User talk:Oleg Alexandrov

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pascal-triangle /matrix exponential (your mail to me)

Hi Oleg -

thanks for your mail! Nice to see, that some work was noticed by someone...

Well, I won't argue for the layout of articles, I think wikipedia is a great deal and good enough as it is. But... a little bit it stitches me with the relocation of the pascal-matrix... You see, it has the character of a introducing-card (would you say so in english?), more than an "important" property. In a list of important properties I think it is not needed for an encyclopedia. It has more the character of a gimmick, pleasant, amazing, and with a styleful shortness and understatement I think the best place would be in fact at the introduction, saying "hello,look here"... and then proceed to the more general and important things.

Positioned at this place I'd rather feel to retract it, but, well, I'll try to get used to it next days ;-)

And generally: it is nice to get welcomed in the way of your mail. Thanks again!

Gotti --Gotti 18:49, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Gotti,

my name is Meni and I am about as new to Wikipedia as you, but I do however have several hints amd suggestions for you.

First, note that users other than the owner of a talk page (in this case, Oleg) may reply to your questions (which is exactly what I am doing right now), so it is useful to add links to the article you're discussing and the topic in discussion. This way anyone can quickly understand what you are talking about. Links are basically created by enclosing an article name with [[double brackets]]. There are some other tricks to it, but this will do.

You don't have to worry whether your work will be noticed or not. Hard-core mathematical Wikipedians such as Oleg closely monitor pretty much every mathematical article in Wikipedia, and administrators (again, such as Oleg) always welcome newcomers warmheartedly when they encounter one.

Be sure to add important articles to your watchlist and check it once in a while. This way you can know about any changes, possibly comments about your contributions. Also, if you'd like, you can add some information about yourself in your user page, so that everyone will know who you are.

About the location of the matrix exponential identity, I think your notion of an introduction should be the other way around. The introduction is where the most important information about a topic is located, pretty much those things that everyone must know. Specific properties, curiosities and "gimmicks" should be farther down, in approporiate sections or in a section of their own.

And I don't think the phrase "introducing card" is widely used. I'd go for "introductory fact".

I hope I have been helpful.

--Meni Rosenfeld 19:47, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Well -

thanks for your input! After considering a bit, I still think, that a property like that, put up into a simple,single point, would be appropriate at the introduction. But - according to the wikipedia rules about original work I come tending to the opinion, it would be better to retract and to try to get it into the printed version first and make it common this way.

Hmm.

Styling an encyclopedia is not so easy, I learn by this ...

Gotti --Gotti 20:29, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Ahh - Meni and Oleg, also I had to say thanks for your hints; I'll try to follow them.
And I just put some things together to introduce myself a bit Druseltal2005 - Gottfried Helms

--Gotti 22:58, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

That's nice, I've been drinking all day, and when I am back, I don't even need to answer questions, things are taken care for me. :)

I would agree with Meni, it is good if the introduction is a short elementary description of things to come (see also the math style manual). After that, it is good to have a section on motivation. Your example might work there, but I would think that it is more like a curiousity, and it might confuse people the first thing in the article (or in the first section). So, I would still think it is good if it went a bit below, but that is all subjective. Decide for yourself. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:26, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Temporarily freezing a page

Hi Oleg --

If I wanted to temporarily freeze a page so that I can do some tedious notation replacements without worrying about other people making changes in the meantime, how do I arrange to get the freeze put in place? And how long does a temporary freeze usually last? FYI, the page is Discrete Fourier transform, and there is a general consensus behind some simple notation substitutions. Please let me know. Thanks.

-- Metacomet 02:12, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Try to put the {{inuse}} template on the page. That should work (do a preview first) see how it looks. And as you guessed, it is good if you don't keep that for too long. An hour, maybe two, should be fine, but not till New Year 2006. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:22, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Regarding changes to Leibniz and Topology pages

Thank you for taking the time to write to me. I appreciate your suggestion and will follow it. As you might have noticed, I am just beginning to learn the etiquette necessary for being a proper "comensal" in this place. Can I ask you for a favor? Do you know how to add hit counters to articles? We want to add one to the Leibniz page.

Best Regards

Dr. Gabriel Gojon 17:06, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know about hit counters. I never head of them, and I don't know if people like those. But you could try asking that question at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) where a lot of knowledgeable people hang around. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:52, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Hit counters were enabled quite some time ago, but the technical people found that updating them caused too much strain on the servers, so they disabled them. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 20:56, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Specific links

Hello, Oleg

Thanks for your help in the past, but I am still learning about Wiki.

