Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

Category:Jewish mathematicians CfD

This category was recently deleted as part of the general deletion of Category:Mathematicians by religion. However the case of Category:Jewish mathematicians was put forward for deletion review and its deletion was overturned. Consequently it is now being considered for deletion again. I encourage members of the maths project to contribute to the discussion here. Geometry guy 18:01, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

There is possibly enough consensus to delete this category, which would be in line with the deletion and/or absense of similar religious/ethnic categories for mathematicians. However, there are users with no particular expertise who stop by at CfD's like this with a political agenda. Can I please encourage everyone here to look at the page and express their view. The outcome really does have the potential to affect the quality of life for many editors here, as the recent discussions over Georg Cantor illustrate. Please remember, though, that this is not a vote: read the contributions of other editors and express your view with comments and justification. Geometry guy 23:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure that it makes any difference? I have spent enormous amount of time analyzing the previous discussions and their outcomes, and came to the conclusion that people with this political agenda and no particular expertise are very persistent, and have the proven ability to bring this category back to life. To me it appears to be a canonical example of метать бисер перед свиньями. Comparatively speaking, I would prefer reverting vandals at Geometry or Algebra, at least, it's more efficient if just as hopeless. Arcfrk 01:05, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

For the sake of clarity, the Russian text above means "throwing pearls to the pigs", which is is used in English too, I think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:29, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

"Pearls before swine" but I think my generation is losing this and many other great colloquialisms,:( Anyway I don't believe we should ever allow this kind of thing to encroach on the wonderful place we have created here, fight to protect it, lest we lose it.--Cronholm144 03:12, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

A twist of irony that; here's the line as it appears in the King James Version of Matthew VII, verse 6:

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

In generations past, reading literacy was often built on a text found in many homes, so such phrases were familiar; but Matthew may have been less popular in Jewish homes.

As for the obsession some have to classify people according to Jewishness, I have expressed my sentiments in the Cantor discussion. Next I suppose we'll be forced to nationalize Leonhard Euler, who spent more time in Russia than in Switzerland. And after that we'll be counting toes. It's an idiotic waste of time; but the human race, like a human infant, is slow to mature. --KSmrq^T 04:01, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I take your point, but I think it could. Not only are there essentially no other similar mathematics categories, but also there are essentially no similar subcategories of Category:Jews by occupation: Category:Jewish scientists exists, but there is no Category:Jewish physicists, Category:Jewish biologists, Category:Jewish chemists, and so on. These persistent people have a general goal, but not a specific focus. If this the maths cat goes away, there is no more reason to recreate it than any of these other subcats. My best guess would be trench warfare at Category:Jewish scientists, but even that would leave many of us a little more in peace to get on with improving maths articles. So please don't be despondent! Geometry guy 01:59, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

To KSmrq: Thank you for the full quotation. It is one of many good sayings from Jesus's Sermon on the Mount.
To People in General: Please provide translations to English for any quotations you provide in a foreign language (except perhaps French which is so close to English). JRSpriggs 10:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Arab mathematicians

One of the arguments that keeps arising in these debates is the existence of Category:Arab mathematicians, which seems superficially similar to Category:Jewish mathematicians, at least to those who can't be bothered to go and see what is actually in the category. Of course, the arguments for this similarity are flawed, but it is not as easy as it could be to squash them for a couple of reasons.

1. At present Category:Arab mathematicians is a subcategory of Category:Mathematicians by nationality, and does not contain many important Category:Persian mathematicians. This suggests it could be renamed Category:Arabian mathematicians to eliminate the controversy. In that case, though, it should be about mathematicians of Arabia. And essentially it is up until the time of Al-Jayyani (989–1079). From then on, though, the listed mathematicians all lived in what was then Al-Andalus, and is now Spain, or (in a couple of cases) Morocco.
2. In contrast to Jewish mathematics (and Category:Jewish mathematics), there does exist Arabic mathematics (and Category:Arabic mathematics). However, the first of these links redirects to Islamic mathematics, and Category:Islamic mathematics is offered as the "correct" category for the second (does this need a CfD?). This seems an unfortunate choice to me!

These are rather thorny issues. I have raised the second one at here, also partly because I think there has been a misunderstanding about the meaning of the adjective "Arabic", which doesn't refer to people (that would be Arabian or Arab) but language, literature and culture.

For the first issue, is it worth creating Category:Al Andalus mathematicians or are there other ways to clarify this point? Geometry guy 17:16, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion both Category:Arab mathematicians and Category:Persian mathematicians should be deleted. Modern day mathematicians are better placed in Category:Iranian mathematicians, Category:Saudi Arabian mathematicians, Category:Egyptian mathematicians, etc. In the case of historical mathematicians it only creates an artificial and unnecessary split (no to forgot that a significant portion of related biographies can't, with certainty, be placed in any one of them.) I've categorized most of the biographies currently under those two categories in Category:Arabic mathematics/Category:Islamic mathematics but this has the drawback that it doesn't separate the biographies from the other topics. —Ruud 17:39, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Certainly not all "Islamic" mathematicians after 1079 lived in Spain. See for example Jamshīd al-Kāshī or Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi. —Ruud 17:39, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Clear, but both of the examples are Persian. Just out of interest, can you come up with Arabian examples? Geometry guy 19:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Al-Khalili and Ibn al-Shatir came from Damascus. Not sure if that would make them Arab or Syrian, though. —Ruud 20:32, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

There are some more from that period in Category:Spanish mathematicians, I think, including at least one Jew. I am in favor of a category that collects together mathematicians from the Arabian mathematics period (whatever you want to call it) and that has a name that includes islamic Spain but unambiguously excludes modern mathematicians from the same places. —David Eppstein 17:30, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree, this is a possible way forward. It almost surely not a good idea to identify such "arabic mathematicians" as Spanish, although the whole issue of geographical vs political nationality is also rather thorny. Geometry guy 19:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

If there is a category for mathematicians from the Islamic/Arabic civilization, wouldn't "Category:Arabic mathematicians" be a better name? To me the primary meaning of "Arab" refers to ethnicity, and "Arabian" to the geographic area. "Arabic", on the other hand, refers foremost the language and its script, which was used as the Lingua Franca in which the mathematicians of Islamic civilization wrote their works, just like scientists in Christian civilization used Latin.  --Lambiam^Talk 19:06, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree with that: also Arabic refers to literature, which is quite appropriate in this case. Geometry guy 19:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Also see the two quotes at User:Ruud Koot/Arabic mathematics#Terminology. Here Toomer argues for the term "Arabic mathematics" and Berggren for "Islamic mathematics".

Outcome

Editors here might like to know that the outcome of the CfD for Category:Jewish mathematicians is deletion. I would like to thank others here for taking the trouble to comment at this CfD and thus express the view of general mathematics article editors. The discussion was one of the longest I have seen, so the weight of good argument that editors here contributed was very important. Geometry guy 10:56, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

References

Hey everyone, as you may know Geometry guy and I are working on categorization of the various Math articles. I have noticed in rating my first hundred or so that there seems to be a recurrent lack of references on various articles ranging in class and importance from stub to B and low to high. Is there anything that can be done about this? I for one have about four gigs of electronic mathematics texts and would be willing to upload them to a central location for use by editors. Let me know what your thoughts are on this. Thanks--Cronholm144 04:20, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, references are important. Google books is an awesome resource for finding references.

There are also a couple of tools which allow one to format references given the ISBN; template builder, and my own tool (the latter is slow and produces code which always needs tweaking, but is useful as a backup). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:28, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

These are all good tools but unfortunately Google doesn't allow for easy reading, I.E. it only shows snippits of the work. The cite tool is good, but If the author doesn't have a usable ref, it won't work quite as well. I just would like for there to be a way for editors to be able to actually cite the material, rather than to just list titles in the bibliography.--Cronholm144 04:55, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Right, it just offers a few pages. But if you know what you search for, and go through a few books in the list of results (or search through the given book for more pages), you can learn a lot of stuff and is much more efficient than digging through a real book or visiting the library, I think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:44, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

We do have a project-page devoted to referencing Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Reference resources. Your electronic text sounds interesting, not being attached to a university put most online journals out of my reach, however I can see problems with copyright and licences if these are put in a public space. --Salix alba (talk) 07:50, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I have created a page that list the references that I can provide in text form, most are DjVu or PDF. User:Cronholm144/List_of_References Be warned the list is rather extensive. I hope you all take a look. Just E-mail me and I will send you the required material...but only if I know you. My E-mail is in my UBXes under basics. Hope I can be of service!--Cronholm144 06:05, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Since I have not posted the texts themselves on an open site I think this is alright... anyone here know copyright law?

I had attempted to do a similar thing [1] but my list was not as comprehensive as yours. It should be easy to source most of our math articles with standard graduate school references. I felt, however, that I was being a little lazy by not tracking down the "best" sources. shotwell 11:45, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I have revamped the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Reference_resources. I would like some input on how to improve it further.--Cronholm144 04:41, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Portal updates

I'm going to be away from Wikipedia for a few weeks and I haven't had time to update the Mathematics portal. It will go bust next Monday unless someone updates it. Every week the portal looks for a new article of the week at a specific page. These pages need to be written ahead of time. Specifically, someone needs to fill out

• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 21
• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 22
• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 23

You can copy the basic structure from Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 20. Just pick your favorite article and write a short blurb about it. Pictures are good. You can see a list of articles already featured at Portal:Mathematics/Featured article archive. -- Fropuff 07:03, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Some potential choices, culled from a discussion at the Reference desk proceeding from a request for an interesting math topic for a high-school presentation:

• Pascal's triangle (B?) article is a mess
• Interesting number paradox (stub) Too short
• Fractal (B+) Selected for 21
• Zeno's paradoxes (B+)
• Tic-tac-toe (B)
• Topology (B)
• Cardinal number (B) Difficult to find a good image; Continuum hypothesis used recently.
• Ordinal number (GA)
• p-adic number (B)
• Platonic solid (B+) Used recently
• Minimal surface (stub) Too short
• Monty Hall Problem (FA) but used last year
• Nomogram (start) Too short
• Analog computer (B)
• Map projection (GA) Selected for 22

 --Lambiam^Talk 19:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I've commented on the above. Here also is the list from Portal:Mathematics/Suggestions. Cronholm will be shocked that some of the above have not yet been rated! Geometry guy 11:52, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

• Derivative (GA)
• Nash equilibrium (GA)
• Ordinal number (GA)
• Order theory (GA)
• String theory (GA)
• Sylvester's sequence (GA)
• Znám's problem (GA)

To save this from breaking, I've arbitrarily put Fractal in the next portal. The blurb is just a cut and paste from the introduction, so needs improvement. Geometry guy 12:06, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

The only one that shocked me was Zeno's paradoxes and Platonic solids,the rest I can understand, I have updated the ratings.this is the other Cronholm144--Πρ 03:43, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Sadly noone improved Fractal or has made any further suggestions. One option is to go for Pascal's triangle next, even though it needs a bit of work. There is a colourful Image:Sierpinski-rgb.png to use as the lead image, connecting fractals and binomial coefficients. Just a thought. Geometry guy 19:41, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I tried to improve Pascal's triangle, but the closer I looked, the more I found it a confusing mess. I think this one is hopeless for the portal. Most of the other articles above are either too ragged, or don't seem to offer the prospect of a decent image. Map projection might be okay, so I would suggest that. Any comments? Geometry guy 15:32, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

A quick skim of map projection is encouraging; looks like an above average article with a variety of content, broad appeal, and numerous figures and links. The most apparent weakness is that the mathematics does not go very deep. --KSmrq^T 15:19, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Now copied in... Geometry guy 12:56, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

...but with a link to Fractal, which a user kindly fixed today. Unfortunately it is too much work to bring deep mathematics to the portal, and no one appears to be up for that, so I've found a nice A-class basics article, namely Golden section for number 23. I guess we will just have to ask Fropuff please not to take any more holidays ;) Geometry guy 18:32, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Who are the most best editors around here?

