User talk:Jitse Niesen

Archives
up to June 2005 Jul – Sep 2005 Oct – Dec 2005 Jan – Mar 2006 Apr – Jun 2006 Jul – Sep 2006

Unless requested otherwise, I will reply on this page, under your post. Sometimes, especially when we haven't met before, I copy my answer to your talk page. -- Jitse Niesen

Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2006_September_26

thanks for your comments on the rfd. i put my reply there. Lunch 00:16, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Floating point page

The page floating point needs expert attention, and such experts are extremely rare. Based on your past contributions in this or related fields, I wonder if you could take a look. William Ackerman 22:07, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup on Automatically_Tuned_Linear_Algebra_Software

I have been working to cleanup ATLAS. I see that you have edited related pages in the past. If you would be so good as to check out the latest version and contribute to or comment on the article, it would be most appreciated. Cheers, -- Jake 19:36, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I commented on the talk page. Thanks for all your good work. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 04:09, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. That was just the sort of review I was hoping for. -- Jake 15:29, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup of free software links on Finite_element_analysis

Dear Sir, please explain your justification for removing links to free software on FEA. I understand the reasoning behind removing links to commercial software, but as a USER of Wikipedia, I find links to good, free software to be very valuable information. -- anon

The underlying reason is that Wikipedia is not a repository of links. While a couple of useful links are usually included in the articles, long lists of external links are not suitable for Wikipedia. Given that there are many FEA packages, we chose to include links to lists of software (like IFER - Internet Finite Element Resources), but not links to individual packages.

You can see some discussion on this subject at Talk:Finite element analysis. For an example of a list of software package that is acceptable, see Comparison of computer algebra systems. By the way, Wikipedia is supposed to adhere to be neutral, and as such, we shouldn't distinguish between free and commercial software.

I hope this explains our position. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 00:53, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Dear Jitse

could you remove the semi-protect on the galatasaray and turkey national football team artice there are some mistakes in it and i cannot fix it. -- anon

Okay, I removed the semi-protection. I hope that those mistakes you want to fix are genuine mistakes, and that you'll discuss matters on the talk page instead of engaging in edit wars. Anyway, I'll keep a watch on the pages. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 02:15, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

3+i2 vs 3+2i

You said:   "and "3+i2" is definitely rare"

For a very common counter-example, see: Euler's identity#Derivation

--Bob K 16:21, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I was refering specifically to "3+i2" versus "3+2i", with numbers. I agree that the order "i sin x" is far more common than "sin x i", but with numbers it's the other way around. For "a+bi" versus "a+ib" (with single-letter variables), both are used. In my experience, "a+bi" is more common, but I might be wrong there. Anyway, I see no reason to change the order. If you want to discuss this further (and of course you should feel free to do so), I think that Talk:Complex number is a more appriopriate place. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 02:20, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Matlab does it your way, which surprises me. Evidently I don't care very much, because I had to look to be sure. It's not something I want to spend any more time on, and if your way is good enough for Matlab, that's good enough for me. --Bob K 04:48, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Re: Galatasaray

Hopefully it will be alright. There was a banned user targetting it previously with various IPs.--Konst.able 04:25, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

The request the anon made to your for the unprotection was genuine it seems, but the troll who targets Galatasaray has returned, it seems he has nothing more meaningful in his life to do than sit around and wait for semi-protection to be lifted. From his prior actions I think he will not stop after just 1 IP, I have semi-protected the page for a while longer (I have left Turkey national football team unprotected for now though)--Konst.able 07:19, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Remainder Arithmetic, ancient Egypt

This discussion concerns ancient Egyptian mathematics.

Jitse, it looks as if you or another Wiki reviewer has been editing posts without entering a reason. Did you alter the info on 10/14/06 that cited the scribal division method:

one (1) divided by 2 2/3, written as 1/(8/3) = 3/8 = 1/4 1/8

right?

Scribes mentally did compute with vulgar fractions, as scholars have missed for the last 75 - 150 years (since scholars had thought that all arithmetic operations had to employ unit fractions at every step --- a silly proposition on its face, yet one that has confused scribal subtraction and division since the RMP was first published in the 1870's).

