Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

Is anyone familiar with the terminology used in the article constructible set (topology)? It claims that a constructible set is one in the algebra generated by the open sets. It's certainly possible that this name is used somewhere but I have never come across it. There's a reference to an arXiv paper, and an external link to a PostScript doc with no indication that it's been published. --Trovatore (talk) 18:48, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Besides classical algebraic geometry over closed fields, the phrase "constructible sets" occur in real algebraic (semi-algebraic, semi-analytic, etc.) geometry. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 19:27, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is it used with the meaning indicated in the article? --Trovatore (talk) 20:09, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Andradas, Bröcker, Ruiz define constructible sets this way on page 13 of their monograph, Constructible Sets in Real Geometry, using the Boolean algebra of "basic open sets" defined by a finite number of positivity conditions, which is too complicated to define. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 20:39, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, cool. Do you have that publication, by any chance? Maybe if you find time you could add a better reference to the article than the ones it has. --Trovatore (talk) 21:00, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done. I'm sorry for not seeing your question, before. Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 00:44, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Andradas, Carlos; Bröcker, Ludwig; Ruiz, Jesús M. (1996). Constructible sets in real geometry. Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete (3) --- Results in Mathematics and Related Areas (3). Vol. 33. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. pp. x+270. ISBN 3-540-60451-0. MR1393194. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
Mostowski, A. (1969). Constructible sets with applications. Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics. pp. ix+269. MR255390. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Unknown parameter |location1= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |location2= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |publisher1= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |publisher2= ignored (help)

I added links to Armand Borel and to A. Grothendieck, but didn't have the energy to formate the other references properly. Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 00:57, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is it appropriate for an article to mandate a unicode character?

There is a discussion at Talk:Convolution about whether it is appropriate to mention in the "Definition" section of the Convolution article the designation of the unicode glyph for the asterisk. To me, this seems to be utterly irrelevant in the article. Anyway, I've been accused of edit-warring there (on what seem to be quite spurious grounds). I'd like to ask for other opinions. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:45, 22 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I do not believe an ordinary article on mathematics should talk about the unicode points of the characters in mathematical notation. There are a few articles specifically about symbols, and those are an obvious exception. But the article on convolution is not an exception. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:58, 23 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Universal data compression

I removed a PROD tag for this article since the subject does seem to be notable. However the article is unreferenced and it appears that it will need a complete rewrite due to accuracy issues. It would be nice if someone knowledgeable about data compression could bring it up to at least stub quality before it goes to AfD.--RDBury (talk) 19:35, 24 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The article says nothing about a probability distribution on possible input sequences. Without such a distribution, one cannot hope to show that the "compressed" output is probably shorter than the input. If every sequence of length L is equally likely, then no loss-less compression is possible. Compression works by making more likely messages shorter at the expense of making less likely messages longer. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:48, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The definition in the article is very confusing. The definition in the cited paper is perfectly unambiguous: "A universal Data Compression algorithm is one that yields a compression which approaches, as the input length tends to infinity, H bits/letter where H is the entropy of the (stationary) source whose statistics is unknown to the encoder, except for the fact that the source is a member of some given class of stationary sources (a.e. the class of stationary ergodic sources)." I'll rewrite the intro suitably. Dcoetzee 23:24, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to indicate that although the input is assumed to be a stationary process, the output cannot be a stationary process. JRSpriggs (talk) 14:42, 27 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Diophantus-Brahmagupta-Fibonacci-Lagrange identity

Some terminological confusion that may be beyond Wikipedia's scope to sort out, but let's see. (Note: Diophantus lived in the 3rd century, Brahmagupta in the 7th, Fibonacci in the 12th/13th, and Lagrange in the 18th.) We have an article at Brahmagupta–Fibonacci identity, which gives the identity

\left(a^{2}+b^{2}\right)\left(c^{2}+d^{2}\right){}=\left(ac-bd\right)^{2}+\left(ad+bc\right)^{2}