Right now I am writing an article about the magnetosphere of Earth. It will be very long and maybe I will divide it into "Magnetosphere' and "Magnetospheric physics." I am not sure.

With a long article, the question of references arises. You do not want to send all users to the beginning of the article, if the part you want to point out is deep inside. You do not want the user to start a long search.

Does Wikipedia have anchors, the way HTML does, something like <A name='substorm'>  ? If so, how do you place them, and how do you use them in links inside Wikipedia, or for outside users?

    Also, is it OK to indent paragraphs for better appearance, like this one?

Happy New Year

David Stern http://www.phy6.org/stargaze/Sstern.htm

Hi

Simply use the # charcter to specify a section. for example [[Magnetosphere#History of magnetospheric physics]] will link to this section. I hope this solves your problem.

I guess you shouldn't indent unless necessary. In talk pages, for example, it is customary for each writer to use a different indentation (so I'm using one level of indentation, and if Oleg replies he will probably use 2 levels of indentaion.

--Meni Rosenfeld 19:43, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Meni, that's helpful! That's what I had in mind also. You may also try what you said earlier, <A name='substorm'>. I don't know if it will work, I never tried, but the wikipedia markup language is close enough to HTML that most html constructs work.

About indenting, indeed, I agree with Meni that indenting on the talk page is good indeed, actually recommended. Also agree with Meni that indenting in main article is good if you indent sparingly, only for a very important result let us say. And indenting only once should be enough (meaning, one should not push the text too much to the right in articles). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:52, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

You can make anchors by typing <span id=anchorlabel></span> and link to them by typing [[#anchorlabel]]. See the link in the first cell of the table in Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Participants for a practical example (this is where I learnt the trick). Of course, if you want to link to a specific section, you don't need to make an anchor; just use Meni's technique. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 20:56, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Your edit at Point (geometry)

Hi. I am not sure I understand your edit at that article. What is an ideal in that context? It cannot be an ideal (ring theory), can it? Anyway, I would really appreciate it if you would revisit that article, and make links to the relevant concepts in your contribution, and maybe making it more clear. Thanks a lot, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:52, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Hello, i was just hoping that someone would approve or correct this definition that i have found on planetmath.org

i'm not sure about it :-) —the preceding unsigned comment is by Unixer (talk • contribs)

Well, would you give a link to the article at planetmath? I strongly suspect that information is either not correct or not in the right place. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:12, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

here is the PDF file: http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~yakov/Geometry/5.pdf —the preceding unsigned comment is by Unixer (talk • contribs)

I read that. OK, what you wrote is not right away wrong, but it is not helpful as there is no description of the assumptions involved, what kind of ideals are that, in what ring, etc. Maybe your contribution could be fixed, but would require a careful job by a person who knows all that stuff. The simplest thing to do would be just to remove your contribution, which I will do now. I would suggest that in the future when you contribute you be familiar enough with the topic at hand to know that what you are writing is in the right place and correct. That because it seems that when people complain about Wikipedia, they don't mind so much when information is missing, rather when information is incorrect. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:30, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

more examples in external links

The reader is not blind, but is trusting, perhaps, and when the "Examples" section ends, they may believe that there are no more resources with examples. Can I add my link inside the examples section since it is all example problems? -Tbsmith

No. External links inside Wikipedia articles are not really encouraged, especially considering that you are doing self-promotion here. So, please write your external link as modestly as possible, and in the external links section. And make sure it is well-formatted and gives the appearance of a relevant link. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:45, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

not relevant

Do you really think all those examples aren't relevant to path integration? How so? I don't understand how it's not relevant. http://www.exampleproblems.com/wiki/index.php/Complex_Variables#Complex_Integrals

Yes it's self promotion, but so what? The link is extremely useful to anyone in graduate school that's learning how to compute these integrals.