Occam's Razor confirms this proposal, since the simplicity of mental division of vulgar fractions would not have required shorthand notes, as Ahmes and the other scribes selected in the style writing of their answers, such as dividing one (1) by 2 2/3 = 1/4 1/8 (per 1/(8/3) = 3/8 = 1/4 1/8), and generally, (a/b)/(c/d) = ad/bc.

Can yesterday's post be restored since no reason was given for its removal?

Best Regards,

Milo Gardner

Milo, I did indeed remove the text. However, I gave a reason in the edit summary, where I wrote "no reason to mention the 2003 paper in the lead section, see WP:LEAD". When editing an article, there is a small field labeled "Summary" under the main edit-box. It looks like this:

What you type in there appears in the watchlist and the Help:page history. I would appreciate it if you could also fill in the edit summary field, as it makes it easier to understand what has changed, and is helpful when going through the history of the page.

Now, the text itself. You wrote

A 2003 paper alternatively suggests that algorithms and proportions were related to this subject, such as dividing one (1) by 2 3/3. Given that scribes tended to write answers to this class of problem, in this case 1/4 1/8, without citing the intermediate steps confusion has dominated scholarly discussions, hence the algorithm and proportion and other more awkward dvision proposals. Had scribes shown all their logical steps scribal arithmetic debates would have been ended years ago. The current remainder arithmetic view is that vulgar fractions were used in the intermediate steps, or converting 2 2/3, a quotient and remainder, to a vulgar fraction or 8/3. Then the division steps would have been: 1/(8/3) = 3/8 = 1/4 1/8, as scribes may have completed mentally (hence no scribal notes were listed).

The reasons why I removed the text all have to do with style. Firstly, you added the text in the lead section. The lead should summarize the rest of the article. The text you added, does not do that; it makes a separate point, and a point of which it is not clear that it is important enough to appear at the start of the article.

(I see your editorial points, ones that are made in the abstract and not connected to the remainder arithmetic subject. As a mathematician I expect a little pencil to paper activity at some point in your pure 'word person' editorical function. Let me know when Annette's paper, or some other actual debating point from the other side is wished to be read? Thanks again for the comments. Milo)

Secondly, you really should identify the "2003 paper" (author, title, place of publication). Thirdly, I'm finding the text, especially "suggests that algorithms and proportions were related to this subject", very confusing. Is the explanation "1/(8/3) = 3/8 = 1/4 1/8" proposed in the paper? Does this refer to a specific problem?

(Yes, the problem is that Babylonian scholars wish to interject algorithm from a cursive context fron prior to 2000 BCE into the debate of reading Egyptian unit fraction texts created after 2000 BCE based on remainder arithmetic methods. The Jens Hoyrup, Eleanor Robson group tend to see themselves as gatekeepers for all of the ancient Near East, before and after 2000 BCE. These two scholars have taken Annette Imhausen under their wings and suggested to her to rhetorical use algorithms and proportions as a way to read post 2000 BCE Egyptian arithmetic ).

I did not remove the text because I did not agree with the explanation "1/(8/3) = 3/8 = 1/4 1/8". If you can address my stylistic concerns, in particular if you identify the paper, then I think that the text would make a good addition. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 07:40, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Jitse,

Thank you for the extended comments. The 2003 paper was authored by Annette Imhausen, and edited by two well known Babylonian scholars, Jens Hoyrup and Eleanor Robson, titled " Egyptian Mathematical Texts and their Contexts". This information and its confusing conclusion that algorirthms and proportions were involved in solving simple division problems like 1 divided by 2 2/3 is silly on its face --- It was not cited because it is totally wrong, creating a strawman of the worse sort.

Yet, Babylonian scholars continue to propose that recursion, a form of algorithm, used for base 60 and Egyptian base 10 prior to 2,000 BCE, both employed a form of round-off, would show Babylonian numeration was superior to Egyptian numeration. This topic is one of the major debating themes that is hold back the simple vulgar fraction aspect of reewriting 2 2/3 as 8/3 so that its inverse form --- a favored Babylonian technique for its unit fraction series that only used multiples of 2,3 and 5 in their denominators, was superior to the Horus-Eye Old Kingdom binary form that only used multiples of 2n in its denominators.

