User talk:David Eppstein

Hi, and welcome to my User Talk page! For new discussions, I prefer you add your comments at the very bottom and use a section heading (e.g., by using the "+" tab at the top of this page). I will respond on this page unless specifically requested otherwise.

Notability in Wikipedia

David, sorry to bother you with trifles, but you are the only wikipedian with serious credentials known to me. Can you please comment about a brand new article, Notability in Wikipedia, in talk:Notability in Wikipedia? Twri (talk) 22:39, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Taxicab Geometry

David, you posted the following on the edit page:

"Hilbert's axioms are not a formalization of Euclid's axioms. They are a formalization of Euclidean plane geometry. And removing the wikilink is a bad idea. Silence ≠ consent"

There was silence because we have already discussed this with the other members. EVERYTIME I change it, it gets changed back. I had three people approve it, so I expect you to accept it. And what proof do you have? PLEASE LEAVE IT, AS IT GETS REALLY ANNOYING....THANK YOU! If you have ANY problems with this, PLEASE, PLEASE discuss it to me on my talk page, as I am SICK and TIRED of your unreasonable actions....

Rallybrendan2006 (talk) 23:27, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

By the way, the silence has been broken and I have gotten approval from Bubba72, so PLEASE respect that. See the discussion page for Taxicab geometry for proof. Thanks!

Rallybrendan2006 (talk) 23:49, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Regarding: "Sorry, despite your CAPSLOCKS OF RAGE, I am going to change it anyway. Euclidian => Euclidean." ---- Fine. I can accept a minor spelling mistake. I just didn't want my correction to be removed again despite permission from the group....

Rallybrendan2006 (talk) 05:39, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Ford circle

In your recent additions to the Ford circle article, I think item 1 should be

The circles C[r/s] such that |ps − qr| = 1

Otherwise, as currently written, it seems to say that all circles tangent to C[1/2] are also tangent to C[2/3] (because 2x2 - 3x1 = 1), which is incorrect.

Also, I don't fully understand item 3:

The circles tangent to C[r/s] where r/s is one of the two closest ancestors to p/q in the Stern–Brocot tree or vice versa.

For example, what are the "two closest ancestors" to 3/4 in the Stern-Brocot tree ? Are they 2/3 and 1/2 ? Or are they 2/3 and 1/1 ? Can you clarify your meaning here, please ? Gandalf61 (talk) 09:17, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - your re-write is much clearer. Gandalf61 (talk) 08:03, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Afd closed/reopened

Not sure if you'll care or if you should care. But figured you should know. [1] Bali ultimate (talk) 17:20, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Blocked

You have been blocked from editing for a period of 1 week in accordance with Wikipedia's blocking policy for for repeatedly closing an AfD early. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make constructive contributions. If you believe this block is unjustified, you may contest the block by adding the text {{unblock|Your reason here}} below, but you should read our guide to appealing blocks first.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.61.10.180 (talk • contribs)

An IP can block people? This is a new one. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:35, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

LOL. That is one dumb IP. ResMar 17:41, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Calkin–Wilf tree

Hello! Your submission of Calkin–Wilf tree at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Shubinator (talk) 21:00, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Françoise Lebrun

Hi, Excuse me for my bad english. I see your work on Thierry Zéno page. Yesterday the page of Françoise Lebrun was deleted and I think it's a mistake because she's a french actress very famous in the little milieu of the post-nouvelle vague. She work with Jean Eustache ans Marguerite Duras. And Vecchialli. And many others... Can you take a look of this case? Thanks ! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.180.107.80 (talk) 21:09, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I undeleted it, since the procedure by which it was deleted only requires a reasonable request such as the one you just made to be reversed. However, the article is in danger of a more permanent deletion unless published third-party sources can be found that are specifically about the actress rather than merely briefly mentioning her role as part of an article about some other movie. French-language sources are ok. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:20, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Re: Françoise Lebrun

Fair enough, thanks for alerting me. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 22:23, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Response

If she's so notable, when and where was she born? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:53, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea. Why should we care — does that have anything to do with her accomplishments? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:55, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Calkin–Wilf tree

On May 12, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Calkin–Wilf tree, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Dravecky (talk) 13:49, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Why http://en.scientificcommons.org is an unreliable source?

What do you say about DBLP?? --Kitresaiba (talk) 23:11, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

"Every researcher can organize his publication directly on ScientificCommons.org to create his own personal researcher profile." In other words, it appears to be self-edited rather than having any kind of centralized editorial control and oversight, so by Wikipedia standards it is a self-published source. DBLP, on the other hand, systematically collates contents of journals and conference proceedings rather than listing author-generated content. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:15, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

How about http://www.zentralblatt-math.org/ioport/ ?