-Tbsmith

Well, if you read carefully what I wrote on your talk page, external links are fine, as long as they are in the right section, called ==External links==, they are relevant, are written such that they appear to look relevant, and one follows the accepted Wikipedia style practices. Does not clarify things a bit? :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:15, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Matthew Vassar user vandalism

I appreciate the objectivity of your edit, but take a look at the history of that entry and the IPs editing it. Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with a user who does this ? -- TrinityC 21:05, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, vandals are eventually blocked. I guess the standard procedure is to give repeated warnings on the vandal talk page, to ask the person to stop. One may the {{test1}}, {{test2}} all the way to {{test5}} for that. If there is enough evidence that the user is not willing to smart up, and there is a lot of recent vandalism, the user is blocked. With that particular user, I guess one may want to wait a bit, the vandalism is bad, but not a lot.

By the way, you can also report vandalism at Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress, usually there is good response there. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:19, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Question about wikipedia

Hi Oleg. Do you know offhand if there's a way for me to modify my username? I originally signed up with this one, which is an alias, but in retrospect I would rather use my real name. Thanks. --Adfgvx 00:17, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Changing username. But you could as well make a new account, and redirect the old one to the new one, since you have few edits. I did that with my old account, User:Olegalexandrov. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:19, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Oleg. I've edited probability current and revised the introduction (although inadvertantly under my old name still...) I removed the link from probability density to probability amplitude because these are two fundamentally different (though related) things which are often confused. I think it would be great if someone would create an entry dedicated exclusively to probability density (not just as it relates to quantum mechanics). As I've said on the discussion page for probability amplitude, I think the probability amplitude entry is redundant and should just point to wavefunction (which is the same thing). --Joshua Barr 00:48, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your work! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:23, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Seasons greetings to you too

I was excited when the yellow bar appeared atop my page, thinking perhaps it was a late "Merry Christmas" or an early "Happy New year" — only to discover it was a boring heading "fix". Oh well I guess I should be thankful (even tho it isn't Thanksgiving) for whatever care is shown for my talk page. And since I'm here, happy whatever holidays a heathen like you celebrates ;-) Paul August ☎ 16:21, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry Paul, I just could not resist seeing a misformatted page. (Of course, how you will react to the yellow bar was the last thing on my mind!) :) But if you used that an occasion to congratulate me with the holidays, well, maybe that fix was not in vain! Thank you for your wishes, I will pass them on to a certain somebody, and I wish you also all the best in the year ahead, Julius Caesar and all that. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:52, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Wait now... a heathen? Who said that? And if the New Year is not my primary holiday, so what of that? So that you know, I am no heathen at no time! My primary great great holiday is Jimbo's birthday and don't even think even for a moment of questioning that! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:57, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Idefinitely Blocked?

Thanks for unblocking me. Any clue why I was Indefinitely Blocked by "209.67.210.206" Agerard 17:13, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I really don't know what all that is about. I did not block or unblock anybody recently, and I don't see any blocks applied to you at any time. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:59, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh I see, you are talking about this and then this. That was not really a block, just a vandal slapped an inappopriate text on your user page. You could have just deleted yourself if you saw it before others. A block is when you can't edit, from what I know. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:00, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the help man. I'm slowly working my way around wikipedia. Appreciate the help. Agerard 18:03, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

polynomials

Hi Rick. You have been doing good work and you did talk at talk:mathematics as I asked you.

As such, I have no right to ask you to slow down when you make huge changes to math article, it is your right as editor, and I may do the same.

So let me put it as a favor. You basically rewrote function (mathematics) and did a huge change at polynomial. OK, you can do that. However, if I were you, and knowing that a lot of other people watch those articles, and that a lot of work went into that before you, so if I were you, I would be slower and more cautioous.

The reason is the following. It will take me a lot of time now to go through all the changes you made at polynomial, and see what I like, what I don't. I had a vision for that article, I knew it very well, and now it is all changed.

OK, I don't know how to say it. Let me try that way. There is no rush. You could have changed just a paragraph or two today, waited for comments, inquired on the talk page. Again, you don't have to do that, this is not the mathematics article, but again, it is easier on others that way.

It is not the end of the world, you could write a bit today , a bit tomorrow, etc. This is the strategy I employ, and very suscessfully. So think of it as a piece of advice, no more.

You can reply here if you have comments. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:05, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I had already replied on your talk page before your advice to reply here sank in. My impression is that it is more wiki to reply on the other person's talk page. Yes? No? Rick Norwood 14:55, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I explained my goal, in the polynomials article and also in the rational function article, more than a week ago, and waited for comments. As you suggest, I will not change the names of the articles. However, there really is a difference between an expression, and equation, and a function. I've been working through the math articles trying to make that difference clear, but each change necessitates other changes. First, I had to work on the article on mathematical expressions. Then on the article on equations. Then on functions. Then on polynomials. Everything I do I do carefully, writing, rewriting, proofing (and, of course, no matter how careful I am, errors slip through).

