (I think?), but the fact that this cultural phenomenon exists should be reported in a serious way---that is the sense in which they should be taken seriously. Michael Hardy 22:45, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a joke Erdős might have enjoyed.

As I said, however, regardless of one's opinion about the benefit of the category, there was clearly no consensus to delete it, and the admin has acted improperly and with an unacceptable explanation. How would you feel if the deletion target was, say, Category:Bourbaki ("initially a clever prank", says the article)? Don't kid yourself that it couldn't happen. --KSmrq^T 18:04, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

If you do not like it, take it to Wikipedia:Deletion review. The meme is significant and it is dealt with at Erdős number. However it is absurd that articles such Linus Pauling, Edward Teller, Louis de Broglie, Jonathan A. Jones and Kenichi Fukui, just to name the ones that came up on my watchlist to delete the category, should be cluttered up with this joke category. Their Erdős number is completely non-notable. --Bduke 01:01, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I assume you're referring to the policy WP:N, which has nothing to say about article content, only whether or not each specific article exists. It has no bearing here. --Cheeser1 04:02, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, no I was not. I was using the word notable in its usual sense, not the WP:N sense. Perhaps I should have used trivial. The Erdős number is interesting and it is fun, but it is completely trivial and inappropriate to put Nobel Prize Chemists into this category. On other issues, I was not impressed by the closing admin's reasons, but as I said if you do not like it, put it to WP:DLR.--Bduke 08:48, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

While personally I would have preferred that the categories had been kept, to be honest that's mostly just because I thought it was sort of cool to be able to find mathematicians' Erdős numbers easily; I couldn't think of any strong argument that it was something that belonged in the category system, which is why I didn't contribute to the deletion discussion. While I have to allow that KSmrq has a point about the closing admin's handling of the situation, I do think he probably got to the right result.

Main point being, let's not let this turn into a math-wikiproject-against-the-world issue. It's not worth the political capital, especially when the argument one might make on the underlying substantive issue (as opposed to complaints about the closing admin) is so weak. It would be reasonable at this point to recreate a list article, I think, if one was deleted on the grounds that it was redundant with the categories, or to create a new one if one never existed. --Trovatore 04:24, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Something to that effect seems to be going on at User:Mikkalai/By Erdos. —David Eppstein 05:18, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I also liked the convenience of being able to scroll down to the bottom of a math biography article and see the subject's Erdos number. One suggestion on the talk page was to put the information in an infobox, instead. [1] --Ramsey2006 15:10, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest a compromise, that it might be more appropriate to have a Category:Mathematicians by Erdős number: I'm not persuaded that Erdős number is an interesting categorization for people in general, and I think it should be listified, but for some mathematicians there is an interest in categorization by Erdős number, even if it is just a meme and a joke. Such a category might more easily survive the attention of the streamliners. I nearly mentioned this in the debate, but there was obviously more heat than light there so I stayed out of it. Geometry guy 20:55, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Reasons to reverse the deletion

• promoting the effective concensus. If every issue were decided by a vote ("is pi transcendental?") most technical issues would be decided wrongly. It's not enough than non-specialists don't understand something, to be justified in destroying it. Democracy needs mechanisms for merit to intrude into policy. Note the current political issue in America, where "separation of church and state" protecting the teaching of Darwinian Evolution in public schools, can be subverted by Creationists simply redefining themeselves as Creation Scientists (so their view is Science, not Religion). They publish their own papers with their own peer-review in their own journals. How is that science, to be distinguished from "our" science, in the courts? The general process of promoting truth (in the sense of propositional calculus, or in the sense of scientific induction) in a world dominated by public opinion, judicial truth, Revelatory Truth, and others, is not trivial. We have to live in this world.
• Support for the Category is not just a clique of wikipidians, but a profession. For example, Ron Graham, a former president of the AMS, "popularizes" Erdos Numbers.
• Erdos' indiosyncracies, unprecedented touring, profligate production, and brilliance are legendary, in fact iconic. Erdos Nubmers have (increasingly) historical and (diminisihing) socio-political significance to mathematicians. Also the Numbers so some extent memorialize the man in a more approopriate way than merely naming a theorem for him.
• This category is in no way less meaningful (nor, perhaps, more meaningful) than categories such as persons born on certain dates, or who live in certain cities, etc. Summary deletion of those categories would evoke a hew and cry from the special interest group that does care. This is a natrual process, and mathematicians need to be able to hew and cry also, as deductive logic is not necessarily effective on the deletionists.
• I have a theory that the deletionists are concerned with "defining people by numbers" perceived as an evil activity, and conceived with very murky notions of "define" (and even "number", e.g. they are confused about Erdos Numbers being upper bounds). If they understood the subject they may not be afraid of it. So part of our motiviation is education, but in a meta-mathematical topic that is outside our usual methods of teaching, e.g. I can't prove that the category should not be deleted, in the same way I would prove L'Hopital's Rule. Pete St.John 22:50, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Admins do as admins please. I don't think this is going anywhere, even with consensus on its side. CRGreathouse (t | c) 00:54, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