(that shows, among other things, that the set of sums-of-squares is closed under multiplication). Now it so happens that although "Fibonacci's identity" elsewhere does seem to refer to this identity, Brahmagupta knew and used something more general:

\left(a^{2}-Nb^{2}\right)\left(c^{2}-Nd^{2}\right){}=\left(ac+Nbd\right)^{2}-N\left(ad+bc\right)^{2}

The previous identity is the special case N=-1. It seems a "waste" to use the name Brahmagupta's identity for the special case. (And in fact the special case may not even be in his work; I haven't checked.) Moreover, the special case — sum of squares — was also known to Diophantus! So why is Fibonacci's name associated with it? (It is hard to suggest that someone knew one of these identities but not the proof; since the proof is trivial.) Should we rename some articles here, or is it the kind of thing we cannot do? Shreevatsa (talk) 00:29, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think we have to go by generally accepted naming, as indicated by the usual reliable sources. -- Radagast 3 (talk) 03:09, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I know; hence the first and last lines of my comment. But the question here is precisely to determine what "generally accepted naming" is. For sources which refer to the second identity above as Brahmagupta's identity, see (apart from the book already linked): MathWorld, here, here, here, here, here, here, etc. In fact it appears to me that more sources use "Brahmagupta's identity" for the second one than the first. Several of these sources also name the first identity after Diophantus, with no mention of Fibonacci. I was (am) hoping someone could determine the right answers here, and if after carefully weighing sources it transpires that there is no clear choice, we may as well move the articles to rational titles. Shreevatsa (talk) 03:43, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Peer review request for "Number" article

I've put in a request for a peer review for the article Number; I feel that as it is considered a vital article in the area of mathematics it should be improved to at least the standard of a good article. If someone would be willing to put the time into creating a peer review for the article I would be very grateful, and would act to improve any suggestions. The peer review page can be found here.

Thanks, Qwam (talk) 13:34, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Background color for formulas

I don't know if someone else noticed this, but since r59550 we can use the commands \pagecolor and \definecolor in order to change the background color of mathematical formulas. This is useful for example when a formula has to be over a colored background. Ex.:

Wikicode	Rendering
<span style="background-color:aqua;"><math>\definecolor{aqua}{RGB}{0,255,255}\pagecolor{aqua}123456789</math></span>	$\definecolor {aqua}{rgb}{0,1,1}\pagecolor {aqua}123456789$
<math>\definecolor{aqua}{RGB}{0,255,255}\pagecolor{aqua}123456789</math></span>	$\definecolor {aqua}{rgb}{0,1,1}\pagecolor {aqua}123456789$
<math>123456789</math>	$123456789$

I thought it's worth to note here, in case somebody needs this, since it seems not to be documented anywhere...

Best regards Helder (talk) 23:58, 27 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Adjoints

Can we have some standardization on how to represent the adjoint of an operator (matrix)? I see $A^{*}$ and $A^{\dagger }$ a lot (for example in the normal matrix, hermitian matrix, self-adjoint operator, Bra-ket notation). Recently I have cleaned up positive-definite matrix to make the notation consistent. As a physicist, I'm more used to the dagger, but it seems to me that the asterisk is much more common in maths. Should then the standard be context-dependent? Tercer (talk) 01:00, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Standards differ from field to field. It is a wikipedia best practice to leave the choice of (notional/linguistic) standards up to the editors of a particular article. There is no way that community consensus will be reach one standard or an our. This also stresses the need to explain what your notation means (this is needed anyway for readers unfamiliar with any standard).TimothyRias (talk) 07:03, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Another vanity page?