Hi, I'm looking for a small number of Wikipedia editors in the Mathematics area who are well-qualified, well-respected, and have high standards. This is for a new project that needs such talents; just now I'd rather not advertise the details. Please tell me some names, including perhaps your own if you fit the description. Thanks. --Zero^talk 10:46, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Methinks mostest editors went a-scurrying after reading this ungrammatical, error-filled request. linas 15:52, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

We're not such a judgemental lot are we? It looks more like a case of Groucho Marx to me: "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member" :) Geometry guy 16:33, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Need help with Wadge hierarchy and related articles

The Wadge hierarchy stub needs help from an expert. Wadge game needs an article or a section in Wadge hierarchy. If these topics are better covered in other articles, then a paragraph in another article with a merge/redirect or blank/redirect may be in order. Disclaimer: I am not a mathematician. davidwr ^09f9(talk) 15:38, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Can people who don't edit under their real name rate articles?

At Talk:Cross product, Edgerck reverted Geometry guy's rating of that article, on the grounds that Geometry guy has an anonymous identity and since Edgerck does not agree with the rating anyway. Comments? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:44, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

No, no, no. Wikipedia does not require that users reveal their real identity or credentials (it's not acceptable to fake either, but that's a separate issue). Should I not be able to rate articles because I edit under a pseudonym? Disagreeing about the rating is one thing, but he does not automatically have authority because he uses a real name. —METS501 (talk) 15:48, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Changing the rating because you disagree is fine (although discussion might be helpful). Removing the whole template because someone uses a pseudonym (not the normal meaning of anonymous in a Wikipedia context anyway) suggests that either there is something else going on, or Edgerck is not used to the whole procedure. JPD (talk) 15:53, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Geometry guy is an established, regular, and seemingly knowledgeable editor of math articles here. To me that carries a lot more weight than knowing or not knowing his real-life name. —David Eppstein 16:30, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Of course! Anyone can rate articles, and anyone can change ratings. That is the whole spirit of wikipedia! One of the reasons I edit anonymously is that I do not want any of my edits to carry a stamp of authority. They should all be judged individually. I am rating a lot of articles at the moment, and am going to make mistakes (well, we all make mistakes: even a genius like Grothendieck can suggest 57 as a prime, as an anonymous IP editor pointed out to me recently). If anyone disagrees with any of my ratings, change them. Even better, add a comment and sign/date the new rating. I would only ask that they have a quick look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 first to get a feel for the system. Geometry guy 17:55, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Hello all. Looks like people here did not read my original comment in Oleg's page. I commented that in view of the known identity abuses at WP, an user who wishes to remain anon (which they do for their own benefit) should not venture into questionable edits. I think this could be a self-enforced rule, for fairness. This is not just about Gg's rating. To be relevant, ratings need to be 1) based on a statistically significant number of opinions and 2) provided by unique, qualified (even if anon) participants. This is standard stuff. Gg's rating goes against (1) and (2).

On the topic of anonymity, let me comment in general (not making an instance on Gg's case). I am a believer in the need for anon discourse -- for example, in political areas. But, given today's principle of academic freedom, I can't see a reason for anon discourse in physics, math, or biology, for example. And, as anyone can see, the "stamp of authority" argument is not a barrier for online questioning. So, on the contrary, in these areas I see reasons otherwise, with people in WP and elsewhere (eg, usenet groups) using anon discourse and taking pseudonyms with bogus academic qualifications in order to advance crank, niche or copyrighted material under the cloak of an IP number or nickname.

There are also people who seem "well qualified" in WP, but in discussion with them, or reading their edits, their content reveals otherwise. Users who like to patrol some articles in order to ensure conformance with their niche or particular views, with ensuing edit wars if contradicted, are usually not quite open about who they are, as their opinions and methods may backfire.

In summary, I think that transparency (which can be called sincerity etymologically) would go a long way in preventing the distortions seen in WP today, with identifiable individuals that would stand behind their opinions.

Those that wish to remain anon should by all means be allowed to do so, in the name of tolerance, but since they do this for their own benefit they should also use some measure of self-restraint in what they can do or not. While it's certainly fair for anon users to edit and provide opinion, it may not be as fair for them to place themselves as judges of opinion.

I hope this is useful.Edgerck 19:30, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

A fair enough view (the people behind Citizendium also think somewhere along these lines). But restricting anon editing goes against the spirit and policies of Wikipedia however. Not much can be done about this, I guess, unless Jimbo himself has a change of mind (which is unlikely, I think). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:36, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Oleg: A minor nit. As above, I am not for restricting anon editing, even though (just from the view point of information reliability as used in scientific research and journalism, for example) verifiable sources are a basic tenet for reliance on information (trust). What I am for is for self-restricting anon ratings, for the reasons above. Anon users should not use their invisibility cloak if they wish to judge others. Edgerck 19:45, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I still don't see that you have explained why we need to know the person's real name in order to judge their reliability as a WP editor, or why the rating process is so critical and inflammatory that it must only be handled by persons of known reliability. —David Eppstein 19:50, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

David: "Ratings" is one example of what I would call trust asymmetry in WP today. It's easy to verify that anon editing is actually a recognized problem in WP -- just see the WP policy for verifiable sources, to see the basic contradiction. Why wouldn't there be a need for authors to be verifiable if references should be? However, one can argue that the benefits of anon discourse trumps the rule for verifiable sources. That's acceptable in a balance of interests for what WP is. But using anonymity to judge others seems to be unjustifiable under the same balance of interests. It seems murky and open to distortions, for no real benefit. Reliance on information is more than just what the record says for itself -- there must be independently verifiable channels of information that provide the trust channels for that record.

On another topic, in addition to the crank and niche views, it's possible that WP has a large Intellectual Property liability under the current anon editing guidelines. This will eventually surface. Edgerck 20:11, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Maths ratings are not about judging others, they are about assessing articles: those who disagree should check out WP:OWN. Geometry guy 20:18, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I certainly did read Edgerck's remark on Oleg's page before commenting here: I usually try to check out where a fellow editor is coming from before I contribute. The comment "an user who wishes to remain anon (which they do for their own benefit) should not venture into questionable edits" suggests Edgerck hasn't actually read my post immediately above his, in which I explicitly state one of my own reasons for remaining anon.

The real abuse is not anonymity, but using unverifiable claims of authority to support edits. I don't do this. I do mention (for those who are interested) that I am a professor of differential geometry on my user page, but I explicitly state that I do not want anyone to take this into account when judging my edits. After all, how does the average WP editor know that User:Edgerck is the famous Ed Gerck who

received his doctorate in physics (Dr.rer.nat.) from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet and the Max-Planck-Institut fuer Quantenoptik in Munich, Germany, 1983, with maximum thesis grade ("sehr gut"). He also has titles of Electronic Engineer (1977) and Master of Science (1978) from the Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica (ITA/CTA), Brazil.

and then went on to

work in information security and election integrity received worldwide press coverage by The New York Times, Le Monde, O Globo, Forbes, CBS, CNN, Business Week, Wired and USA Today.

I'm not questioning that he is who he says he is, I am just pointing out that an eponymous username and a list of credentials doesn't help prevent abuse. As Oleg points out, Citizendium is the place for those who want verifiable credentials. Here the policy is: judge every edit on its own merits, and be bold. Don't complain about other user's edits: fix them!

Finally, as for maths ratings, my point of view is that a good result can be achieved by a process analogous to simulated annealing in which many users contribute by adjusting ratings where they think they need to be changed. If Edgerck prefers these ratings to be produced by a statistically significant number of expert opinions, he should go ahead: there are only about 10000 articles still to assess, so it shouldn't take him and him team of experts too long. Geometry guy 20:18, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Forgive me if this is repetitive. This edit is the result of an edit conflict.

"There are also people who seem "well qualified" in WP, but in discussion with them, or reading their edits, their content reveals otherwise." I would argue that in the case of Geometry guy this is precisely the opposite. He has established himself as a very skilled editor and is an active editor in the community. To my knowledge, none of his edits have been questioned except for the WP 1.0 ratings, and considering that he has over 1000 of these it seems inevitable that someone would disagree with B vs start or a high ve. mid rating, I know that I have been rating quite a few articles lately and have made more mistakes on average than Geometry guy. Rather than assuming that an anonymous editor is unqualified I think a better litmus test (and the one that I think is usually used here at WP) would be to judge the editor on the quality of their edits.

Another example is the friendly exopedian that has been patrolling Calculus and Derivative lately, He has made excellent comments and improved the articles significantly, yet he simply doesn't want to edit under anything but an IP. The W.P. rating system is rather simple, field (this can usually be ascertained by a layman) Importance(more difficult, especially if you are not experienced in said field, this could be a valid change, I know that when I make my edits this is the most frequently changed) Class(this is tricky for articles that cover the topic well, but the topic just isn't that large, but in most other cases assessing the class is rather simple as well). The goal of all these assessment is to place all the important math articles under the same proverbial roof. If you have a problem with the rating, go ahead and correct it, these templates are for use by the editors of the articles so the occasional mis rate doesn't last long assuming the editors are active and doesn't affect the casual reader. --Cronholm144 20:25, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, these ratings are not for casual readers (they are placed on the talk page): they are for other editors. Geometry guy 20:35, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

When we set up the maths rating process it was designed to be light weight, lacking on buracracy. Any editor can add a rating, if a another editor disagrees with a rating they can ammend it. If there is disagreement then it should discussed on the articles talk page in the first instance, just as any question about the content of the article. As yet I've seen nothing which explains why you disagree with the rating.