There was no reason to delete this, except that some people see it as their job to tear down the work of others.Ryoung122 02:43, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

That's not a fair or appropriate accusation. As much as any of us might disagree with the actions or opinions of others, we should not be jumping to such accusatory conclusions. As for the "admins do as admins please" - I suppose that is true, and perhaps that's a systemic problem on a wiki like this, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth making an honest effort to do something (be it overturn, or listify, or something). --Cheeser1 05:42, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Reversing the Deletion

I've requested a Deletion Review, at this deletion review log item. It's awkward because of the related categories Erdos Number <<X>> that got destroyed, not to mention variant transliterations of "Erdos". But Wiki has a mechanism for consensus among admins, similar to consensus among editors for ordinary contributions, and I think it's fair to give that mechanism a chance to work. Pete St.John 18:23, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Status at this writing

The original vote to delete the category (in this recent 3rd attempt to delete it) had been 11-5 in favor of keeping it (not counting an anonymous IP who voted to delete). The Admin deleted anyway, on the grounds of prefering the arguments to delete. Currently, at the Deletion Review where I have requested overturning that deletion, the vote is close, 6 to overturn and 5 to endorse (the deletion). This isn't the overwhelming 2-1 majority that lost anyway to admin fiat, but I think the standards may be different in a Deletion Review among admins, than the standards applied by an admin reacting to editors. I think at least we are showing the admins that we have a beef. Personally, it seems to me that while we tire of rebutting the same circular objections perpetually, to no apparent effect, the deletionists do not tire. They are like vampires who crave blood but can't be killed. Pete St.John 22:35, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's helpful to refer to this process as a "beef" or to call people vampires. We have plenty of points to make on their own merit, and don't need to make this process any more hostile or tense than it is. --Cheeser1 00:21, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

What is all this talk about "among admins"? DRV isn't for admins only any more than CfD is. The only difference is that DRV is for reviewing a deletion, not simply talking about whether an article should be deleted. JPD (talk) 12:51, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Seemingly that's my mistake. I had construed the Deletion Review as pertaining to admins, I asked for clarification, and the clarification was ambiguous ("anyone can comment" and it seems to mean "the votes keep/overturn are just comments too, in this context"). So we can all "vote", that's great. Thanks.Pete St.John 19:33, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I would suggest that in spite of the passions there should be a civil and constructive atmosphere. Demonizing your opponents is a rather poor taste tactic, at least on Wikipedia. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:57, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

• Two things; first, does "demonizing your opponents" refer to me? I have been somewhat more liberal in my characterization of the predominant opposition, in my expressions here. I have a very low opinion of their rhetoric and practices, but anyway please feel free to point to particulars that you consider excessive.
• Second, I have, in fact, been formally accused of unethical canvassing practices. Cf this item at my talk page, which includes a link to the "ANI" item. I may be misinterpreting the ANI process, it's new to me, but it seems to be a mechanism for addressing unethical practices. I posted my rebuttal there, I'm happy with it so far, but I'm in personal trouble atm, which may detract from my (relatively militant) advocacy of the Erdos Number issue. Some would say that is a Good Thing. Pete St.John 19:33, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

You have posted notices on the pages of individual mathematics contributors about the deletion review. Bad idea; interested parties will see a single notice posted on this page. You have also sometimes slanted your notices to favor overturning. Bad idea; even among mathematicians opinions differ on the merits of these categories, and it is far better to merely urge participation with no prejudice about what the outcome should be.