Reid W. Barton is another article that looks more like a vanity page or a glorified CV (here is the previous case). I am wondering how many more are there! Arcfrk (talk) 21:03, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'll stick a prod on it. Dmcq (talk) 23:04, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I stuck a prod on it - and then removed it. Having given it another reading I think an AfD would be more appropriate as there are grounds for dispute. Anybody else want to give a nod one way or the other first? Dmcq (talk) 23:24, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A prod would have been the appropriate solution. There's absolutely no way the article would pass AfD. -- Radagast 3 (talk) 01:01, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's a vanity page — it seems to have been created by others. Although there isn't sufficient notability (yet?) as an academic, the arguments on the talk page seem to argue he's notable as an math-contest participant — which is true, he's a star in the IMO/IOI/Putnam/etc community (or was at some point). Of course, no one (including himself) may care about this anymore. Shreevatsa (talk) 02:06, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify: "vanity page" doesn't necessarily imply the subject himself wrote it (for example, pages devoted to one's children/parents/beau/spouse may be so categorized). Dcmq, what are the grounds for dispute? It clearly doesn't pass WP:PROF. I just don't have enough time to devote to AfD, or I would have sent it there already. Arcfrk (talk) 06:25, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay so I should just left the prod - I'll reinstate it I think that should be okay. Dmcq (talk) 08:18, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not disagreeing with deletion, but winning the Putnam four times puts the subject in a very small group. Deletion is probably something that should be argued on AfD, especially since the previously deleted Darij Grinberg article is something of a weak precedent (only one IMO gold). Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:31, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd consider a regular AfD as more appropriate, after all he seems to clearly more "notable" than the case it is compared to, which had regular AfD. I agree with Shreevatsa that the potential case for his notability is not based on being a notable researcher (yet), but for being the star or best known competitor of the imo/putnam scene. I can see how some people might make weak case for keep/notability (together with a rewrite) based on the combination of the high numbers of wins (and scores) at putnam and olympic competitions and the morgan prize.--Kmhkmh (talk) 15:58, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've raised Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Reid W. Barton as the prod was removed. There is some doubt whether it should be included but it might be notable. Dmcq (talk) 16:20, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are a few other cases (IMO or putnam guys) that should be looked at in this context as well: Christian Reiher, Iurie Boreico, Ciprian Manolescu. In addition we need to consider red links in the articles about Putnam and IMO, because it's fair to assume that red links in those articles are likely to lead to the creation of biography articles.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:18, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Font used in formulas, in images

[First posted here, later here.]

I was wondering if we should aim to use a similar font as the LaTeX output in images that reproduce formulas from the body of the article. For instance, most of the images in HSL and HSV#Formal_derivation that use a Sans Serif font. It's kind of hard to identify in the images what is a formula, and what are merely labels. Using a Latin font might help to distinguish between the two types. Thanks. SharkD Talk 01:40, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think you are referring to images such as File:Hsl-hsv chroma-lightness slices.svg. It would certainly be possible to recreate these using a different font, or just edit the svg to change the font and then upload the image again. That image is on wikimedia commons, which means it is free content: anyone is free to edit the image and upload a new version. Personally, I would not object if someone changes the math fonts to serif. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:49, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. The author of these images is resisting the change, so I'm not sure what to do. SharkD Talk 01:46, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well it is obviously up to the author of the image, what kind of fonts are used for it and it is up to the article's authors which image they use in the article. We definitely should not have any guideline mandating particular fonts for images. The authors of the concerned article need agree on the exact images they want to use and consider carefully whether rather marginal changes are really worth a lengthy and probably bitter argument.--Kmhkmh (talk) 08:45, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, images on Wikipedia are not owned by their original authors any more than regular articles, so what kind of fonts are used in an image is subject to consensus.—Emil J. 13:00, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You misunderstand my point above, it's not about ownership but creation. Whoever creates a particular image decides what it looks like and what fonts he wants to use. Of course it is possible for other authors to create alternative images from the scratch or as derived material. I don't think that WP has any business in regulating the image creation process, but mandating a "style guide for (math) images". If several images are available for an article, the article authors need to decide on which one to pick (on a case by case basis).--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:22, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My question was with regard to which image appears in the article, not which image was uploaded to Commons on XXXX date by YYYY person. In this case the author of the image is also a contributer to the article, and wants "his" version with the Sans Serif fonts to appear in the article, and not the one with the Serif fonts. SharkD Talk 17:44, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In this case the authors of the article need to work it out.--Kmhkmh (talk) 18:39, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You're saying that third opinions don't matter? SharkD Talk 19:27, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

