Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

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call for abstracts

Posting this here since it would be great if someone could come along and talk about Wikipedia's mathematical culture.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS (deadline: 30th June 2017)

ENABLING MATHEMATICAL CULTURES, University of Oxford, 5th-7th December 2017

This workshop celebrates the completion of the EPSRC-funded project “Social Machines of Mathematics”, led by Professor Ursula Martin at the University of Oxford. We will present research arising from the project, and bring together interested researchers who want to build upon and complement our work. We invite interested researchers from a broad range of fields, including: Computer Science, Philosophy, Sociology, History of Mathematics and Science, Argumentation theory, and Mathematics Education. Through such a diverse mix of disciplines we aim to foster new insights, perspectives and conversations around the theme of Enabling Mathematical Cultures.

Our intention is to build upon previous events in the “Mathematical Cultures” series. These conferences explored diverse topics concerning the socio-cultural, historical and philosophical aspects of mathematics. Our workshop will, likewise, explore the social nature of mathematical knowledge production, through analysis of historical and contemporary examples of mathematical practice. Our specific focus will be on how social, technological and conceptual tools are developed and transmitted, so as to enable participation in mathematics, as well as the sharing and construction of group knowledge in mathematics. In particular, we are interested in the way online mathematics, such as exhibited by the Polymath Projects, MathOverflow and the ArXiv, enable and affect the mathematical interactions and cultures.

We hereby invite the submission of abstracts of up to 500 words for papers to be presented in approximately 30 minutes (plus 10 minutes Q+A). The Enabling Mathematical Cultures workshop will have space on Days 2 and 3 of the meeting for a number of accepted talks addressing the themes of social machines of mathematics, mathematical collaboration, mathematical practices, ethnographic or sociological studies of mathematics, computer-assisted proving, and argumentation theory as applied in the mathematical realm. Please send your abstracts to Fenner.Tanswell@Gmail.com by the deadline of the 30th June 2017.

The event takes place in the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford on 5th, 6th and 7th December 2017, with a dinner on 5th December and an informal supper on 6th December.

The focus of Day 1 will be on success, failure and impact of foundational research with an emphasis on history and long term development. Days 2 and 3 will focus on studies of contemporary and prospective mathematical cultures from sociological, philosophical, educational and computational perspectives.

Confirmed speakers include: Andrew Aberdein, Michael Barany, Alan Bundy, Joe Corneli, Matthew Inglis, Lorenzo Lane, Ursula Martin, Dave Murray-Rust, Alison Pease and Fenner Tanswell.

Organising Committee: Ursula Martin, Joe Corneli, Lorenzo Lane, Fenner Tanswell, Sarah Baldwin, Brendan Larvor, Benedikt Loewe, Alison Pease

Further information will be added to the website at https://enablingmaths.wordpress.com

Previous "Mathematical Cultures" events can be found here: https://sites.google.com/site/mathematicalcultures/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arided (talk • contribs)

Contravariant and Covariant Vectors

I have made a couple of entries on the talk page, but nobody seems interested and there has not been much article edit activity for a while. Could somebody have a look at the article and assess whether it needs attention. My opinion is that it could benefit from a thorough rewrite. The content is good, but wordy and disorganised, and the notation slightly distracting. I am prepared to put in some effort, but I don't want to stir up a hornets nest.Foucault (talk) 16:38, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

You mean Covariance and contravariance of vectors. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 16:54, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes. Thankyou. I wrote this as an afterthought, when I was about to go to bed - 230am.Foucault (talk) 17:00, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Note: I have reverted the edit and left a message at the article page. - DVdm (talk) 08:37, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Geometry of an algebraic curve

I hope someone has an idea for what to do with this page. It reads like the backs of several envelopes. The title does not appear to be suitable (the material is much more narrow and esoteric than the title suggests, IMO); but before a better title can be chosen, the content needs clarification. XOR'easter (talk) 23:07, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

It doesn’t really seem like an article on anything, just a collection of snippets on some topic, not necessarily the topic given by the title which seems too vague. I see this was raised on the talk page but was rejected with a "so fix it" argument, but with no proposal how it could actually be fixed and I don’t think it can be. AfD perhaps?--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 23:50, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

WP:BLAR to algebraic geometry, maybe? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:56, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

That makes sense. The page history is still there for anyone who thinks they can do something with it. But as-is better a redirect until that happens.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 23:59, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

A redirect to algebraic geometry sounds good to me. XOR'easter (talk) 00:27, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Move back to the draftspace: I still think moving it back to the draftspace makes the most sense. There, it should be possible to work out what materials should belong to the draft with the current title. The error was to move it to the mainspace. The redirect makes little sense since it doesn't lead anywhere (i.e., people cannot work on it.) -- Taku (talk) 03:09, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

About the title. "Geometry" is there to compare it to arithmetic of algebraic curves, another important topic. -- Taku (talk) 03:11, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