I myself didn't notice the category deletion until a bot modified several pages I watch. I only just joined the wikiproject, watching this page, on account of this controversy. Alot of mathematicians are interested in mathematics so much more than in politics :-). My feeling is that we were rail-roaded, by a glib result contrary to a clear majority, and that we are still being swamped by a spam-like process of recurring, circular rehashes, so I felt, and feel, that it's important to get out the vote. Democracy loses if only anarchists vote. Quadratically loses. As for slanting my notices, I am deliberating attempting to countervail a movement. I have a side. I take not of guidelines about canvassing and I'm seeking to work within them, but I'd be lying if even pretended to sound indifferent. Pete St.John 21:24, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

In the review itself, any editor may participate; admins have no special status. The purpose of the review is not to rehash the arguments for and against deletion. The relevant question is whether the admin who closed the debate acted properly. For example:

1. The closing summary said arguments from the two prior debates should carry no weight; is that correct procedure?

I'm no expert on the procedure. I would assume that the votes would carry no weight, but the arguements themselves would be fair to cite. The admin, Kbdank71, plainly and energetically supports deletion. Pete St.John 21:24, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

1. The closing summary said good arguments were made on both sides, but the closer preferred one side; is that correct procedure?

apparently the admin who closes may rule against the majority if the arguements favor the minority. Kbdank71 stated his opinion that the arguements for deletion were stronger. He can't seem to point to any specific one that hasn't been rebutted over and over. Admins have alot of latitude, I believe he abused that latitude. But we don't have laws and courts, we have guides and reviews. I seek review. Pete St.John 21:24, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

1. Numerically, the comments in the debate were overwhelmingly in favor of retaining the categories, the opposite of any consensus for deletion; was the closer right to impose an opinion without the support of consensus?

Kbdank claims that the arguements for deletion were better than the arguements for keeping, which may be interpreted to mean the consensus was not reflected by the majority. IMO the overwhelming vote opposing him (11-5, not counting the Anonymous IP that voted to delete) is a plausiblity arguement that he did not judge according to the consensus, as he is guided to do. Pete St.John 21:24, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia will not be destroyed if the categories are retained, nor if they are deleted. It will be in serious trouble if decisions are too often made at the whim of an admin.

I wholly agree. I think the editorial process is more important than the Erdos categories themselves. The majority rules, but should not ignore minorities. Pete St.John 21:24, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I have been criticized for saying the crazies have won. I stand by my characterization. Repetitive shouting and a partisan close is no way to run an encyclopedia. That is not to say that everyone who did not support the categories acted crazily, nor that everyone who did support the categories acted properly. My concern is that the process was fatally flawed. Craziness has won.

In my view craziness has scored a victory; bringing the same issue to vote 3 times, losing every time, then making a fiat contrary to any sane assessment of consensus, and railroading and blindsiding affected users. But craziness hasn't won. Not if we don't give in to this. Pete St.John 21:24, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

My greater concern is that in the recent past we have had other examples of bad deletion decisions, suggesting a systemic problem rather than a single aberration. --KSmrq^T 21:06, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not coping elegantly with just this one. But, "stuborn-ness in the cause of mathematics is no vice" :-) Pete St.John 21:24, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Small reference font size

An editor has changed many articles to make the font size of the references smaller (example). This is a common thing to do on articles that have dozens of footnotes, and perhaps reasonable in that case. But many of the math articles only have a few references, so I don't see the need for the smaller font. The manual of style is silent on the issue of small vs. regular fonts in reference sections. What do others think? — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:38, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Ditto. I find it a bit irritating but not enough so to do anything about it yet. Jmath666 18:39, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I love the small font when there are lots of references. I don't mind it when there are few, but I never use the small font myself unless the article has maybe 8+ references. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:16, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I dislike the small font for the full references. I think it's OK, if there are lots of footnotes referring to the same article, but for the article reference itself I prefer the normal font. (E.g. as it is in Homotopy groups of spheres.)Jakob.scholbach 19:54, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

A part of the issue might be that the <ref> </ref> <references/> mechanism renders as footnotes, and footnotes indeed should be small. So some editors may not see the difference between scientific-style citations and footnotes. There is another citation style that renders as the usual [1] etc. I saw it somewhere on wikipedia but cannot find it right now. Jmath666 20:10, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I guess I feel that either standard is fine but it ought to be uniform, or at least there should be a uniform quasi-standard for the number of references that trigger the small font. By "quasi-standard" I mean it doesn't have to be an exact number; if there are some articles with 25 references and the large font, and some others with 23 references and the small font, that's probably OK, but at least some rough idea of the fuzzy boundary should be present. --Trovatore 03:29, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this is basically how I feel. Articles with more than ~20 references are best with the small font.

