Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

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Project Euclid identifier?

I notice that several references link to Project Euclid. A bit like how many reference link to Mathematical Reviews. I think we should give Project Euclid its own identifier (and its own article as well) so references can be tidied up like the others.

For example, a citation with a link to Mathematical Reviews like

{{cite journal
 |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried
 |year=2008
 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics
 |url=http://www.ams.org/mathscinet-getitem?mr=2413003
 |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]]
 |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239
 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828
}}

gets cleaned up to

{{cite journal
 |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried
 |year=2008
 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics
 |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]]
 |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239
 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828
 |mr=2413003
}}

I think that it would be a good thing to clean up

{{cite journal
 |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried
 |year=2008
 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics
 |url=http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.bsl/1208442828
 |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]]
 |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239
 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828
}}

to something like

{{cite journal
 |last1=Gottwald|first1=Siegfried
 |year=2008
 |title=Mathematical fuzzy logics
 |journal=[[Bulletin of Symbolic Logic]]
 |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=210–239
 |doi=10.2178/bsl/1208442828
 |euclid=euclid.bsl/1208442828
 |mr=2413003
}}

Which would look something like

• Gottwald, Siegfried (2008). "Mathematical fuzzy logics". Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 14 (2): 210–239. doi:10.2178/bsl/1208442828. MR2413003.

  . or similar.

  I've also made {{Euclid}}, similar to {{MR}} and {{doi}}. Appearance can be tweaked since I've no idea how a link to Project Euclid should be presented. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:59, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

  See a related discussion at Template talk:Citation#Many things about identifiers. I think the distinction between identifiers like MR and doi that have their own parameters and identifiers like {{ECCC}} that do not is the frequency of usage: how many project Euclid references do we have? In any case, it should work to use your Euclid template within the |id= field of a citation template. But I'm not sure I see the point when the doi goes to exactly the same place. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:52, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

  Yeah I remember that discussion, I led it :p. But as a point of comparision, There's a bit more than 500 articles with links to the Project Euclid website (524 articles, as of 17 March 2001), well over the threshold for inclusion. However, if these links are truely redundant with DOIs (as in dois will always resolve to the same location), then it would probably be better to convert these urls do DOIs instead of giving them their own identifiers. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:59, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

  Unfortunately I don't think the doi does always work. At least, for example,

  works, while the corresponding following the syntax of your example, doi:10.2178/em/1047565447, does not. I agree that standardizing the format of our Project Euclid links would be an improvement. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:17, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
  

  Link presentation

  Any feedback on how to present the link though? Like which of pe:euclid.bsl/1208442828 (as the doi) vs. PE euclid.bsl/1208442828 (as most other identifier, but is PE understood to mean Projet Euclid as MR is understood to mean Mathematical Reviews?) vs Project Euclid: euclid.bsl/1208442828 vs... is best? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:36, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

  Anyone? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:26, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

  I would prefer the presentation PE for brevity (versus space-hungry "Project Euclid" and for consistency with Mathematical Reviews's MR.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:02, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

  Minimization of prefix?

  Hi! This is a useful template.

  • Nordström, Kenneth (1999). "The life and work of Gustav Elfving". Statistical Science. 14 (2): 174–196. doi:10.1214/ss/1009212244. JSTOR 2676737. MR 1722074.
    . {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1=, |2=, |3=, and |4= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); line feed character in |id= at position 1093 (help)

    I would prefer the deletion of the (redundant) prefix "euclid." from the identifier. It would be useful to provide documentation and examples on its use; also, the documentation has 3 levels of parentheses, where I believe 2 are intended.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 13:10, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

    The problem is that "euclid." is part of the identifier, so you can't removed it. You could do something like euclid.ss/1009212244, but that means you input a partial identifier ("ss/1009212244") in the templates, which most people will not do. They will input "euclid.ss/1009212244", and it'll produce euclid.euclid.ss/1009212244, which is both uglier, and gives a bad link to the PE database. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:30, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

    I first tried "1009212244" (following the MR and JSTOR examples) then "ss/1009212244" and finally "euclid.ss/1009212244", FYI. Thanks for your clarification.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 13:47, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

    π or pi?

    What is our opinion of this edit? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:09, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    I disagree with it very strongly. Doing it for the main article on the number is one thing, but when it appears in a phrase it just gets silly and ugly. If that's the general opinion here, I propose that the move is reverted and the user who did it is asked to use the WP:RM process for this controversial move. Hans Adler 17:49, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    grrr -- "propose that the move be reverted" -- end grrr Note that the main article has been at pi for a long time; this seems to have come out of a proposed move to π, which I wanted to support but in the end couldn't (the screen-reader problem was the deciding factor). Kauffner seems to be on a bit of a tear to generalize the non-result ("leave things as they are") from that proposal.

    On another note, I don't like the {{pi}} or {{math}} templates at all. I think we should stop using them. On some screens they make things look better, at least marginally, but messing around with fonts is a hack. If running-text math in articles needs a serif font (why?) then maybe we should look for a way to put entire math articles into a serif font. --Trovatore (talk) 17:59, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    There was an RfC at Talk:Pi in which there was some consensus, based on accessibility concerns, that the article pi should not be moved to π. However, I see that some users have taken this to mean that the symbol π should not appear in any titles. And, moreover, the same editor changed the symbol into the word elsewhere in the text as well. This seems to go against well-established practices. No one writes out "pi" to refer to the mathematical constant. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:56, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    The same editor is lobbying to change this in all of our pi related articles. I agree with Hans: this is a silly idea. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:00, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    So no one writes out "pi"? Let's just look at journal articles, shall we? Any journal article on this subject will have equations with the symbol π, but we want to know how many use "π", but never "pi". proof π irrational -pi gives us 3890 math/engineering hits on Google Scholar compared to 9,230 hits for proof pi irrational. So consistent use of the π symbol is a minority taste even among the writers of journal articles on this subject.

    Serif font pi ({{pi}}) is this: π. How many people really want to go back to this: π Kauffner (talk) 20:23, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    Ummm, you may want to actually "look" at the journal articles, or at the very least consider that google might (be trying to) be smarter than you. First: Google uses OCR, so it will read in the greek character π and parse it and consider it as "pi". Second: In the first of the 9,230 hits, the "pi" returned is not an occurrence of "pi", nor in fact of π, rather it is a ρ (in ${\text{Proof that }}\rho _{k}^{\prime }>\rho _{k+0.8}$); in the second hit, the "pi" returned is actually p₁; in the third hit, "Pi" actually occurs and refers to the mathematical constant, though the occurrence is in the title of a book ("Pi and the AGM"), a book that uses "Pi" in its title and chapters titles, but not in its section titles nor its prose. In the future, please put a bit more effort into your googling. RobHar (talk) 21:25, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    In the browser I'm currently using, with the settings I'm currently using, the latter actually looks very substantially better. I'm quite willing to believe that the former looks better on your screen. That's part of the problem — font manipulations are incredibly non-robust; they don't give remotely the same experience for different users. --Trovatore (talk) 20:52, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    It does give the majority of readers an improved experience, which is the reason I advocate using serif for math and pi. But to go back to the original issue; I prefer the symbol inline, but not in article titles for reason of accessability. — Edokter (talk) — 21:20, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    I would need to see evidence that it "gives the majority of readers an improved experience", and I'm not sure that would be enough even if true. Mixed-font stuff is just bad. That's the first thing any decent typography lesson teaches you to avoid.

    Just to clarify what I'm reporting, here's what I see from Kauffner's text:

    

    You can see that the serif-ized version doesn't render nicely at all — the two legs have different thicknesses. The sans version, although we might not be as used to seeing it in mathematics, blends more harmoniously with the surrounding sans text. --Trovatore (talk) 21:33, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    That is just on your display (noting you don't have Times New Roman, and a sans-serif font that strangly does has a serif pi. Also note that Kauffner uses <big> for his examples.) There will always be readers with deviating font- and screen settings. I crafted {{math}} (and by extension {{pi}}), to suit the majority of readers that have default screen and font setting... on multiple platforms. It is those readers we have to accommodate. And while your example may not be the prettiest to look at, it isn't unreadable either. That makes your objection purely one of personal preference, and we simply cannot cater for all personal preferences. (You can however specify your own font for math and pi in your personal CSS.) — Edokter (talk) — 22:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    And for the record, here is how it shows on my screen:

    

    Note the atrocity of the sans-serif pi... just saying. — Edokter (talk) — 22:22, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    I agree that we cannot cater to personal preferences. The simplest way to not cater is to use an unadorned π and leave the rendering up to the user's browser.

    In addition, I would like to point out that this discussion has a lot of overlap with WT:MOSMATH#Request for comments: serif vs. sans-serif. While commentators there generally favored serifs, there was no strong consensus either way. It might be more fruitful to renew that discussion rather than focusing specifically on how we should write the ratio of the circumference to the diameter. Ozob (talk) 22:47, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    Yes, exactly (to your first paragraph). My main objection is not how it looks on my screen. It's using this ugly font-mixing hack to make it look better on some screens (not at all clear how many). With all due respect for the effort Edokter has put into {{math}} and {{pi}}, I do not think they are helpful, and I do not think we should use them. --Trovatore (talk) 23:08, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    Perfect is the enemy of good. I think your argument is meaningless without better understanding of what the quantifier "some" really means. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:12, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    Leaving it to the browser has already proven inadequate, hence why {{math}} was created. It is geared towards default font settings, which we can safely asume is > 90% of our reader base. But you point out, this belongs to WT:MOSMATH. — Edokter (talk) — 00:44, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    "Proven" inadequate? What was the proof exactly? --Trovatore (talk) 00:47, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    Somehow this discussion has moved on to the merits of serif versus sans. The more immediate problem is whether the ratio of the circumference to the diameter should be represented by the ordinary string of letters "pi" (as some are arguing) or by the Greek symbol. (I don't personally care whether it has serifs). Sławomir Biały (talk) 22:52, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    I think we should always use the Greek letter π, even in headings and titles. Provided that search engines and search bars know that if someone types pi then they may mean π. I would hazard a guess that the majority of people backing pi are laymen of the mathematical sciences. (What's next, changing every x to an eks?) — Fly by Night (talk) 23:20, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    I suggest we make a list of all the math articles with pi or π in the title and then submit a formal multipart move request. Kauffner (talk) 23:34, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

    The List of topics related to pi should have most of them. Note that all but two of the titles use "pi". Also note there are many other uses of pi that have nothing to do with the ratio, not to mention other Greek letters and letters from other alphabets, e.g. λ-calculus and $\aleph _{0}$.--RDBury (talk) 02:09, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    Most of these seem to have been only recently changed in that list by Kauffner. Of these, a few of them are redirects to a different article, and Kauffner moved some of the remaining ones to the "pi" version. There were only one or two that used "pi" before all this business started. Sławomir Biały (talk) 07:44, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    I don't think the screen reader argument mentioned above is a good one: we should be very careful about demanding our article content satisfy some limitations of certain pieces of software. Lots of examples come to mind with that thought, but in the case of the screen reader the solution should be to fix the screen reader so it pronounces π correctly, not change all of our articles so the screen reader pronounces things as expected. Personally I value consistency; in mathematics we overwhelmingly use the symbol π to refer to the constant and in Wikipedia our articles largely use the same symbol. I would prefer to be consistent and use only π (with obvious redirects from the spelling pi), including for the article title of the pi article (a brief note about the usage of pi is of course acceptable). I have no opinion on the choice of font. Cheers, Ben (talk) 03:09, 21 April 2011 (UTC).