They do. I'm just saying the involved/interested authors need to work out an agreement for this particular case, but it is imho nothing the MOS should handle or needs to handle (as your first posting seemed to suggest).--Kmhkmh (talk) 20:31, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe... Since Wikipedia and Commons are separate entities, I don't see how an MOS here would affect Commons. I also don't see how an MOS would necessarily be a bad thing right off the bat. Wikipedia has tons of MOSs. An additional one for images would not be bad. But I'm mainly looking for an 3O for this particular set of images. SharkD Talk 14:35, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So, is anyone willing to provide a third opinion, or should I just "get lost"? SharkD Talk 22:56, 7 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect this is a bad idea for many reasons, but one of them is that the choice of fonts that work in scalable (SVG) images on Wikimedia is...idiosyncratic. For instance, Times and Helvetica are bad choices (they don't scale correctly) and instead one must replace them with Liberation Serif or Liberation Sans respectively. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:45, 8 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fonts can be converted into paths in the software, which is already the case in these images apparently. SharkD Talk 02:48, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

They can, but that's a bad idea for a different reason: it makes the images much more difficult to edit. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:26, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Topological model

Hi. I have made image of topological model of Mandelbrot set. I have looked for pages about topological models and found nothing. Do you think that it could be useful somewhere ? --Adam majewski (talk) 19:36, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like it's already been added to the Mandelbrot set article. But, though I have a passing familiarity with the M-set, I don't see how the image relates to it. The model I'm familiar with is a circle with certain points identified, but the homeomorphism between the model and the boundary of the M-set depends on the local connectivity conjecture. I'm not sure if there would be something like a theory of topological models, unless it's topology as a whole.--RDBury (talk) 10:00, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thx. Probably topologicla here means that it shows a structure of Mandelbrot set and it is more related with model theory. --Adam majewski (talk) 14:07, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How is it related with model theory?—Emil J. 14:11, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Curl (mathematics)

There is a strange discussion at Talk:Curl (mathematics) including the claim that a "seven-dimensional cross product" would permit the definition of the curl of a vector field on $\mathbb {R} ^{7}$ . More eyes would be helpful there. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:54, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Math software

Would math related software such as statistical analysis and certain forms of math computations qualify fall under the math wikiproject? Specifically, I'm referring to F(g) Scholar which was once heavily used in math/science academia.Smallman12q (talk) 20:25, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I had removed the math rating banner from this article, but I don't have a very strong opinion about it. At the moment neither Talk:Mathematica nor Talk:MATLAB has a math banner, either, and this seems to have less of a connection to mathematics than those would. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:52, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There really should be a software category for the math software. I believe that matlab and mathematica should be added. WP:WikiProject Statistics List of statistical packages but we haven't added List of numerical analysis software.Smallman12q (talk) 11:43, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We do have Category:Mathematical software, which is on the List of mathematics categories. I added that to the F(g) scholar article, which should now get added to the List of mathematics articles by tomorrow's bot run. That list is really what you want to look at to find mathematics articles. Our talk page tagging is much more limited, focusing on things that are more directly related to math. The list of mathematics articles has a broader focus including things that are closely related to mathematics. MATLAB and Mathematica are both already on the list, for example. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:52, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Merge of non-standard calculus to infinitesimal calculus