Jmath, if you come across that citation style I'd be interested. I too am annoyed with the conflation of footnotes used for explanation and references in a footnote style.

CRGreathouse (t | c) 13:26, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

If we could shrink the footnotes until they disappear completely, I'd be satisfied. References are first class citizens, and when I go to all the work to research them it is because I intend that readers should be able to read them, on an equal footing with sentences in the article. I revert "shrinking" on sight if it is done to an article I watch.

This is a disease that should be eradicated. We are not saving paper. We are not making it easier for readers to scan References, because scrolling works fine and tiny type does not. The implicit message is that no one is expected to consult a cited work; compare to a professional encyclopedia, where tiny type is not used for references at the end. Tiny type suits those who want a footnote after every period, which I emphatically reject for mathematics articles. --KSmrq^T 11:17, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that overfootnoting is not appropriate for mathematics articles. Articles with many footnotes, though (nonmath example: Great power, which over the last 8 months has had probably 25-50 references as it's edited) benefit greatly from the small font. CRGreathouse (t | c) 13:23, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

ScienceWorld

ScienceWorld has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ScienceWorld. At that page people should post their opinions---either Keep or Delete or Merge or Redirect or what-have-you.

My own view, and the reason why this page is where I'm posting this, is that the main reason to consider the topic notable is that this is a new effort by the same people who created MathWorld. When a new novel is to be published by an author who's won the Nobel Prize in literature, it can be considered notable, even before publication, because its author is so noteworthy. Michael Hardy 22:00, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I concur. While notability is not always inherited, in some cases something is notable due (at least in part) to the involvement of some other notable entity. --Cheeser1 07:05, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Houston, we have a mathematical problem...

When is the last time someone from here looked at the article Mathematical problem?  --Lambiam 04:07, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Holy crap! That's all I'll say. VectorPosse 04:17, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Little did I know, computing the decimal expansion of pi was one of the outstanding problems of mathematics! And here I thought it was finding secret encoded messages sent by Elvis from beyond the grave in the decimal expansion of pi. Anyhoo, I cut out some of the howlers from the article and marked it as a stub. I'm hoping one of you will be brave enough to start a proper fleshing-out of the article. I'll snipe from the sidelines. Cheers. Rybu —Preceding comment was added at 06:39, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I hear the decimal expansion of π contains arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions. Jeepers. --Cheeser1 06:46, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, 0, 00, 000, ... (except that the proof is still missing).  --Lambiam 22:13, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Help with some logic articles

I need help with Halting problem and Godel's incompleteness theorem. User:Likebox, an avowed fan of Archimedes Plutonium, is adding some content both literally and figuratively incorrect to these, and I don't see any way to resolve it by myself. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:28, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd almost given up on Halting problem. Perhaps I'll have a look at it tomorrow. Of course, he won't accept my ideas, either.... — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:31, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I fixed halting problem this morning, but he reverted it. He is extremely confused about how to use terminology correctly, apparently favoring vague analogies instead of correct exposition. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:49, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

While I agree with the idea of removing fluff and vague analogies from the article, you also removed the material that makes the article comprehensible to computer scientists. Is there some way of writing an article that's acceptable mathematically but written in such a way as to be understandable by programmers? For instance, there's no explanation of why a decision problem (which, to a programmer, can be explained as the desired behavior of a subroutine that has some input and a boolean valued output) has anything to do with sets of integers (a seemingly static mathematical object having nothing to do with computation). This is, by the way, a problem with both versions of the article; Likebox's version has separate sections with intuition and with rigor, but little connection between them. —David Eppstein 02:00, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I didn't just remove it - I tried very hard to integrate it throughout the other text. Check the diff for my edit [2]. I don't mind at all the idea of having some intuition present, but not in the "he said/she said" way that claims there is a difference between computer science and recursion theory. I would be glad to work cooperatively to add more explanation throughout both articles as appropriate. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:20, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I totally agree that the "he said/she said" approach is counterproductive. I attempted to restore your version of the Gödel article but was reverted (by DFRussia, not Likebox) so it looks like we're going to have to work on building consensus among multiple people who see it the other way before having any success at fixing these articles. —David Eppstein 03:21, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