It looks like DBLP does not include entries from jouranls - it takes just from conference proceedings. Google scholar looks ok in general. --Kitresaiba (talk) 00:39, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Zentralblatt and MathSciNet are both reliable in the sense of WP:RS. However, what are you trying to use them to source? Indiscriminate lists of publications are not particularly useful in the articles here. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:41, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

MathSciNet is a good one. I do see you calling scientificcommons unreliable in Michel Deza the article I started with. But it listed all his work there. --Kitresaiba (talk) 01:17, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Whether it has the correct information is a different question from whether it can be used as a reliable source. See WP:RS. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:21, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Cellular Automata

It is not a requirement of cellular automata that the state transition function (your rule) be fixed. Indeed, one can easily conceive of rules that vary with time, or with context. I think your restatement is too restrictive. William R. Buckley (talk) 16:10, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I have made adjustments to the opening paragraph of the Cellular Automata article, and request your review thereof. Justification for these adjustments is contained on the article talk page. William R. Buckley (talk) 20:31, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Fáry's theorem

David, the year links (after Wagner, Stein, Fary) do not work, and I don't know how to fix these. Please correct these when you get a chance. Mhym (talk) 04:35, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. To make this work the author= style of the citation templates needed to be changed to last= first=, and in one case the years didn't quite match correctly. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:44, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

New section on "Robust measures of scale" page

Thanks for your additions to Robust measures of scale. However, can you check whether you included the correct reference, and whether you have correctly characterized it as a technique for "multivariate data." From the paper it's pretty clear that they are proposing a method for univariate data. The first sentence says this explicitly, and the examples are all univariate. Skbkekas (talk) 14:26, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Missing References tagging in MeshLab page

Hi David, I would like to clean up the MeshLab page that you just tagged with the unref tag. What kind of refernces do you think that should be added? Most of the information present on the page came directly from the home page (that is referenced) of the project and/or from their release notes. Do you think that it should be correct to add release notes as references too? ALoopingIcon (talk) 13:09, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

No, what I intended was more third-party sources that talk about MeshLab in a nontrivial way, as WP:V and WP:N both require. Google scholar has quite a few papers that mention MeshLab, though I don't know whether there are any that are not themselves by the MeshLab authors that cover it nontrivially. If you can find a published review in a magazine, for instance, that would be great. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:19, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Got the point. MeshLab is frequently cited on many blogs and other web based, self-published, media like blogs (wired ) and many other review sites (I even find a episode of a web tv citing it), but probably that they are not completely reliable sources. Looking at 'printed' material I have only found a paper of the MeshLab authors describing the system (ercim news) and some academic papers by various authors citing the use of MeshLab in various contexts (Cultural Heritage, face recognition, surface reconstruction, etc). So, probably, the only sentence that would be supported by reliable sources is "MeshLab is used in various universities and research labs for general mesh processing task". ALoopingIcon (talk) 00:08, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Shige Peng

This is a new bio on a Chinese mathematician and could use some attention from a specialist. Cheers, --Crusio (talk) 16:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll take a look. An invited lecture at the ICM is a high honor so my presumption is that he's notable. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:18, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I didn't doubt the notability, given the National Academy membership, but I was indeed not certain whether that invited plenary was worth mentioning. Thanks! --Crusio (talk) 16:56, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Donald G. Fink

On June 1, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Donald G. Fink, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Jamie^☆S93 20:21, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Category

Mr. Eppstein, In all honesty, I'm not sure which category it falls under.Tyrenon (talk) 05:20, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

G works for me. Have edited what I'm putting in.Tyrenon (talk) 05:22, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Fink rescue

		The Article Rescue Barnstar
		For rescuing Donald G. Fink from AfD, what was possibly my worst ever article (not counting the one with the opening sentence #redirect...) and well done on the DYK. SpinningSpark 15:12, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome, and thanks for the barnstar! —David Eppstein (talk) 15:16, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Nicholas Beale

There seems to be a recent major book in addition to the material there 2 yrs ago at the afd, so it's not really a G4. I think it would take another afd, and I'm not sure how i would !vote on it there. DGG (talk) 21:17, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

David Stack

• Would you take another look at the David Stack article and possibly change your Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Stack !vote? ty. --Firefly322 (talk) 00:50, 4 June 2009 (UTC)