Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

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Can you help with an excessive quotation issue?

An IP brought up concerns at the copyright problems board about the extensive quotation at Josip Plemelj - from the third paragraph under "A geometrical construction from his schooldays" to the end is a quote. Investigation confirms that this material is likely under copyright, which means that the IP is right that the quotation doesn't comply with copyright policies. WP:NFC forbids extensive quotation. I would really prefer to ask somebody to help turn that into a proper paraphrase than to blank the section - I think it's quite unlikely that I could paraphrase it myself, since the material is so far from my realm. Would any of you be able to help out with this? If not, I can of course apply the usual {{copyvio}} template to the section in hopes that somebody else will. But with a case like this one, I really hate to do that. :) If there's no takers, it'll probably be blanked in a day or so and removed or truncated in about a week. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:58, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

This strike be a bit odd, since while still possibly being a copyvio it is certainly no verbatim quote as the original source is in Slovenian and not in English. So the question here is whether the "translation" is too literal/close to the original. One option of course would be imply to rewrite the mathematical content as it is, but it certainly would preferable if we get Slovenian speaker who can verify the IP claim and help rewriting the paragraph witn actually being able to read the source.

Another issue might be that such an extensive coverage of a childhood episode might not all that appropriate for an encyclopedic article.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:50, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

The quote in question is very long and includes many details of conversations and school schedules. It is not encyclopedic. Perhaps the optimal resolution is to summarize this episode in Plemelj's life in a couple of sentences. Mgnbar (talk) 13:47, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Shortening the section seems appropriate to me. Do you have access to the source and can you read it by any chance?--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:51, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

The quote was probably added by User:XJaM, who might be able to help. r.e.b. (talk) 18:23, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm so grateful for all of your responses. :) Projects do not always pitch in like this. I have now asked for User:XJaM's help. Whether or not he added it, he is familiar with the subject area (having edited the article) and might be able to help. :) Summarizing it would suit fine if the verifiability of the content is not suspect. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:20, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

In the absence of any other action on this, I've now gone ahead and removed the quote. But I see no reason why the constructions and accompanying diagrams should not be restored to the page if anyone has the skills and inclination to do that. Thanks to all who responded above. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:48, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Quotient by an equivalence relation

Quotient by an equivalence relation is an article that can be immensely improved. Remind me to look at it some time over this weekend. (And look at it yourself!) Michael Hardy (talk) 04:54, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

The concept of "quotient by an equivalence relation" is defined and studied in Equivalence class, which is a redirect from quotient set and Quotient space. This generalization to category theory and scheme theory must have another title such as quotient (category theory). D.Lazard (talk) 09:53, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

I must admit there might be a better title. There "is" a generalization of a quotient in equivalence classes to category theory and that is called a coequalizer. The article in question is about a special case, which is important and deserves its own article (whence one). Unfortunately, the most common term is just "quotient" (by f). -- Taku (talk) 13:23, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Match-3 games are NP-hard

• Luciano Gualà, Stefano Leucci, Emanuele Natale (24 March 2014). "Bejeweled, Candy Crush and other Match-Three Games are (NP-)Hard". arXiv:1403.5830. Bibcode:2014arXiv1403.5830G. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

There's been a few studies (such as the one above) on the issue, might be something to update various match 3 game articles with, to add a mathematical/educational context -- 67.70.35.44 (talk) 10:33, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Talk:Ellipse#Circumference

Although I am for the moment assuming good faith, I'm having a harder and harder time believing that I'm not being messed with by the OP there. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to respond to future replies, if any appear?--Jasper Deng (talk) 02:06, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Why do you need to explain to this person that they are wrong? The talk page is not a classroom nor a discussion forum. --JBL (talk) 02:10, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Exactly my thoughts. At least he isn't inserting that nonsense into articles. I completely agree that it's quickly getting contrary to WP:NOTAFORUM.--Jasper Deng (talk) 02:11, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

I've collapsed it; I doubt any further replies would help solve whatever problem the OP has, and it has nothing to do with improving the article.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 03:14, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Concerns over the lead at Fourier transform

An editor has expressed concern over the lead at Fourier transform. Comments are welcome at Talk:Fourier transform#‎Lead. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:04, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Several editors have expressed concern about the FT lead. Grandma (talk) 14:43, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, over the course of the years, editors have expressed many concerns about the lead. I am here referring to the discussion of the present form of the lead. Only one editor (you) has expressed concerns about that, and they have not been terribly constructive. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:06, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

User:I'm your Grandma. is acting rather disruptively at the talk page now. I had refactored the section on periodic and transient phenomena, forking out a new section that concerned the lead as a whole. She has insisted on merging these two sections, which makes no sense (presumably out of some sense of ownership) since the section Talk:Fourier transform#Lead has nothing at all to do with transient and periodic phenomena. Anyway, I don't wish to get involved in an edit war on the talk page there, but editors here should be aware that Grandma seems to be deliberately trying to scuttle the attempt to gather outside input. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:03, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I've been reverting further edits to the discussion page there as vandalism. More eyes would be helpful though. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:29, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I also encourage other editors to take a look at the lead of Fourier transform! Sincerely, Grandma (talk) 18:01, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Breaking up topos