In any case, it cannot possibly hurt to have more people watching these two articles for a little while. I agree that consensus building is needed here, rather than some sort of appeal to authority. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:27, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

As Godel's incompleteness theorem has been reverted again, extra help would still be appreciated. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:17, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

DYK

On November 1, 2007, Did you know? on the Wikipedia main page was updated with a fact from the article Bramble-Hilbert lemma. Jmath666 05:36, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

It's in this version. The nominator wrote "not that I understand the advanced math here".[3] It was picked by Blnguyen.[4] I wouldn't call the DYK text "hooky" as requested in Wikipedia:Did you know#Selections, but that may be hard for math articles. I suggested a less technical "hook" when primes in arithmetic progression got in DYK.[5] PrimeHunter 17:04, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. It may have gotten picked because the first sentence (which was partly quoted) makes sense even to those who "do not understand advanced math", say, beyond Calc I. Jmath666 21:10, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

STIX fonts

The STIX Fonts Project has released their fonts for beta testing. —Ruud 21:42, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Chicken McNuggets problem

Didn't we deal with this before? Perhaps it needs more mathematical eyes on the problem. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:11, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Some edits to check

User:71.117.139.31 is making a bunch of changes to formulae with edit summaries like "fixed a variable", which I am reasonably sure are not correct. Can someone take a look? (this <math> stuff isn't my strong suit). --Stormie 23:21, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

They appear to be vandalism. I've undone them all and put a warning on his talk page. Thanks for the alert. —David Eppstein 23:34, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Notice of List articles

Page(s) related to this project have been created and/or added to one of the Wikipedia:Contents subpages (not by me).

• List of basic mathematics topics
• List of basic arithmetic topics
• List of basic algebra topics
• List of basic calculus topics
• List of basic discrete mathematics topics
• List of basic geometry topics
• List of basic trigonometry topics
• List of basic topics in logic
• List of basic statistics topics

This note is to let you know, so that experts in the field can expand them and check them for accuracy, and so that they can be added to any watchlists/tasklists, and have any appropriate project banners added, etc. Thanks. --Quiddity 19:25, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Homotopy groups of spheres A-Class assessment

Regulars here will recall that about a month ago, I raised the idea of taking an article on advanced mathematics to FAC, and proposed Homotopy groups of spheres as such an article, on the grounds that it is both highly sophisticated, and generally appealing. Originally, my ambitions were merely to refine the article at the time. However, I have been delighted by the response: many editors have joined in an endeavour to produce a comprehensive article on advanced mathematics, and the article has trebled in size! Here, R.e.b. deserves a special mention for adding so much deep material. (I have done little more than copyediting.)

However, the huge improvement of this article has raised questions of accessibility, presentation and balance that are hard to judge from close-up. I also noticed that the A-Class assessment program has fallen rather quiet. So I have nominated this article for A-Class, primarily to get WikiProject wide input on the current article and stimulate some discussion. Please take a look at the article, and add comments to the review page. Thank you in advance to all, and thank you once again to those who responded with such enthusiasm to my previous post. Geometry guy 19:34, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Math portal has run out of articles

Moved from WP:AN. Anyone want to look into this? — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:30, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi. There seems to be a problem with the template of the article of the week (featured article) in the portal of Mathematics. The articles are not getting archived since June and i think that it gets updated automatically, often resulting in an empty article. There are some messages about the problem in the talk page, but we need the help of an administrator. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.180.224.85 (talk) 15:05, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

The pages have to be scheduled in advance, and it just seems that nobody's done that. Look at the following list:

• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 41
• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 42
• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 43
• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 44
• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 45
• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 46
• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 47

The red links show where nobody has created the featured article summary; it's now week 45 of 2007. So there's nothing wrong with the portal, except that nobody has updated it; try asking somewhere like Wikipedia talk:Wikiproject Mathematics to see if you can find someone to maintain the portal. --ais523 15:25, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I used to keep these up to date but I've been neglecting the portal since last May. Thankfully some other editors have stepped up. It is a lot of work for one person to keep the portal up to date. More involvement from editors here would be helpful.