If this relates to a specific problem with the article then a discussion on the talk page might help to improve the article. There is even a posibility to edit Talk:Cross product/Comments if there are a comment you wish to make to support a given rating. --Salix alba (talk) 20:43, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

My opinion is above -- the rating system is flawed as it stands, especially if you consider anon rating. Hope this helps. Edgerck 21:09, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

If you believe that, then you should believe that Wikipedia in general is flawed, as it is based on principles allowing anonymous editing of anything, including ratings. Why not join a project like Citizendium that has a more compatible philosophy to yours? —David Eppstein 21:17, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

David: This is getting long, so I'll be brief. Please do not tell people what they should believe. As I wrote above, my opinion is that anon editing is acceptable in a balance of interests for what WP is. But using anonymity to judge others seems to be unjustifiable under the same balance of interests. Hope this is useful. Edgerck 23:01, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

For lower grade articles Stub to B+ the system has served us well to date. GA, A and FA ratings have a more formal process to go though to gain those status. If you think the article deserves a higher status then by all means put it forward to WP:GAC, Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/A-class rating or WP:FAC. --Salix alba (talk) 21:40, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

break it and then fix it? It may be better to have a merit system to begin with. Asking anon users to voluntarily refrain from rating (but not editing!) does not seem to be an undue burden on the informal process. Edgerck 23:01, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Well it seems that your opinion is not shared by the majority of users here and is not in line with WP policy. So, while it is fine that you believe that, it is not fine to perform reverts in that vein until such criteria is adopted as general policy here. I think the consensus is that you should change the ratings that you don't agree with, rather than revert them.--Cronholm144 23:10, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I think several people, including me, find your insistence on this rather bizarre for a very simple reason. There are several levels of importance in editing (I will give a rather rough description to make the point). The most important is editing the article itself, creating or modifying articles. Significant errors, unseemly promotion, dubious material, libelous content, can all be introduced this way. Next level of importance contains things like categories or lists. This is because the usual reader can see if a mathematician is categorized (by the category system) as a Jew or bisexual (very contentious matters for whatever reason). Among even less important things are whether a stub gets marked as a "topology stub", "geometry stub", "math stub", or whether the stub marker goes in a section, or should go at the top, or whether a technical tag goes on the article or its talk page. Among the least important is whether a WikiProject tag on an article talk page should say "mid importance", "low importance", etc. or have a grade of "B" or "C", etc. This is the least important because it in no way affects the content of the article and is not even seen by a usual reader. This is a tag for people in a WikiProject. If you don't want to participate, that's fine (although I recommend you do so), but it's designed by other people for their use. Also, I think once you learn about the rating system, you will see that the editorial judgment of whether a topic is of "mid importance" or "top importance" is not only not as important as editing the article itself, but a much easier editorial judgment to make (and correct) than restructuring and changing an entire article. I have no idea what the Atiyah–Singer index theorem is, but I know it is very important. My ignorance prohibits me from changing that article, but you can imagine a less restrained person, after reading some pop-sci article about it, changing the lede section and mucking the whole thing up. That's what you should be worried about, not whether some helpful anonymous person who has a history of accurate mathematical contributions marks your article as "mid importance" for some maintenance purpose. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 09:36, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Edgerck is a relatively recent user here and the ways of Wikipedia seem rather alien at first. For example, if in real life, someone does something that you disagree with, then the polite thing to do is to go to them and explain (preferably nicely) what you thought they did wrong. In Wikipedia this is not the right response: instead you should undo or change what was done, preferably with a friendly and explanatory comment in the edit summary. If this change is reverted, only then it is time to go to talk. Since this goes so much against normal real life interaction, it is not surprising that in practice users turn to talk before it is really necessary.

The mathematics project is far better than most of Wikipedia in this regard, but still several users have come to my talk page when all they really needed to do was change the rating. I have been gathering responses here. I understand the tendency to complain instead of fix, talk instead of do, and am certainly guilty of it myself, but this is a wiki: all mistakes can be fixed! It is a pity that hard-working editors rarely receive encouragement and thanks, but often receive criticism for their inevitable mistakes.

Anyway, Edgerck has expressed his opinion, and most people here have disagreed with it. It seems to me that it is time to move on. In fact I think Edgerck himself would like to move on: see e.g. this recent diff. I would love to receive an apology, but I am happy to move on as well. Geometry guy 23:50, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Apology? Do anonymous users get offended also? :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:12, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

If an anon falls in the forest and nobody is around, does anybody care?

Not at all, but they love good humour, just like regular editors! By the way, if anyone wants to see an example of what can go wrong with unfriendly edit summaries or going to talk too soon, take a look at this unedifying exchange ;) Geometry guy 00:23, 20 May 2007 (UTC) PS. And many thanks to Chan-Ho for deftly inserting the above forest line into the discussion! Geometry guy 12:29, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

As a pseudonymous (that is the better term, rather than anonymous) editor, I do not intend, because of my pseudonymity, to limit my editing in any way. Paul August ☎ 03:46, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Since we are on the anon user issue, could please anyone tell me their opinion whether the WP guidelines for verifiable claims apply also to anon user pages? Thanks. Edgerck 07:45, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

No. Wikipedia:Verifiability talks consistently about articles, and user pages are not articles. See Wikipedia:User pages for some things that you cannot have on your user page. I don't think it says so explicitly, but you're also not supposed to lie. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 08:18, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Correct; it also would be counterproductive to require all comments on talk pages to be verifiable. However, we accumulate reputations; see below.

And please, learn the Wikipedia distinction between a truly anonymous editor (someone editing as an IP not logged in to an account), and most other editors (an editor logged in to an account which does not reveal their real-world name). Yet somewhat ironically, an IP can reveal a great deal about the source of an edit!

In the academic world, it is not unusual for those reviewing a paper to do so blindly, without knowing the identity of the author(s). The idea is that the contents should be judged on their merits alone, not on the status or connections of the source. Wikipedia does not demand that contributors use their real name, which in some cases could have terrible personal consequences. However, every account builds a history of contributions, and it usually does not take long to get a feel for the strengths and weaknesses of an editor.

Wikipedia is distinctly different from a peer-reviewed journal. Some of those differences cause difficulty. For example, a 16-year-old student who is just beginning to master basic algebra has just as much right to edit an article on integral calculus as a college professor who regularly teaches the subject. Both are also free to submit a paper to a journal, but Wikipedia policy makes it rather difficult to give more weight to the professor on this topic and to quickly discard the misconceptions of the student.

Or consider the case of Carl Hewitt, an emeritus faculty member of MIT who made important contributions to computer science. He created an account here under his own name, and was accorded all due respect until it because clear that his edits were not consistent with current mainstream concensus, and were becoming highly disruptive. Arbitration was requested when dialog failed. He proved to be a very bad Wikipedia editor.

Thus I would argue that your concerns about "anonymity" are misplaced. The on-line world has a history and culture of pseudonyms, which I expect to persist at Wikipedia. Credibility and authority are linked to identity in the real world through behavior and association; the same is true here.

Wikipedia is a strange and awkward adolescent, and none of us entirely understand what it is, what it will become, and how best to guide it. We appreciate your interest and participation, and invite you to continue, even though we find this proposal unacceptable. --KSmrq^T 09:30, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Of course, if a user identifies herself as a persona (a legal term) then that user could be liable for lies, impersonation and false claims. But such questions may not apply to an anon user. As a fictional character, an anon user can certainly claim academic credentials and positions that don't actually exist -- and simply say it was all a fantasy.

Now, why would an anon user who says she is anon because she does not to want any of her edits to carry a stamp of authority, claim an academic credential and a stamp of authority in her user page, and mention them as a weight in public discussions? The same questions, thus, seem to surface again, even for an anon user. Edgerck 08:50, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

One thing I've regretted a few times is using my real identity on Wikipedia. In any discussion with an imbecile, you will come off looking bad, no matter how well you manage to avoid falling prey to insults. Even if some onlooker (as these Wikipedia discussions will no doubt turn up in a Google search of your name) thinks you behaved well, s/he will wonder why you spend so much time arguing some lame, minor point with some 13 year old instead of working on research. I wonder how silly I will look if a potential employer finds this discussion; answer: probably not half as silly as if s/he found some other of my discussions. I think a number of people that are "Internet-savvy" realize these things quickly and are anonymous for that reason. Also, the value of personal security (of yourself and those around you) is important. I had a bad incident where somebody living in fairly close proximity to me sent threatening emails to me and some of those around me. I can't help but feel bad that some people had to endure this kind of thing because I have a hobby like editing Wikipedia. I refrain from editing truly contentious topics for this very reason, although it can be strangely difficult to avoid. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 10:12, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Shortly after the recent tragic shooting at Virginia Tech, attempts were made to mention it in the articles on the two guns identified. There were some strong opinions about whether that was appropriate, and one editor went seriously over the line in his comments to many here. Eventually he told one woman, an admin who had cautioned him, that he lived near her, and then he threatened her life. A quick decision was made to permanently ban him from Wikipedia, and the worst of his remarks were permanently deleted (they will not even appear in histories). I would be offended by a suggestion that the threatened admin have restricted rights because of a reasonable choice to hide personal information in order to avoid such risks.

Or consider editors in Burma or Tunisia or certain other countries where the Web is censored. If they edit openly, they may risk imprisonment or assassination.

Editors choose what to expose and what to reveal, for many different reasons. The on-line community generally does not distrust partial anonymity, no more than we would mistrust someone for having a lock on the door.

And, frankly, if you really are the Ed Gerck (Ph.D.!) described here, I find your comments hard to take at face value. Perhaps they are a crude attempt to probe how trust works on Wikipedia? --KSmrq^T 12:46, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

If you have a specific question for G-guy, why don't you address him on his talk page? Instead of making vague insinuations here in a public forum(I am aware this is not a sentence).--Cronholm144 09:12, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I apologize for my rudeness Ed, I was feeling grumpy and sleepy and thought that this issue had been put to rest. However this is no excuse for my actions. I violated my own wikipolicy and I am ashamed that I did not assume good faith. --Cronholm144 15:28, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Cronholm144. Your comment is framed in such kindness that I can only hope I can be of help to you in the future. Edgerck 15:38, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. G-guy's comment refers to the comment above this one

Thanks so much for accepting my apology.:) The thing that would help me most would be your continued involvement here, whatever form that may take. This little wikipedia community needs as many good editors as it can get. If you are up to it, your rating of unrated maths articles would be much appreciated, or feel free to contribute to the Mathematics Collaboration of the Month by voting or editing. These two have become my pet projects here. I am sure as you continue to make great edits. like you have at Cross product, you will develop a few pet project/peeves of your own. ;)--Cronholm144 16:05, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I think I should be grateful to Edgerck for generating so much interest in mathematics article assessment! When I raised it recently at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive_25#Mathematics_article_assessment, the silence was deafening. Unfortunately, because of the lack of response, this post got archived by the bot. I encourage Edgerck and others who missed that post to take a look. If only I had appreciated the benefits of controversy earlier; I could have created a sock-puppet account and started an edit war with myself, sigh ;)

Concerning the question: why would a pseudonymous user mention their career on their user page? Personally, I find it useful to know a little bit about other users, because it helps in communicating with them using a medium which is at best suboptimal. If the user did it to add weight to their edits, then they are certainly misguided. For one thing, it doesn't work. I don't know if Edgerck has tried using his credentials in this way, but he will probably find it is more likely to make other editors hostile than reverent. The ideal at Wikipedia is to judge each edit on its own merits and if editors are judged at all, it is purely on the quality of their edits. The fact that I mentioned my profession above added no weight to my comment. I have never used it to support my edits to maths articles and never will.

Concerning verifiability: there is no contradiction between anonymous users and verifiability. It is the article that must be verifiable, not the editor. Any statement can be challenged and removed if a reliable source is not found. It doesn't make any difference who produced the statement. Indeed in some ways it is better if the statement was made by someone with unverifiable identity/credentials, since then it can only be judged on its own merits! I know an editor who contributes only as an anon IP for precisely this reason.

Finally maths ratings. I repeat again, they are not judgements or referee reports or anything of the kind. They are an organisational tool. And, quite frankly, if anons and pseudonymous users restrain themselves, mathematics article assessment is not going to get done. I was rather disappointed by the lack of response to my previous posts on this topic; Edgerck may not realise that before this post, the maths rating system was in the doldrums. Now it is moving again. Geometry guy 12:29, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Desirability for ratings to be signed and dated, on-page

I don't see a problem with ratings by users under their "noms-de-wiki". But what I think can be hard is ratings without any comment, date or signature (apart from buried in the edit history). Firstly, because it doesn't give any on-page indication as to how long ago the article was rated, as so how it might have changed since that time; and secondly, it can make it seem as if the article has been rated by an impersonal unarguable and unappealable "voice of God", rather than by a particular wiki-member of the project.

So could raters please add a name and a date into the comments space, even if they don't add a comment? Cheers, Jheald 09:55, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, ideally all maths ratings should be signed and dated, preferably with a brief comment on how to improve the article. However, there are many which have no such comments — see Category:Mathematics articles with no comments — and commenting takes time to do. I take the point of view that it is more useful to the project to have an important article rated without a comment than not rated at all. However, anyone who happens on a maths rating without comments has the following options:

1. They agree with the rating; then they can sign/date it, or even add a comment.
2. They disagree with the rating; then they can change the rating, sign/date it, and add a comment.
3. They can check the edit history to see who added the rating, go to that editor's user page and complain.