Thus Imhausen, Hoyrup, et al, and their Babylonian views that support Otto Neugebauer, Exact Sciences in Antiquity's odd conclusion that Egyptian fractions marked a sign of intellectual decline, rather that its actual historical value, intellectual advancement, need to be directly confronted.

Note that all of my citations have been posed within a continuing debate context, a sad fate for Egyptian mathematics - placed in the back seat, with Babylonian scholars being the regional driver of the history books. But debate is moving in this area, so another 10 years or so - the actual confrontation with Babylonian and Egyptian scholars will be enjoined, based on issues cited and fairly reviewed on Wiki, with the anticipated winner being selected by Occam's Razor, and not classical rhetorical techniques.

Thanks again for the discussion. I'll consider your editorial advise, even though you seem not to have read or understand any of the details of the subject, or worked simple examples like 1 divided by 8/3, by following Occam's Razor, or any rigorous history of science methodology.

Best Regards,

Milo Gardner

Milo, thank you for your explanation. However, in that case I think the text is totally inappriopriate for Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not the place to refute Imhausen's (or any other) paper, unless the refutation is published in some scholarly journal or such which you can cite. As I told you before, we stick very close to the sources and allow only minimal interpretation and analysis. Yours, Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:58, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Milo, let me try to be very clear. Either you provide a reliable source for your explanation of how the scribe computed 1 divided by 8/3, or it will be deleted. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Jitse, the reliable source for scribal divison of 1/(8/3) or any fraction by a fraction is provided by modern arithmetic. That is, (a/b)/(c/d) = ad/bc as we write today. Note that most modern arithmetic books do not list the (a/b)/(c/d) = ad/bc rule, thereby causing confusion by Egyptologists that were not solid students of arithmetic before entering Egyptology. But the facts speak for themselves, as Occam's Razor, and your pencil and paper qucikly affirm, provided you take the time to scratch out a few problems and answers. Best Regards, Milo.

Continuing, responding to your request to justify Egyptian arithmetic, the average modern arthmetic student divides fractions by inverting the fraction and multipling, exactly as 1/(7/3) = 3/7 was written by Egyptian scribes in 2000 BCE. The modern problem of translating the ancient Egyptian artihmetic is that Egyptian arithmetic was written in unit fractions, or 3/7 = 1/7 + 2/7 = 1/4 + 1/7 + 1/28, a form of writing vulgar fraction as the RMP 2/nth table clearly shows for 2/p conversions, and by implication n/p. Too bad that Otto Neugebauer, Exact Sciences in Antiquity got it wrong, and suggested th Egyptian arithmetic was not unified (or his words, that Egyptian fractions marked intellectual decline - which surely it did not!) The 2000 BCE unit fraction notation has been falsely attacked by Neugebauer et al, as marking intellectual decline, as surely is wrong based on its divison of fractions being no different than we use in 2006 AD. Try writing any rational number, or improper fraction, to a short and concise unit fraction series, now or 4,000 years ago, and you'll find quotients and remainders, with the remainders being unitized as Egyptian scribes understood and detailed 4,000 years ago. That is, Egyptian fraction notation and methods marked intellectual advancement, with one proof being modern division of fractions being used by scribes. There are other proofs of unification that I'd be happy to share with Wiki, at the proper time.

I'll be pointing out Spalinger's 1988 paper that shows Barley, Emmer, Dates and Hekat relationships that were not based on proportion but on simple vulgar fraction divisions, as required in 2006 AD. The ancient practical beer and bread ingredient table info follows:

            Barley     Emmer  Dates   Hekat
Barley        1         3/8    2/3     3/2   
 
Emmer         8/3         1    16/9     4  

Dates         3/2       9/16     1     9/4

Hekat         2/3        1/4    4/9     1

Emmer was a type of grain. Begin anywhere in table and proportions are the silly and long way to get the answer. Reading Imhausen's or anyone's review of this paper, and related papers, cites the data as 100 divided by 25 equals 4. Where is the proportional thinking in that? How silly! Best Regards, Milo

Jitse, thanks for editing the table. We can delay a broader discussion of this topic until Dec. 2006 or Jan 2007, if you desire. Best Regards, Milo

You say that "the average modern arthmetic student divides fractions by inverting the fraction and multipling, exactly as 1/(7/3) = 3/7 was written by Egyptian scribes in 2000 BCE". However, it's not enough for you to say this, You have to find this in a academic paper or book or something like this, and then you can put it in Wikipedia, citing the paper or book. Otherwise, it's what we call original research which is not allowed in Wikipedia. This is the main problem as I see it.