    This is to re-propose an idea that has just been overwhelming voted down. Without some attempt to address the font or accessibility concerns of those who voted against, it would just be going around in circles. Kauffner (talk) 05:44, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    I voted against that proposal as well, but I am against unthinking blanket application of the same argument to all articles with π in the title. It's one thing to accommodate screen readers in the main article. It's quite another to set aside all typographical niceties in all of our related articles. Let be add to a point that was already made. The solution here isn't to break our articles, but to fix the wikimedia software so that it supports alt text in titles, I would guess. Or, of course, to fix screen readers to pronounce π correctly, but that is clearly something outside of our controll. Sławomir Biały (talk) 07:35, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    I guess I have say something about my motivations at this point since they seem to have been misunderstood. I was disappointed with the outcome of the vote on "pi", so afterward I considered what steps could be taken to lay the groundwork to reverse it. It occurred to me that cutting extraneous use of the pi symbol would show sensitivity to accessibility concerns and would also enhance the case for using the symbol where it is justified. Also, consistent use of the serif font would enhance the aesthetic value a move. Finally, there should be parallel naming of similar math constants. Kauffner (talk) 17:26, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    Per Sławomir, please undo the moves. "Unicode, it works" (more and more of the time). I can't think of a time I saw "pi" spelled out in a math book, except in an expository sentence or two in an elementary book before going on to use the Greek letter. Screen-reader vendors should just fix their software; we should not mess up our articles to accomodate their bugs, with possible exceptions for very significant cases like the main π article that's likely to be accessed mostly by less mathematically oriented readers. If more extensive special measures really are needed for screen readers, it should be done by transliteration software (server side filter or client javascript) rather than by spewing "pi" through WP article space. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 09:53, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    Added: I now think the buggy screen-reader issue can be handled completely with WP:WPUS. We shouldn't have to make any changes to article for it. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 10:54, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    So, some of the affected articles have been moved back to the versions with π in the title. I can't seem to move Liu Hui's pi algorithm back to Liu Hui's π algorithm, Chronology of computation of pi back to Chronology of computation of π, or List of formulae involving pi back to List of formulae involving π. This requires administrative powers, apparently. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:48, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    Titles with special characters are on the page move blacklist because page move vandals used look-alikes of Latin letters to circumvent the page move blacklist. Another matter is cleaning up the articles themselves. I have just looked at Liu Hui's pi algorithm. More has been done there than just the π/pi swapping, and cleaning up after Kauffner's push for eccentric typesetting is going to take a lot of tedious work. Hans Adler 15:48, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    I redid the section titles because two had the same heading ("Notes"). LaTeX was used in the running text, making the formulas much bigger than the surrounding text, e.g. there was an enlarged $\pi \approx {\tfrac {142}{45}}\approx 3.156$ (just like that) in the middle of a paragraph. I tried to correct this using either {{math}} or \scriptstyle. Now its π ≈ 142/45 ≈ 3.156. Earlier, the article opened, "Liu Hui's π algorithm is a mathematical algorithm "... I rewrote this sentence to avoid having the word "algorithm" appear twice. Kauffner (talk) 01:42, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    I think that part of the concern here is over the recent wide-scale deployment of the {{math}} template. (I'm neutral to this, but it seems like it makes more work for folks wishing to typeset formulas in html). Also, I think there has been some consensus in the past that scriptstyle should be avoided if possible. Generally speaking, if inline <math> must be used, then just leave it as inline math, even if it looks a little too big in your browser. Support for inline math is getting better, but support for inline \scriptstyle isn't. There are other reasons documented in the archives of this discussion page. (Note that the MOSMATH no longer recommends scriptstyle, largely because of relatively recent discussions about it.) Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:26, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    I have gotten rid of the scriptstyle at Liu Hui's π algorithm. In most cases, this was unnecessary, and only caused simple inline formulas to be rendered as a PNG by default, which we typically want to avoid. In other cases, mathematics typesetting like \frac or \tfrac caused the rendering engine also to render the inline formula as PNG by default, but these were most easily corrected by changing something like \frac{22}{7} to 22/7 rather than introducing \scripstyle. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:37, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    I have proposed that the remaining articles be moved back at Talk:Liu Hui's pi algorithm#Requested move. Sławomir Biały (talk) 07:13, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    By the way, Kauffner also requested a move at Talk:Proof_that_π_is_irrational#Requested_move several days ago. Sławomir Biały (talk) 07:23, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    Math MOS proposal

    I propose that we clarify the math MOS to explicitly point out that the symbol π should not be spelled out 'pi' in running text when it is being used to refer to the mathematical constant. I think most people already expected that was the case, but recently there have been articles where the symbol was replaced by the spelled out 'pi'. Article titles are more complicated, and I prefer to handle them on a case by case basis, but in running text we routinely use lots of Greek letters without spelling them out. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    "Pi" is the overwhelming common usage, the way every dictionary gives the word.[1] Even the math symbols everyone understands, like "1" and "2", don't go into running text. Kauffner (talk) 14:25, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    That's not true in my experience. Someone already mentioned that many of the Google hits to "pi" are from OCR issues. I find the other evidence you gave somewhat unconvincing: a New York Times blog post, an Encyclopedia Britannica Online article, and a dictionary entry (which uses the Greek symbol in the actual text). This is less than overwhelming. I can say that, when I am reading a book and see "pi" spelled out, it is the exception rather than the rule. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:42, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    Dictionaries also have entries for e.g. aitch. But we shouldn't write "Choose a value for aitch" in running mathematical prose, and neither should we write "We can approximate pi by using polygons". — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:56, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    If you are not convinced that "pi" is indeed common use, check out this ngram. Then type in "pi" on Google Books. Most of the hits on the first few pages are relevant: Pi, a source book, Pi: a biography of the world's most mysterious number, The Joy of Pi, Pi-unleashed: Volume 1, and on and on it goes. Put in "π" and you get equations and Greek text. Only one hit on the first page is a relevant example of the math constant being referred to in running text. Kauffner (talk) 15:25, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    I asked you above to please be more careful in the future about incorrect uses of "the google". Now, you've done it again (as explained below by 69.111.194.167). Stop wasting our time with this incompetent argument. RobHar (talk) 22:32, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    Kauffner, would you please clarify your view for me using the following examples? First, regarding 'Even the math symbols everyone understands, like "1" and "2", don't go into running text.': You mean that "I bought 2 doughnuts" should be spelled "I bought two doughnuts"? What if we change "2" to "34"? In my youth I was taught that the standard cutoff for spelling out numerals was 10. Do you have a cutoff? Second, in the sentence "The distributive law states that a (b + c) = a b + a c," would you prefer to have "+" and "=" spelled out? Third, please consider this sentence: "In a fiber bundle

    $F\longrightarrow E\ {\xrightarrow {\,\ \pi \ }}\ B,$

    the map π is called the projection." In your view should the "π" near the end of the sentence be spelled "pi"? Mgnbar (talk) 17:04, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    WP:ORDINAL seems pretty clear that π should normally be used instead of pi. If the normal non-math standard is that I don't see why maths would then go around using Engliah names. Dmcq (talk) 17:30, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    Interesting — I learned a different cutoff. You write out twelve but cipher 13. Of course taking care to avoid "outright barbarisms" (i.e. you wouldn't say I think he ran twelve or 13 miles). --Trovatore (talk) 19:47, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    I'm used to 12 as cutoff as well (same in German). But looking at various grammar sites on the web the actual recommensation varies slightly (see for instance [2], [3])--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:16, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    Sorry I don't know what the general standard is in English, I was just commenting about the Wikipedia MOS which definitely tends towards us using π in running text. There are some other considerations for article titles as they specifically talk about being able to type things out on a keyboard but as with all guidelines circumstances might indicate one should do otherwise so I'll have to declare myself agnostic on the titles.. Dmcq (talk) 22:20, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    Actually I think I was responding to Mgnbar, though I may not have realized that at the time. It's tricky to get these interleaved responses in the right place. --Trovatore (talk) 02:31, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    If you look at the cover photos of "The joy of π"[4] and "π: a biography"[5] they obviously both use π. The Borweins do use pi in book titles, but if you look in the Amazon Preview of the table of contets of "Pi: A Source Book"[6] (it is a collection of math articles), there are 2 articles that use pi in their titles; 3 that use π and 1 about Roger Apéry's proof that ζ(3) is irrational, that uses the greek letter ζ. If you look in the contents of "Pi and the AGM",[7] the Borweins themselves use π in the individual chapter titles, which might be taken as more akin wikipedia's constituent articles. There is also "π unleashed",[8] "π Algorithmen, Computer, Arithmetik",[9] and several movies like "π"[10] and on the other hand "pi Geschichte und Algorithmen einer Zahl" (tr. "pi History and algorithms of the number")[11] which (like Pi and the AGM) also uses π in its chapter titles. I get the impression that book and journal article titles are somewhat inconsistent and that Kauffner is cherry-picking sources, while chapter titles of math books use π more consistently. So I think that we should restore the earlier title and text. Opening an RM or talkpage discussion about article titles is much more acceptable than trying to impose a fait accompli. As for what dictionaries do: WP:NOTDICT. Similarly for other non-math sources. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 19:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

    Book covers are just art. The official title is the Library of Congress title, which is generally given on the copyright page. For material in English with the symbol π in the official title, there is the self-published edition of Beckmann's A History of π, Blatner's The Joy of π, the 1998 Aronofsky film π, and about half dozen unpublished dissertations. Out of 50,000 works in the English language with pi or π in their titles, that is it. The Boweins are the pi gods, but unfortunately inconsistent on this issue. However, they do use "pi" 35 times in their book. This is a problem with using "math sources" generally; They don't have a consistent style that would allow them to serve as a model. I suggest following the style of the more scientifically oriented encyclopedias such as Britannica or the Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia. I didn't notice anything in WP:ORDINAL that addresses this issue directly. It specifies that we should spell out "zero" to "nine" in running text. The less familiar the symbol, the more compelling the logic for spelling it out. Kauffner (talk) 02:37, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    "The official title is the Library of Congress title"? Why? What if that title disagrees with that registered in the government of another English-speaking country? Maybe the Library of Congress doesn't even like non-English characters in titles (I recently found out Massachusetts doesn't allow diacritics on birth certificates [12], does that mean that no one born in Massachusetts can be claimed to have an accent in their name?). This is silly.RobHar (talk) 03:07, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    I didn't mean to imply that the titles of books have to be registered with any government agency. In the front matter of a book, there is typically a heading that says, "Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data" followed by title and publication information in a standard format for the benefit of librarians and booksellers. But no, the LOC won't register a title with a Greek letter. A π will appear as [pi] in their catalog. Kauffner (talk) 07:39, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    1) The cover (not the copyright record) is what the user sees, so WP article titles should be treated more like the cover. If there's some redirects that say "pi", that's fine and good. 2) Consistency is overrated. If sources are inconsistent, we can accept some inconsistency ourselves. 3) I haven't had a chance to go to the library and look at the actual EB; I'm not convinced that the "online EB" that you linked to is the same thing as the real EB. 4) The symbol π is perfectly familiar to readers of almost all math articles that mention it. The main exception is Pi which is left at that title (a redirect would also handle this perfectly well).

    I haven't seen the Van Nostrand encyclopedia but other such books of theirs I've seen haven't been very impressive. The premier "math encyclopedia" whose quality we should IMO be striving towards is the The Princeton Companion to Mathematics. Its π article is called "π" (ironically alphabetized as if it were spelled "pi".)