That said, I'll try to slow down. I'll await your and other comments and corrections to what I've done so far before I go on to the rational expressions article.

By the way, I seem to almost alone over on the History of Mathematics article. It was in dreadful shape. I'm trying to do two or three short sections a week, as time permits. Help would be appreciated.

Of course, the fact that classes aren't in session helps. On the other hand, I'm also writing a textbook, publishing a monthly magazine, writing a twice-a-month column for sfsite, and going on a trip to Las Vegas, so it is not as if Wikipedia was the only thing I spend time on.

Thanks for your help and advice. Rick Norwood 14:51, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know about rules to whether to reply on your own page, where the text was originally posted, or to reply on other person's page. I prefer the former, as it keeps the conversation in one place.

No, I did not get the impression at talk:polynomial and talk:rational function that "beware, big rewrites to many articles are to come!".

You did a very good job at polynomial (don't worry about a bug or two, yes, they are unavoidable even with the preview button).

So I am just bugging you for no good reason. Often times an edit has to be big, as you said, as some things just fit together. And also, talking things in advance on the talk page may be too much to ask in all circumstances. But again, I meant it as a advice, and to reiterate it, is as follows: if you think a big change can be split in several small changes to be done over a longer time span, and if you feel that your edit might generate discussion/attention, just some caution could be in order, not because you have to, but because you choose to, to make sure you and other editors are all on the same wavelength, working together rather than arguing, with the common goal of making the articles better. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:03, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I would like to echo Oleg's comments above. In particular I would like to discuss somewhere my concerns about the rewrite of function (mathematics) (my comment at talk:function (mathematics) has generated no response.) The problem as I see is that while I like a lot of what Rick has done there, I think the article is now too didactic, that it reads more like a high school text book than an encyclopedia article. As this is a question of proper encyclopedic style, I would like to work this out before Rick replicates this style elsewhere. Paul August ☎ 17:09, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree strongly with Paul here. I liked the old intro paragraph better, where it summarized the article in three sentences before getting into particulars. The new intro paragraph does read like a grade/high-school text, and that does turn me off in a big way. I suppose this should go to talk:function (mathematics), I'll repost there. linas 05:56, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Acharya S

Could you protect Acharya S? There is a guy editing it from a number of IPs, getting himself into worse and worse trouble because he has lost his cool while under a short 3RR ban. He is emailing me, but seems too obsessed to stop. Charles Matthews 19:31, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know the details, but from the page history I see at least 6 reverts in the last 12 hours, so for that reason I put a temporary protection. I listed the page at at Wikipedia:Protected_page#Full_protection. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:49, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

My thanks. Hope you are having a good New Year's Eve. Charles Matthews 19:55, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi

Hi. About "Christianity is a dying fad", I have never said anything of the sort. This is one voter who it's useless to argue against so I did not wish to respond to him/her. I work on Christianity and Islam articles a lot aside from the other articles I edit and also revert vandalism and POV on those articles. So it really isn't useful for me to argue with someone who just took one look at one of my contribs and made a conclusion. Maybe this helps to understand the situation. :) Thanks Oleg. --a.n.o.n.y.m ^t 23:58, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I did not said you said that. :) Actually, I asked for evidence. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:00, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay then. Thank you for doing that. :) --a.n.o.n.y.m ^t 00:05, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Anonym, just a suggestion. It is not a good idea to delete text from other talk pages or even your talk page. If the talk page gets too big, you can just archive it. I believe that's the best. Thanks. You can reply here if you have comments. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:08, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh sorry Oleg, I just felt that since maybe I said the wrong thing before that it's would be useless to keep it there. But every user has different opinion on the issue. Thanks --a.n.o.n.y.m ^t 00:11, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Nothing to be sorry for. :) I just feel uneasy when people delete stuff from my talk page, be it even their own comments. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:26, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

You are quite mistaken, any user can delete comments on their talkpage at any time without reason. Misstress Selina Kyle's allegation that AE called Christianity a dying fad is not directly shown on the diff. If you look on the left Scorpionman made the allegation and said he saw it in the Islam page archives. As to whether or not it's there...I don't know — Preceding unsigned comment added by Freestylefrappe (talk • contribs)

I wrote on anonym's RfA page a comment saying that it is not a good idea for people to delete right away comments they don't like from their talk page. That's my own personal view. So, I am mistaken about what?