The article non-standard calculus has recently been merged to infinitesimal calculus. There was an old thread discussing this, where the proposal didn't seem to get much support, but someone has gone ahead with the merger anyway. Comments are welcome. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:20, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like bad idea to me, at least in German infinitesimal calculus (=Infinitesimalrechnung) is usually not associated with non standard analysis, but used as term for a less rigor treatment of analysis (i.e. the calculus of the 17th and 18th century essentially).--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:00, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it looks wrong to me too. Just because Robinson found way to make the idea work doesn't mean the old idea had anything to do with non-standard analysis. Dmcq (talk) 15:57, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It should be noted that the article on infinitesimal calculus was nigh content-free, so I support its disappearance. But yes, the term is ill-defined and has only historical value, so associating it with Robinson's work will only confuse readers; I have studied it and noone refers to it by this name, only nonstandard analysis or, less often, nonstandard calculus. Tercer (talk) 16:07, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I did originally revert the merge, but that was reverted. There was also a brief but very old thread on Talk:Non-standard calculus. These look like two separate topics to me, as CSTAR said[1] It is an example of an infinitesimal calculus, however, it should not be conflated with it. --Salix (talk): 16:09, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This appears to be a merge done against the clear consensus at Talk:Infinitesimal calculus#Merge. I have reverted it again, pending further discussion. -- Radagast 3 (talk) 01:02, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There was a clear consensus at both talkpages that infinitesimal calculus should not be merged into non-standard calculus. I would have similarly opposed such a merge. What I proposed last week was a merge in the opposite direction. CSTAR clearly stated (five years ago) that he views non-standard calculus as a sub-branch of infinitesimal calculus. His position is consistent with such a merge. Note that the term itself "non-standard calculus" is a creation of a wikipedian. In the literature, one talks about "non-standard analysis" and "infinitesimal calculus using Robinson's non-standard analysis". The term non-standard calculus is rarely used outside of English wikipedia. Keisler's textbook mentions infinitesimals in the title, but not anything "non-standard". As an example of infitesimal calculus, [[non-standard calculus} should be merged there, while making it clear that it should not be conflated with it. Tkuvho (talk) 06:58, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Opposition to a merge is opposition to a merge, regardless of direction. And it's clear that several editors here were unhappy with the merge which you boldly implemented. The merge idea was worth exploring, but now it's time to drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass, and try another solution. -- Radagast 3 (talk) 07:48, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If anything the merge should have been of non-standard calculus to non-standard analysis. I'm not sure where that would leave the movement to try and use non-standard analysis ideas in introducing calculus. Names are not the same as topics. Just because a person has infinitesimal in their title doesn't mean it should go under infinitesimal calculus unless that is turned into a disambiguation page. Dmcq (talk) 09:53, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

General comment: In my experience, the term the infinitesimal calculus just means the integral and differential calculus considered together, and has nothing particularly to do with the foundational approach. I think infinitesimal calculus should simply redirect to calculus. That's a comment about the title and where it should point. As to the content, I haven't actually looked. OK, now I have. I think that should be merged into calculus as well, or possibly moved to another title (such as, I don't know, Newtonian and Leibnizian development of the calculus), with the redirect left behind at infinitesimal calculus redirected to calculus. --Trovatore (talk) 10:52, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that a sensible approach seems to be to redirect infinitesimal calculus to calculus, and include a summary section in calculus on different foundational approaches. Presumably this section would build on the Limits and infinitesimals section of the Calculus article, although it could be that what is already there is sufficient for this purpose. This still leaves open the question of what to do with the current contents of non-standard calculus. It seems to me that most of this content could be merged to non-standard analysis to that article's benefit. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:38, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, without commenting on the content (which I haven't read), I agree that at the end of the process the search term non-standard calculus should be a redirect to nonstandard analysis (with or without the hyphen — my preference is without, but this is a minor point).

I would elaborate on my previous remarks that my impression is that, in the phrase infinitesimal calculus, the purpose of the adjective is to distinguish from other technologies also called calculus, such as the calculus of finite differences (and possibly even the propositional calculus, or is that an anachronism?). If this can be sourced, it should be mentioned in a "Terminology" section of the calculus article. --Trovatore (talk) 20:10, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would support the idea of redirecting infinitesimal calculus to calculus. But then obviously calculus itself should be the target of a real effort to get the historical, pedagogic and logical status of calculus sorted out. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:24, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, that's important. But let's not put it too early in the article. Calculus is mostly an applied discipline (the pure-math counterpart is real analysis, which has its own article) and foundations, while interesting, should not be the focus. --Trovatore (talk) 19:00, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

actually the real analysis article might even need more work than the calculus article, since in its current form it is little more than name dropping. Improvement issues aside I think the redirect to the current calculus article is a good idea.--Kmhkmh (talk) 19:29, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Svante Janson for DYK

The new article Svante Janson will be appearing as on the Wikidepia frontpage as a Did you know? fact. Improvements would be especially useful in the next few days, before hundreds of readers view the page (in its 12 hours of fame). Thanks, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 01:05, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

RfC on the 7D cross product

There is an RfC here on whether it's appropriate to label an identity with the label "Pythagorean theorem". More interested participants are welcome !--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 21:00, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Missing assessments for ~50% of Math WikiProject articles?