It is a pity that the third approach is often taken instead of the first two.

Concerning the "voice of God" point, I think there is some misperception about what maths ratings are for. They are not judgements; they are not for readers, but for editors; anyone can change them; anyone can comment on or sign them. They are aimed at directing future edits to improve our coverage, they are not "referee reports" on work done so far. Geometry guy 10:35, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Further to this, Cronholm and I have managed to instruct AWB to allow us to leave comments or at least sign. The list we are working through is here: these are essentially the unrated articles on Oleg's list, and are ordered by the number of articles which link to them. Any AWB fans just need to save the source for the page in a text file to join in the fun. Geometry guy 12:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Rather than grumble, I decided to take up my own suggestion and sign a few ratings. I went through the entire stub class, checking the articles, upgrading them to start class where appropriate, adding a (helpful, or often not so helpful) comment in a few cases, and signing and dating in general.

This moves the goalposts again of course, and there will undoubtedly be complaints about ratings without comments, but I am getting used to this. The number of unsigned/dated assessed articles peaked at nearly 1800 recently: it looks like it can be brought back down closer to 1000. Geometry guy 21:13, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Update: after peaking at around 1800, the number of assessed articles without comments, signature or date has come down to a more manageable 709. Of course, most of these are just a signature and date, and many of the comments are bland, not particularly helpful, or possibly even tactless ;) ! Please feel free to replace these by something more useful. I would also point out that there is nothing to stop editors from assessing or commenting on articles to which they have contributed (even substantially): it is the article that is being assessed, not the editor! Geometry guy 16:50, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Layout of the main assessment page

I think some overview of the assessment goals should be placed near the top of Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Assessment (which is linked from the {{maths rating}} template). When I first encountered these assessments, I was also a bit confused as to their purpose. I had to dig around a bit to determine that they are in fact a very good thing. An FAQ might also be helpful (if there isn't one already?). Silly rabbit 12:50, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll update that page: it's original main use was a template to be transcluded onto other pages. The main page for the article assessment scheme is Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0, but I can improve the "noinclude" information on the template to clarify this.

There is no FAQ at the moment. Could you start one? I'm sure others and myself who have been involved in the renaissance of the programme would be glad to contribute to it. Geometry guy 13:37, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Aye cap'n. I can start one. I'll post an announcement here once I have a working version. Silly rabbit 13:59, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! It'll definitely be a good thing to have comments from someone not too close to the development of the programme. Meanwhile I've patched up the /Assessment page. Geometry guy 14:27, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Moving pages with assessment comments

When moving an article, you have to remember to also move the /Comments subpage if it exists. For instance, when Euler integration is moved to Euler method, the talk page Talk:Euler integration automatically goes with it, to Talk:Euler method. However, the subpage Talk:Euler integration/Comments is not automatically moved to Talk:Euler method/Comments; you have to do this by hand.

This is a pity as it will go wrong in the future. Unfortunately, I don't have any better suggestion that just telling everybody to keep this in mind. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 08:04, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe a bot could check for this :-) --Chan-Ho (Talk) 09:40, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Is this a problem for all articles with archived talk pages as well, eg Talk:Entropy/Archive7 ? If so, this is a much bigger problem, and should be urgently patched in the wiki software. Jheald 10:01, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Is there an extant proposal to modify Special:Movepage so that it offers an option "[ ] Move subpages (if any)" in addition to "[ ] Move associated talk page(s)"?  --Lambiam^Talk 10:24, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out Jitse! I agree that it is definitely a flaw in the wiki software, especially now that subpages are encouraged for so many things (e.g., /doc pages for templates). I would also note that if a page about a rated mathematician is moved (e.g. to make the form of the name comply with Wikipedia guidelines), then there may also be a Talk:.../Data subpage to move. Geometry guy 10:40, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

That was me, sorry about that. I moved the page, fixed the redirects, but did not think of the comments page. Good to know in the future. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:59, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

To answer my own question above: yes, there is such a proposal: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9626. If you think this is a good idea, you can vote for it.  --Lambiam^Talk 06:31, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Liminal property

According to this article, "liminally compact" is another way to say "locally compact". I asked the author of the page two months ago whether some reference could be added (see User talk:Wikimorphism). I got a reply that it was definitely used as claimed in the article, but no references have appeared and the author has vanished. So, is anybody familiar with this usage? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:44, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Apparently the contributor was not sure it had every appeared in print. The article is only a stub, and a dubious one at that, so it would be no great burden to recreate it should the need arise. I have PRODed it. --KSmrq^T 13:19, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Uh... I think I made a mistake on this one. :( after the PROD expired I "deleted" the article, but I don't think I have the power to actually delete articles. Could an admin fix my mistake? Thanks--Cronholm144 19:48, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Importance of mathematics articles

I promised several visitors to my talk page to initiate a discussion here about importance ratings in the maths rating system, and this seemed an appropriate moment to do so.

Although there are many articles for which the current class grading is wrong (and I have made many such mistakes), it is usually clearly or uncontroversially wrong, and therefore easy to fix. Importance is harder to handle for at least three reasons:

1. lack of clear definitions of what the importance levels mean (in particular, for mathematics articles);
2. lack of guidance on the context within which importance should be assessed;
3. are we rating the importance of the topic or the article?

First, here are the current definitions:

• Top Subject is a must-have for a print encyclopaedia
• High Subject contributes a depth of knowledge
• Mid Subject fills in more minor details
• Low (WP 1.0) Subject is mainly of specialist interest. (WP 1.0 Math) Subject is peripheral knowledge, possibly trivial.

The top and low importance seem to me to be the most problematic. What does "a must-have for a print encyclopedia" mean? Which encyclopedia? EB? An encyclopedia of mathematics? And does "must-have" mean that such encyclopedias have an article on the topic, or that there would be mass protests if the article were removed? As for low importance, is "specialist" the same as "peripheral"? It certainly isn't the same as "trivial". Also there seems to be quite a gap between Low and Mid, which means that Mid is getting overloaded.

A proposal to update the scheme has been made, which seems to be an improvement in some ways, but not in others. For example, it concentrates a lot on whether a topic has achieved local, continental or international notability, which is largely irrelevant for mathematics. Also it seems confused over the second issue above, context.

Consider e.g., motive (algebraic geometry): this is an extremely important topic in modern high-brow algebraic geometry, but within geometry as a whole it is relatively less so. How can we compare it to platonic solid, for example? And within mathematics as a whole it is certainly only of specialist interest, and hence, arguably, peripheral.

So far I have been taking the view that it is more helpful to assess the importance of a topic within its own context, since it is more discriminating. However, I think this needs to be discussed.

Finally, articles vs topic. For articles about mathematical subjects, the distinction is probably rather minor, but for articles about mathematicians, there is another closely related question: are we rating the importance of the mathematician or the article? So far, I believe we have been following the WikiProject Biography guidelines, which suggest the former.

To illustrate the difference, consider Ramanujan. Certainly he was a genius who made remarkable contributions, but his impact on mathematics is not in the same league as Euler or Gauss. Yet an article on Ramanujan is a must-have, not only because of his contributions, but because of the fascinating story, and the deep insights it provides into the mind of a mathematical genius.

I think these issues need to be clarified in a way that makes the importance rating as useful as possible to the Maths Project, and that we really need to have mathematics-specific descriptors. Geometry guy 15:26, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Overall importance or within context?

I think that we should have relatively few articles of "top" importance (say, 2% = 300 articles within mathematics) and that the majority of articles should be "low" importance. Articles of "top" importance should appeal to non-mathematicians so they can't be about deep concepts; there may be some exceptions like Poincaré conjecture that are important in maths and have hit the headlines in the newspapers. That means that we should be very selective: after 50 or so mathematicians and elementary stuff like square, triangle, addition, there is not much left.

"The importance of a topic within its own context" depends a lot on what you consider to be its own context. The article on pseudo-differentiable quasi-widgets is not that important in the context of mathematics, more important in widget theory, and crucial to the theory of pseudo-differentiable quasi-widgets. I hope that Geometry guy can clarify this point.

As an example, I'll explain the ratings that I have in mind for numerical analysis:

• Top: only numerical analysis itself.
• High: major subfields like optimization, interpolation, root finding, numerical integration; and also the most important methods (I haven't thought this through, but I'm thinking about Gaussian elimination, Newton method, fast Fourier transform, and no others); about a dozen in total.
• The rest to be divided between mid and low.

I haven't rated any of the articles mentioned, except numerical analysis which I upgraded from "high" to "top", so I've no idea what the actual importance ratings are. But I've seen quite a lot of articles being rated, and most importance ratings match with how I'd rate them. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

This is quite a different view to the one I was trying to express, but I think I agree with some of the points. At the moment there are 135 Top importance articles. About 2200 have been rated so far, and I estimate that there are about 6000 articles worth rating at the moment. So 300 seems to be about the right ballpark, although since Top importance articles are more likely to have been rated already, we are possibly undershooting. I also agree that we should have #{Low} > #{Mid} > #{High} > #{Top}. This is not going to happen with the current definition of "Low", because editors who have worked hard on articles they are interested in are hardly going to call the subject "peripheral". For instance Lazy caterer's sequence is currently rated "High" (see the talk page history). At the moment there are more mid importance articles.

The main point where I disagree with Jitse is on the prioritization of elementary mathematics. I don't think we should be afraid to say, for example, that the Atiyah-Singer index theorem is High importance (possibly even Top). This is partly because I find it unhelpful to think of WP as a single encyclopedia like EB (which is 20 times smaller, with only about 70000 articles on 1/2 million topics) — it is more like a nested family of overlapping encyclopedias. Within our Encyclopedia of Mathematics, there is also an Encyclopedia of Numerical Analysis, and so on.

So I think there is a good case to be made for rating importance within context. When I wrote the above I wasn't sure what this should mean, but following the discussion below, I think context should be interpreted using categories. Thus if Category:pseudo-differentiable quasi-widget contains a large number of varied articles in it (and its subcategories), we can be pretty confident that its lead article is very important! On the other hand if the category doesn't exist, or is rather meagre, then the context for pseudo-differentiable quasi-widgets will be a category like Category:widget theory in which it could be of rather low importance, or it could be one of the major examples.

From this point of view, Optimization (mathematics) is probably Top importance. On the other hand Square (geometry) is probably not. Triangle is also currently rated "High", but "Top" is arguably more appropriate. Addition is, of course, top importance. Geometry guy 16:49, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Re: This is not going to happen with the current definition of "Low", because editors who have worked hard on articles they are interested in are hardly going to call the subject "peripheral". — there is some of that, I'm sure, but I wonder if there's also a selection effect here: the articles that get enough attention to be rated are also less likely to be on topics of low importance. —David Eppstein 06:46, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

List of fields

I would like to propose expanding the current list of Fields for the rating scheme. Especially if we take up Geometry guy's suggestion to assess importance within its own context, it's crucial to have a proper classification for various contexts (i.e., fields) that can occur. In particular, I strongly believe that Algebraic geometry should be its own field, not part of Geometry and topology. This would greatly alleviate some of the thorny issues mentioned above, not just concerning motives, but pretty much all modern algebraic geometry. Arcfrk 03:14, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I definitely think we need to re-consider field, problematic articles abound say Talk:Cross product and Talk:Sheaf (mathematics) both have reasons for being in geometry and algebra, the latter could nicely fit in algebraic geometry but the former less so. One possibility is to have allow two fields so you could have field=algebra and field2=geometry. There is also a good case for an algebraic geometry field as there are a large class of articles in this group. There is also the mathematician who could well do with being listed by their field of study as well. The danger with too much expansion is that we end up duplicating the category system.