If you refer to Spalinger's paper, be sure to include full bibliographic details, as we don't know what you're talking about if you just say "Spalinger's 1988 paper". -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:58, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Jitse, my documentation problem begins in 2006 and our modern definitions of division. I have looked on the best USA web sites supoorted by NCTM, like Dr. Math, and they do not define division of fractions per the simple rule (a/b)/(c/d) = ad/bc. That type of cross multiplication rule seems to be reserved for ratios. How odd is that?

The most rigorous modern difinitions fall short of the ideal, simply state that when dividing a fraction by a fraction the divisor is inverted in multiplied, using words only, without the use of abstract representations of the component rational numbers. Given this language proof problem, I will search out the appropriate modern defintions of rational numbers, and then apply that test to the ancient Egyptian rational number division operation. Thanks for almost pointing me in the right direction. We are going in the right direction, looking for the why and why's of our modern and ancient arithmetic, showing the additive and abstract aspect that philosophers and k-6 math educators of both eras have struggled to define in everyday terminologies. Egyptians used unit fractions as their arithmetic context, while modern western and USA educators use base 10 decimals. Oddly modern teachers omit the abstract number theory definitions, as noted with respect to division, thereby confusing upto 75% of our modern students who never master fraction arthmetic while in school, an issue that I am taking up with NCTM in its dumbed down 1989 standards. Best Regards, Milo Gsrdner

Inline-citation squad

You wrote: "However, they are not in the maths or physics WikiProjects (or if they are, they haven't come out of the closet yet)." Did you miss the whole fracass at the end of September, when {{fact}}, {{Veri policy}} and {{noncompliant}} were being plastered all over science articles (e.g. Big Bang), and science articles were demoted from GA status without review because they had "not enough" inline citations? Much of this came from just two editors, one of who went on a rampage (see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive138#Disruption from User:ClairSamoht), while the other caused considerable distress by giving a week's time notice on most maths and physics GAs to comply with "the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation" before "deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article". I think it was this "citationgate" that led to the initiative for the presently proposed guidelines.  --Lambiam^Talk 22:31, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I didn't miss that and I know that the proposal is a reaction. As I said, I don't like having separate guidelines for science. Perhaps it's better to ignore the GA process. After all, I'm not convinced that GA will take "our" guidelines into account, especially because they were written in response to their strict interpretation.

With "However, they are not in the maths or physics WikiProjects (or if they are, they haven't come out of the closet yet)", I meant that none of the members of the maths or physics WikiProjects think that every fact should carry an inline citation. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 02:27, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

None? When was the last time you looked at what Melchoir has done to the Proof that 0.999... equals 1 article, to thunderous applause from the inline-citation squad? And don't just count the 63 citations (and 49 references), look at them in detail. For example, look at numbers 13, 14, and 15. (And has it bought correctness? Consider the persistence of the following falsehood added to the intro, no less: “[E]very terminating decimal expansion has a twin with trailing 9s.” At least the correct statement has not yet been obliterated from Generalizations.) Do you imagine the insanity will stop there? --KSmrq^T 10:45, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough, I forgot about Melchoir. By the way, I think that, while inline cites are sometimes unnecessary, they are also mostly harmless. I don't want to waste my time adding unnecessary citations, but if others want to do that, that's fine with me. Of course, I agree that citations don't imply correctness. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:31, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

More information is always better, right? Maybe not.