    All in all, things were fine the way they were and there was no reason to mess with them. If you want to open an RM discussion, that's fine, but once again, I think it is proper to undo all the moves first, rather than presenting a fait accompli. (edited) 69.111.194.167 (talk) 05:23, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    I notice "π: Algorithmen, Computer, Arithmetik" is also inconsistent. Its cover says π, its title page says pi, and its copyright page says "[Pi] π [Medienkombination]" ("Media combination" since the book comes with a CD-ROM). "π: a biography" says π on the cover, Pi on the copyright page, and [Pi] in the online LOC record.[13] "π Unleashed" appears to be a translation of "π: Algorithmen, Computer, Arithmetik". Its copyright page on Amazon appears to give the German title but not the English one. The LOC record says "Pi-unleashed" with a hyphen. Overall this LOC and copyright info doesn't seem that authoritative. "The Number π" says π on the cover, [pi] on the copyright page, and mentions on the copyright page that it's a translation of a French book "Autour du nombre π" which says π on the cover,[14] doesn't have a preview with a scan of the copyright page, but says [pi] in the LOC.[15] I also notice that two of three books on π-calculus (a computer science topic, not related to the number π=3.14159...) that I found in the LOC say [pi] or [symbol for pi].[16] Anyway, Beckmann's and Blatner's books are obviously not unique. Could you please stop wasting our time with this stuff? 69.111.194.167 (talk) 06:44, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    If they want to raise a proposal then go ahead. Personally I'm against using pi in running text, I see no need to switch to linguistic mode for the maths and it grates as I shift gears. I find the business of even using a in running text and a in formulae causes a delay in my thinking. Dmcq (talk) 07:54, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    Unless I've missed something, Kauffner is the only user arguing for "pi" in running text. Kauffner has not responded to my request for clarification of his argument. His argument is contradicted by dozens of math books and hundreds of math articles in my possession, and I'm sure that the other mathematicians here possess similar evidence. So I wholeheartedly endorse Carl's original proposal, that Math MOS be amended to say that "pi" should be "π" in running text. (I prefer "π" in titles for the same reason, but maybe there is a technical issue I'm missing?) Mgnbar (talk) 12:46, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    I am not aware of any such technical reasons. I support this proposal. Hans Adler 14:21, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    I have to wonder where all this emotion was during the pi move vote. Of course, that was quite an emotional discussion as well, but only those opposed to the symbol seemed to really care. Kauffner (talk) 15:49, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    There are thousands of mathematics articles in Wikipedia, and we can't all get involved with a single one of them. But once you start to edit against standard conventions and established practice on a wider scale, you shouldn't be surprised that you are getting opposition. Hans Adler 16:18, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    The move proposal was just about the title of the article, there was no implication it should be written as pi everywhere in text any more than 'Euler–Mascheroni constant' or gamma should be written instead of γ everywhere in running text. Dmcq (talk) 17:27, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    This is absoluteness ridiculous. We have a single, mathematical layman, trying to change all of the maths articles. There may be books with pi in the title, but they are books aimed at people that don't even know how to pronounce π. Kauffner, you in way above your head here. Give it up, and find a better use for your time. I can't believe you're here arguing with the maths wikiproject regulars that you are right and they are wrong. Like I said in my earlier post: shall we replace x with ecks? Of course not. You're being ridiculous. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you say anyway. Us mathematicians write the maths articles, and we're going to carry on using π. — Fly by Night (talk) 17:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    Okay, but Kauffner is trying to be a good Wikipedian and resolve the issue through verifiable sources, so let's be civil about it. Even if math articles were mainly written by mathematicians, there would still be a place for non-mathematicians, to keep us from going off the deep end. Mgnbar (talk) 19:55, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    Mgnbar: you're right, and Kauffner: I'm sorry. I didn't want to be uncivil, but I obviously was. I just feel strongly about the issue. Point taken, must try harder. — Fly by Night (talk) 20:47, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    I think the stuff about looking at copyright pages is bogus (I shouldn't have spent so much time on it myself). By WP:COMMONNAME if we're writing about a book, we should use the name on the cover, since that's what people see, even if it says something different on the copyright page. Note that some of the books with "pi" in the title are high-level math, like the Borweins' book. But, overall, this is a case of "if it's not broken, don't fix it". I also don't understand Kauffner's post of yesterday[17] which sounds almost like this whole pagemove thing was some kind of pointy reverse psychology (but I doubt that's really what was being expressed). 69.111.194.167 (talk) 05:32, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    I don't see anything about book covers in WP:COMMONNAME. WP:NCB refers to title pages and doesn't mention anything about covers. This article also includes an illustration of a title page, not a cover. You think the cover is more "common" because more people see it? That is not what "common name" means. The common name is the name that something is commonly referred to by other sources. So you don't need to look at the book at all to determine its common name. Just check the listing on WorldCat or Amazon. For our purposes here, the question arises, "Are these sources not using the π symbol simply for a technical reason?" Since the libraries and booksellers get their data from the copyright notice, this notice is the authoritative source. Kauffner (talk) 11:14, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Neither argument seems convincing to me. On the one hand, many library catalogs don't handle even diacritics very well, to say nothing of non-Latin letters. Looking at the WorldCat holdings for "A History of Pi" is not encouraging: one of these is "A History of [pi] (pi)", one is "A History of Pi", one is "A History of pi symbol (pi)" (!). Moreover, the entries seem to have the publishers wrong: the title of the Golem Press edition is very clearly "A History of π (pi)", but this is the one that WorldCat thinks was published by St. Martin's Press (and apparently in the wrong year). Clearly, I don't think we should be relying on library holdings as indicators of the "official" title of a work. Nor should we rely on the book cover either. Even the copyright page seems not to always agree with the library holdings. For instance, "π: A History of the World's Most Mysterious Number" has "Pi" on it's copyright page, "π" on the title page, and according to WorldCat, it is typically cataloged under [pi]. I think this needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis. There doesn't seem to me to be any natural candidate for the "official" title, and nothing that one can confidently say is supported by the MoS to the exclusion of the others. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:07, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    In all the cases you mention, the libraries and booksellers are using "pi", not π, even when the cover or copyright notice says otherwise. Someone must been asleep at the switch when this title got registered though. On Amazon, it's always "pi", never "[pi]" or π. So the common name issue is pretty straightforward. Kauffner (talk) 14:23, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    The Amazon statement, does that refer to A History of Pi only, or is it a general statement about titles as they appear on Amazon? Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:30, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    I think I have looked up enough books on Amazon to make such a "general statement" and I have not found any π or [pi] books. On the other hand, I did miss the two "[pi]-calculus" books in the LOC catalog, so my track record is less than perfect. Kauffner (talk) 15:52, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    If there are no exceptions, I would consider it a stylistic choice on the part of Amazon, rather than an indication of what the title actually is (let alone how we should treat it). Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:18, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    To summarize and hopefully finish this conversation, only one editor ever objected to π in running text, and he did so only briefly, and he has not argued for that position in 10 (oops --- ten) days. Is it fair to say that we have a consensus for altering Math MoS as proposed by Carl? (N.B. This is a different issue from π in titles, still being argued below.) Mgnbar (talk) 16:43, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    Template:Cubes proposed for deletion

    The Template:Cubes has been proposed for deletion: Template:Cubes Please see the discussion regarding its deletion.

    Also, consider expanding and improving the Cubes navbox, which was recently created and newly expanded: In particular, crystallography may have many cubic articles. (It was never meant for mathematicians, who are served by the fine navboxes on polytopes, etc., but for civilians.)

    Thanks!  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 17:14, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    A confession: The former line of "ominous cubes" having the Klee-Minty cube, the Hellraiser cube, and the Cosmic cube was asking for deletion.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 17:20, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    The navbox has been deleted. (An archival copy is on my talk page).  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:43, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    Branching random walk

    Branching random walk is a stubby new article. Work on it. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:03, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    Good luck! Shouldn't it be "branching random-walk", per MOS?  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 22:00, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    In most cases, modifiers right-associate by default, and you need hyphens only to mark exceptions from that. --Trovatore (talk) 22:02, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    My reading of the MOS, and my discussion of "real vector-space" with MF, suggests that the MOS mandates recommends the suggested hyphenation, which is consistent with Michael Dummett's book.

    I already moved the page. However, "anybody attempting to use hyphens consistently shall go mad"!  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 22:25, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    OK, I totally disagree with that move. Kiefer, are you a native speaker? To my ear/eye/whatever this hyphen is very jarring. Who is MF, and where do you see this in the MOS? --Trovatore (talk) 23:36, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    Totally see my user page for information about me. For MF, search among the primary writers of featured articles on English WP. See the MOS, also.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 23:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    I don't see on your user page where it says whether you're a native speaker of English. Oh, never mind; it was under a "show". You claim to have a "professional" level of English. This is not the same as having a native ear. How about just answering the question about MF rather than telling me where to search? Please point me to the clause in the MOS on which you're relying. --Trovatore (talk) 23:49, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    Sweden has a number of probabilists analyzing branching processes and random walks. Perhaps it is not obvious that branching modifies "random walk"?  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 23:46, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    What else is available for it to be modifying? --Trovatore (talk) 23:49, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    The MoS doesn't mandate using a hyphen in every compound attributive, and it gives some examples where adding a hyphen changes the meaning. I would say that in "branching random walk", a hyphen is not needed because it is clear that "branching" modifies "random walk", rather than "random". By contrast, a hyphen would be necessary if we meant "branching-random walk" (whatever that could mean). A simpler example: we wouldn't write "hot chicken-soup" (to mean chicken soup that is hot), but we would need to write "hot-chicken soup" (soup made out of hot chickens). Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:58, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    Sławomir, "branching" modifies the object "random walk". The problem for civilians is that "branching", like "halting", could modify "walk" directly.

    Of course, we both think that almost all readers are familiar with chicken soup.

    However, an undergraduate looking to write a B.S. thesis might read the branching random-walk article without familiarity with branching processes or random walks, and benefit from the hyphen. Please read the article in the state I found it, and tell me whether I was right to be concerned about the needs of civilians.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:25, 23 April 2011 (UTC) (There was an EC that prevented my direct answer before, 01:40, 23 April 2011 (UTC))

    
    For MF, search among the primary writers of featured articles on English WP. Malleus Fatuorum and I discussed hyphens previously, with good humor, also. See the MOS, also.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 23:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    Maybe George Bush has corrected others' pronunciation of "nuclear" the way you Trovatore offers advice on hyphens? The MOS states that hyphens are used to prevent ambiguity. Please see Dummett's book for clear and firm advice.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:10, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    "Branching", like "halting", could modify "walk" directly.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:10, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    I suppose, in an utter vacuum. No one's going to hear it that way, though. I think this hyphen is completely ill-advised. I'm going to revert your bold move and you can raise an RM if you like. --Trovatore (talk) 00:13, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Your last sentences don't make much sense, and argue further that you should not be dispensing prose advice, at least not at this hour. Look at the state of the article before I copy-edited it.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:17, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Please contribute to the article, before edit warring.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:21, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    What edit warring? WP:BRD. --Trovatore (talk) 00:26, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Look, Trovatore. You have been insulting. Do you know anything about stochastic processes? Hardy certainly does, but the article's state was far below his usual standard. I fixed the prose, and provided links to the related areas. You have contributed nothing to the article. Let Hardy revert the move if he wants, when he next edits. I certainly will respect his judgement.

    Did you check Dummett's advice. Have you, apparently a logician, heard of him?  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:32, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    I have been insulting? That's pretty rich. I leave it to fair-minded observers to look at the exchange and see who has been more insulting and first. Maybe you got upset because I asked if you were a native speaker? It was a fair question, I think.

    Sure, I've heard of Dummett. I don't necessarily agree with him on foundational philosophy, but I got a lot out of Cantorian Set Theory and Limitation of Size. I have never seen a style manual by him and would not take him as an authority on that. --Trovatore (talk) 00:52, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    I dislike Dummett's prose style, but I find his comments thoughtful. Dummett favors clarity and hence suggests hyphens to avoid ambiguity and to save the reader's time.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 01:46, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Sławek is absolutely dead on. Your hyphenation is utterly tin-eared. Get consensus first. --Trovatore (talk) 00:31, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Who are you to question my English or to take that tone with me? I rewrote the article, repaying a small part of the kindnesses that Michael Hardy has shown me on hundreds of occasions. Write some content, as way to atone for your sins.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 00:53, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    I stand by my characterization. --Trovatore (talk) 00:54, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    LOL  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 01:24, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Please fix the damage you did to my signatures. Thanks,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 01:32, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Done. Editing mistake; somehow I got the text in two places. --Trovatore (talk) 01:35, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Thanks!  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 01:41, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Please, no hyphen, it is awful. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 18:25, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Without commenting on the other aspects of this discussion, I agree: the hyphen needs to go. CRGreathouse (t | c) 20:17, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    To comment a little further, I think older works in British English use hyphens more than contemporary or American works do. I can get the impression that Malleus Fatuorum is influenced more by dated British usage than a lot of the rest of us are, which would explain his take on this. To me (US English speaker) the hyphens come across as dated and maybe stilted. I remember an elderly physics professor from a Commonwealth country who wrote "wave-guide" and pronounced it with equal stress on both words, which came across to me as marked. Anyone I know would have written "waveguide" or "wave guide" and stressed "wave" when speaking. Perhaps this should be left up to Michael Hardy per WP:RETAIN. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 00:53, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

    You may have misunderstood Malleus: He wanted consistency, and we had a polite discussion of hyphens. Malleus is an excellent writer---unlike the fellow who totally stood behind his synaesthetic complaint that my hyphenation was tin-eared ....