As to importance, I've always been a fan of the proposal mentioned above as it seem to be a more objective criteria, loosely we could have coverage or scope

• Of high importance across all numerate discipline - everyone should know this
• Of high importance throughout mathematics - all mathematicians should know this
• Of high importance in a major field of mathematics - all those working in the field should know this
• Of importance within one field (high importance in a sub-field) - most working in the field would know this
• Mainly limited to a sub-field
• Specialist, mainly work of one researcher.

Curiously principal component analysis could be applied to this: there are several ways to rate articles: how well known something is, the number of fields/sub-fields its covered by, how useful the result is, when its likely to be taught. These are likely to have a strong level of correlation. Assuming you could give each of these a numeric score, you could put all of these into a big matrix, find the cross correlation matrix and perform SVD to get the largest eigen vector, representing the principal mode of variation. When you get at the end is probably the important score. The task is then to find a set of words which descibes this well. ::--Salix alba (talk) 09:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Look again at sheaves; they are relevant to logic as well as geometry, with topos theory as common ground. In fact, MacLane and Moerdijk have written Sheaves in Geometry and Logic: A First Introduction to Topos Theory (ISBN 978-0-387-97710-2). We lose deeply interesting connections in mathematics when we try to force every topic into exactly one area. As for algebraic geometry, I think it transformed into a rather different field when it refounded itself on schemes, something that can be very confusing for a reader at the level of, say, Bézout's theorem. For example, on page 294 of Hartshorne we find, "In other words, a curve is an integral scheme of dimension 1, proper over k, all of whose local rings are regular." Few of our readers would see it that way! I'm not sure what the implications should be for this discussion, but it should at least caution us that different readers and different editors may frame a subject in radically different ways. --KSmrq^T 09:41, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Interesting comments! There are certainly problems with the field system — in particular, the fact that only one field can be assigned means that compromises have to be made. However, I have not found this so difficult in practice: for instance Cross product is clearly an article set in the context of elementary Euclidean geometry, even though the same concept could be discussed in a more abstract-algebraic way. I also don't have a problem with the fact that the same subject can seem quite different at different levels of abstraction. For me, sheaves a very geometrical way of looking at things, even logic, but then I would say that ;) — there is certainly a case that they belong in foundations.

I would prefer, as far as possible, to take a pragmatic point of view. I think a field2 would overcomplicate the system. For mathematicians, an alternative would be to use the same trick that has been introduced for historical articles, i.e., replace the mathematician field (which isn't a field anyway) by a mathematician=yes tag.

I agree with Salix alba that we don't want to start duplicating the category system: categories provide plenty of context for importance assessment, and also address some of KSmrq remarks. So I am against expanding the field system to take on this role: it isn't up to the job, it isn't needed, it would be too complicated and too much work.

Pragmatically, fields were introduced to break up the assessed articles into manageable groups. I would therefore propose just to split up fields when they become too large. At the moment algebra and geometry and topology have twice as many entries as any other field, and there is no sign that this trend will change. Myself, I'd prefer to split the latter into geometry and topology, rather than separate out algebraic geometry (partly because of the overlap with number theory and algebra). (In fact, I'd already been planning to do that!)

Any ideas for subdividing algebra? Geometry guy 11:10, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

On the question of field2, there have been a few articles that have crossed my Watchlist recently, where I think there's quite a strong case, eg:

• Talk: Information theory. Currently Applied mathematics. Also Probability and statistics ?
• Talk: Information entropy. Currently Probability and statistics
• Talk: Asymptotic equipartition property. Currently Probability and statistics Applied mathematics.
• Talk: Sigma algebra. Currently Probability and statistics Analysis
• Talk: Spinor. Currently Geometry and topology. Also Mathematical physics ?
• Talk: Spectral theorem. Currently Analysis. Also Algebra ?

... etc.

Bearing in mind that the most important thing is the reverse lookup here -- ie what shape are articles in that are important under Probability and Statistics, under Applied Maths, etc., I think it may be quite valuable for a few articles for their ratings to appear on more than one of the sub-lists.

I also wonder whether it's right that Numerical Methods appear to be by default being filed under Analysis? (eg: Talk: Newton's method) Jheald 15:20, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually it is quite easy to list an article under more than one field because VeblenBot produces the tables using "What links here". All you have to do is link the relevant field page on the article talk page. However, I'm worried that this could be overused, which might reduce some of the benefits of breaking up the articles by approximate field.

For instance, information theory relates to probability, statistics, physics, and applied mathematics, but it may be better to decide on one of them. I'd prefer to go with applied, since it best reflects the variety of applications/influences. Also the applied mathematics field is rather underpopulated, and not yet clearly defined: its meaning is partly going to be determined by which topics we decide it covers. For instance, we may decide that it covers numerical analysis as well. A similar decision (between probability and analysis) could be made for topics in measure theory.

In other cases, the existence of two plausible fields may suggest a need to actually have two articles! I think this is the case for Spectral theorem, and spinor field seems to be a redirect with possibilities! Geometry guy 17:16, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

PS. A lot of these issues will go away if/when Wikipedia:Category_intersection is implemented.

I would suggest pretty much all articles on information theory subjects at least go under Probability and Statistics, because it is very much a statistical idea, dealing with probabilistic quantities; and it is often provides useful ways to think about statistics and statistical questions. It is very much another tool in the statistical armoury. Information theory itself should maybe dually go under Applied mathematics as well, but constituent articles on subjects like Information Entropy, Asymptotic Equipartition Property, Minimum Message Length etc ought primarily to be under Probability & Statistics. Jheald 21:40, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

You may be right, I am no expert, but I am a little wary of the argument that information theory is another tool in the statistical armoury. I can only attempt an analogy: the derivative of a function is very much a geometrical idea, dealing with tangency between a line and a curve, or more generally, tangency of a linear subspace; it is one of the major tools in differential geometry. Does that mean it is most helpful to place Derivative in the geometry field? We have to try and remember that the maths rating field is not a categorization, but an organizational tool. Geometry guy 22:26, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I am a bit surprised to have encountered such entrenched resistance against introducing Algebraic geometry as a new field for the purposes of the rating project. For once, I would have to regretfully conclude that Geometry guy's argumentation, which is usually a model of clarity, is self-contradictory. If the field Geometry and topology is getting overloaded, then it would seemingly make sense to split off Algebraic geometry, which is uncontroversially a well-defined field of its own, with its peculiar scale of importance. Moreover, he amply illustrates the need to assign the proper context in order to rate the article, so that we do not end up comparing motive (mathematics) with platonic solid (both currently within Geometry and topology). Additional pragmatic advantages would include simplifying the task of raters and making the whole process more objective. In particular,

• it would help editors pick the articles in subjects that they are experts in and in which they can provide a fair rating and, especially, helpful comments for further development;
• for the editors involved in broad rating project across multiple fields, it would streamline the process of assigning the importance by gauging it within the correct field.

Other comments: I quite like Salix alba's definitions of levels of scope/importance, as the ones currently in use really make me scratch my head for nearly every article save the very top importance class, such as Geometry, or clearly technical ones a la Apothem. We just need to come up with descriptive, easily remembered names for his six classes. I also think that to be useful the list of fields should be less precise than the AMS Subject Classification (and of course, the categories system), but agree with Jheald's point that the reverse look up feature makes multiple fields desirable in some instances. As for specific examples of expansion, besides my suggestion of Algebraic geometry above, I think that Numerical methods should not be part of Analysis and (unless it is already covered by Applied mathematics) deserves to be its own field; and Representation theory can be split off Algebra. Arcfrk 00:40, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I have filed all "numerical analysis" articles under "applied". We should at least be consistent (of course I think that I'm right and that it should go under "applied" instead of "analysis"). -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 01:53, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree and would be happy for us adopt this as a convention, accepting that their can also be a deep analytical compoment in numerical analysis. I would like to adopt a similar convention for information theory. Another issue (which maybe deserves a separate debate) is Galois theory. At present the categories emphasize the algebraic rather than number-theoretic aspects of this, which surprised me. Geometry guy 02:36, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I only have time to reply briefly to Arcfrk. I'm sorry I was not clear, but I don't think I was being self-contradictory, nor do I see here any entrenched resistence, just a preference, expressed only by me, to split geometry and topology into a geometry field, and a topology field. The problem I have with algebraic geometry as an organizational field (rather than a category) is that it has too many points of view: arithmetic, algebraic, analytic and geometric. The overlap between number theory and algebra is already quite tricky without bringing arithmetic algebraic geometry into the picture. One would also have to decide which parts of commutative algebra are algebraic geometry (well, all of it really, but then I would say that ;) )

However, the main point I was trying to make by comparing motives with platonic solids was not that these are incomparable because one is geometry and the other is algebraic geometry. The same argument would apply to a triangle and an exotic sphere, or to an elliptic curve and a Grothendieck topos. They are incomparable. This is why I believe that context should be provided by categories, not by broad-brush fields. There is no need to reinvent the category system here. Geometry guy 02:36, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Linking to article hierarchy

I was starting a thread on the same topic as this one but one day later on the wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 page and expressing my viewpoint that the importance assessment should better be done within the context of all of maths. Based on the discussion above, my augmented list of arguments in favour of single maths context for importance is the following:

• Assessment within disciplines would lead to a serious proliferation of Top/High labels; this I think is inevitable unless an unusual number of articles turned out to be more important viewed accross categories/fields/subdisciplines than within them, which I find hard to believe;
• Deciding how finely grained subdisciplines to use adds another layer of complexity; obviously the finer the grid the more Top/High-importance articles; this debate has clearly started on this page;
• Assessment within the totality of maths fits in my mind better with (one of) the goal(s) of the whole grading exercise: prioritising the articles form the viewpoint of importance to a high-quality encyclopaedia.
• The importance rating (or prioritization) accross all of maths is possible if difficult (and sometimes inevitably contested - but so is assessment within fields). It is in fact an execise that editors of paper encyclopaedias have had to do in the past to choose topics for major / minor articles, sections in articles or omission. For Wikipedia, while there is no cap on the number of pages to produce, we have another scarce resource: editors' time. Hence the prioritisation on the level of mathematics still makes sense, at least for as long as we are quite far from having good-quality articles covering all topics which should definately be of Top / High importance within all of maths; and
• As the rating appears on the Maths tab, related to the WikiProject mathematics, it also seems natural to keep the rating on the level of the WikiProject (unless we want to start splitting the project, which probably is not a good idea at this time).

As for how to implement importance assessment on the level of Mathematics, I made the following poropsal that would explicitily link the importance to the hierarchy of mathematics articles:

• The main subdisciplines in maths (plus some selected "general" articles) should receive Top importance (e.g., Number theory, Algebraic topology, Analysis, Integral). These articles could then refer to High-importance articles for further details.
  • (That would partially resolve the issue discussed above wrt Algebraic Geometry — no matter whether one thinks it should be a new "field" in our classification, it definately is a Top-importance article and thus creates an importance sub-hierarchy in this model)
• Second-order subdisciplines within the Top-importance areas as well as the very few most important objects / theorems should have High importance (e.g., Homology and cohomology, Elliptic curve, Harmonic analysis, Fourier transform). These articles could then link to Mid-importance articles for further details.
• Third-order subdisciplines (or theories) within High-importance topics as well as most definitions, theorems etc. that should belong to a good graduate student's general knowledge regardless of own field of speciality could for the Mid-importance layer; and
• The articles of Low importance could be those that would not likely be interesting to people outside of the speciality.