Suppose you are reading an article on a topic for which you are not an expert. As you read, you encounter several footnotes in each paragraph, and sometimes several in one sentence. Is everything so important or so controversial? Do the references support the statements? How many will you check? As you read, will you constantly interrupt your reading to view footnotes? If you do, is that helpful? If you don't view them then, when will you? Are inline citations like these useful out of context? Heavily footnoted text presents a façade of thorough research and staunch reliability; but can you trust that image?

Now suppose you want to edit such an article. Everywhere you look the text is interrupted and fragmented by inline citations. Does that make it easier to edit, or harder? If you think something could be said more clearly, does the citation still apply to the revised wording? Will you check the source to find out? Must you check? Can you? Are you essentially forced to parrot the source? If you don't parrot closely enough for the citation police, will they attack you for original research, as we have seen happen? If you add new material with no inline citations, will it be reverted, or viewed as less credible?

Will we ever again be allowed to say, "I think this article reads better without the clutter of countless inline citations", or will we from now on have FA and GA lauding of citation excesses forced upon us?

So, misuse of inline citations has the potential to be bad for readability, bad for reliability, and bad for revisability. Is that “mostly harmless”? --KSmrq^T 14:16, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I need my towel. Where did I leave my towel?  --Lambiam^Talk 20:23, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Replying to KSmrq:

1. "More information is always better" — Of course not; the notes do distract, and ideally they should be hidden by default.
2. "Is everything so important or so controversial?" — This is a concern I share, and I think that the notes should make it clear when they relate to a fact which can be found in any text book.
3. "Everywhere you look the text is interrupted and fragmented by inline citations. Does that make it easier to edit, or harder?" — This is for me only a minor concern (assuming you are refering to the ref tags making the wikitext hard to understand).
4. "If you think something could be said more clearly, does the citation still apply to the revised wording?" — This is an argument I hadn't considered before. If the citation is useless, then you should be able to remove it. I understand that this will be hard in practice.
5. "Are you essentially forced to parrot the source?" — This is an important question: How strict should we be in interpreting WP:NOR? It is separate issue though.

Of course, misuse can be harmful. For instance, the source cited may not support the text at all. But here I'm thinking about citations as

"Every real matrix can be written as the sum of a symmetric and an skew-symmetric matrix. [cite some standard text book]"

I don't think it's worth the effort to fight such cites. The problem is that people are lending too much importance to such citations. The important policy is Wikipedia:Verifiability, and citations are only a means to reach this goal (well, sometimes they're also needed for reasons of academic honesty). -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 10:12, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, misuse is the problem. Anyone who deals with academic papers sees inline citations used routinely, and properly so. What we've been seeing lately within Wikipedia is not normal cells, to use a biology metaphor, but a cancer; the growth is out of control and harmful to the organism.

Follow-on comments:

1. Hiding notes — I like it! There would be a minor user-interface issue: how to be sure readers know the notes are available.
2. Most standard facts don't deserve an independent note. One or two early notes and a good reference section should suffice. (I think we're agreeing.)
3. For modest use of notes, the interruption is tolerable. (It would be more so with a BibTeX mechanism.) I'm concerned about massive use of notes, especially where a note in the middle of a sentence has a full citation like:

   Stewart, G. W. (1980). "The Efficient Generation of Random Orthogonal Matrices with an Application to Condition Estimation". SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 17 (3): 403–409. ISSN 0036-1429.

4. Right.
5. I hope the issues can be separated in practice. A genuine problem with cranks and confusion and pseudoscience has triggered a reaction that is itself troublesome.

Incidentally, I would not include a citation for the symmetric plus skew decomposition, since it is so trivial to verify from the definitions. The existence of a polar decomposition is not so obvious; depending on context it might deserve an inline citation. However, I could also be content with linking to the relevant article (especially if it is in decent shape). --KSmrq^T 14:37, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

reply about rectangular to triangular correction

I'm actually not sure exactly how to reply through the wiki in a way that you will get the message - is it best to use your talk page or mine? But in anycase - thanks Jitse for checking my question and putting it into effect. As for images, I think I've figured them out now. Richard Giuly 06:40, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Comments

Hi, I somehow missed your comments on my watchlist. In any case, I have responded on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Citation guidelines proposal. Thanks! –Joke 16:51, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Excelent edit on Projection (linear algebra)

Thanks for that great edit over at Projection (linear algebra), the article is much clearer now. Pdbailey 12:46, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Today's featured article

Just wanted to let you know a featured article you worked on, 0.999..., was featured today on the Main Page. Tobacman 00:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Arbitrary link deletion

>I agree with Oleg that they're not useful. The main problem is that the webpage seems to be >about a mathematical theory which is not published in a reliable source like peer-reviewed >journals.