    Ditto with David, who thought my hyphenation to be old-fashioned, at least with "real vector-space". :-)

    I'm glad somebody agrees that we should let Michael decide, respecting his contributions.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 20:51, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

    I'm a fan of hyphens, where they go. For example, it wouldn't break my heart if we got rid of the rule that you don't hyphenate "adverb-adjective noun" when the adverb is a regularly-formed "-ly" adverb (and this one is explicitly stated in the MoS).

    But only very rarely is it justified to hyphenate on the right, because that's the way modifiers associate naturally. --Trovatore (talk) 08:21, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

    Hadamard's lemma

    Regarding the article on Hadamard's lemma. It is presented as a first order application of Taylor's theorem; which is fine. But then it assumes that the function is real valued. I'm sure that it works for functions from C to C. Moreover, I'm sure that the statement can be generalised in terms of other fields. Does the statement holds for functions from a field K to a field K? If not, then what are the necessary conditions? What is the most general form of the lemma? All we need is for a function from K to K to be continuous, and for its first order derivative to be continuous. I've listen to talks about p-adic differentiation and integration (i.e. where the field K is a finite field with a prime number of elements); surely the article can be extended. What do we think? — Fly by Night (talk) 21:40, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    Over the complex numbers, the result is a trivial consequence of analyticity. I don't know about other fields. In order to define smoothness, some valuation is presumably needed. But (as far as I know) in the general setting of ultrametric fields, the theory of integration is either unsatisfactory or not really connected with the notion of differentiation, so the proof given in the article probably fails in that case. But, as I know very little about ultrametric analysis, it could be that the theorem remains true even in that case. However, that's far from obvious to me and would need a reference. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:41, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    The article's proof doesn't carry over. Consider f(x) = x^p over a field of positive characteristic p. One of the first steps of the proof is to differentiate the given function, and when we differentiate f, the result vanishes. The proof then relies on the integral of the derivative being the original function up to a constant, but this is not true. I'm guessing that one could replace the f(a) term in the statement of the theorem with a function whose derivative is identically zero, and while I'm not an expert the result looks plausible to me. It could also be that there's a different proof that gives a stronger result, perhaps even the same result as over a field of characteristic zero. But again, I'm out of my depth here. Ozob (talk) 01:37, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

    True, but theorems have more than one proof. Just because a certain proof fails to adapt to a given setting doesn't mean there is no other proof. As I said, and Sławomir implied, the result is a specific case of Taylor's theorem. We just need to understand what C¹(K,K) means for different fields K. It's obvious over R and C (maybe over H too), and I feel that it may be meaningful over Q_p where p is prime. Like I said, I have heard people talk about p-adic calculus. For example, the first hit on Google was this: p-Adic Calculus and its Applications to Fractal Analysis and Medical Science — Fly by Night (talk) 01:45, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

    The statement of the Hadamard lemma isn't quite a special case of Taylor's theorem. Nothing in Taylor's theorem (for several variables) guarantees that the remainder terms will be smooth near the expansion point, and I think that's the subtle point of the Hadamard lemma. In fact, the Taylor remainder terms are non-unique, and we can always make them nonsmooth by subtracting some nonsmooth quantity from one and adding a balancing nonsmooth quantity to another (e.g., $x^{2}+y^{2}=x^{2}(1+|x|y^{2})+y^{2}(1-|x|x^{2})$). I agree that it is a consequence of one of the most common proofs of Taylor's theorem, with the explicit integral form of the remainder, but this proof fails in the ultrametric case. If there is a way to get it from Taylor's theorem directly, then that would probably go a long way to establishing it in that case. Sławomir Biały (talk) 02:11, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

    Does anyone have any ideas as to how to overcome these obstacles? — Fly by Night (talk) 22:21, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

    Provably/probably

    I expect most of us who have math articles on our watchlists see this from time to time -- an article contains the word provably, used correctly, and someone, usually an IP, changes it to probably.

    I was just idly wondering if anyone else has an opinion on this. Is it a specific person who just likes to do this for fun, maybe figuring it's a subtle change that might escape notice? Or, is it that a lot of people just don't know the word provably and fix the "typo" in good faith?

    Either way, it seems likely that some such changes go uncaught. Just thought I'd mention it so that the next time one of us sees the word probably in a math article, we might give half a second's thought to whether it's really supposed to be provably. (Or, I suppose, the reverse is also possible, but I don't recall an example of that.) --Trovatore (talk) 04:56, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    I think the people who do it are honestly confused. I would expect that some spellcheckers don't know the word. And as Spanish speakers tend to conflate v and b it's actually plausible as an error. Hans Adler 16:05, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Suggest that when "provably" is used, it is linked to a definition (something on the Proof page, probably (no pun intended)).

    On our (ugly) sister site ProofWiki we have the same problem with getting "iff" changed to "if" so whenever I see this I change it to a specific link to a definition of "iff" as I can't abide "if and only if". --Matt Westwood 05:18, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    It's a bit of a tangent, but I (for one) can't abide "iff" in formal writing such as we should be using on Wikipedia. I'll happily use it on talk pages and other less-formal contexts. MOS:MATH agrees (see the section "Writing style in mathematics"). So unless you want to build consensus to get the MOS changed, please just spell it out. (Also, I am a victim of the provably/probably thing — one of my papers uses "provably" in the title and it has occasionally been cited as "probably".)—David Eppstein (talk) 05:31, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    I agree. By my standards iff is properly confined to blackboards or quick notes; its only function is to be able to be written quickly. I also don't agree with linking it (or provably). Links are primarily intended to enable in-depth reading on an important aspect of the topic being read. I dislike links whose main purpose seems to be to say "hey, this is a word I'm not sure you know". --Trovatore (talk) 07:26, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Just to set you all straight, I'm not talking about Wikipedia here, I'm not suggesting "iff" be used on this site, that would indeed be outrageous. I was talking about what we do on ProofWiki where the rules are different because we're doing a different job.

    I replied to this post because I was able to offer a suggestion as to what to do in this circumstance. But okay, if the page uses a word which confuses people enough to want to change it "because it's obviously wrong", then you definitely need *some* sort of means to tell the reader: yes I *do* mean that word.

    So, a further suggestion: how about a link to Wiktionary? --Matt Westwood 09:33, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    As for "provably", there are probably many cases where it can be dropped altogether. E.g. "The set of prime numbers is provably infinite." -> "The set of prime numbers is infinite." There are variations that might also cause confusion, "provable" vs. "probable", "provability" vs. "probability", and these might be more difficult to deal with. Perhaps in such cases a hidden comment can be added such as <!-- Please leave spelling as is. -->. If we start adding links every time there is a word someone might not understand the articles will fill up with distracting link symbols. Someday someone will add a browser feature where clicking any word will look it up for them on their favorite on-line dictionary; we shouldn't try to implement it here.--RDBury (talk) 15:52, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    I recommend {{not a typo|provably}}. I think that's the "official" way to mark something as "meant". -- John of Reading (talk) 16:27, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    That looks good. Thanks! --Trovatore (talk) 17:03, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Haynsworth inertia additivity formula

    I've created a new article titled Haynsworth inertia additivity formula.

    That article and Sylvester's law of inertia treat of this particular concept of "inertia". Is this so called because of a conceptual connection with physical inertia? If so, those article ought to explain the connetion.

    To do:

    • Explain that connection.
    • Otherwise improve the article.
    • Link to the article from appropriate other articles.

    Michael Hardy (talk) 18:07, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    The connection is the inertia tensor, for what it's worth. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:44, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Thank you. I wouldn't mind if some linear algebra textbooks at least mentioned that when they mention the word "inertia". Michael Hardy (talk) 00:33, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

    List of matrix topics?

    Should we have a list of matrix topics or list of matrix theory topics? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:15, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    Navboxes are more useful than lists particularly for slow connections. You can see a navbox without downloading another page. Also, navboxes can be structured and thus carry more information than alphabetic lists. Tkuvho (talk) 21:39, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

    But navboxes seem to be for navigating, whereas lists are (partly? largely?) for browsing. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:29, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

    Does Category:Linear algebra help? 69.111.194.167 (talk) 00:38, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

    Not really. It's merely a category, not a list. List of linear algebra topics is somewhat more to the point. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:21, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

    multiplicative calculus

    Does anyone have some details on Volterra's role in developing multiplicative calculus and to what extent this was influential? The impact of this subject seems to be not much greater than non-Newtonian calculus (see deletion page). Unless we can justify it as a historical page, it may be next. Tkuvho (talk) 04:58, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

    My impression is that some people actually study this. But that could be because I've come to associate the moniker of "multiplicative calculus" with things like the product integral. I've not made any systematic effort to locate sources for this article that are independent of the (clearly WP:UNDUE) Grossman and Katz book, and the few other questionable sources listed there. It could go either way for me. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:55, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    Top importance, Start class articles

    Loosely connected to the recent Signpost Interview, I was thinking about the project's aims etc. Taking the article assessment as a first (rough) indicator for where we are, I was looking at the most important, but worst articles. This is the list ("<500" means that the article is among the 500 most viewed math articles, vital articles are also bold).

    1. Branches of maths / theories: abstract algebra, commutative algebra, group theory, homological algebra, linear algebra (<500), ring theory, differential calculus (<500), functional analysis, mathematical analysis, real analysis, optimization (<500), combinatorics (<500), discrete mathematics (<500), theoretical computer science, foundations of mathematics, pure mathematics, analytic geometry, applied mathematics (<500), mathematical physics, algebraic number theory, analytic number theory, class field theory, algebraic topology, general topology, topology (<500)
    2. (Slightly more) advanced notions: commutative ring, Gaussian elimination (<500), isomorphism (<500), Cauchy's integral formula, differential equation (<500), holomorphic function, limit of a sequence, equation (<500), Markov's principle, sequence (<500), commutative diagram, diophantine equation, expected value (<500), probability (<500), probability distribution (<500), random variable (<500), statistical hypothesis testing (<500), stochastic process (<500), homology theory, open set
    3. Misc/basic notions: 1 (number) (<500), equation solving, formula, subtraction, conjecture (<500), mathematical proof, Fields medal (<500), symmetry in mathematics, percentage (<500)
    4. Biographies: Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Felix Hausdorff, Henri Lebesgue, Jean-Pierre Serre, Karl Weierstrass, Shiing-Shen Chern, Bernhard Riemann

    After the Signpost interview the other day, I was curious where WP:MATH will be going etc. Given this list, I'm wondering whether we might want to identify particular target articles etc. For example, I'm personally most concerned/astonished about the group "branches of maths". I did not check each individual article above for its quality, but most are really crappy (or at least short). Another criterion might be "importance to the general public" (i.e., the <500 ones). Most of them are either basic notions or probability/statistics. What do you guys think about all this? I.e., 1) what aims do we have and 2) how do we get there? Jakob.scholbach (talk) 19:31, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

    I like to refer to article that get a lot of views as highly visible; you can check page view stats to get an idea of this when the article isn't on the top 500. There are highly visible articles that are low importance and vice versa, but there is a correlation. For about half the articles on the list I have to disagree with the Top importance rating. For example "commutative diagram" may be an important concept, but it's not not something you can build a curriculum on. So perhaps the reason the article is still so short is that it already has most of what there is so say on the subject, or at least what there is to say that wouldn't be better placed in category theory. You're right in that it's a good idea to keep an eye on these articles and work on them periodically. It sets a bad example when a highly visible article is poorly referenced or badly written. Perhaps we could start by picking out one or two of these and making it a goal to bring up them to at least C standard. We used to have a collaboration of the month for that kind of thing, so maybe we can repurpose that.--RDBury (talk) 02:04, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

    Optimization should redirect to Mathematical optimization, now called optimization (mathematics).  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 06:23, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

    @RDBury: I'm curious what else you consider not top importance. (I agree there is a couple of articles that will be difficult to improve, since their content is not well-delineated.)