Hi all,

On a whim, I checked the article assessments for 95 geometers listed in The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry by David Wells. Of those, roughly half (46/95) had no assessment by the Math WikiProject. That seems like a surprisingly high fraction of the articles that fall within our scope, although the biographies of geometers may not be representative. I've since added assessments for those articles.

It's not the most pressing issue, of course. But the assessments help us keep track of how we're doing; if I recall correctly, the system was invented by people from this WikiProject. So the next time you're reading or working on a math article, please take a moment to check whether your article has an assessment from WikiProject Math. Thanks muchly! :) Willow (talk) 23:27, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

PS. The article on Victor Thébault could seriously use some help - any takers? Theodor Reye is missing altogether; I'll work on that one. Willow (talk) 23:33, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To follow up: if you do find an article without an assessment template, and you want to add one, please fill in all three of the parameters: class (quality), priority, and field. We have a list of mathematics articles already, so the only reason to add the template is the assessment information. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:09, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For biographies, the field is always mathematician, right? For people who don't know about assessments, the idea is to add a line like

{{maths rating|class=Start|priority=Mid|field=mathematician}}

to beginning of the article's Talk page. More details can be found here; thanks! Willow (talk) 14:35, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think some congratulations are due since apparently we do at least have articles on all 95 of the geometers. We do have a backlog on filling in ratings, as well as backlogs on several other tasks. Perhaps it would help to add these to the 'Things you can do' section on the project page.--RDBury (talk) 08:44, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We can be even more heartened because there were only 23 stubs (~24%), albeit some well-known ones such as Möbius, Brianchon, and Feuerbach. Overall, the distribution of qualities was 5/2/10/12/43/23 for FA/GA/B(+)/C/Start/Stub; the Start class seems to be dominant, with almost half of the articles. Willow (talk) 14:35, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I tweaked one of my scripts so that it works for mathematicians, too. It dynamically generates a list of all articles in a category that don't have a math rating template. The results for Category:Mathematicians by century are here. As you can see, there are a lot of unassessed mathematician pages in those subcategories. The point of this tool is to make it easier to assign ratings by letting you focus on one category at a time. But you still have to assess the quality and importance of each article. The importance in particular is very hard to characterize with a set of automatic criteria. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:12, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Neat! Thank you for making that wonderful tool. :) It seems wise and efficient to break the problem into smaller bits. I'll do my share, starting with Dinostratus. Willow (talk) 13:17, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Math formatting that scales with browser text

I just had a look at the preview examples in http://www.mathjax.org/ — it looks much better than what we do for math markup here. Especially nice is the way the math scales when the browser text font size increases or decreases. We should use into the possibility of using this or similar technology in place of our current bad system of math typography. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:02, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I had made some inquiries to the system admins this spring about the possibility of switching to JSmath, which was a predecessor to Mathjax. The responses I got were not favorable; the people who responded thought our current system is "good enough" and that they are not willing to replace the default images-based system with any system that requires javascript. And jsmath (at least) requires installing fonts to work well.

Then I did some testing of jsmath under my personal account. I was able to make it work, but it required me to install some fonts, and there were some pages with broken rendering that I didn't investigate deeply. About that time the STIX fonts came out, and I thought I would wait a few months to see if those get integrated into JSmath.