There are hundred of links at the wikipedia which ARE neither published, nor sponsored, nor endorsed, by any peer-reviewed journals (and specifically within the same issues I posted my link) but you don't care about that but just about mine, and all we know the true reason: The true history of root solving shown in those web pages. The true about Newton's, Bernoulli's, Halley's and Householder's method. Of course, there could be many other reasons: I am SouthAmerican telling all the true about those superb Cartesian methods.

The real problem here is that the link I provided is a clear denuntiation of the way irrational numbers have been handled by mathematicians.

>Furthermore, there is no analysis of the new root-finding methods.

You have arbitrarily deleted SEVERAL other reliable sources which I included along with my link as for example: http://mathpages.com/home/kmath055.htm http://www.mathpath.org/Algor/cuberoot/cube.root.mediant.htm Dr. Sterven Finch, Generalized Continued Fractions and the Generalized Mediant

All those reliable sources along with many others are included in the link I provided.

All of them containing analysis on my the methods shown in my webpages.

Furthermore, in general terms, it is a real shame to read articles on root-solving from people who use to consider themselves as experts on roots solving but seem unaware about the crude fact that all those supposedly "advanced" cartesian-methods can be easily developed by means of the most simple arithmetic as shown in the link I provided. Furthermore, I am a civil engineer, structural engineer, and I think that if some mathematician consider himself as an expert on root-solving then he has the moral obligation to make whatever analysis should be made on those trivial methods. That's a moral obligation specially when considering that for mathematicians of past times it was almost imposible to compute a simple cube root. I don't have any reasons to post a complete analysis on those methods in my webpage, that's why I published my book which is mentioned there. The link I provided is just a brief summary.

Worst, almost all the links all over the wikipedia do not contain, at all, full demonstrations on the issued they deal about.

>The text is impossible to understand.

That's not true. You don't want to understand just because you don't want such denuntiation on the true history of root-solving. I bet you even have not read any single part of the link you want to let deleted. The proof of all that are the aforementioned reliable links where reknown authors have analyzed some of the methods even when they don't have to agree with my critics to Cartesian-System.

>You added the link to Newton's method, yet the web page is not at >all about >Newton's >method. That's why I am removing the link. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:03, >27 October >2006 (UTC)

The link I provided show that Newton's, Bernoulli's, Halley's and Householder's methods can be easily stated by means of the most simple arithmetic and that ancient mathematicians has at han the elementary arithmetical operation needed for developing such "advanced" methods. I understand these is the main reason some of you don't want my link to appear here, however, as said may there be other reasons. Besides, there are some explanations on why Newton's method is just a crude and primitive geometrical artifice which is not a Natural Method at all and should not be considered as being part of any Natural Philosophy.

Finally, I understand that you have not read through any single part of my methods, you are not interested in doing so. You just want to get it deleted. I understand that, and I know it seems not sense to reply your message because the all of you have laid your wiki-cards on the table. The wikipedia is yours and not from others but only yours.

I only would ask you to allow me to save your comments and to pass them to some of my coleagues, and even use them as part of the next english edition of my book. I would deeply appreciate that, I think it is not so much to ask from the wikipedia editors specially when considering that you are experts on root-solving and endorse your own statements with so much courage.

Re: Thanks for removing spam

My pleasure - I've stumbled across several linkspam festivals tonight. I detest spam and it's been a little while since I devoted a chunk of time to getting rid of it. If they want to increase their Google Rank here, they've got to get through us first. :-) Thanks! KrakatoaKatie 04:22, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

thanks

thank you for the help

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		for helping me with my qusestion TrackMonkey 23:37, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

TrackMonkey 22:52, 29 October 2006 (UTC)