I have started a discussion on whether it makes sense to separate the article topos into two articles: one on math, the other on logic. The feedbacks are very welcome. -- Taku (talk) 05:14, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Good article nomination: Addition

I have nominated addition as a good article. It is well-sourced, covers all major topics, etc. Due to the simple nature of the subject, it should not take someone with an advanced background to review it (I believe it mentions Dedekind cuts, but that's about as bad as it gets). Link:Wikipedia:Good_article_nominations#Mathematics_and_mathematicians Brirush (talk) 00:03, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Homothety

Should homothetic transformation and homothetic center really be two different articles? Michael Hardy (talk) 23:27, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

A new redundant category

Greenrd (talk · contribs) has created Category:Foundations of mathematics which is redundant with Category:Mathematical logic. JRSpriggs (talk) 08:47, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

According to Topics in mathematics in Portal:Mathematics, the latter is a subset (subcategory) of the former. Just noting, I have no opinion. YohanN7 (talk) 09:21, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Two articles in Category:Foundations of mathematics are already in Category:Systems of set theory which is in Category:Set theory which is in Category:Mathematical logic. And Category:Foundations of mathematics is in Category:Fields of mathematics which already contained Category:Mathematical logic. This is as one would expect since "Mathematical logic" and "Foundations of mathematics" are synonyms. JRSpriggs (talk) 09:37, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I disagree that "Foundations of mathematics" and "Mathematical logic" are synonyms: For taking a simple example, Automated theorem proving and category:Automated theorem proving‎ belong naturally to "Mathematical logic" and are far to belong to the foundations of mathematics. On the other hand, the foundations of mathematics clearly involve philosophical and epistemological questions which do not belong to mathematical logic. The debates between constructive analysis and non-standard analysis vs. classical analysis are examples of questions of foundations of mathematics that do not belong to mathematical logic, as involving the same logical foundation. D.Lazard (talk) 10:56, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

User:Brirush Sectionifying

Over the last couple of weeks, since at least 22 Nov, User:Brirush has been "Sectionifying" lots of articles, splitting the leads up into lots of sections leaving behind a diminished lead which often says practically nothing e.g. arithmetic topology, arithmetic combinatorics, topological combinatorics. I believe it might be a good idea to just wholesale revert all the articles that have been sectionified rather than trying to check each one individualy to see if any of the sectioning was justified. 2.97.23.254 (talk) 16:27, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I have no problem with you reverting the edits, but make sure you don't revert ones like Nash-Moser theorem, cofunction and computable analysis where content was added, unless you dislike the content. The size of the edit should be a clue. I do not plan on doing the reverts myself, as I obviously find my edits useful, but I won't keep you from reverting them.Brirush (talk) 17:00, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Other useful ones to avoid deleting: Adding reference to R (complexity), adding image to conformal equivalence, adding "see also" items to many articles, adding an image to convex body, expanding dimension theory significantly, etc. I hope you exercise some restraint in your reverts.Brirush (talk) 17:26, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Just to give another perspective, I looked at some of Brirush's edits and they all look improvement to me. (The amount is such that as if someone is paying him to do it.) Ledes don't need to be long and in fact many Wikipedia articles can use "sectionifying". People, both creators of the pages and others, (by which I mean editors such as myself) tend to add materials and changes in the organizational structure tend to lag behind. He is just correcting this. -- Taku (talk) 18:41, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with Taku. This is part of the natural process of turning stubs into something better than stubs; it gives them more structure, making it easier to see where they should be expanded. Reverting would send the wrong message "no, we want our stubs to stay stubby". —David Eppstein (talk) 18:47, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I can understand your point of view--generally we don't want to reduce the usefulness of leads by cutting them down to single sentences. The Manual of style doesn't provide a lot of guidance for this. WP:LEADLENGTH says only that leads should be one or two paragraphs for articles of less than 15K characters. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section#Stubs says that sectioning of a stub should occur at an article length of 400-500 words. Some of the articles that Brirush has been sectioning have been shorter than this. But short articles often fit on a single screen, so there isn't much added cognitive friction in sectioning even short articles. I've looked at some of his recent edits and they seem fine to me. My guess is that Brirush is working very hard to improve the class of the mid and high importance articles in this project, a laudable goal. Sectionfying is a cheap way to help an article progress from 'stub' to 'start' class. So I'd recommend looking at each article on a case by case basis and if the sectioning has truly harmed understanding, unsectionfy and discuss on the article's talk page. --Mark viking (talk) 21:32, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I went through and did more work on these articles (arithmetic topology, arithmetic combinatorics, topological combinatorics). If you find any more that are especially bad, let me know.Brirush (talk)