So I think there is some chance of getting JSmath / Mathjax support as an optional feature, either supprted directly in mediawiki or through user javascript. The main thing that it would take is someone with the time to get it set up. But I don't forsee it replacing the images system just yet. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:21, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the sample formulas, it doesn't seem mathjax needs any special fonts. (Or maybe there are special fonts, but they are loaded/downloaded by the script.) But I don't see the real benefit, since you cannot copy and paste the formulas into other software and still have them be legible/meaningful. Better to wait until mathml becomes supported by browsers, since presumably you will be able to transfer formulas between applications via the clipboard. SharkD Talk 19:31, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The benefit is to have math formulas that don't look horrible. I had the impression that Mathjax does allow copying and pasting, and does support mathml, but those are extra benefits above and beyond the basic one of looking ok. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:40, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's homepage says it supports cut-and-paste interoperability, though maybe the preview on the website doesn't. To me, Mathjax looks like a huge improvement on jsMath, which it builds on and is designed (by the same lead developer) to be the successor to. It's still in beta, but its homepage says "1.0 release expected in July 2010", so that may not be too far away. From the sponsors and supporters listed in the lead of our Mathjax article, it looks to me like it's destined to become the standard way of delivering equations in journal articles within browsers (i.e. without downloading a pdf). My guess is that may take a couple of years yet, but I'd hate to see Wikipedia get left behind. Qwfp (talk) 20:03, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I tried copying and pasting the output into Microsoft Word and the result had several errors. I doubt other applications will fare any better. SharkD Talk 23:02, 7 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Orphan basic articles

Relative difference, Percentage change, Percent difference, Fold change are very simple and overlap greatly and do not link up to anything really. Could someone fix this? (I though I had posted this, but searching nothing came up, so I probably never did, If I am repeating myself, I am terribly sorry) Thanks --Squidonius (talk) 20:46, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am surprised that none of those articles mentions the natural logarithm. If A<B, then

{\frac {B-A}{B}}<\ln(B)-\ln(A)<{\frac {B-A}{A}}\,.

And the logarithmic version has the advantage that the relative changes are additive. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:28, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm reminded of the discussion at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Mathematics/2010 May 13#calculation help. Anyone know of reliable sources other than Tim Cole's article on 'sympercents' (doi:10.1002/1097-0258(20001130)19:22<3109::AID-SIM558>3.0.CO;2-F}? Qwfp (talk) 07:57, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dihedral symmetry of some subsets of Young's lattice

To the article titled Young's lattice, I've added a section on the surprising (quite surprising to me, and I'm not the only one!) dihedral symmetry of certain subsets of the lattice, somewhat recently discovered by Ruedi Suter. The bilateral symmetry is obvious, so the surprising part is the rotational symmetry.

Improve the new section if you can. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:12, 7 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Review needed at Proof (informal) to establish consensus

At Proof (informal), editor Vaughan Pratt (talk · contribs) has written an essay-style article in which he insists that the dictionary definition "A proof is sufficient evidence for the truth of a proposition" applies equally to formal proofs in mathematics and logic as it does to the concept of proof in other fields such as law, rhetoric and philosophy. He believes that formal proof is not essentially different from informal proof , but is only a "higher standard of sufficiency", and that "the notion of "sufficient evidence" does not distinguish between formal and informal argument".

An attempt by myself to clean up the article and restrict its scope to fields in which an evidence-based concept of proof applies were reverted by Pratt, with the talk page comment "so that others would have a chance to judge the original and draw their own conclusions". It would therefore be good to see more contributions to the discussion at Talk:Proof (informal).