As for the very valid point that several concepts (such as sheaf) may be found at various levels in such a hierarchy (e.g., sheaf on a quite low level in analysis --> microlocal analysis compared to topology), a possible solution would be to choose the highest rating based on the article hierarchy (which in my mind would bring sheaf to High importance under Top-importance article on Topology).

In any case, a more structured hierarchy of articles, starting from ones with wide coverage with limited technicalities and progressing towards more specific and technical articles through links is something I think is needed for maths articles. And indeed, work has clearly started towards that goal on many topics (Integral, Algebraic geometry come to mind as top-level examples). I have been making a plan for algebraic topology articles for such a treatment. It would be great if the importance assessment scheme could support that kind of "global" structuring effort in addition to pointing out articles for "local" improvement.

But however we decide to use the importance scales, I agree with Salix alba that we need clear (and sufficiently verbose) definitions for the importance grades so that everyone can agree on at least the principle if not specific application of them.

Stca74 08:58, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I replied to the original post here. There are certainly arguments to be made about making assessments all across mathematics rather than within context, or at least partially taking into account how specialized a topic is. However, I think the comparison with a paper encyclopedia is flawed, as I have already mentioned: WP is a very different beast (encyclopedias within encyclopedias). Furthermore, we seem to keep forgetting what importance ratings are for: they are for editors, not readers! They are not there to say "These are the most important articles in mathematics, dear reader, read them first", they are there to say "Hello, editor, I see you are an expert in homotopy algebras and you want to help improve some articles: these are the articles which the project thinks are highest priority". If we rate across mathematics, all homotopy algebra articles will be low importance, which is not terribly useful. Geometry guy 09:37, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I surely agree that Wikipedia is different from a paper encyclopaedia, and I also quite like Geometry guy's metaphor of nested encyclopeadias. However, there is also the "top-level encyclopaedia" here, the one that this whole project started to build and the one that is being prepared for the v1.0 "fixed" edition. And it is in this context that I have seen the usefulness of the importance gardings: guidance to those who would like to contribute to finishing the "top-level" first. And I agree, this is clearly guidance to editors, not readers (a point on which I do not perceive serious disagreement in the discussion above). On the other hand, providing such "global" guidance certainly does not prevent anyone from contributing to articles of more specialised interest (this is more or less what I've been doing in the few contributions I've managed to make so far...). As for the specific example of homotopy algebra topics, this is how I would see it: Algebraic topology:TOP --> Homotopy theory:HIGH --> Homotopy algebra:MID --> Individual homotopy algebra topics:LOW (unless MID due to specific reasons..). But in the end, whether such grading is seen as useful depends very much on the ultimate goal of the importance ratings — top-down completeness of the general encyclopaedia or guidance to more specific sub-encyclopaedias. Both are valid goals, and in principle we could have parallel ratings for these purposes, but I'd prefer not to complicate the "overhead" associated to project maintenance. Further comments welcome! Stca74 13:00, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I am glad you like my metaphor! I am also grateful to Stca74 for bringing up the v1.0 fixed edition CD: I was about to add a comment on this myself, because I shouldn't go around boldly declaring what the ratings system is for without mentioning its original motivation to produce the v1.0 CD (which is why the assessment project is called Wikipedia 1.0 in the first place)!!

While this is still an important motiviation, the ratings system has clearly grown since then. However, I don't see an incompatibility between rating in context and building WP 1.0. In fact, it seems to me that Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Release_Version_Criteria#Importance_of_topic supports the in-context point of view. Specifically, it gives an example of a hierarchy History -> History of Europe -> History of Poland -> Polish kings and queens. and then goes on to say:

An article labeled as "Top-Class" for the subject of history would probably warrant inclusion in V0.5, V1.0 and other releases. A "Top-Class" article for the history of Poland would be a reasonable candidate for inclusion, but most "Top-Class" articles on Polish kings & queens would probably not be included in early releases. Nevertheless such ranking within a subject area is very helpful in deciding which articles are included first as the scope of the Wikipedia 1.0 project expands.

In other words, the kind of downrating by subtopic proposed by Stca74 will happen anyway when articles are selected. I wasn't sure when I first posted this thread, but this seems to make the case for rating in context rather compelling. Geometry guy 13:39, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Moving forward from here

As the discussion has died down a little, I thought it would be useful to summarise some of the issues with a few comments, and outline some steps forward.

1. There seems to be agreement (or at least no disagreement) that there should be more articles rated as lower importance than higher importance, and in particular that only a few hundred articles (out of several thousand rated articles) should be rated Top importance. This is not going to happen unless some changes are made: at the moment, the Mid category is the most populated.
2. There appears to be some consensus that context should be taken into account when assessing importance, although there are concerns that this might conflict with point 1, and no agreement whether elementary material is intrinsically more important than advanced material. On the other hand, rating importance within context appears to be coherent with the v1.0 fixed edition plans.
3. There has been much less agreement on how and to what extent context should be taken into account, although several suggestions were made.
   1. The field entry in the maths rating should be the context in which importance is assessed (see also point 6 below).
   2. Context should be assessed using the main category to which the article belongs.
   3. Other mechanisms and ratings schemes should be introduced, such as User:Salix Alba's scope.
4. The fields should be clearly defined to help editors to be consistent about which topics are rated under which field. This may involve making conventional choices: for example, topics in Numerical analysis should be rated under applied, even if it is also analysis.
5. Further to this point, some editors suggested that a field2 would be useful. This can also be achieved more informally simply by linking to the relevant field page from the article talk page. However, yours truly cautioned against overuse of this feature as it might defeat part of the purpose of the field entry in the ratings template.
6. In conjunction with 3.1, Arcfrk suggested that the number of fields should be expanded and in particular that algebraic geometry should be a separate field. Certainly the geometry and topology and algebra fields are already too large to be manageable.
7. The question of how to assess importance of articles on mathematicians has not yet been discussed.

In response to this, I have created Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance. At present, it mostly consists of material copied from other pages, but the intention is to develop it to provide mathematics specific guidelines which at least address points 1 and 2. I have also created /defn subpages of the field pages to provide descriptors of the fields. These are gathered together at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Fields: please improve and add to these definitions! I hope this will help to address point 4. For point 5, the linking could be tried out with some of the information theory articles, which are the most obvious examples so far where the single field approach is inadequate.

Concerning point 3, I'm not sure it matters too much that there isn't consensus for time being. As long as we agree that some context should be considered when assessing importance, a diversity of opinion on how much is not going to make a huge amount of difference to the way articles get rated. The ratings system, like the rest of Wikipedia is definitely a work in progress, and I would prefer to take a fairly conservative approach to improving it. This partly underlies my view on point 6. Some expansion of the number of fields is going to be needed, and in the long run, I could certainly imagine geometry and topology being replaced by maybe even six fields such as

elementary geometry, differential geometry, algebraic geometry, general topology, differential topology and algebraic topology.

However, doing something like this would require a lot of work, and the case for it is not yet clear, in my opinion. I would prefer to experiment with the geometry/topology split and see what the numbers look like: this would at least make it easier to subdivide geometry later on if this proves necessary.

Finally, apologies to other editors if my over-active participation in this discussion has conveyed the impression of a hidden agenda or a point of view to promote. I initiated the discussion precisely because there were several issues that I was unsure of, and some of these have been greatly clarified thanks to the comments made here so far. However, I freely admit that my developing point of view is also influenced by issues of implementation: any improvement to the rating system needs to have editors willing to do the (often substantial) work required to implement it!

Further comments most welcome either here or on the relevant talk pages in Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 (such as the new pages above). Geometry guy 15:40, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Using categories instead of fields

Would it be possible to use categories (which articles already have) instead of making editors choose one field for an article? It would not be particularly difficult to determine which articles are in (subcategories of subcategories of) particular "master" categories. That would make it possible to automatically sort the article into several "fields" and would let us get rid of the field= parameter entirely. That seems better than adding field2= and field3= parameters. Another benefit would be that unrated articles would be automatically detected. CMummert · talk 00:13, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Some impressions

I have gone over a substantial number of articles in Algebra and Geometry and Topology fields. This is likely to be a contentious issue, but let me say straight away that I have changed quite a few importance ratings, mostly, downrated (explanation below). Here is a rather haphazard list of my impressions from the rating project.

• Vast majority of articles have been filed under the correct field, but there were some (rather obvious) exceptions. I did come across a group of articles which seemed to defy the current classifications scheme, such as Nondeterministic finite state machine, currently under algebra, but in fact, belonging to computer science. Should this be a separate field?

  This issue also caused me some problems. In a sense this material is algebra in the most naive sense of manipulating symbols. However, it is also natural to rate it in the context of discrete mathematics articles. Another case is automatic group: discrete, or algebra? I'm not at all convinced I made the right choice! Geometry guy 20:21, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

• In practice, the category system is not easy to use to gauge the importance, or provide the context. The depths of subcategories vary widely, although the case could be made that this only makes difference for rather unimportant articles. At any rate, I've become convinced that for undeveloped (stub and start class) articles, expertise in the subject is crucial to determine the importance.
• Overall, the importance ratings are inflated, in my opinion. Keeping in mind that one of the main purposes of the rating project is to facilitate the editing, and especially, identifying the 'weak links', this is not terribly important for articles in B-class and above, since they have already received a lot of expert attention. But it may nonetheless be a problem, since there are hundreds of start and stub class articles purporting to be high importance, which ones to edit first?
• Another thing to keep in mind is that the comments are a lot more valuable than the ratings. Thus it may be preferable for experts (and amateurs:-) to spend a bit more time analyzing the articles and reviewing than trying to rate as many articles as possible. There is absolutely no question that the meaningful improvement cannot keep up with the rating process, we simply do not have enough resources.
• This may be worth a separate discussion, but one thing which emerged from looking over a large number of articles is the definite trend to expand articles beyond reasonable length. The rating system has a potential to exacerbate this problem. Some articles on possibly important subjects, but not top level, are reasonably complete; yet they were put into start, or in some cases, even stub class. In my opinion, in most cases it would be unhelpful to expand them further. Yet, somehow I sense a pressure to bring the articles to higher class, which would translate into expansion or inclusion of related material that is already covered elsewhere (and may not belong to the article in question if it is focused enough). I'd be curious to know what other people think about this.
• And, need I point this out, the rating process (especially, importance) tends to be highly subjective, and examples of inconsistencies abound. I was trying to correct them to the best of my abilities, but I apologize in advance to those of you who might feel like your favorite topic got a short shrift! As Cronholm144 writes in comment pages,

Please mail your all complaints to the following P.O. box -- ...I'm kidding! Please add useful comments here. Note: these ratings are not set in stone, please change them as the article progresses.

Arcfrk 12:49, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree with the view that the quality assessment can have an unintended impact on articles, perhaps in particular in maths. It is interesting that the the WP:FACR do not require that even a featured article be necessarily very long. Instead, appropriate length and focus are called for. Still in practice short but otherwise adequate articles do not appear to be even proposed for GA or FA. This suggests that the application of the criteria is being skewed towards too heavy demands. Stca74 13:04, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

(I hadn't seen Stca74's comment)I sense the pressure to bring articles to higher classes as well. I have been responsible for rating a fair number of reasonably complete articles within their respective fields as start class, simply because of their relative length and completeness pales in comparison to the typical B-class articles. This issue has been discussed in the WP 1.0 discussion page if I remember correctly. They proposed that instead of stub, start,..., FA. They (well, someone at their talk page) introduce the idea of completeness of the coverage of the topic as a rating level, there are problems with this system, but it is the most reasonable answer to the problem of completed articles becoming perpetually start class. However the unfortunate consequence of a change of this type would be the necessity to reevaluate a large number of articles...sigh. --Cronholm144 13:08, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe we need something like "B+ (mini)", "B (mini)", "Start (mini)" would be appropriate ratings for articles which are substantially all that is needed, and wholly adequate, yet only a few paragraphs long. Jheald 23:44, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I changed that humourous comment(cited by Arcfrk) into two different "templates." I find the lack of references the most common flaw in most math articles #1. If I don't have anything interesting to say #2. If there are other problems I just type something to that effect.

