Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

Formal language (logic) on AFD

I have nominated Formal language (logic) for deletion. The discussion page is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Formal language (logic). — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:39, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

In a similar vein, someone interested in math logic may want to take a look at more articles that share similar issues:

• Deductive system vs. proof calculus
• Syntax (logic), Formation rule and Well-formed formula
• Formal proof (claims that natural deduction is a generalization of "proof")

Pcap ping 06:12, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

It does appear to me that we need a position paper, i.e. essay, setting out principles such as Wikipedia:Encyclopedic axiomatic mergism. A snappier term would be welcome. But judging by tensors, boolean algebras, formal languages alone, there seem to be some general issues to cover:

• Topic sentences start us off with definitions, not "ways to think about X";
• Pedagogy is a valid area of discussion, but what X is cannot be determined by "in courses X is often introduced as";
• Mergism should be taken as subordinate to summary style, in that proper structuring of subtopics in an area requires a central article, off which specialised articles hang, rather than a menu of articles;
• Proponents of POV forks are really arguing for a longer menu, rather than properly applying the core principles of encyclopedia-building.

Whatever you make of my formulations, I do think recent discussion suggests that these ideas need to be put together in a coherent discussion. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:22, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, concerning myself with the nature of "stuff" rather than mere terminological distinctions, or differences between similar treatments is one of the first lessons I've learned editing here. Some separate articles like boolean ring vs. boolean lattice or Presentation of a monoid vs. string rewriting system or abstract rewriting system vs. State transition system may sometimes be justified based on focus even if size alone isn't an issue, but even then connections need to be stated explicitly. Obscuring connections by narrowly writing articles from few/one source[s], like we witnessed in the logic articles at hand here, is bad and non-encyclopedic practice. A guideline should definitely help some confused newbies... Pcap ping 09:49, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Result

Result was delete; could someone change the 100+ references to formal language (logic) in articlespace back to formal language? I can't run AWB on this computer, as IE is comprimized. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:19, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I was willing to fix some by hand, but "what links here" does not seem to work properly for that article, perhaps due to parentheses in the name. It lists over 500 articles here, and the few I checked don't even link to the deleted article. I'm confused... Pcap ping 10:32, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Edit Template:logic first. I just now created a redirect to solve the immediate problem. If someone else removes the links, let me know and I'll delete the redirect again. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:35, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Done. That cut down the number to 51 articles that were linked with AWB during the AfD, and which I and CBM did not reverse right then. Pcap ping 10:58, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

metalogic = metamathematics

I managed to find a source that explicitly says this, see Talk:Metalogic#Metalogic_.3D_metamathematics. So, I'm proposing a merge of those articles. Pcap ping 09:36, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Rayleigh's method of dimensional analysis

Rayleigh's method of dimensional analysis could use a couple minutes of work to clean it up. I know 0 about the subject and have not been able to get a good enough grasp of it through google. Thanks for any assistance.Cptnono (talk) 02:53, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Isn't it all covered under dimensional analysis? I'd have thought this was a candidate for deletion. Why particularly the 'Rayleigh' in the title? And by the way shouldn't the Rayleigh number be mentioned in the dimensional analysis article as one of the most famous uses? Dmcq (talk) 06:45, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I've cleaned it up. I put some proper initial context words in the first sentence, added some links from the article to some others, brought the style (mostly) into line with Wikipedia conventions, and added some links to the article from other articles. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:56, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

To Dmcq: ???  :)

To M Hardy, thanks for the quick clean up.Cptnono (talk) 20:47, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

The article in its present form is not all that clear. I don't know whether it's really dealing with something that doesn't belong in the main dimensional analysis article. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:58, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Collaboration of the month - inactive?