To provide context for the talk page discussion, you may need to know that editor Vaughan Pratt identifies himself as Professor Vaughan Pratt of Stanford University. Gandalf61 (talk) 08:28, 8 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This brouhaha seems to have settled down, and things are pretty much back to where they were originally, namely at Proof (truth), albeit with a couple more paragraphs in the article and a ton more sources. While I don't want to quibble with most of what Gandalf61 wrote above (not to imply that I agree with it, in fact I resent the 20 hours additional labor that his 2 minutes of reverting has cost me), I do want to object strenuously to his unkind implication that I promoted myself in the article Vaughan Pratt. While I can see that the article has something to do with me I have nothing to do with it, I do not consider myself qualified to edit it in any way, and I was surprised when it was drawn to my attention that such an article even existed---no one asked me beforehand whether I minded. Furthermore I have never identified myself on Wikipedia either as a professor or as a member of Stanford, which is not in keeping with the non-hierarchical structure of Wikipedia. On a few occasions I have said in what areas I have some expertise in, and on many more in what areas I'm not qualified, but that's about as much of myself as I'm willing to browbeat fellow Wikipedians with. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 21:59, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You may want to consider editing pseudonymously as I do. Ozob (talk) 02:55, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Scriptstyle

There seems to be a trend to replace all inline LaTeX with \scriptstyle. I think it may be time to revisit our WP:MOSMATH recommendation concerning the use of scriptstyle. My impression is that it should be used only under very exceptional circumstances, but perhaps I am in the shrinking minority. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:25, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. We should not use scriptstyle for inline text. It's not only semantically wrong, it will lead to problems when we introduce a better TeX display system. But I have not seen this sort of trend on mathematical logic articles. Is there a particular class of articles where the change is being widely made? — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:16, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed it in Fourier transform today and not too long ago in Positive-definite matrix. Two articles may not exactly be a "trend" per se, but it definitely shows that more than one editor out there is reading our MoS the wrong way. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:25, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It already leads to problems in the current TeX display system, it looks ugly in many ways. This is an inherent feature of TeX, script style simply was not designed to be abused as the main math style.—Emil J. 14:40, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For people who don't realize how scriptstyle affects things, compare

\scriptstyle {x+2^{n_{i}}}

with

x+2^{n_{i}}

. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:45, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. But the most obvious difference is that scriptstyle is about 80% or 90% of the body text size on my browser. Without scriptstyle it's more like 200%. I think non-scriptstyle math should only be used for displayed formulas, because it is far too intrusive for inline text. Since scriptstyle math also has its problems, maybe the lesson is that we should only inline math if we can do it in html? —David Eppstein (talk) 15:28, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would be inclined to agree with David Eppstein on using HTML in-line. However, I am afraid that some readers will fail to connect the HTML with the corresponding symbols in the display formulas. For example, tau: τ does not look much like

\tau

or

\tau \,.

So I feel that we need to use one version consistently, namely

\tau \,.

JRSpriggs (talk) 17:43, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What do people think of edits such as [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11]? Ozob (talk) 03:23, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Without scriptstyle, "displayed" TeX is about three times the size of the surrounding text in my browser window. With or without scriptsyle, "inline" (as opposed to "displayed") TeX usually gets misaligned. To high or to low, or the period or comma that follows it appears at the beginning of the next line, etc. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:53, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The inability to learn or understand the mathematical fields or formulas of your own choosing on Wikipedia is frustrating.

I can go to an article and know that this is the type of mathematics that I want to learn and use. But I'm not trained in it. No problem; all the formulas are right there along with any proofs. But I'm not educated in the symbols, variables, and subformulas used, either, and they are never linked to! This just removes the ability to learn mathematics on Wikipedia altogether. I'm sorry, but there's no way to start at the bottom and work my way up to what I want to learn when the things in between are not linked to! "Go to school and learn everything, you loser." is not a reasonable solution. This isn't a problem with normal science, history, or psychology articles, for example, but it constantly is with mathematics articles. I'm not simply too dumb as I have learned and even (independently; not originally, I strongly assume) discovered some not majorly complex mathematical formulas on my own with basic knowledge, so if you're indeed linking to all esoteric (from a layman's perspective; something articles in general seem to tend to do on Wikipedia) terms being used then it's severely non-obvious how you are doing so. I just wish that it wasn't assumed that anyone looking at these articles already knew all of the mathematics used within them, ironically meaning that you could only learn something if you probably already happened to know it anyway, unless of course you're simply a professional looking at an extremely complex article, with such a person not meant to ever be Wikipedia's target audience, it appears elsewhere.75.4.141.69 (talk) 04:06, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]