    Collaboration of the month: how about bringing topology (vital, highly visible) to B or B+ class? (Apparently the list above is slightly out of sync, the article is currently C-class, but clearly deserves attention.) This is a nice topic that might, at least in the long run, showcase both the beauty of mathematics and the performance of WP:MATH. So: who would join this effort (previous collaborations failed because of lack of particpants)? Jakob.scholbach (talk) 14:14, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

    To respond to the inquiry: The entries in the Branches of mathematics all seem top importance to me; basically if it could be the title of an undergraduate course then there isn't much doubt that it should be Top priority. Conversely, most of the entries in Advanced/Basic notions I'd change to High rather than Top. Maybe "Probability" should be Top but there seems to be some overlap between that and Probability theory which is also Top. "Limit of a sequence", "Equation Solving", and "Percentage" I'd make Medium. Under biographies I'd at least question all but Cauchy and Riemann. Just my opinion and obviously not one I feel strongly enough about to actually change the ratings and it's not worth the bandwidth to argue about it if someone disagrees.

    Topology might make a good article for CotM and it definitely needs work; right now I'd give it a C-. C makes a good standard for "minimum passing" quality, the major aspects of the subject should be covered, references in reasonable shape, understandable enough to make it worthwhile for someone to read it. So to me, getting an article from B to C is not as high a priority as getting an article from Start to C, given the articles have the same visibility/importance.--RDBury (talk) 17:06, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

    I agree that the importance of most of the biographies has been overrated. CRGreathouse (t | c) 18:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

    Regarding the vital articles (bold), a classification new to me: Apparently these 1000 articles have been identified by outsiders while "top importance" articles have been identified within this project. At the moment, Riemann's biography is not vital, merely vital(expanded), and "Equation solving" is not even on that list. On the other hand, the 987 vitals do include 62 "vital" Mathematics articles.

    Fully 16 of those are now in Start class. I looked at four of them: Area, Constant, Digit, and Equation. I am not sure whether the latter deserves a Start or a C. It's outlandish that any of the first three is a Start.

    Hastily I guess quality classification is so far out of date that its maintenance, rather than improvement of listed articles, may be the only immediately useful application of these lists.

    (Btw, it appears that "expansion" of the list of vital articles from about 1000 to 7000 brings only 50% increase in math articles, from 62 to 92.) --P64 (talk) 19:35, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

    I have no idea how the "vital" article list was decided, but I think it should be ignored. The list includes combinatorics, game theory, and chaos theory, while leaving out much more important topics like calculus. Weird attention has been devoted to the most elementary notions of geometry as well, listing 15 articles on things like "line", "point", "shape", "conic section". Sure, these are important topics for understanding geometry. But they aren't vital to an encyclopedia. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:47, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

    My understanding is that the vital list is decided by consensus and is limited to 1000 total, of which there are 62 math articles. Because of the limit you can't propose an article be added without specifying which article it will replace. There are similar lists such as Core articles and WP 1.0. WP 1.0 is based on a heuristic formula using article statistics such as page views and number of links, see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Article selection.--RDBury (talk) 15:01, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

    I'm not suggesting we add anything. I'm saying the whole list is suspect. I mean, is "point" an important concept? Sure, we should have an article about it. But from the point of view of building an encyclopedia, it's not near the top of the list. In fact, in some sense the heuristic isn't even being adhered to: "point", "line", etc., all belong to Geometry, which is probably the only article out of those 15-16 that should be on the list. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:54, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

    I think the idea of having to nominate something to be removed when submitting something is very good. Now if only the government had to do that when it proposed new laws! You could always have a poll about which ones should be included I guess - if so I propose we use Single transferable vote and D'Hondt method to choose them but we probably should have a referendum on the voting method first. :) Dmcq (talk) 17:04, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

    As far as I can tell "vital articles" has turned into a forum to discuss why what's important to me is more important than what's important to you. I agree with Sławek that it should be ignored. Any usefulness it ever had is long since past. Ideally it should be marked as "inactive" or some such. --Trovatore (talk) 00:41, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    Articles every Wikipedia should have

    I agree with what Sławomir is saying about the vital articles list. But as far as I can tell, the list is not used for anything important. A much more important list is at m:List of articles every Wikipedia should have. This seems to be used by those starting Wikipedias in other languages. The current list is:

    1. Mathematics
    2. Algebra
       1. Group theory
       2. System of linear equations
    3. Arithmetic
    4. Axiom
    5. Mathematical analysis
       1. Differential equation
       2. Numerical analysis
    6. Coordinate system
    7. Equation
    8. Function (mathematics)
    9. Geometry
       1. Circle
          1. Pi
       2. Square
       3. Triangle
    10. Mathematical proof
    11. Number
        1. Complex number
        2. Number theory
    12. Infinity
    13. Set theory
    14. Statistics
    15. Trigonometry

    Logic and probability appear not under mathematics but under philosophy. Algorithm appears under computers. This list seems okay considering its size, but I think there are improvements we can make. If it were up to me, I would:

    1. Replace group theory with symmetry. The fundamental idea underlying group theory is symmetry, so an encyclopedia needs an article on the latter before it needs an article on the former.
    2. Replace numerical analysis by calculus. Calculus is fundamental to modern engineering and physics; and as far as I can tell, about half of numerical analysis consists of approximating integrals.
    3. Replace complex number by prime number. Both of these are fundamental concepts, but the basics of complex numbers should already be in the number article, whereas there is a lot to say about primes that does not fit well in that article.
    4. Replace circle and square with angle, area, and Pythagorean theorem. Specific shapes aren't as interesting as concepts; and the Pythagorean theorem, besides being a classic and the only theorem most people have ever heard of, is at the heart of how we measure distance in the real world. (I'm keeping triangle because you can't have an article on the Pythagorean theorem without triangles. The same could be said of squares, but if I include them I have too many articles.)
    5. Remove mathematical analysis and number theory. The list is too short to include fields of math.
    6. Remove axiom. This has a lot of overlap with mathematical proof, truth, and logic (all on the list).
    7. Add logarithm. Not only is this of great historical importance, but logarithms are extremely practical, even for laymen.
    8. Add standard deviation under statistics. Seriously, this is the number 2 most viewed math article on the English Wikipedia (after Einstein, who doesn't really count as math).

    Before I propose this change, I'd like some feedback. What would you like to see changed on this list? (Note that the size of the list is fixed; you can't add something without removing something else.) Ozob (talk) 00:34, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    The value of this list: Responses

    Basically I think the same as I think about "vital articles". Bluntly, this is a useless exercise, nothing more than an opportunity to argue about what's more important. If you have an article you think is underserved, ask for help on it specifically. --Trovatore (talk) 08:41, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    Ozob, I think the project you are undertaking is too broad in scope. How about focusing on a particular issue? Certainly standard deviation, which does carry heavy traffic, should be on the list if we are to take relevance to the public into account. What would one do about this? Tkuvho (talk) 12:11, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    Isn't it a bit pretentious to tell other WPs what they should have?--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:15, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    It is advice based on our experience. They can ignore it, if they wish. JRSpriggs (talk) 13:04, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    Does doesn't change the fact that it sounds rather pretentious. Of course it can only be a "advice" for structural reasons alone, as the other WPs have their separate administration and portals. Moreover if I understand the original reason of the discussion correctly, the goal is to identify the high priority math articles for en.wp and now we've ended up with that pretentious title above (the page already existed before, but still ...).--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:20, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    Keep in mind that some WP's are really small and the person (there may only be one) they have working on math articles might want a list of articles to give top priority. Anyway, the list is on meta so it's not one specific WP telling the others what to do. I agree with most of Ozob's changes, except I don't think you'd need articles that go beyond a typical high school curriculum so "Standard deviation" is probably not needed. There are some other nit picks as well but I'd say make the proposal there to work out the details.--RDBury (talk) 14:43, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    I have no issue with the content and math is rather universal anyhow. I just find the title somewhat unappropriate due to being pretentious.--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:23, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    Well, it's not my title; the person who originally selected it may have been pretentious, but now that's just the name of a page on meta. And the page does seem to serve a real purpose, because it gives small Wikipedias something to work towards.

    Regarding my preference for standard deviation: Even though standard deviation is a more advanced topic than some of the others on the list, it is extremely practical. The same can be said of differential equations, which are already on the list, and of solutions to systems of linear equations, which are also on the list. Practicality isn't the only consideration, but it is important. But that doesn't mean that I've made the right choices, and if someone has other ideas for the list I'd love to hear them. Ozob (talk) 00:01, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

    Well, I'm against this project entirely. But if it happens, I certainly disagree with replacing group theory by symmetry. The first is at least about some reasonably well-specified mathematical thing; the latter is more of a broad philosophical concept. Who says the fundamental idea of group theory is symmetry anyway? Not all important groups are most naturally understood as symmetry groups, by any means.

    Also, I'm against replacing complex number with prime number. That's a personal thing; I don't care much about number theory, having always been more into infinitary than finitary math. Is there any objective criterion by which one should be included more than the other? I think not, which to my mind just shows the folly of the whole idea. I would like to see it dropped. --Trovatore (talk) 20:07, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

    (unindent) I don't consider this question foolish, just difficult. Moreover, I think coming up with the best list of vital topics etc. is not what's most important. It seems that most (all?) people around agree at least that the topics listed above under "Branches/theories" are crucial (in order to use a word that is not "vital", "top importance" etc.). Yet, many of them are in poor state. For example, look at real analysis. I would love to initiate a drive that turns these articles (one by one, obviously) into decent articles. Does not need to be good, but maybe B-ish would be nice. Do(n't) you share this wish? Jakob.scholbach (talk) 20:28, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

    Probably the list you originally gave is the one that should guide which articles we as a project should focus on. I would like to add, though, that "start" class may not be the best metric for determining which articles need the most urgent work. I just picked at random combinatorics. I agree that this is a "start" class article (maybe "C", I don't know how such things are reckoned), but it really isn't all that bad, and gives basically an outline of the subject and links to other more specific articles. I don't think it's in urgent need of development. Maybe about half of the others are in a similar state, like group theory and Cauchy's integral formula, random variable. Perhaps we need an ad hoc metric to determine which of these articles are really truly dreadful, and make it a priority to work on those. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:54, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

    I still believe that Meta's list of articles every Wikipedia should have is important, but I agree that it is not so important for the English Wikipedia and for this Wikiproject in particular. Because of that, I think that part of this discussion is better held at m:Talk:List of articles every Wikipedia should have. I'll start a thread there some time soon. Ozob (talk) 01:00, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    I agree, this here is the wrong place for discussing topics affecting all wikipedias.--Kmhkmh (talk) 01:01, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    Specific proposals

    • Numerical analysis can be generally viewed as computational approximation theory, with an emphasis on the computational representation and solution of problems in mathematical analysis (differential and integral equations, continuous optimization, simulation). See Kantorovich's essay, "Functional analysis and applied mathematics". Scientific computing and applied mathematics are wider areas.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:53, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    Vital articles

    The preface at Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded (level 4) implies to me that the Wikipedia:Vital articles have a function that others naysay (I don't like hyphens), underlying some cooperative effort across wikipedia editions. Unlike the level 3 list, this list is nowhere near being worked on across the various wikis for other languages.

    I don't now have time to read more or to comment.--P64 (talk) 22:48, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    Need to update ratings?

    Going back to the list at the top of this section: we can see here that most of the ratings are some years old. Although many of the articles aren't in perfect condition, I think the majority have moved beyond start-class. How are the ratings used? Is there any value in going through this list and updating ratings where appropriate? Jowa fan (talk) 07:03, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

    We didn't start using C until relatively recently so some of the Starts might actually be C's. Our system is idiosyncratic in other ways and imo gives more inflated ratings than the common standard, but one purpose is to suggest priorities by identifying which articles need the most work. I guess another purpose is to help measure progress in article quality with specific criteria.--RDBury (talk) 14:23, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

    Cross-classification

    For example,

    • List articles in Start-class assessed by the Mathematics project that carry the Statistics project banner —not the same as Start-class assessed by Mathematics that have {{maths rating | field=probability and statistics}.
    • List articles in Statistics project, not Mathematics project.