I disagree with redirecting to algebraic geometry: almost everything in the article could be merged into Algebraic curve, and "Geometry of algebraic curves" refers clearly to algebraic curves, the first word being somehow a pleonasm. Thus I'll be bold and modify the redirect. D.Lazard (talk) 08:57, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Oppose back to draft space: The move was already debated. I would note that this would not be the first, second, third, or fourth time that Taku has tried to leverage this back into draft space to try and escape generally accepted operating procedures. IF the page can be improved, it can be done as a subsection of a larger article until such time that WP:SPINOFF becomes a useful solution to the parent article having too much content. Hasteur (talk) 23:10, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

It seems clear from the above that the move of the draft page to the mainspace didn't make sense. So the obvious solution is to undo that. -- Taku (talk) 00:11, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Please Review my Article

I wrote an article on geometric mixed motives and I would like to have a mathematician on this site to review it. It was previously revoked by a non-mathematician, but their criterion for revoking the article is invalid: the sources I provided are notable. In addition, I made sure to cite other articles on wikipedia and gave detailed explanations on the page. Any help is appreciated! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.166.193.229 (talk • contribs)

Maybe these could help: "Geometric Mixed-Motives". Apparently not a huge subject, but the chances of approval increase considerably if you cite peer-reviewed publications. The sources you gave are, by definition, not notable or reliable. This has nothing to do with the meaning of the terms in the real world. YohanN7 (talk) 16:09, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Why is the handbook of K-theory or the journal of K-theory not notable? One is published through Springer and the other is a peer-reviewed journal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.138.65.89 (talk • contribs)

I have answered in the draft's talk page. D.Lazard (talk) 18:38, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

These are notable, however, up until yesterday they were so poorly referenced that this fact was hidden. You have to realize that in writing for an encyclopedia you can not assume that readers and even editors are going to be familiar with the perfectly good sources in your subfield. The publication data is needed to establish that these sources have been vetted by the mathematical community–just providing the links to these sources does not give that information. As I looked over your article I also noticed another problem that you will have. There are no in-line citations. The sources that you provide are meant to support the statements made in the article. Without the in-line links to the sources (including page numbers) the statements you make can not be verified by a reader and that is the heart of what Wikipedia is all about. If you keep at it this article will eventually be in good enough shape to be accepted. --Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 18:40, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

The content has now been merged into Motive (algebraic geometry). XOR'easter (talk) 21:42, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

RfC: Should the WP:TALK guideline discourage interleaving?

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines#RfC: Should the guideline discourage interleaving? #2. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:41, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Calculators and software in external links

I tend to be a bit fussy with external links and I see a lot of calculators in elementary articles (which I tend to remove) and software, either working programs or code, in CS articles (which I tend to leave alone hoping that someone else will deal with it). My feeling is that these things are not in the spirit of proper external links and they can usually be snagged on the basis of not being reliable sources. However, it would be nice (I think) if there was an explicit point addressing this issue on the list at WP:ELNO. Before proposing anything to a wider audience I thought that I would first like to gather the reactions of the members of this project, since it would affect us the most. If an outright ban is not in order then maybe some guidelines as to what would be acceptable could be given. Thanks for your consideration. --Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 23:13, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

I agree with this proposition. However, what is said about calculators can also be said of many external links to courses or mathematical explanations. These external links generally fall under item 11 (Blogs, personal web pages and most fansites) of WP:ELNO, but may also considered as aimed to promote their authors. Therefore I generally leave to the authors of the links the choice of the relevant item(s) by providing the edit summary "per WP:ELNO". Nevertheless an item on calculators and elementary courses would be useful. D.Lazard (talk) 08:36, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

I mean no insult to you. The idea that including math or CS theory in articles is acceptable, but that concrete instantiatons of the theory/algorthms, such as calculators and source code, are so far beneath us that they do not even merit an external link, however, strikes me as elitist. Especially in cases of source code links, these can be considered further development of the topic and a good alternative to trying to add source code directly to the article. Some encyclopedic books, like The Algorithm Design Manual, are valuable in part for thier curated lists of external links to source codes. Any of those source codes I would have no problem with externally linking. I think a proposal like this should emphasize whether the linked web site or source code is relaible or at least has been discussed/reviewed by third parties, rather than whether the content is theoretical or applied. --Mark viking (talk) 18:05, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

I am not sure how you are reading a theoretical vs. applied divide from the above comments. I am no stranger to coding and D.Lazard is certainly not either. Maybe I did not make myself clear enough, but my issue with calculators and code not being in the spirit of external links is precisely because we can not verify their reliability in any easy manner. There is absolutely nothing wrong with programs or code that have been properly vetted and they would make fine external links. However, I haven't seen this kind of vetting occur for the programs being placed on our pages, and that is what has me concerned.--Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 19:16, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your clarification. I interpreted your first two sentences in the original posting as that you were singling out and against all calculators and code in external links, in principle. With your clarification, I think we are in agreement that it is the reliability that is important for EL, not whether the content is a calculator, source code, tutorials, lecture notes, etc. --Mark viking (talk) 20:03, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

I tend to dislike calculators not because they are inaccurate (although that is also an issue) but because they don't add much to reader understanding of the topic (ELNO #1 — often they are just simple formulas that anyone could plug into a claculator), are typically very spammy (ELNO #5), have unknown provenance and little editorial control of their methods (ELNO #11) and often (especially for number-theoretic calculations) have significant limitations in the range of numbers that they can be used for (ELNO #16). —David Eppstein (talk) 20:15, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Smooth projective plane