• needs refs, try finding some [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/References|here]].--~~~~

'''Note:''' These ratings are not set in stone, please change them as the article progresses.

• Please add useful comments here--~~~~

'''Note:''' These ratings are not set in stone, please change them as the article progresses.

I have adjusted the maths ratings template so that it includes part of this last line. For technical reasons (aka the "pre-expand include limit") the total number of kilobytes of comments needs to be controlled, and so boilerplate comments are best absorbed into the template. Feel free to edit my version of this comment at Template:Maths rating. Geometry guy 22:15, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I noticed and have gone through and edited myself to reflect this change. I am about through the start and stub class articles--Cronholm144 22:20, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I had thought previously that quality (class) gradings were more straightforward than importance ratings, but a number of issues have come up, and it indeed seems to merit separate discussion, as User:Arcfrk suggests. I agree that the system at present can encourage the expansion of articles for which expansion is either undesirable, not needed, or a low priority. I also agree that a case can be made for promoting some short Stub/Start class articles to Start/B. However, I would caution against the idea of grading a short but "reasonably complete" article too highly. In my view, it is our conception of the meaning of the class grading that needs tweaking. Such a short article should certainly hope for a B or Bplus class grading, but we need to provide space and encouragement for an article to achieve its potential.

It is surprising how much one can do to improve an article. I recently participated in the FAC for Equipartition theorem. There is no reason why this subject in particular needs such a detailed treatment, cf. Virial theorem, which hasn't had the same attention (currently rated Start by Physics, but I think it is B). To me, this illustrates what can be done to lift a short B-class article to FA, and also the fact that a B-class article can be totally respectable.

I think a lot of the problem is the wording of the class descriptors. These tend to assume that an article starts off with an ill-informed description, and is gradually improved as more expertise is brought to bear. This isn't what actually happens for many of our articles. Instead they start as a technically correct definition, which is improved to a technically solid article by expert editors. However, these articles are incomprehensible to most readers, as well as being imperfectly presented or badly sourced. But the class descriptors don't pick this out: they should be encouraging us to maximise the accessibility of our articles.

I suspect this underlies some of our problems with Good Article review, because a technically excellent B article has a big leap to make to satisfy the GA crowd. I think instead we need to encourage the improvement of technically good (i.e., "reasonable complete") articles (with examples, explanations, references) in a step-by-step process, and this applies equally to articles which are short or long. I therefore think we should adapt the descriptions of the classes to our needs, rather than create new classes for short articles. Geometry guy 23:05, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Help required for a big development of Trigonometry and related articles.

The article is somewhat shell-ish; i outlined a framework for the new article on the article talk page. Please, let's get this article good.. i love trig! ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ ^{slurp me!} 19:27, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Subscripts on underbraces

In Faà di Bruno's formula, I tried to edit this not-too-satisfactory expression:

$n=\underbrace {1+\cdots +1} _{m_{1}\ {\mbox{terms}}}+\underbrace {2+\cdots +2} _{m_{2}\ {\mbox{terms}}}$

In normal LaTeX, as opposed to the somewhat stripped-down version of TeX used on Wikipedia, a subscript on an underbrace would be directly under the center of the underbrace. As a first step toward achieving that result here, I tried something:

$n={{\underbrace {1+\cdots +1} } \atop m_{1}}+\underbrace {2+\cdots +2} _{m_{2}\ {\mbox{terms}}}$

Not surprisingly, the expression with the first underbrace looks OK by itself, but is not correctly aligned with the rest of the expression. One could of course but empty expressions under the other terms, but that seems more cumbersome than what the software ideally would provide for.

Here's the surprise: Look at the SECOND underace in the SECOND display. At least on my browser, it now appears directly under the center of the underbrace, as one would normally wish it to be, even though it code is identical to what appears in the FIRST display. Is the (temporary, at least?) solution just to put some dummy blank expression down there somewhere so that the display has enough room for these to fit down there?

And how 'bout a more permanent solution? I know nothing about who maintains the software or how; I just think of it as if it is inexplicable divine providence. Just file a bug report through the usual channels? Michael Hardy 21:59, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps something is temporarily broken, because the example on the formula help page looks to me the way you expect. This may have something to do with a TeX "style" decision. Compare using an explicit "\displaystyle".

$\displaystyle n=\underbrace {1+\cdots +1} _{m_{1}{\text{ terms}}}+\underbrace {2+\cdots +2} _{m_{2}{\text{ terms}}}$

Also note that I use "\text" instead of "\mbox", which fixes another problem not mentioned. --KSmrq^T 22:48, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the problem seems to have gone away for me, though the bad images are cached. --KSmrq^T 23:52, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

So next time you encounter this problem, change the TeX in a way that does not change make a difference, e.g., add \, or {} at the end of the equation (the problem was fixed in a software upgrade about half a year ago, but, as KSmrq said, the bad images are cached). -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 01:39, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

An invisible change can be simpler still: add a space (almost anywhere inside the <math> tags).

$n=\underbrace {1+\cdots +1} _{m_{1}\ {\mbox{terms}}}+\underbrace {2+\cdots +2} _{m_{2}\ {\mbox{terms}}}$

$n=\underbrace {1+\cdots +1} _{m_{1}\ {\mbox{terms}}}+\underbrace {2+\cdots +2} _{m_{2}\ {\mbox{terms}}}$

The caching is presumably based on a hash of the characters, with no regard for meaning. Also note that in the above example pair I did nothing to fix the second problem, for those who didn't see it before. --KSmrq^T 23:33, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Why do they not just modify the caching so that it removes a few of the oldest entries from the cache each day? They would then be re-calculated as if they were new formulas. Then the effects of any software changes would eventually propagate to the entire cache. It seems to be an obvious solution. JRSpriggs 11:03, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Reliance on information

Perhaps someone might want to suggest changes or join this experiment: User_talk:Edgerck#Reliance_on_Information Comments are welcome (down the page, please!). I hope this is useful. Edgerck 11:03, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

5280 (number)

I nominated this for deletion, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/5280 (number). Comments welcome. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:55, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Should I mention this Afd this to WP numbers? I think it is as much their issue as it is ours.--Cronholm144 05:09, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

disastrous article

The article titled additional logarithm topics bears certain resemblances to New Orleans three days after Katrina. Probablly some of its material should get merged into existing articles or perhaps new articles on disparate topics. Michael Hardy 21:07, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that's too generous. All the "derivations" are textbook stuff that doesn't belong here at all (I'm not saying that proofs don't belong here; I'm just saying that the theorems proved on that page are not given in any context other than that of an indiscriminate, textbook-like list, and so don't contribute to acceptable content). The "using logarithms" section is really just some competition problems that constitutes a "how-to" guide, and so should go. The continued fractions bit at the end is just an explication of a well-known algorithm for computing continued fractions that is actually given on the page for that topic. This article looks like it was written by a high-school junior taking precalculus. Ryan Reich 21:39, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I've proposed the article for deletion. If anyone disagrees, feel free to remove the deletion template. Ed H | talk 01:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

AFD

I've nominated List of prime numbers for deletion here. Feel free to comment. —METS501 (talk) 20:21, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, don't feel free to comment any more. :-) Closed as speedy keep. —METS501 (talk) 02:45, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. :) Sometimes it helps testing the waters over here before nominating an article for deletion. If mathematicians here say a math article sucks, the rest of the crowd at AfD usually has no choice but to agree. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:38, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

...and another

Someone's nominated three coin for deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Three coin. Michael Hardy 00:05, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

still another

I have nominated table of divisors and table of prime factors for deletion. --Trovatore 04:16, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Bertrand Russell GA/R

I have nominated Bertrand Russell for WP:GA/R due to inadequate referencing. I hope the article gets the attention it deserves during this process to retain its quality rating. Please see discussions at Wikipedia:Good_article_review#Bertrand_Russell. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 16:54, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

The review was speedily closed to delist. CMummert · talk 12:42, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

A speedy delist. That's a new one, isn't it? The usual result of nominating a math-related article for GA/R is argumentation and then delist. But I suppose it's wise of them to skip the usual bickering with folk from here and go ahead to the delisting. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 13:15, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I applaud the new procedures. They save time and trouble for everyone. -- Dominus 13:51, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

However, I would suggest a change of name to Wikipedia:Articles with footnotes, since the evident criteria of the project have nothing to do with the quality of the articles. This is of course partly tongue in cheek; but if there is any support here, I will go through with it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:14, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I have noticed that there is some serious animosity here towards the standards people, along the lines that they insist on irrelevant, perhaps ignorant, and superficial changes to otherwise good articles and refuse to recognize the quality of articles whose referencing does not satisfy their arbitrary but inflexible requirements. I share this frustration regarding good mathematics articles that can never achieve Good status because the needs of mathematics differ from the needs of other, more empirical subjects where frequent, inline referencing is the only means of assessing veracity. However, Bertrand Russell is a biography, and it makes purely factual (as opposed to logical) claims that really should be justified by some reliable source, and in this article, they are not. The same is true of Georg Cantor, mentioned down the page here. Mathematical biographies are not "mathematics", referencing-wise. Just including a (however laudably-complete) list of bibliographic sources is not good enough, since how am I, the reader, to find a particular fact in any of them without any guidance? (See also the video, now on YouTube, of Serre on how not to write mathematics, regarding "citing the collected works of Euler"). Even in mathematics articles, any surprising claim should be cited in one of the sources (a deep theorem, for example); since truth is stranger than fiction, in biographies, all claims are surprising :) Ryan Reich 01:38, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The gruff way in which these presumably well-meaning people throw their weight around does not help to reduce that animosity, such as speedily delisting an article before even anyone had a chance to realize it had been put up for review. And what can we say about this singularly unhelpful and brusque brush-off in response to a request for clarification about a requirement for a "solid rewrite", since, as far as the WikiProject Mathematics is concerned, it is an A-class article. The response was, literally and in its totality: "If this is the case then the Maths Project needs to reconsider its rating since that is a wholly inaccurate assessment."  --Lambiam^Talk 17:33, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

And there is one major modern biography of Cantor: the one by Dauben (Aczel is a popularization; most of the other book-length works are either dated, or deal with the mathematics.) I would assume, without further checking, that any statement not purely mathematical and not otherwise sourced claims to refer to Dauben, who has an index. Evaluating that claim would involve reading the article alongside Dauben, which I have not done; and which Bad Articles haven't done either..

It would require doing so even if every reference to Dauben were duly footnoted, with almost as much work.