    Is there any such tool here at Wikipedia? --P64 (talk) 15:05, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    Monty Hall problem

    Since the arbitration committee ruling, Monty Hall problem has become a much more cooperative place. Alas, it has also become a place where there are very few editors. If you walked away from the article because of the battleground it became, you might want to consider revisiting it. Guy Macon (talk) 12:52, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

    Should it be added to the list of common misconceptions? Tkuvho (talk) 14:00, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

    That's a really good question. My first guess is no, based upon what I perceive (but cannot prove) as a failure to meet the "common" criteria. I would guess that most people have not heard of the Monty Hall problem. Totally subjective opinion, of course. Guy Macon (talk)

    If the Parade magazine got 10 thousand protest letters, it is safe to assume that a much larger figure are aware of the problem, making it "common". Tkuvho (talk) 04:38, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    Agreed. CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:24, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    Thanks. If we can have just one more editor interested I would take it up at the "list". A few editors there are (rightly) making sure there are no irrelevant additions, and it would be helpful to have the support of the project. The "list" carries heavy traffic (tens of thousands of hits per day sometimes), and gives nice exposure to an elegant math problem (hope I am not offending anyone at WP:probability). Tkuvho (talk) 08:59, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

    I support in principle , but the current article has POV tag on top due to years' long disagreement between the regulars as to which solution is wrong. More appropriately add it to WP:LAME for now. Tijfo098 (talk) 06:18, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    I have added a non-controversial entry on Monty at list of common misconceptions that both sides should agree on, see there. Tkuvho (talk) 11:36, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    The delete elite troops are at work already at list of common misconceptions. Tkuvho (talk) 13:34, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    To Tkuvho: Rather than put the Monty Hall problem specifically into the list of misconceptions, you should figure out what general misconception about probability or statistics is responsible for the popular misunderstanding of MH and put that into the list. Then MH could be linked to as an example. That would make the entry much more useful and important. JRSpriggs (talk) 13:49, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    There is no way of sourcing such "generalisations", and they will certainly be rejected by the troopers. Actually, I disagree with the philosophical thrust of your remarks: the best way of explaining a misconception is by an example, not by discussion of general misconceptions that one thinks people have. At any rate, the recent reverts are by an editor who... has a misconception about Monty Hall Problem! See talk there. Tkuvho (talk) 13:52, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    Quasisymmetric map

    In the article titled quasisymmetric map, this is given as the definition:

    Let (X, d_X) and (Y, d_Y) be two metric spaces. A homeomorphism f:X → Y is said to be η-quasisymmetric or if there is an increasing function η : [0, ∞) → [0, ∞) such that for any triple x, y, z of distinct points in X, we have

    ${\frac {d_{Y}(f(x),f(y))}{d_{Y}(f(x),f(z))}}\leq \eta \left({\frac {|x-y|}{|x-z|}}\right).$

    What does $|x-y|$ mean? Does it mean $d_{X}(x,y)$? Clearly the article needs work. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:11, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

    I am pretty sure that is what's meant, though I'm no expert. I've changed the article accordingly. Ozob (talk) 23:11, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

    Shapley–Folkman lemma Review for A-Class

    The article Shapley–Folkman lemma has been nominated for A-class review. Your comments are most welcome. Best regards,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:58, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

    Math contests medalists (was Peter Scholze at AfD)

    The article Peter Scholze is at AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter Scholze. What do we think of this? (Initially I had missed that he was a Clay fellow, but this could tip the discussion the other way.) Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:14, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

    Another IMO related AfD discussion is here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Iurie Boreico. This one seems more clear-cut. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:46, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

    There's also Gabriel D. Carroll and Reid W. Barton to consider. I see that Barton is notable for other stuff as well, and survived an AfD. Tijfo098 (talk) 03:28, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    David Rees (mathematician)

    Can someone knowledgeable in commutative algebra add the details about Rees' contribution form some math source (and not a newspaper obit of someone else)? I've added the semigroup theory stuff I knew of. Tijfo098 (talk) 02:01, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    Also the page of his (former) student Michael P. Drazin could enjoy more than a sentence. Tijfo098 (talk) 02:05, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    90-degree rotation in the complex plane

    New article looks like it was done as an extra credit project. Well done for what it is but not really encyclopedic in style. Copy to WikiBooks?--RDBury (talk) 04:12, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    Certainly the textbook style is more appropriate to WikiBooks. I have prodded it. Gandalf61 (talk) 08:28, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    Category:Non-Newtonian calculus

    Do we need Category:Non-Newtonian calculus ? Tkuvho (talk) 08:14, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    No, I don't think so. Neither do we need List of derivatives and integrals in alternative calculi. Ozob (talk) 10:20, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    I think I complained originally about that article looking like it was generated by a program rather than summarizing any source. I see the creator was banned so perhaps a simple prod will get rid of it now. Dmcq (talk) 12:05, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    Whatever material is appropriate for Product integral should be moved there. Tkuvho (talk) 12:12, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    It's hard to see what possible reference use such a table could serve. The sources are a bit dodgy, and do not seem to support the contents of the table. A prod on OR grounds might prove uncontroversial enough. I agree with Tkuvho that some material should probably first be merged to product integral, since that article would benefit from a few choice examples. However it seems silly to attempt any kind of list or table of such integrals, given that the product integral can be obtained easily from the ordinary integral. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:52, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    I don't know much about product integrals, but with scalar-valued functions you can reduce their evaluation to that of ordinary "sum integrals". My understanding is that the thing that prevents that reduction from making the subject unworthy of further attention is product integrals of matrix-valued functions. With matrix-valued functions you can't just reduce them to sum-integrals that way. But there's nothing about product integrals of matrix-valued functions in the article. If someone is knowledgeable in that area, that material should be added. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:29, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    "We" again

    Does anyone here think "we" is used improperly at powerset construction? The books cited use pretty much the same tone. Tijfo098 (talk) 23:25, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

    The use of we in section Intuition is borderline, but "We will construct" (under Example) is where it gets really bad. None of the books cited is an encyclopedia. Hans Adler 00:04, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    I was surprised to see that MOS:FIRSTPERSON seems to allow this, but I prefer not to use first-person here even in that sort of impersonal way. It does say in the MOS that "often such things can be rephrased to avoid the first-person pronoun" and I think it would be appropriate to do so in this case. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:04, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    It's called an 'inclusive we' in linguistics. There's an article about it—clusivity—and some google books searches indicate it's a hot research topic with respect to academic register. [18]. Tijfo098 (talk) 03:53, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    (When the MOS dash warriors take a break and the MOS is un-fully-protected, I'll change MOS:FIRSTPERSON to the use proper lingustic terminology and link to the right article.) Tijfo098 (talk) 03:57, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    This sort of "we" is often better rephrased. But a while ago various strange people were construing it literally as referring to the author of the article, and saying that makes it an expression of personal views, to be tagged as an "essay-like" article. That is absurd. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:24, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    Besides the linguistic style issue, I think "we" mostly occurs in a section that doesn't follow the WP:NOTTEXTBOOK guideline. So before rephrasing the sentence it may be worthwhile assess whether the material belongs in an encyclopedia in the first place.--RDBury (talk) 16:10, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    I can try taking a look at cleaning it up; I've been working on DFA minimization lately, anyway, and this is very closely related. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:53, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    Links to the "Gauss" disambiguation page

    Something to work on:

    Gauss is currently a disambiguation page. A very large number of pages link to it. Either (1) those links should get disambiguated or (2) the page should be moved to Gauss (disambiguation) and Gauss redirected to Carl Friedrich Gauss. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:32, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    (2) has been done, evidently by Michael Hardy. That has gone back and forth.

    If I understand correctly, links to the redirect now called Gauss should be checked and many should be resolved, and there is a tool for semiautomation of that task. More than half of the incoming links are from article space; many are not. --P64 (talk) 16:50, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

    Polytope articles

    I've raised this issue before, but we have a large number (in the hundreds) of articles on specific polytopes and more are being added all the time. I looked at one of the more dubious ones, Bipentellated 8-simplex, and found no reliable references and it seems to be largely original research. Most of these seem to be the work of a single editor and judging from the red links {e.g. Pentistericated 8-simplex) present on the page it looks like the final tally for these articles could be in the thousands. I find it difficult to believe that the majority of these articles meet the GNG so perhaps there should be a review to decide on a few dozen articles that are worth keeping.--RDBury (talk) 16:42, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    "Bipentellated" doesn't seem to be a term used outside wikipedia. At least, there are no hits on Google scholar or Google books, and most (all?) of the Google hits seem to be Wikipedia mirrors. Maybe it follows some systematic way of naming these polytopes based on compound words formed from the Greek, but sources that address the subject directly are needed. I think most of these articles should be transwikied to wikibooks if sources cannot be found, since it seems to be clear OR. If anything the nomenclature is very non-standard. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:10, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    I think some of the glossaries listed in External links section define the terms and the author is applying them to generate the names. If so then these would definitely come under the heading of original research. I'd settle for consolidating the articles since much of their content seems to be boilerplate and the actual information they contain can be summarized in a table entry, assuming that is that the information can be verified.--RDBury (talk) 20:54, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    Even if we accepted that glossary as reliable, it doesn't seem to support the nomeclature "bipentellated". This seems made up. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:59, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    Fully agree. Also just because something has a name doesn't mean it has independent notability. There's lots of people with different names, that doesn't mean everyone iis notable as far as Wikipedia is concerned. The should only be in some notable topic. Dmcq (talk) 21:05, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    Another popular "word" in all of this business is "bicantellated", which also gets zero Google books and Google scholar hits. The naming conventions in these articles, and the overall program, seems to be inspired by the "uniform polychora project" of Norman Johnson (mathematician) and George Olshevsky, but this project no longer seems to exist. I can't seem to find any published materials from the project that these articles can be sourced to. However, I also feel that a lot of work has gone into making these articles, and that we should make every effort to preserve this content. Even if it is original research, it seems like worthwhile and possibly useful original research. So I think that rather than deleting, all of these articles should be transwikied to WikiBooks. (I assume they allow original research.)

    If there is consensus that either deletion or transwiki is appropriate, then I think the next order of business would be to make a list of all of these articles. There are various subcategories and subsubcategories of Category:Polytopes that are populated primarily with these sorts of articles. Does anyone (*cough* Carl *cough*) have a script that will unwrap a few levels of a category into a list? We can then go through this list and strike the ones that are either obviously OK, or ones for which there are good references. The remaining ones can be transwikied or deleted by the appropriate process. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:37, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    There is Wikipedia:WikiProject Uniform Polytopes that gives some greater context for these articles. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:46, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    Since language and logic seem to be important to this topic, I thought I would point out that there seems to be a conflation of two issues here.

    One is the introduction of NOR questionable naming associated with well known mathematical operations on hyperdimensional geometric objects. It would seem too broad a brush to simply eliminate pages from WP for want of more common naming schemes. I suggest due diligence by those interested in taking action to understand and correct the specific issues with finer strokes than a house painter.

    The second is the GNG as it pertains to visualizing the many permutations of hyperdimensional geometry. While one might replace all the amazingly beautiful visuals contained herein with a table, I suspect the public would not be well served. Think of the need to stimulate the minds of our youth with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)). Math tables are important, direct, and accurate but tend to be dry. Please consider the right half of the brain when pondering the elimination of these pages - they do provide another way to look at the world to the extent they represent valid geometry.