I was thinking of ways to get myself more involved in Wikipedia again - specifically the maths topics. I was surpised to find that the Collaboration of the Month page was marked as inactive. Would there be interest in reviving it? --Paul Carpenter (talk) 16:26, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes. But in the past there has (apparently) been a mismatch between the nominations of topics, and topics on which people have wanted to work. Something structural probably needs to be done to alleviate the passive-voice and wishlist aspects of simply having a popularity contest. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:19, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there are enough active editors of mathematics articles to make Collaboration of the month worthwhile. People just work on articles they want to when they can. Charvest (talk) 20:22, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, I'll be watching the page in-case it fires up again. Maybe I'll take a look at the structure of it all sometime. Thanks. --Paul Carpenter (talk) 10:17, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Hannan Binth Hashim

See Hannan Binth Hashim. Hoax? Non-notable instance of some journalist being stupid? Michael Hardy (talk) 19:08, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

From a quick read, it looks like both - a non-notable instance of a journalist taking in a host. I'll ProD it. --Paul Carpenter (talk) 19:54, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

d'Alembert's formula

I believe there is a non-sense in the derivation of the formulae: u_mu.eta = u_{(x + ct)*(x - ct)} = u_{(x² - (ct)²)} which is NOT the same as u_tt - c²u_xx —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.3.252.129 (talk • contribs) 27 September 2009

I've put this comment back and I'm not sure why you deleted it. Thanks for bringing this fairly messy article to our attention. I'm going to take a look at it. If you want to retract your comments that's all well and good but please avoid removing content from talk pages while it's still relevant.

I repeat my invitation for you to join Wikipedia properly.

--Paul Carpenter (talk) 15:03, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

A nitpicking style issue

Even today there are poor benighted souls who don't know Wikipedia math notation style conventions.

I sometimes find things like x_n, with the subscript not italicized. Here's a guess: some people see things like x₁, where the subscript should not be italicized, and leap to the conclusion that that applies to subscripts generally, rather than being about the difference between literal variables and digits.

At any rate, I've always assumed the idea is that non-TeX notation should match TeX style as closely as possible. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:27, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I assume you are referring to the recent edits you made at Cyclotomic character. I wrote that article and can explain to you that my decision was not a matter of poor pattern recognition, but rather a compromise at the sometimes poor look of html. Italicized super- and subscripts can redner poorly. As an example, consider the following with italicized superscript: Hⁿ. Because html makes no attempt at looking good, the superscript and the base letter overlap, and can be unreadable at times. Now I have since seen the hack H ⁿ, and I use that now, but I didn't go back over all previous edits I made to change them all. Especially since html rendering of math is not actually a guideline, and some people go around changing things to TeX anyway. I will assume you weren't calling me "benighted". Though a quick look at the history of the article would have clearly indicated that I was essentially the only editor. Perhaps this whole comment could've been posted on my talk page. Maybe I'm the only culprit. RobHar (talk) 00:22, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm puzzled: You're saying the problems you refer to here explain your decision not to italicize the subscript n? Michael Hardy (talk) 10:18, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I find that html does a poor job of rendering italicized small fonts in general. The superscript example I described above is a particularly egregious example, but even H_f doesn't look great because the f is so small. So, for a while, I simply decided to avoid italicizing sub- and superscripts for aesthetic purposes. I view TeX emulation not as a goal unto itself, but rather a good approximation to proper aesthetics. Are you still puzzled? Something that puzzles me that you could perhaps explain is why every single time you add a section to this talk page you do so manually and without changing the edit summary so that it appears you are adding to the previous discussion, but really you're not. Now that's puzzling! RobHar (talk) 15:18, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

It's not actually every time, and when it happens it's just haste. Certainly the way we handle both TeX and non-TeX notation has been deficient in some identified ways that we've been talking about at least since the beginning of 2003. How do H_ƒ and H _ƒ appear on your browser? Michael Hardy (talk) 19:12, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

On my system at least, the kerning on Hⁿ is just as bad as RobHar says it is. It will depend very heavily on the fonts that are used to display the math. TeX itself has to go to great lengths to get the kerning right for mathematical formulas, which is why there are very few mathematics fonts for TeX.

