Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

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FPSAC, and notable conferences

I notice that the International Conference on Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics (FPSAC) has been proposed for deletion. This is a highly prestigious conference with extended abstracts, comparable in several ways to a journal; I think it is the main conference in algebraic combinatorics, broadly considered. Does WP:NJOURNALS apply? If it is not notable, does a similar argument for deletion apply to e.g. Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA)? (While the SODA article is better developed, the concern of primary sourcing still holds.) I think that there may be several similar conferences around theoretical computer science and nearby areas. Disclosing that I served on the scientific committee of FPSAC the year that it was in Slovenia. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 09:05, 28 October 2023 (UTC) Addition: or alternatively, do proceedings published in well-established journals satisfy GNG? Russ Woodroofe (talk) 10:46, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

It is very difficult to source articles on conferences, even major and well-established ones, and even considering selective indexes to be sources as NJOURNALS does. They are not generally indexed except by specialized sources like DBLP (which is not very selective), it is difficult to find people who write much about them rather than merely publishing in them, and often when they do write about them it is in non-independent sources such as prefaces to the conference proceedings. For SODA, it is possible that there is something about it in SIGACT News, like a report from an instance of the conference, but as an ACM publication that might not be considered independent enough. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:54, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Conley conjecture

I could not find the reference the Conley (1984) in this article. What should I do ? SilverMatsu (talk) 01:41, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

That reference likely comes from the review paper The Conley Conjecture and Beyond. It is more of an attestation that the event took place than a reference itself. You could link to the review paper as the source of the claim. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 05:41, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@Mark viking: Thank you for your advice ! Thanks to you, I fixed it. --SilverMatsu (talk) 13:52, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Integer factorization

The article integer factorization lists a lot of algorithms. I think it should say what algorithms are the most practical. Somewhere (I couldn't find it again) I read that Shanks's SQUFOF is clearly the best for $n<2^{64}$, or something a little bigger than that; that Quadratic Sieve was best for some range, and that something else was better for some other range.

Can someone add that to the article? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 17:54, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

And General number field sieve says that it is best for integers over 100 digits. So what are the approximate range where each is the best? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:06, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Also, I think it would be good to have an article about how to factor an integer. I remember a journal article with that title decades ago. Also, Knuth, volume 2, § 4.5.4 goes through a process, but it is out of date. He first does trial factorization and then switches to Fermat's method, which isn't currently the best thing to do. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:06, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

What are the approximate range where each is the best? This strongly depends on the used computer architecture and the used basic algorithms (integer multiplication, linear algebra, ...). So, I doubt that any reliable encyclopedic answer can be provided.

I think it would be good to have an article about how to factor an integer. See WP:NOTHOWTO. D.Lazard (talk) 11:35, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

More accessible explanations near the front, some historical discussion, possibly an example or two, and some explicit comparison of various methods wouldn't necessarily make integer factorization into a "howto". What we have now is mostly a list of wikilinks to various methods with no explanation or context. A novice reader of the integer factorization page (say a high school student) isn't going to get much out of it, even if integer factorization is relevant to one of their interests or projects, because the page is written in a pretty inaccessible way.

But Bubba73, what did you have in mind? You can always try adding the information you are looking for to the article. Or if you propose something concrete maybe others can help. –jacobolus (t) 14:46, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I would want some reference on which to base such an article. Something like try trial division up to some point, and if that fails to completely factor it, do a primality test on what remains. If it is composite, then try to factor it with method X. etc. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:15, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

The Joy of Factoring", by Wagstaff, page 247 gives several tips. It also says that the Quadratic Sieve is best for numbers with 50-100 digits and the Number Field Sieve is best for numbers with more than 100 digits. At least that should go in the integer factorization article. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:30, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Is that ten-year-old comparison still accurate, though? As of a different 2011 comparison the crossover was more like in the low 90s [1] and since then some NSF implementations have had significant speedups [2]. Later posts in the same thread put the crossover at around 100 again. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:18, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Probably not. I'm not up to date on this. But it may give a rough idea. It could be in there with the date of the statement, and note that things change, and it depends on other factors. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:48, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

I tried to make the first paragraph of integer factorization a bit more accessible. I think it would still be good to add another paragraph to the lead (and another section to the article) describing pre-computer pen-and-paper factorization algorithms and efforts. –jacobolus (t) 23:47, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Help with history template

I recently created the Template:History of physics which has helped to revise and navigate better in between history articles related to physics. I started a Draft:Template:History of mathematics, however I am not sure I got every history article there is, and some topics could be grouped together as in Template:History of physics. Any suggestions? To be precise I am only adding links to articles that are mainly about history (usually titled "History of", "Timeline of", "Chronology of"). I am not adding articles that have a history section like complex number. ReyHahn (talk) 12:22, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Mathematical modelling of infectious diseases#Requested move 30 October 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Mathematical modelling of infectious diseases#Requested move 30 October 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Polyamorph (talk) 08:09, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Two questions

In the draft of recognized content, it does not list one featured article Quine–Putnam indispensability argument, and GA nominee Earth–Moon problem that it listed on GAN before I nominate Square pyramid. Is it possible to add it manually, or should wait a little bit longer for the bot?