    Jgmoxness (talk) 16:05, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    There is quite an active community of people working on these high dimensional polytopes which seem to be a bit outside the mathematical mainstream. Their main communication channel seems to be the polyhedra mailing list and I think there are some meetings. I would suspect the names reflect those of this community rather than one WP editor. As it seems to be outside the mainstream the work tends not to get published in traditional journal sources. So while not strictly "original research" it would still fall under WP:OR unless there are sources we don't know about. I would say wiki-books would be a good solution for much of this material. Anyway I've notified the main author of these pages User:Tomruen and it would be good to wait until we gat a reply from him.--Salix (talk): 17:15, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    The terminology all comes from Norman Johnson, in the context of uniform polytopes, Coxeter's term for vertex-transitive polytopes with uniform polytope facets. Johnson studied under Coxeter, wrote his dissertation in 1966 on uniform polytopes and honeycombs, and has a long delayed book called Uniform Polytopes on the subject, which has been referenced as an unpublished manuscript, and his terminology used in various polytope sources. The polytopes are named with a prefix notation corresponding to the Coxeter-Dynkin diagram, graphs where each node is a reflection mirror, and each edge is a dihedral angle between the mirrors with a given reflection order. Each Coxeter graph has a set of regular and uniform polytopes by unique permutations of rings around the nodes. So the names are defined by the ring pattern, as well as a t (truncation), notation, like t₀ forms a regular polytope (on the linear graph families), t_0,1 is truncation (named by Kepler), and Norman named bitruncation for t_1,2, Cantellation for t_0,2, runcination for t_0,3, etc, and mixed term like t_0,1,2 is a truncation and a cantellation, so he calls that cantitruncation, etc. So that's where the names come from for uniform polytopes dimension 4 or higher.

    Printed references for these higher polytopes are still rare. George Olshevsky claimed to be the first online reference for the uniform 4-polytopes, and the only printed book which I know that uses the terminology is the 2008 The Symmetries of things by Conway et al. Richard Klitzing has the only online source for higher dimension uniform polytopes, so I've used that as my primary, [19]. He uses an inline (ASCII) Coxeter diagram, which are a bit hard to read, and references the polytopes by Jonathan Bowers, so I've included those names as well, but use Johnson's truncation terminology for the article names.

    My goal was first to get the basic families, summarized in this table Template:Polytopes, listing families by dimension, and the regular polytopes (or end-ringed quasiregular forms for the bifurcating families). I was hoping to at least get the uniform 5-polytopes completed, and didn't expect to expand articles on all the higher ones, since they approximately double on each higher dimension. I have generated the graphs for each family, orthogonal projections in Coxeter planes for each family which have the nice symmetry, and give a chance for visualization of these polytopes.

    Each uniform polytope can be projected in its family Coxeter plane, or any of its subfamilies, so I made tables for each family, and you can see the number of images increases rapidly.

    • Simplex: List_of_A5_polytopes, List_of_A6_polytopes, List_of_A7_polytopes, List_of_A8_polytopes
    • Hypercube: List_of_B5_polytopes, List_of_B6_polytopes, List_of_B7_polytopes, List_of_B8_polytopes
    • Demihypercube: List_of_D5_polytopes, List_of_D6_polytopes, List_of_D7_polytopes, List_of_D8_polytopes
    • (subset) E_n: List_of_E6_polytopes, List_of_E7_polytopes, List_of_E8_polytopes

    All these shapes are well known by Coxeter even 60 years ago, but it wasn't until Johnson that they were named. These are the easy ones since they are defined by symmetry. Harder ones are called non-wythoffian, like the grand antiprism in 4D, found by Conway, and unknown beyond 4D. Also less known are uniform star polytopes with rational-ordered mirrors, like Coxeter's 3D Uniform_star_polyhedrons and regular Kepler-Poinsot_solids. A list of 2000+ are known for 4D, which wikipedia articles haven't touched, and are not published ANYWHERE, but given in Rob Webb's software Stella_(software). The only listing of those wikipedia has (from Stella images) are the 4D regular forms Schläfli–Hess polychoron.

    Anyway, I agree it is hard to defend these on wikipedia, or where to draw a line. As far as I know Norman Johnson (and a few collaborators) are the only ones working on the subject. If it wasn't for wikipedia (seeing the original articles I worked from), I wouldn't have even bothered trying to learn about any of this, since it seemed too hard, and too few resources to help explain what they are. I saw Magnus_Wenninger polyhedron models in the 1990's at a math convention and thought they were beautiful but had no idea before wikipedia before I found out they are mostly "simple things" that look complex! Tom Ruen (talk) 19:00, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    I think the 'list of' articles could possibly be defended but the individual ones just lack notability. They really should all have been in a wiki of their own. What could possibly be done for the moment is to move the pages to commons and reference them from Wikipedia with 'Wikimedia Commons has media related to: xxx' for each of them. Probably not really a proper long-term solution but it would avoid deleting everything till someone decides they deserve their own place elsewhere along with all the various knots and all the various graphs etc. Dmcq (talk) 19:10, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    The primary reason I support individual articles for a subset of forms (possibly complete up to 5 or 6 dimensional, and single-ringed forms for 7 or 8), is because of the recursive definition, higher dimensional polytopes are constructed from lower dimensional facets. They might be linked to family tables, but pages load slower and harder to find. Also no singular table can contain all the information. And on notability, many of these polytopes are related to sphere-packings, and kissing numbers of densest packings. So all the uniform polytopes with circumradii as equal to edge lengths are the vertex figures of uniform lattices (or as root systems of infinite Lie groups). I hope to expand those relations at some point. Tom Ruen (talk) 22:35, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    Well just taking a fairly simple one at random Truncated 5-simplex I'm afraid I just cannot see the notability of that article never mind getting up to the Bipentellated 8-simplex. Lets start with general notability guideline "Significant coverage" means that sources address the subject directly in detail, so no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source materia" So where is the truncated 5-simplex mentioned in respect to anything else except being just one in a list? Is there something saying it specifically occurs in sphere packings or a kissing number of densest packings or a root system of infinite Lie grpoups like yous said they were? Dmcq (talk) 23:48, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    Nope, you're right on that random example, and no more important than one of its facets, truncated 5-cell, or one of its cells, truncated tetrahedron. (The Stericated_5-simplex#Root_vectors in contrast vertices represent the root vectors of A5, but just a quick reference there.) Probably all but a handful of the uniform polyhedra and polytopes are not defendably notable if you apply strict standards. The Uniform polyhedron compound (which another editor compiled) is largely just a list as well, possibly just overlapping other lists as being stellations as well as compounds. Tom Ruen (talk) 00:11, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

    My initial thought when I saw this was that someone, somewhere on Wikipedia must have dealt with this somehow before. With a little work I found Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects, which has topical archives on tables of asteroids. With more effort I found that Wikipedia:WikiProject Algae has a large number of articles which seem to have been created by importing parts of AlgaeBase (see for instance Category:Algae genera and Category:Algae stubs). It's not clear to me whether there is a community consensus for articles which can be created essentially by rote and in some cases by machine.

    I think the present situation is partway between the asteroids (where almost all articles were expected to be hard-to-maintain database dumps) and the algae (where I think the long term goal is to eventually add real content to every article). Some of the polytopes are notable and should be kept, but I'm not sure which ones. Ozob (talk) 01:21, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    There has been an effort to maintain statistical information by "template databases" (idea started by another user, and continued by me), for example the regular polyhedra at Template:Reg_polyhedra_db (can be converted to/from Excel spreadsheets), and used for stat tables: Template:Reg_polyhedron_stat_table. The databases can be used for different table formats and allow new fields to be added. I did an initial tests for 6-polytopes at Template:Uniform_polypeton_db and tested on Rectified_6-simplex. The main reason I delayed from expanding is deciding how much information to include, so far only included basic summary counts and symbols. I've done the same thing for the solar eclipse articles for 1900-2100, which I hoped would allow a framework for notable past and future eclipses to be expanded. So the same is true for these uniform polytopes. The less notable ones can just have basic information, and the full lists (of the lower dimensional families) allows browsing cross-linked exploration of these beautifully symmetric objects. So far we have mostly Coxeter plane projections which have a number of graphs per polytope, but there's also perspective and stereographic projections that can be added, and too much to be summarized in a single table or article. Tom Ruen (talk) 01:47, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    Maybe we can borrow from Wikipedia:Notability (numbers)#Notability of specific individual numbers? If a polytope has three or more unrelated and distinctive properties (e.g. its skeleton is a Cayley graph, it has a record-high genus for its number of faces, stuff like that, not "it is the teratopentellation of the dodecadodecahedron"), if it has obvious cultural significance, or if it is treated individually and nontrivially in published works such as Wells Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry, then we can include it, otherwise not. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    Expressions of notability can end up as original research as much as anything, like the the n-permutohedra (described atTalk:Permutohedron) being clearly related to the omnitruncated n-simplex polytopes, BUT I have no sources that state the connection. Similarly the root vectors of the simple lie groups are drawn in lower dimensions as related to uniform polyhedra, but to my sources its inductive OR to state the uniform polytope connection to higher dimensions. I have limited ability to express these connections, although I have some book sources like Conway's Sphere packing, lattices, and groups, its tough reading. So anyway, for me my strength is merely to express the uniform polytopes as defined by Coxeter and Johnson, construct them computationally, and draw their symmetry projections. I do hope I can understand more in time, but for now their amazing symmetry is what attracts me to showing them. My interest would suppport (1-done) All convex and star uniform polyheda (~75) (2-done) All convex uniform 4-polytopes (~55), (3-done) All nonprismatic uniform 5-polytopes (~105), (4) A subset of convex uniform polytopes from 6,7,8, mainly the smaller ones 1-2 active mirrors, and summary tables of all convex forms. (5) Summary tables for 1-2 ringed forms for 9D, 10D. 9D is a good place to stop with the E8 lattice and the highest uniform hyperbolic honeycomb, and 10D and higher have no new special symmetries. (Although Conway and others would claim still more interest up to 24D!) Tom Ruen (talk) 02:04, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    p.s. Documentable notability within the field of uniform polytopes would mainly come from Coxeter himself, and his historical references of previous discovers, like Ludwig Schläfli and Edmund Hess who identified the (full) list of regular polytopes, and Thorold_Gosset and E._L._Elte who independently described semiregular polytopes by different definitions that eventually Coxeter expanded to the uniform polytope defintion that was complete. Tom Ruen (talk) 02:15, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    I like David Eppstein's suggestion. I have no objection to keeping lists of polytopes up to 9D; you gave a good reason above why 9D is a good place to stop (namely, that's the dimension where E₈ appears). I think we should have articles on all the uniform polytopes of dimension less than or equal to 3 (regardless of whether interesting properties can be found), and I could possibly be convinced push that to dimension 4. But all the other polytopes are going to need some interesting properties. (You mentioned Johnson's manuscript Uniform polytopes above. Maybe that has some interesting facts about these objects?) Ozob (talk) 11:13, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    I couldn't disagree more with Ozob. Stopping at 3 is like burning geometry books after Euclid. 4D polychora are merely the beginning of modern geometry. Visualizing as much modern geometry up to E8 is needed to show the public how to percieve something they probably thought was impossible - but there it is! While I understand the debate over OR & GNG as potentially interesting - what POSITIVE purpose is being served by moving these particular articles? Reorganize and rename - YES! Move'em out - NO! Jgmoxness (talk) 13:42, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    to prod, perchance to help...

    Is there a wiki policy that editors should try to help rather than prod? See generality of algebra. Tkuvho (talk) 20:23, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    I don't think a prod is appropriate. A single Google search turned up thousands of results. I've added a reference, and marked the article as a mathematical analysis stub. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:49, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    I agree with the user that introduced the prod. There are not thousands of Google results associated with "generality of algebra" in the sense used in the article -- just a few. As far as I can tell, the term "generality of algebra" as used in the article is non-contemporary, used only by Cauchy in the 19th century to refer to certain non-rigorous arguments of Euler and Lagrange. As it does not appear to be a term in current usage, it can be described in the currently referencing articles without creating a new article in wikipedia. — Myasuda (talk) 20:58, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    Regarding "just a few": how so? Most of the top search results used "generality of algebra" in the sense used here. Same with Google books and scholar search. Obviously, I'm not going to page through hundreds of pages of hits to see if they are all relevant, but my impression is that many are. See also the scholar search: [20]. The first six hits are relevant to the subject of the article. (Then there are some hits with the phrase "generality of algebraic groups".) Then there are some more relevant hits. This is clearly a bona fide notable notion that historians of mathematics are interested in. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:03, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    It looks to me like a reasonable topic and that there's a good chance of forming a reasonable article instead of the one liner definition that's there. Dmcq (talk) 21:09, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    There are probably more articles that are beyond help than ones that only seem to be. But people should be doing due diligence to make sure which is the case before slapping on a PROD tag. On the other hand, an unreferenced stub should probably be fixed by the author rather than relying on other editors to clean it up. It's like walking through a dark alley with a $100 bill sticking out of your pocket, maybe you don't deserve to get mugged but it shouldn't come as a big surprise either.--RDBury (talk) 21:13, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    Indeed. Write a decent article in the first place and it won't be prodded. The artice still doesn't tell us what this mysterious "generality of algebra" principle actually is. Gandalf61 (talk) 22:02, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    There is a further report at my talkpage that the article has been slated for deletion, but I have been unable to find any evidence of this at either generality of algebra or talk:generality of algebra. Tkuvho (talk) 04:07, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    Just look at the article history. William M. Connolley (talk · contribs) prodded the article; Slawekb (talk · contribs), who also posts as Sławomir Biały, removed the prod notice (which any editor is allowed to do if they believe an article is worth keeping). Gandalf61 (talk) 08:13, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    Reminder: Titles with π

    There seemed to be a consensus above that for articles in the scope of this project, there is nothing wrong with "π" in the title and that this should not be replaced by "pi". There was even talk about updating MATHMOS to reflect this. This consensus is currently not reflected byanother requested move discussion, which is going on at Talk:Liu Hui's π algorithm#Requested move. To me this indicates that more (focused) discussion is needed, either in the relevant section above or in the new requested move discussion.