Yeah, I asked Misstress Selina Kyle for evidence, I thought that was clear enough from what I wrote there. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:39, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Happy New Year

Oleg the Great rings in the New Year

All the best for 2006. Paul August ☎ 06:27, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! All the best to you too, August Paul, Ceasar of the lands northwest of Cape Cod and all the great Atlantic sea! (Be that 2006 AD or 2006 BC, I don't know which one you are more comfortable with :)

Oleg the Great needs to dig up his rusted sword and go make justice to the Republic of Moldova page, from where you stole this picture and which is now protected for fighting edit wars. It never ceases to amaze me by how many passions are inflated around such a small country, with 2/3 of Massachusetts population. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 07:08, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Ed Poor

Gateman1997, your decision to start an RfA for Ed Poor without asking him first, and without posting it on the main RfA page, was not a good idea I believe. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:14, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

• Thank you for your comments. Unfortunately I disagree. First the RFA was started pending Ed Poor's approval per the RFA process. Secondly, RFAs aren't to be posted on the main page UNTIL the user has accepted. This RFA was done exactly according to policy. The people who have acted inappropriately are the users who have voted on his RFA before he accepted.Gateman1997 01:49, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Scalar

Hi Oleg - your input on the scalar (physics) talk page would be welcome. I am having a discussion with another editor and the more opinions the better. PAR 16:57, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you Mathbot for adding my edit summary use. ;) --a.n.o.n.y.m ^t 04:56, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Mathbot and rfa

I think it should add edit summary stats after prior comments, if any. In one of the rfas, it has added the stats before a pre-existing comment by me - it makes reading the page difficult. Or you may want to create a separate sub-section? btw, does it look at edit summary usage in Template space? If not, it may be a good idea to say that it looks at edit summaries in the article namespace. Also, you may want it to generate a table (a 2X2 matrix) to show edit summary usage for major and minor edits on one axis and for Article and other namespaces on the other axes generating four boxes. Also, implicit assumption is that the user would have made 500 edits to article namespace. Pl. feel free to disregard ;) any of these suggestions. --Gurubrahma 09:42, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

That's a lot of things. OK, first mathbot adds the usage right after the Comment heading because it is easier to parse text that way, and is good that mathbot's message is always in the same place. I don't see how putting mathbot's comment first (one or two lines) would make the page less readable. For now, I don't know about a separate subsection, I doubt it is worth the trouble.

Yes, the bot does look in the template namespace, the message states that it ignores just talk pages, wikipedia, image, and user namespaces. About making a table with edits to all other namespaces, I don't know how useful is that, I don't think people care much if somebody does not consistently use edit summaries when votign for deletion for example. Anwyay, I will post this at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship and wait for comments. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:00, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

summary...

Hi, I´m sorry, mainly i just done little and quick modif and i forgot to put summary >.<.
PS: i din´t know of which article youb are talking about, but i forgot often time.
Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. When you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion (but never when editing articles), please be sure to sign your posts. There are two ways to do this. Either:

1. Add four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment, or
2. With the cursor positioned at the end of your comment, click on the signature button located above the edit window.

This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is necessary to allow other editors to easily see who wrote what and when.

lyhana8

I don't know myself which article I am talking about. :) But there was one I guess. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:32, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

On a second look, it appears that you almost never put edit summaries, too bad. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:33, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Weak solutions

Thanks for starting the article on weak solutions. I edited it slightly to indicate that there are other definitions of weak solution besides the distributional one. Also I added Evans' book as a reference, but he doesn't talk about n-th order equations so the article needs a reference for that material (Hörmander?). Brian Tvedt 02:49, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

That's such a weak way of thanking somebody. :) Let me give you though a strong you are welcome. :) I mostly wrote that stuff out of my own head, I tried to look for references with Google books but was not very lucky (not that I tried really hard). Thank you for working on that article. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:04, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Root-finding algorithm

Hi Oleg.