Also, in the article Fleiss' kappa, is it possible to change the modern template reference? There was a hidden comment, stating that there were a few errors or bugs about the appearance of references, along with the discussion from a long time ago in the link here. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 00:33, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Is there a category for history of nomenclature and are there articles on history of nomenclature

I was looking at Natural numbers and it occurred to me that the question oi whether to include zero was pat of a more general issue. There are many fields of Mathematics where different nomenclatures have existed, either over time or concurrently, and that articles on the evolution of nomenclature, including sign conventions, might be useful.

Are there such articles, or a category to assign them to. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:14, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

We do have an article about the history of mathematical notation. I wouldn't worry about the category, but you can certainly write articles like this if they don't exist, so long as the content is based on published sources (in more obscure cases the history of names and conventions may not have been directly written about). For details up through the 19th century, you could start by reading Florian Cajori's book A History of Mathematical Notations. –jacobolus (t) 16:38, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

There are also individual articles on notation, or sometimes on the history of notation, in Category:History of mathematics + Category:Mathematical notation. Example: Zenzizenzizenzic. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:34, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

How to handle vandalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Intersection_(set_theory)&curid=23476429&diff=1183967074&oldid=1182504792 is the only contribution from a particular editor and is an obvious case of vandalism of Intersection (set theory). I am not vary familiar with all the wikipedia procedures, but instead of going through an edit war, wouldn't there be a way to block this editor outright? PatrickR2 (talk) 05:39, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Just revert the edit and leave a message on their talk page. If they do it again they can be banned. –jacobolus (t) 05:47, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

I have reverted the edit and left the standard first-level warning at their talk page. XOR'easter (talk) 05:50, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

If it continues, you can report to WP:AIV. --JBL (talk) 18:07, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Making mathematical articles more broadly accessible

During the Q&A of one of the lightning talks at WikiConference North America this last weekend, it came up that a lot of us, even those with degrees in mathematics, find the bulk of en-wiki's math articles among the least penetrable on the site, even when compared against other STEM topics. There were a few constructive suggestions (I'm paraphrasing, of course):

• Have in mind who your audience is. You aren't writing to show your professor that you understand the material. You are writing to teach the material to someone who is at the level in mathematics to be able to understand the relevant concept, theorem, etc., but to whom this particular material is new.
• Consider that the lede should be as broadly comprehensible as possible. In particular, it is OK if the lede oversimplifies a bit, as long as it is clear that the details can be found later in the article. Gödel's incompleteness theorems is a great example of getting this right. Note, in particular, that it does not even touch upon arithmetization of syntax, perhaps the most striking feature of Gödel's proof. Why? Because it's not an article about the proof, it's an article about the theorem, and someone with only a moderate background in mathematics is likely to be a lot more interested in what the theorem says than how, exactly, it is proved. Conversely, in the generally good lede of manifold: would it have killed anyone to explain the word "lemniscates" with "(e.g., figure-eights)" rather than make maybe 90% of readers click through if they want to understand what is being said?
• We might want to create a template which, in the session, we jokingly called {{Prerequisites}}. The idea would be to list, up front of either a section or of the article as whole, the concepts you need to understand the article, instead of having the reader discover them as they encounter links scattered through the article. E.g. Manifolds usefully says, at the end of the lede, "The study of manifolds requires working knowledge of calculus and topology." The is is the sort of thing {{Prerequisites}} could do; also, if the way we deploy such a templates were designed well, we might be able to make clear that most of the article can be understood with just topology, and only certain sections require any calculus.

Thoughts? - Jmabel | Talk 20:32, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

It's hard to argue with the general goal or the first two points. The third point, about prerequisites, has been proposed many times and shot down every time. In essence, the counter-argument seems to be: The prerequisites are already encoded into the links, and anything that does much more than the links is veering into Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a textbook territory. I don't find that argument fully convincing — maybe there's a perfect balance to be discovered — but I've never seen it described in adequate detail. Regards, Mgnbar (talk) 21:33, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

As to the second point, I think that while Jmabel's example (the intro to Gödel's incompleteness theorems) is fine, the wording could be abused. There's a difference between leaving out detail, and saying things that aren't true. We should never oversimplify to the point that what we're saying isn't true, at least not without an explicit warning that that's what's happening.