    Also, I was going to move List of topics related to pi back to its correct title, but because of the title blacklist only an admin can do it. Hans Adler 08:19, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    This is a neutral notice? See WP:CANVASSING. Kauffner (talk) 16:39, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    Done. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:18, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    To be honest this seems like a little inhouse push to ignore a wider consensus. The problem is because of the MoS requiring no symbols in the titles of articles. Should this not have gone for either wider consensus (via RfC) or another such process rather than in-house admins consenting to IAR? Chaosdruid (talk) 16:24, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    First, these were originally moved en masse from the WP:STATUSQUO without first attempting to get consensus. There is clearly no consensus for the original move, as evidenced by the thread at Talk:Liu Hui's π algorithm. Second, the MoS only cautions against using symbols that might render as square boxes because of a lack of browser support. That is a non-issue for Greek letters. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:29, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    No, that is not true, it does not say that. I suggest that is OR on your part.

    From MoS: article titles — "* Do not use symbols: Symbols such as "♥", as sometimes found in advertisements or logos, should never be used in titles. This includes non-Latin punctuation such as the characters in Unicode's CJK Symbols and Punctuation block." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chaosdruid (talk • contribs) 16:43, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    As I explained to Kauffner before, and he has chosen to conveniently ignore, this is taken out of context. Greek letters are clearly not symbols in the sense of that rule, as is clear both from the surrounding rules and the talk page discussions from the time when the word "symbol" was introduced here.

    In fact it's clear even from the text you quoted yourself: (1) π is less "symbol-like" than ♥. π is not normally found in advertisements or logos, and is much more often found in other contexts. π is not "non-Latin punctuation" because it is not punctuation. π does not appear in the CJK Symbols and Punctuation block and is unlike everything that appears there in that it has a lot less browser support. If this rule had been meant to cover something as common in English text as a Greek letter, there would have been plenty of more appropriate examples than a playing card symbol and CJK characters, both of which are much rarer in English text. Hans Adler 17:08, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    The "wider consensus" was entirely between Kauffner and himself until I made this comment. ("As you may have noticed, you haven't had much, if any, support yet but a lot of opposition. At some point it might be a good idea to just accept reality and disengage.") For some reason you suddenly became intested in this topic 14 hours later. (I am not saying there was any on-wiki canvassing. The only intervening edits by Kauffner were to push a new iteration of the Obama birth conspiracy and to support another of his contrarian page move votes in a different topic.) Hans Adler 17:00, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    This post sounds somewhat unhinged, like something that might not belong on a public forum. The thought that I might be canvassing in secret leads to obsessive behavior, but doesn't discourage you from canvassing openly yourself in the post at the beginning of this section. There is a page called WP:Requested moves that you might want to check out before you allow these conspiratorial thoughts to fester any further. Kauffner (talk) 10:02, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

    This is nothing to do with support, the reality is that there is a guideline and you are ignoring it. You are also ignoring the processes to change the MoS and RfC. I have raised the matter for discussion on your behalf at MoS as none of the project members, apart from Kauffner who mentioned modifying MATHMOS, seems willing to try and at least follow any kind of proper procedure.

    My interest? Lol - all page move requests are posted to a big list where all Wiki editors can see what are being proposed, your comment about "I am not suggesting canvassing" is exactly that and I find it a little ridiculous that you would imagine such a conspiracy.

    Go and comment on the MoS talk page and get consensus to change it, or change the MATHSMOS, and then we can all be singing from the same songbook. It is silly that people are trying to dissuade people from following my posts and my oppose vote when if correct procedure was followed (getting the symbol allowed) my vote would have been Support :¬) Chaosdruid (talk) 17:12, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    Greek letters, and other mathematical symbols, are clearly not "symbols" as defined in that section of the MoS. No change is required. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:31, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    E.g. 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + … has both + "symbols" and an ellipsis symbol in the title. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:34, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    It clearly needs to be moved to one plus one plus one plus one plus dot dot dot. </joking> In seriousness, though, from the (recent) discussion at the MoS that precipitated the "Do not use symbols" recommendation, this was clearly intended to refer to the sort of symbols that appear in the unicode symbols character set (a very motley crew of wingdings and other exotic symbols—not including commonplace things like the Greek letters). See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Symbols in article titles, specifically Pi. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:34, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    That should be "What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?" and attributed to the White Queen. Alice quite rightly said "I don't know, I lost count". ;-) Dmcq (talk) 13:06, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    "Discovered" vs. "invented" math topic

    I don't think it's Wikipedia's business to solve that philosophical issue, but perhaps someone with more experience in side-stepping that should probably comment at the FAC for logarithm, which has been open for who knows how long, and seems to attract all sorts of nitpickers. Tijfo098 (talk) 22:04, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    Isn't it this sort of thing that keeps people from trying to get math articles to FA status? I especially dislike the "the Google hit count on my version is higher than the Google hit count on your version so my version is correct" argument. Seems like we're wasting a lot of time with proofs and logic if all we have to do is to count Google hits to see if something is true.--RDBury (talk) 15:54, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

    The best solution for discovered/invented is to use a neutral term such as "developed". It works every time. Tkuvho (talk) 16:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

    Default TeX font size too big

    Someone also opposed the FAC for logarithm on this. I'm curious if there's an easy way to fix that. I think Wikimedia use dvipng, which can probably be tweaked to make smaller pix by default. Tijfo098 (talk) 22:27, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

    The developers have the technical ability to do this. In the recent past they have not given much attention to math display. I'd suggest trying to get a large number of comments on a village pump if you want to convince them that they should tweak the software. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:35, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

    Whether they can do this and whether they should do it are different issues. WP renders formulas as small PNG files and it's the browser that decides relative sizes based on screen resolution and user settings. Formulas might appear too big on one machine and too small on another. We've had long and intricate discussions here before on what can and should be done and we even have a sub-project for making the best of what we have. We're coming up on 2 years since the last math article was made FA (I just checked and updated the project page) and it seems to me that if this kind of thing can keep an article from being promoted then math articles are pretty much disqualified before the start.--RDBury (talk) 16:56, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

    As we have been incessantly discussing since February 2003, there are lots of problems with using TeX in an inline setting on Wikipedia (whereas in a "displayed" setting it seems to work well). One of those is improper alignment, thus:

    $a+b,\,$ $a^{b},\,$ $a_{b}\,$

    Another is this:

    $1+2=3\,$

    .

    The period at the end of a sentence appears on the next line. The same thing happens with commas. (Of course, this varies with the window geometry.)

    Michael Hardy (talk) 03:53, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    
    

    Two envelopes problem, two children problem

    Having fought for two years on the Monty Hall problem, almost getting banned from wikipedia for OR and COI, I am looking for a new brawl, and am getting stuck into the two envelopes problem. Have been accused of gross arrogance and incivility within one day (practice makes perfect! I didn't want to waste time with ritual dances but went straight to the nitty gritty). There is a big problem with that page, that a lot of people have been writing up their own common sense solutions (both sensical and nonsensical) but almost no one actually reads the sources. I just wrote up two mainsteam solutions to two main variants of the two envelopes problem, both "out of my head", ie without reliable sources. (Very evil, very un-wikipedian). After all, I have been talking about these problems with professional friends for close on fourty years now, and setting them as exam questions, talking about them with students, without ever actually carefully reading published literature on the problems.

    Maybe some of you folk here can get access to some of those papers in journals where you have to pay a big tax to the publishing company before you can actually read the pdf. That would be useful.

    Looks like the two children problem is equally much a mess.

    Of course I could be completely wrong that what I think are the solutions to the two main variants of the two envelopes problem are indeed the solutions, or for that matter, are correct at all... Richard Gill (talk) 08:14, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    Link? Ozob (talk) 10:36, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    Someone made the links. The latest contributions to the Talk page for two envelopes problem are mostly by me. And two of the sections of the page itself were hurriedly and entirely written purely as uncited "own research" by me: [21], [22].

    Well: I think I report the accepted wisdom / folklore in my community. What does the community think? What are the good references? Richard Gill (talk) 13:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    Boubaker polynomials

    I just declined an AfC from an anon IP wanting to recreate Boubaker polynomials, which appears to have been persistently popping up and being deleted over the last few years. On closer inspection the content came from User:Rirunmot/User:Rirunmot/subpage6, which in turn must have saved from an old version of the deleted article (hence the cleanup tags), and I suspect the AfC was submitted by User:Rirunmot himself. He's apparently been working on several versions of it in his user space recently. Anyway, I have no idea whether the new version of the article is better or if the subject has recently become notable, I just thought there might might be people here who would want to keep an eye on it. —Joseph Roe^Tk•Cb, 13:13, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    Previous deletion discussions can be found at: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Boubaker_polynomials, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boubaker polynomials (2nd nomination), and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boubaker polynomials (3rd nomination). Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    However, at this point there seem to be enough hits at Google scholar in decent places that this passes our notability threshold. This is, in some sense "unfortunate", since the article was really a dogged attempt at self-promotion (with all kinds of sockpuppetry, meatpuppetry, and vote-stacking), and I don't personally find the polynomial sequence to be especially notable (as it's a trivial variation of the Chebyshev polynomials IIRC). But I think there is probably no choice but to allow the re-creation of this article in some form. In any event, this will be something we definitely want to keep an eye on. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:25, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    Per this slightly odd note on my talk page I would be on the lookout for yet more sockmeatpuppetry. —Joseph Roe^Tk•Cb, 14:37, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    Dear Sławomir Biały, I was working on this page among several others, but it seems to me the most controversial among the pages I studied. Its lastly deleted version contained à 'zero' references... the actual one User:Rirunmot/User:Rirunmot/subpage6, is referring to more than 22 third party, independent, verifiable and academic sources, … there is something wrong and abnormal… at the last AFD !! as you said hits at Google scholar yieded thousands of links in decent places.

    Your note about link to Chebyshev polynomials could be understood, but specialists say Polynomials are generally linked to each other, and ther are rules for differentiating (i. e; Chebyshev polynomials are linked to Luckas polinomials by a simple mutiplying act, nevertheless they exist separately) ). Please have a look on the references and give your opinionRirunmot (talk) 15:04, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    Yes, many polynomials are variants of each other. This one is an especially trivial variant of the Chebyshev polynomials and, in my opinion, doesn't really require its own article. There was some discussion about this eons ago at the now deleted discussion page. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:16, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

    Yes , but in one reference of that article , it is stated that a polynomial, in order to have an identity must have 1_ A generating function 2_ A recursive form 3_ an explicit form 4_ a characteristic Differential Equation and finally 5_a field of application.

    According to references (from Encyclopedies and Books) the Boubaker Polynomials have these 5 Charecteristic Patterns !! and are applied in tens of scientific fielld (see §the page) . You know, Dickson are simply 2*chebyshev!!! Do one dare saying that Dickson are trivial?? what is your opinion??

    Rirunmot (talk) 15:24, 3 May 2011 (UTC)