On the other hand, I would just write Hⁿ in an article. I don't think we should worry about things such as kerning for HTML display. But if you do want to add a space, make it a thin nonbreaking space (typed as " "). This gives: Hⁿ. The version with   gives: H ⁿ which is too wide for me and probably for everyone else too. See Unicode spaces. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:37, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks CBM, that looks much better. RobHar (talk) 15:11, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

He might have noticed it last there but you're hardly the only person to do this sometimes! Dmcq (talk) 08:37, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Since we are nitpicking, this is a good time for me to ask this question: In TeX, I always write the time complexity of a linear time algorithm as $O(n)$. This is the same as in the Big O notation article, and CS papers in general. However, I've noticed that while using HTML, most people just write O(n). (The difference is that the "O" is not italicized.) What is the correct way? Is the big O italicized? (Same question for Omega, Theta, etc.) --Robin (talk) 19:45, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

For big-Oh notation, we should probably follow the pattern used by the majority of CS publications, if there is a pattern. That will minimize reader confusion with our articles.

Greek is a different issue. TeX sets lowercase mathematical Greek in italic by default, but some people use upright lowercase Greek with TeX (in other fonts), and so it is not clear which way is better. Also, certain things are set in non-italic by convention (for example, capital Greek letters are set upright in TeX by default). Personally, when I use HTML entities to type Greek letters in math articles on Wikipedia, I never italicize them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

D. Rees?

Can someone address the issues I raise at Talk:Don Rees? Michael Hardy (talk) 01:57, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

List of X topics vs Outline of X

Should articles called List of topology topics etc be changed to Outline of topology etc. User The Transhumanist is changing them all. A particularly ridiculous example is when List of triangle topics was changed to Outline of triangles. Charvest (talk) 13:02, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

...and similarly, outline of circles. Michael Hardy (talk) 13:38, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

There is some background and explanation at User talk:The Transhumanist, accompanied by a growing list of complaints. Some of these page moves are being reverted piecemeal by various editors. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:12, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

There's a WikiProject devoted to this: Wikipedia:WPOOK. Michael Hardy (talk) 13:23, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

If you take a look at The Transhumanist's last few contributions, he talks about accelerating this process and is enlisting others to help. I suggest that you visit the project and warn them to stop and approach this in a very different manner. Such mass changes should be approved on each talk page first. Barring that, a Wiki-wide official policy needs to justify it. Such a style policy/guideline doesn't exist, AFAIK. This needs speedy action to prevent more damage. -- Brangifer (talk) 13:53, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

The Transhumanist has a long history of blatantly ignoring complaints and pushing ahead his pet project of "WPOOK" in spite of everybody else. Apparently, "outlines" need to be forced down the community's collective throat for its own good.

the bottom-line is that we have here an editor who has repeatedly shown his utter contempt for all wikilike procedure of discussion, consensus-building and compromise. I know of no effective way of dealing with such cases other than the warn-block cycle. --dab (𒁳) 14:04, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Dbachman, this has been discussed with you before, I need not tell you to see WP:OUTLINE Highfields (talk, contribs) 15:05, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

A proposed guideline is hardly a good reason for undiscussed execution of blatantly wrong page moves such as those mentioned above (Outline of triangles, outline of circles). Outlines are controversial. Renaming lists to "outlines" is predictably controversial. We have two processes for controversial moves: Proposing them on the article talk page, and WP:Requested moves. Which of them was followed in these cases? Hans Adler 15:52, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the name is very important. Yes, User:The Transhumanist should not be doing these sorts of massive page moves, and someone has already given him or her a warning to stop. But I don't think it's worth wasting too much time discussing the matter, when we could be achieving more useful things than discussing whether "Outline" or "List" is a better word for the title. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:26, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh God, is he still at this nonsense? Someone block him and be done with it. → ROUX ₪ 16:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)