That's the vexing thing about these discussions. On the one hand, it's definitely true that many math articles are written in a way that makes them much less useful than they could be. On the other hand, we see people throwing drive-by {{technical}} templates on articles that are written quite reasonably for any audience that has the background necessary to have a chance at the inherent subject matter. And there's a contingent that even thinks it's OK to tell lies to children if it makes readers feel like they understand. --Trovatore (talk) 21:53, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I personally find throwing "maintenance templates" on tops of articles to be obnoxious and almost entirely useless. However, it would be nice if confused readers would take the time to start a talk page conversation with a concrete critique when they have an issue like this, so that someone can try to make improvements. If the subject gets discussed somewhere I see it, e.g. at this wikiproject talk page, I'm happy to give some effort to working on accessibility of subjects that I feel nominally competent to write about. (Or if that seems too off topic for here, I'd be happy to discuss such cases at some other venue.) As one example, someone recently mentioned on the talk page of WP:TECHNICAL that they found the lead section of our article Bijection to be hard to follow, so I tried to rearrange and expand its lead section a bit to hopefully be clearer to a general audience (people with more expertise than I have are welcome to rework that further). –jacobolus (t) 02:07, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

As a small aside, I'm curious about these potential readers who know topology but not calculus.... --Trovatore (talk) 22:14, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

The biggest error that we make on Wikipedia in this area is summary style, whose author regretted it years later as I recall, since really it's a newspaper thing not an encyclopaedia thing. Introductions should introduce; not be a Britannica style Micropedia to the Macropedia that is the rest of the article. If you try to compress the rest of the article into the introduction, and then summarize the introduction into its first paragraph, the information density becomes ridiculous; and this is partly the cause of articles that end up as "subject is the namedrop jargon jargon of namedrop jargon when jargon namedrop jargons are encofstulated.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]}". I don't think that prerequisites are the answer, but I do think that dropping the idea of compressing everything ever tighter again and again, and instead just introducing a subject, would avoid the "leaving out detail" problem. Uncle G (talk) 23:18, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I am very strongly in favor of putting in the effort to make our articles as accessible as possible. But it is significant effort, and not the kind of effort that mathematics students are often well-trained in. That said, the original post has a serious inaccuracy in its framing. It writes:

Have in mind who your audience is. You aren't writing to show your professor that you understand the material. You are writing to teach the material to someone who is at the level in mathematics to be able to understand the relevant concept, theorem, etc., but to whom this particular material is new.

This is written as if there can and should be only one audience for each mathematics article, someone ready for the material who does not yet understand it. This is untrue. That is one kind of audience, but not the only one. We need the leads of our article to be readable by someone who is not ready to learn the material in any depth but is interested in finding out what it might be about (WP:ONEDOWN). And we need the later parts of our article to be usable by people who do understand the material already but want to refer to it anyway as reference material, as a quick reminder of what they already know, or as a collection of pointers to more in-depth literature to use as references for other works. Writing articles that can be used for all these purposes is even more effort, and is something typically not appreciated by readers at a different level who either think the material is too technical or too oversimplified. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:30, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I would like to call out another aspect of Jmabel's (generally reasonable) post. I disagree that we are writing to "teach the material". This is a reference work, not a textbook. We want to facilitate self-teaching, but we do not ourselves want to teach.

This is more a question of organization than level of difficulty. I've never come up with the perfect way of expressing it, but maybe -- we want to be random-access rather than serial? We're not presenting an order in which you're supposed to learn the material. We want to make the material available to you, so you can look up an individual fact quickly if you need it, or find a path through it to learn it if that's your goal. --Trovatore (talk) 01:36, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

I can appreciate the motivation for a {{Prerequisites}} template, but in the end it sounds like a gimmick: one more thing to have to maintain, and one more way that complicated relationships get flattened for the sake of having a box in the sidebar. It's rather like the "influenced" and "influenced by" items in {{Infobox philosopher}} and {{Infobox scientist}}, which were recently removed. Our time would be better spent improving the text than futzing about with new sidebars.

I'll echo the sentiment above that an article can in general have more than one audience, which makes for hard writing. Moreover, this is one way that we differ from textbooks: a typical textbook is made with an audience in mind and a sense of where in the curriculum it's going to be used. Another difference alluded to above is that textbooks are generally sequential, rather than "random-access". The standard approach in teaching a course is to begin at the beginning of the book and work through the chapters pretty much in the order they're printed, maybe not getting all the way to the end. The challenges of writing well in that style are going to be different than the challenges of writing well on this platform, just by the nature of the platform itself. My sense of the overall situation is that the top priority for some articles, like short ones on highly specialized upper-level topics, should be to expand, organize, and reference them. A lot of improvement in those corners of the encyclopedia would involve writing at a similar level to what the existing text presumes, but just being less half-ass about it. In other places, the top priority ought to be providing a solid opening. XOR'easter (talk) 08:24, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

It has always been thus, as I know from the day I joined the project in 2007. Wikipedia is not a textbook, and this is particularly stark in advanced mathematics articles... but we should – and often do – strive to make mathematics articles as accessible as possible to the dedicated reader, by making our explanations as clear as possible, and by linking to sources and resources that will help readers learn more and then appreciate the value and beauty of maths. Geometry guy 00:43, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

New editor with a draft

• Draft:Mal'cev's criterion
• JesseStraat (talk · contribs)

This is going to be a difficult AFC review for whoever picks it up. I've given the article creator a few tips and pointers, but some help from others would not go amiss. Uncle G (talk) 22:58, 14 November 2023 (UTC)