I suppose we should be grateful that juvenile and incompetent editors are engaged in this frivolity, and not doing wider harm to the encyclopedia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:23, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Re Lambiam's comment: Cantor was one of the articles that was rated A-class before the very new A-class review, so it would have been conceivable that the process wasn't right. I thought that must have been the case until I noticed that the article is also rated A-class by three other wikiprojects including Biography. Nevertheless, the reviewers are probably correct that the article doesn't satisfy WP:WIAGA. People outside this project also grumble about the state of the GA process, but I haven't seen serious discussion towards reworking it from the ground up, which I think is what will be required. CMummert · talk 23:47, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that there exists a powerful feeling within this project is that the GA process is broken and should be ignored, and the in-house ratings of Bplus and A replace it. I have even heard a person here say that they would rather have an article stay start class forever than be reviewed by the GA process. I am actually a fan of the GA process in general and I have participated in listing GA articles in the past, but the process cannot be applied in the same way to mathematics articles. I agree that there should be a discussion of the compatibility of Maths articles and the GA process here, if only to be able to present a united front in the future.

Regarding the Bertrand Russell delist, the article, which has a tag that "consensus was reached" for its delisting, was only a candidate for delist for one hour and nineteen minutes. This does not seem appropriate even for a "speedy" delist. I will end this post with the title of the announcement that Calculus was no-longer a GA class ariticle, "Obscure article Removed Status of Good Article" You can see it in its original context here. I think that this kind of thing illustrates why some of us here are jaded. --Cronholm144 02:49, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I have recommended that GA be moved, at Wikipedia_talk:Good_articles#Requested_move. If it is, I would be content to ignore it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:50, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Georg Cantor Good article review

Georg Cantor has been put on Good article review, I suppose, as a punishment for emphasizing his maths over his (non)-Jewishness. Feel free to comment. Arcfrk 07:31, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

No, I recognize the name of the nominator; this is simply more footnote-worship. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:06, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

If you have any problems as regards myself PMAnderson please take it to WP:ANI. If you do not, and continue to make remarks on other talk pages as regards myself, I will not hesitate in reporting you there for baiting me. We both disagree on the level of citationing an article needs, so let's leave it at that. LuciferMorgan 22:44, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I am pleased to come back from ANI bearing news that this threat seems to have been retracted. I admit I do not share LuciferMorgan's simple and unjustified faith in what citation can accomplish; but we also disagree on whether "citationing" is an English participle. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:53, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Quintic equation

If anyone has a minute, can they try to decipher this edit and reinsert it in coherent English? It was written by a user who doesn't speak English very well, and has been removed by me for the time being. —METS501 (talk) 18:00, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Geometry vandalism

I take it the semi-protection of geometry has expired, because we're right back to vandalism. My assessment of the experiment is that vandalism completely disappeared during protection, and positive contributions appeared. Conclusion: semi-protection should be permanent. --KSmrq^T 04:11, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Yuktibhasa the first treatise on Calculus

In the article Yuktibhasa it is said that the work of the same name by Indian astronomer Jyeshtadeva, is considered to be the first mathematical treatise on calculus. This became a DYK also. Most of the sources online refer to the work thus. However, certain users have questioned this notion in connection with Indian Mathematics and Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics. Rather than leaving the resolution to quasi experts, this question should be settled here, I think.

The conversation referred to is ongoing at Talk:Indian mathematics the major players are User:Jagged 85 and User:Fowler&fowler. However most articles that mention the history of calculus will be affected by the result of this conflict.--Cronholm144 07:09, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, as there is no original research allowed, at most certain references may have to be added. It is outside the scope of Wikipedia to rule on what is the first treatise on calculus (even if that is a meaningful statement). Charles Matthews 10:14, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

External link at Mathematician

I appear to be in conflict with a user who in this edit removed a link I had just added to the article Mathematician. The edit summary is: careercornerstone.org advert link, not a good quality link for this article. This user wrote to me on their talk page: "And yes I am very unflexible about this. When I clean up a mass spamming I expect it to stay cleaned up."

I don't want to get into a revert war, which this would clearly become. I'd appreciate it if some of you could give an independent judgement whether and to what extent this link is (in)appropriate.  --Lambiam^Talk 16:29, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I just saw that the AMS has several links to this organization on its website: [2], [3], and [4] (the last two having the very same link that was removed from the external links section at Mathematician). 17:08, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it would help to explain that you are not connected with Career Corner, or that you do not intend to mass include the link. I would have some doubts about the link: it is a commercial link, and it offers career advice. Skimming suggests that it is sound; but career advisor is one of the things WP is not. Perhaps wait a week, and then add the first AMS link above (the other two are linkfarms)? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:35, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The organization behind the link is not commercial. It also has good information and seems more informative than the AMS link. The potential problem is that I'd guess there are quite a lot of similar sites and that the addition of one link will lead to many others. So, the question is: Is this one particularly good?

Yes, the user that removed the link is inflexible about it, but in my experience also susceptible to reasoning. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 20:01, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Jitse, I take that as a compliment! (: The story with careercornerstone.org is that it was part of a mass spamming. I only have a problem with that particular link and I am sure that there are plenty of other Mathematician career links it could be replaced with. Even a commercial link would be fine by me. (Requestion 20:54, 27 May 2007 (UTC))

Since I'm visiting this math project I would like to bring up a relevant topic; The mathematics of Wikipedia mass spammings. I'm a spam fighter, I see a lot of Wikipedia spam, and I've noticed something interesting that happens during mass spammings. It doesn't make a difference how blatant or how heinous a mass spamming is. There will always be regular editors who WP:AGF and want to keep the spam. It's a constant and that number works out to be about 3%. So imagine a case where an external link is added to thousands of Wikipedia articles. Most of the spam will get deleted but some will stick and unfortunately the pro-spammers have figured out that this is a successful strategy. I can extrapolate and see an end game where all Wikipedia is consumed by this spam. I see some game theory and some statistics at work here, am I missing any related or important fields? Also from a mathematics perspective is there any advice that you can give me to help deal with this growing problem? (Requestion 20:54, 27 May 2007 (UTC))

What makes a link "spam"? Is it a property of the link, or of the process and external to any intrinsic qualities of the link and is the removal a punitive measure for misbehaviour? Would the AMS put spam links on their own pages, not once but repeatedly? The web site seems pretty good to me (at least in the areas for which I can judge this, which includes mathematics). This may be because they don't need to worry about generating money and are actively supported by many of the leading professional societies (such as the AMS). It also helps that they focus on a limited range of academic disciplines: Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Computing, and Medicine. As mathematicians we tend to gripe that young people have completely wrong ideas what it means to be a mathematician; well, this website does a decent job of giving the right idea. If other equally good career centre websites exist, I'm not aware of it, and I don't expect a deluge if we open the gates.  --Lambiam^Talk 21:18, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

What is the nature of link spam? That's a complicated question. It's part property, causality, contiguity, and personal identity. Every spamming is different and no one rule applies globally. The intent of removal is more preventive than it is punitive. In fact the whole purpose of the escalating {{spam}} tags and the blacklist is to make the spam stop. Unfortunately spam usually returns and sometimes it even grows as is happening in the Mathematician article. Rewarding it is definitely the wrong course of action. I don't know anything about the AMS links you mention and I have no opinion of them. (Requestion 05:46, 28 May 2007 (UTC))

American Mathematical Society--Cronholm144 06:03, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

What about this rule: if an editor in good standing adds a link, based on their judgement that the link enhances the value of the article, then the mere fact that that link has been used in other edits deemed spamming is not sufficient cause by itself to warrant reversion. Does that sound reasonable?  --Lambiam^Talk 10:04, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Why would you want to reward spamming behavior like that? Look at this as a complex interconnected dynamical system and think about how a reward plays into the game theory aspects at work. Besides, adding previously deleted spam links just isn't a good idea. Do you really want to fight over a spam link that a different editor in good standing wants to delete? (Requestion 18:41, 28 May 2007 (UTC))

Think of it this way: why would you let spammers control your criteria for what is or is not a good link? Wouldn't it be better to make that determination by judgments of knowledgeable editors, rather than by whether or not some spammer has decided to spam that link? And how do you know, in each case, that the persons responsible for creating the spam are the same as the ones rewarded by the existence of a link? —David Eppstein 18:55, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

It's how WP works, anyway: different opinions in tension. There is a spam blacklist for links. If a link is not blacklisted, adding it is up for grabs. Charles Matthews 18:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Requisition, if there is a non-spam link that contains the same information, by all means replace it. If not, I would hate to remove a useful link just because someone decided to spam it.--Cronholm144 19:34, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

The link wasn't there before they spammed it. (Requestion 19:58, 28 May 2007 (UTC))

I understand. I never meant to imply anything to the contrary, but the link is appropriate for the article--Cronholm144 20:48, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Fact: spamming works. And consequently it blights our lives. On an individual level, it means we need to use spam filters for our emails (and check their content regularly), while for Wikipedia it means we need to have bots which systematically remove spam, and dedicated users like Requestion who patrol pages for spamming. It is a pain.

But it is worth asking why spam works. In emails, it works because for every 10000 users for whom the spam is an irritation and a violation, there may be one for whom it is just what they were looking for. The same principle applies to Wikipedia. Sometimes a spammer's link is a useful addition to an article. Requestion suggests a figure of 3% for spam links which some other editor accepts. This is surely higher than Wikipedia can tolerate and we should definitely try to bring it down (one editor's acceptance is not enough unless well argued, as it seems to be in this case). However, denying the reason that spam works will have little or no effect in reducing it. Just because a link was not there before it was spammed does not mean it is not a useful link. I hope that in more than 97% of the cases (99.9% might be more appropriate!) the spam link is removed permenantly, but that is not the same as saying that all cleaned up spam links stay cleaned up. Yes, the spammer gets a reward for spamming even if 0.1% of their links survive, but this is not a zero-sum game: as long as knowledgeable and impartial editors decide which 0.1% survives, Wikipedia can benefit too. This is no comfort for the spam fighters, I know, but putting our hands on our eyes and saying "see no evil" does nothing to reduce the evil in the world. Geometry guy 21:13, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

How many internal links to "mathematics"?

The number of Wikipedia pages linking to mathematics exceeds 10,000 (ten thousand) and I stopped counting at that point.

• Is there a quick way to count them?
• Does that page hold the record, i.e. is it the one with the largest number of such links? (So I suspect.)

Michael Hardy 01:37, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive 25#Most linked to math articles. You could ask Mathbot (i.e. Oleg) for an update of User:Mathbot/Most linked math articles, if you need current information. JRSpriggs 05:39, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

The list is at User:Mathbot/Most_linked_math_articles: I believe this list only counts mathematics articles linking to a given mathematics article. For example, there are about 5500 mathematics articles linking to mathematics (and this is number one by a huge margin). The list is fairly up-to-date, except that since then Cronholm and I have been down the list to about the 800th most linked article adding maths ratings.

Regarding the first question, links to an article can be counted by loading the "What links here" list into AutoWikiBrowser and filtering out the links which are not in the main space. Geometry guy 10:04, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I count 13642 links; discarding redirect pages, talk pages, and pages in other namespaces, I count 10462 articles linking directly or via a redirect to Mathematics.  --Lambiam^Talk 10:19, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

There is no quick way to count links using the web interface, but there are some programming APIs that can be used. The record for most links used to belong to United States. Right now that article has 301,386 links (counted using m:query.php which I learned has serious performance problems with this sort of query). CMummert · talk 22:43, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Iteratively Re-weighted Least Squares

Hello to everybody at the Math Wikiproject. While evaluating articles to be created at WP:AFC, I encountered this Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/Today#Iteratively_Re-weighted_Least_Squares. I am not too good with things math related so can someone here who is more knowledgeable review the submission to see if it is worthy of an article? Thanks for helping. -- _Hdt83 ^Chat 06:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

It was created by Salix alba and subsequently edited by Lambiam and myself. In case anyone else here cares to view the results, they are now at iteratively re-weighted least squares. —David Eppstein 19:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)