I undid your topological combinatorics one, but less because sectionifying was wrong there (it's a good length to have sections added and move from stub to start) and more because the text you added to make the sections flow seemed to me to misunderstand the subject. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:49, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank youBrirush (talk) 00:44, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

"Notability" of Stirling polynomials

The "notability" of the topic of the new article titled Stirling polynomials is being questioned. Would perhaps a few more references settle that? Michael Hardy (talk) 23:25, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Like most of that user's edits, none of the identities appearing in the article appear in the cited source. Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:43, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

To clarify my tagging: the article contains not even the most basic statement of why one should find these objects interesting, and this is why I tagged it. (I also think the "context" tag should be put back, but evidently User:Michael Hardy thinks the two sentence lead I wrote is sufficient on this front :).) --JBL (talk) 00:11, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Draft:Gaussian process latent variable models

Hello, mathematics experts! Should Draft:Gaussian process latent variable models be published? --Cerebellum (talk) 07:25, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

This is not in my field. However, it strikes me as someone taking a well-known idea, slapping a new name on it and then trying to claim credit for it. JRSpriggs (talk) 16:31, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

merger proposal

We have a new article titled Legendre's formula, whose topic is the same as that of an old article titled de Polignac's formula. I've put "merge" tags on them. If they are merged, we have the question of what the title should be. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:53, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Exponential broken up

Hi,

The article exponential map has been split into two articles: exponential map (Lie theory) and exponential map (Riemannian geometry) per the consensus at the talkpage, the original page having become the disambiguation page. It remains to fix a large number of incoming links. I did fix the most, but there are some instances when I couldn't figure out the correct targets. It seems many of them should have not be linked to the exponential map (a concept in differential geometry) to begin with. It would be nice if other editors with necessary background can take care of them. -- Taku (talk) 03:38, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Euclidean algorithm

I have nominated Euclidean algorithm for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ‎DrKiernan (talk • contribs)

Seems like more anti-intellectualism from our friends in the wider Wikipedia community (anyone remember the ridiculous affair that the mathematical works of Alexander Grothendieck should be made accessible to laymen?) Now we are told that the article on the Euclidean algorithm should be made understandable to 10 year old children! Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:53, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

I think commenting on this nomination is worthwhile. Explaining and promoting mathematics to the widest community possible is important. More generally, Wikiarticles can often be structured so that there is something in them for general public as well as, when necessary, something in them for the expert. My thoughts, sincerely, Grandma (talk) 14:27, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

It's not a particularly good article. Anyone reading the whole thing risks to die from boredom. YohanN7 (talk) 14:54, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Parts of it are boring to me as well. Perhaps not the best article to nominate? Or, maybe because it needs work, it would benefit from the scrutiny that comes with nomination? Grandma (talk) 15:07, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Why waste time on an article that is already (undeservedly) FA-class? Yes, surely there must be other better suited. But I can't think of a single math article that is very likely to appear as a featured article (except articles about mathematicians). YohanN7 (talk) 15:26, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree, the article can be improved. Nothing about the FA designation implies that the article is perfect. But the reasons for nominating it for review are thoroughly idiotic (an easily Googled fact tag, and a belief that the article should be accessible to 10 year olds). A review can be constructive, with thoughtful comments that lead to real improvements. But that didn't happen here. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:00, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Can we please keep the rhetoric conducive to teamwork? Thank you, Grandma (talk) 19:29, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Grandma, I'm not sure what you hope to accomplish by your continued trolling, but I'm pretty sure "teamwork" is not high on the list. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:47, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

\not in MathJax puts the slash in the wrong place

With MathJax as my preferred rendering style (in Chrome on OS X), anomalous cancellation does not appear correctly: the slashes are placed near the digits they are supposed to be through. I.e. $\not {3}$ (<math>\not{3}</math>) renders as "/3" rather than as a slashed three. With the new MathML/SVG rendering it looks ok, so this is just MathJax. This does not happen when I use MathJax on web sites that I control, with the script from http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS-MML_HTMLorMML, so I'm guessing it must be something Wikipedia is doing differently than the standard MathJax that screws it up, or possibly a bug in an older version of MathJax that's being used here. Anyone here have any idea what the problem is, how to communicate the existence of the problem to the people who maintain Wikipedia's MathJax interface, and how to persuade them to actually fix it? And/or, whether there's some way of working around this that still renders correctly in the other styles? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:50, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Maths ratings

I noticed that all Top-Class articles are rated B-class or higher. Are they really all at this level? Or is this an artifact from earlier, less restrictive rating requirements? In fact, I noticed that the maths rating "matrix" at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0 is almost lower triangular.76.98.76.147 (talk) 00:46, 7 December 2014 (UTC)