The article titled Smooth projective plane needs work. I found it as an orphan and I created two links to it in the "See also" sections of Projective plane and Real projective plane. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:35, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Regretfully, these experts (main contributors) do not collaborate further. I wrote a number of questions there, but who can answer? Boris Tsirelson (talk) 07:25, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

A quote from myself (relevant or not): "if the only editor that wish and can to describe a topic here is the author, then probably the topic is not worth to be described here". Boris Tsirelson (talk) 20:48, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

As I mentioned on the talk page, I only helped to Wikify the page and this out of respect for the authors of the main reference whom I know only by reputation. The article does read like a research paper (or summary of one) rather than an article on a topic. Perhaps we should put clarification tags, corresponding to your questions, in the article and then PROD the whole thing in hopes of getting some attention to these issues.--Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 23:44, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

X–Y–Z matrix

Is X–Y–Z matrix notable? Boris Tsirelson (talk) 06:22, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

I can't tell whether they really want to be talking about tensors or multidimensional arrays, but either way we have better material on the same subject. I don't think this article is a useful addition. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:43, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

From the grid mention, I suspect they are talking about multidimensional arrays. But the name is uncommon as far as I can tell. and the name ovelaps with transformation matrices to XYZ color space.It may not even be worth a redirect. --Mark viking (talk) 17:33, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

I'd say to redirect it to multidimensional array, but I'm not sure it's a sufficiently common search term to make that worthwhile. XOR'easter (talk) 19:13, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Maass wave forms

Someone (with a breathtakingly extensive deficiency of TeX skill) created an article titled Maass wave forms. I tried to move it to the singular, Maass wave form, and found that that was already a redirect to Maass cusp form. So I deleted the redirect and moved it. Should this new article, now titled Maass wave form, be merged with Maass cusp form? Michael Hardy (talk) 16:44, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Why not? According to "Maass cusp form", these are two names of the same notion. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 19:39, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Merge Request

I think the Sheaf of logarithmic differential forms article should be merged into the Log structure or Logarithmic form page. What are people's thoughts? Username6330 (talk) 01:04, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Umm, why? The notion of log differential forms makes sense and is still useful outside log geometry. I do agree to add some discussion how to understand this notion from the log-point-of-view. -- Taku (talk) 22:55, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Logarithmic form is literally the same topic as Logarithmic form. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:54, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I was questioning the merger with log structure (replace "why" -> "why log structure"). The two articles Sheaf of logarithmic differential forms and logarithmic form are on the same topic, obviously, and should thus be merged. -- Taku (talk) 01:32, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Redirect for Additive Combinatorics

The way this redirect is set-up doesn't really make sense, even though there is more info about the subject on the additive number theory page the redirect points to Arithmetic combinatorics. In fact, there is a loop formed by clicking on the words "additive combinatorics". On the Arithmetic combinatorics page it takes you to Additive number theory, on the Additive number theory page it takes you to Arithmetic combinatorics. I don't believe this should be the case, links for a given topic should always direct readers to the same page, in my mind. I don't have enough experience in the area to say where this information should actually be or which is right, but I do believe it should be straightened out. GiovanniSidwell (talk) 17:47, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing this out. This a redirect from 2008 and I suspect the arithmetics combinatorics article was probably the best target at the time. But I agree the section in additive number theory is in better shape, so I have redirected to Additive number theory#Additive combinatorics. --Mark viking (talk) 21:16, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Complex analysis template up for deletion

For those that don't follow TfD, I note that Template:Complex analysis sidebar is up for deletion at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2017_September_27#Template:Complex_analysis_sidebar. It is up for deletion in part because this nav template is unused. Did it fall through the cracks and would be useful to add to complex analysis articles? Or is there a consenus to avoid such nav sidebars in this project? Thanks, --Mark viking (talk) 21:05, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't know a reason not to use it. I suspect the only reason it's not used is lack of widespread awareness of its existence, and the reason for the lack of widepread awareness is that it's not used. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:11, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Also, it's pretty new. Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:48, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

I boldly added the template under "See also" to the page Complex analysis. It is used now under its title, at least; so please, in case you are interested, check, if it disturbs or helps. Purgy (talk) 14:29, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Watchlist problem

Strangely, this day my watchlist page says "No changes during the given period match these criteria." which is surely wrong. Is it my personal problem? Do you see your watchlist normally? Boris Tsirelson (talk) 05:59, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Never mind, it appears to be because of "Days to show in watchlist: 0" in my preferences->watchlist. I have no idea why this value was reset to 0, but anyway, I restored it. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 06:02, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Move discussion, possibly with wider implications

See Talk:Upper and lower bounds#Requested move 12 September 2017. There seems to be further inconsistency in article naming – when the title should have both a notion and its dual versus just one of them. I'm also not sure how it fits in with WP:AND, so I thought I'd see if anyone else had thoughts (the discussion there seems to have stalled). --Deacon Vorbis (talk) 14:13, 29 September 2017 (UTC)