Actually, I'd like to come up with another system for the portal so that the above problem doesn't happen. It would be nice to just have a pool of featured article snippits and have the portal randomly select one each week. People could add more snippits as they see fit and we would have rotating content without the annoying periodic redlinks. I'll have to think of a way to do this. -- Fropuff 16:44, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

You might leave a message at Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals about that. I think one or more of the members of that group have probably done something similar already for other portals. John Carter 16:50, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Fropuff, if the snippets are in some reasonable location it would not be hard to make a bot script that would update the portal once a week to pick a new snippet. I'd be glad to run that bot if others arrange the snippets. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:21, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I can think of two ways to do it. One would be to have the snippits at Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/n where n is some number. We would then have to have some page indicating the maximum n. Other way would be to put the snippits at Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/Article name and then have some page (such as Portal:Mathematics/Featured article list) that would list all the article names. The bot would then select a new one from the list every day/week/whatever (either by rotating through them or randomly selecting one). If we did this we should do something similiar for the featured pictures as well. -- Fropuff 17:41, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

We could just put the snippet pages into a category (Category:Mathematics portal articles of the week or something like that) and the bot would semi-randomly select a new article every week. While we're at it, we could separate the formatting of the "articles of the week" box from the snippet content. I should be able to look into this later this week. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:56, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

What John Carter said. See Wikipedia:Portal/Instructions#Editing Archive for random portal component section for some (unclear?) instructions, and many examples of simple randomized content at the featured Portal:Cats, Portal:Environment, etc (click "Show new selections" to purge/refresh the page). Hope that helps. --Quiddity 18:07, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it looks like if we do the numbered article thing we can use {{Random portal component}} to randomize the content. There would be no need to write a bot. From what I can tell this template will pseudorandomly select a new featured article on every page load (assuming the cache is purged). Maybe this is the easiest thing to do. -- Fropuff 18:44, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

That does seem to be quite simple to implement, and would require little ongoing maintenance. Let's do it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:19, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I maintained the portal from May to September by recycling: 2007 portals 26-40 are essentially the list of 2006 portals. Sad to say, there aren't many other mathematics articles which are good enough to showcase. The proposed solution sounds fine: I just wanted to suggest that randomness is not essential - one can simply cycle. Geometry guy 19:37, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

What are the criteria for including an article? — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:46, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've updated the portal to use a slightly customized version of {{Random portal component}}. I've placed the content at

• Portal:Mathematics/Selected article/1
• Portal:Mathematics/Selected article/2
• Portal:Mathematics/Selected article/3

I'll try to move our whole slew of existing snippits to the new locations. I'll also try and update the archive to reflect the new format. And then do the same thing with the pictures. Let me know if you see any problems. -- Fropuff 20:07, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

improper integral

A confused person extensively rewrote the article titled improper integral. I reverted to the last version by Jitse Niesen. I left a message on the confused person's talk page explaining why at least some of what he wrote was erroneous. Possibly some assistance from some readers of this page in helping him out of his confusion will be needed later. Michael Hardy 16:33, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Average

Could you please watch over average while keeping in mind that this is an introductory article to the topic? There's some good discussion and edits going on, but -- and I'm appealing to those of you who have kids trying to understand this topic -- could you please try to keep it simple in this article? Maybe encourage some of the discussion and text to move to more technical articles? Maybe try to simplify the article so that teens looking up "average" in Wikipedia won't be completely turned off? Illustrations would help a great deal. Shorter sentences and less jargon would help a lot. PLEASE help if you can! I'm not saying the information is bad or wrong, I'm just worried about it being in this general and basic article. --Foggy Morning 02:39, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Definable real number

I found this forum dialog: http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/known-math/98/definable

There are somes things that would be very useful in the article. But I don't know if this is usable as a source. I tried to contact David Madore, he didn't answered. As he is a teacher in the best French math faculty, I think it would be better that another teacher try to contact him. His adress is on the bottom of the page. Barraki 21:21, 8 November 2007 (UTC)