I made a minor change to root-finding algorithm and you reverted it. Thank you for your interest. It is of cause not very important whether a free variable is called x or p. If there is only one free variable, x is the conventional choice. If there are four free variables, p q r s seems natural. We need four variables, but not five, so p q r s is sufficient and x is unnecessary. Happy new year to you and thanks for our fine discussions. Bo Jacoby 07:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Here is the edit in question. I don't understand why one should change variables in the middle of the paragraph with no reasons given. If you start with x, you go with x. It is the next paragraph which says: initialize four variables, p, q, r, s. Thus, if you switch to p several lines before that, where it should be x, and then you say below "initialize p", I believe that is confusing. Did I understand it right? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:52, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Somewhere I must change from one variable x to four variables p,q,r,s. When I claim that the two observations are the clue to the method, then I had better let the formulas of the observations look like the formulas of the method as closely as possible. The method uses no x. That's why. I'm sure you understand it right. You are the reader - if it is confusing to you, then it is confusing. Perhaps I must be more explicite:

If $(q,r,s)\approx (Q,R,S)$, then the substitution $\ (:=)$ approximates $(\approx )$

$\ p:=p-{\frac {f(p)}{(p-q)(p-r)(p-s)}}\approx p-{\frac {f(p)}{(p-Q)(p-R)(p-S)}}=P$ , and if $p\approx P$ , then the substitution $\ p:=p-{\frac {f(p)}{(p-q)(p-r)(p-s)}}\approx P-{\frac {f(P)}{(P-q)(P-r)(P-s)}}=P$

In both cases the new value of the variable p will approximate the root P:

$\ p:\approx P$

Am I clear ?

Bo Jacoby 13:47, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I see. I think you are right, I got that after I reworded the text. By the way, do you have a source for it? Does it always converge? It looks to me that it uses a fixed point iteration, which means that it is much slower than Newton's method. But your method might be superior if it always converges to the four roots of the polynomial. Wonder what you think. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:18, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

See Talk:Root-finding algorithm. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 17:13, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Please comment on the current Math Collaboration of the Week

Hello Oleg - since you listed statistics as an interest in your user talk, I was hoping you could lend your expertise to the current Mathematics Collaboration of the Week: Multiple Comparisons. Obviously it's a interesting and important topic. We are also in the midst of a discussion as to the distinction between multiple comparisons and multiple testing. Your thoughts would be much appreciated. Let's get a math article up on the front page! Thanks for any help. Debivort 10:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

La Multi Ani Oleg!

Sa ai un an bun. De la Bonaparte talk 17:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Edit summary

I was wondering if you could do me a favor and find my edit summary usage using Mathbot. If you're too busy, just forget about it. Thanks. Gflores ^Talk 01:10, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

The bot is running hourly. The next update will be in one minute. :) I will now switch my bot to running every 15 minutes (this will be no bigger performance on the server, as it will just wake up to see what's new, and go back to bed if nothing it to be done). Gosh, people got addicted to that edit summary usage. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:12, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh wait, you are not on the RfA list. OK, got your request now. Here we are:

Edit summary usage: 79% for major edits and 81% for minor edits. Based on the last 150 major and and 150 minor edits outside the Wikipedia, User, Image, and all Talk namespaces.

Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:21, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! Gflores ^Talk 01:23, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Redirect on Mathbot

I have redirected Mathbot's talk page to this page as that is how the bot's user page requests feedback/talk be given. --Nick Catalano (Talk) 07:57, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I believe that will be confusing, as people will not understand what mathbot and me have in common. For that reason, I redirected the talk page to the User:mathbot page, where people can read about who his boss is, and if necessary, contact me. So, there is one more click that way, but things are more clear. :)

I will now undo your change, but if you give other arguments, I will think about it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 08:00, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I was more confused because when I would press "discussion" it was sending me to the page I just came from... I found that insanely annoying... At the very least remove the redirect and give some sort of written clue about what to do to leave a comment --Nick Catalano (Talk) 09:01, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, I undid the redirect altogether, see if you like it. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:08, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Request for edit summary usage

Salut Oleg, poti sa-mi spui si mie procentajul cu MathBOt? Bonaparte talk 12:52, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Here we are:

Edit summary usage: 54% for major edits and 8% for minor edits. Based on the last 150 major and and 86 minor edits outside the Wikipedia, User, Image, and all Talk namespaces.

Plenty to improve on. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:08, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Mersi. Asa zici? Ce importanta are? e drept ca eu nu prea obisnuiesc sa scriu nimic acolo. Bonaparte talk 21:47, 6 January 2006 (UTC)