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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Rcq (talk | contribs) at 23:32, 20 June 2006. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Older stuff at

"Was this reviewed?"

On Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) you wrote:

... much of the burden of revieweing edits could be improved with better tools. For example, I would love to know if one of my trusted collegues has already reviewed the same edit I'm reviewing. This would greatly reduce my review burden, and allow me to monitor many, many, many more articles. linas 23:35, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Fantastic idea. Do you know whether there is some ongoing discussion on such things? (Feel free to reply here; I'm watching this page.) — Nowhither 18:36, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect there is, but I know not where. I have noticed that the wikimedia software made an attempt at implementing something like this, but it was either a hack or mis-designed or incomplete. You can see this on newer wikimedia sites, for example [1]. If you look at edit histories, you'll see red exclamation marks denoting unreviewed pages. But you'll also notice that any sockpuppet can reset them, ... so it really doesn't work correctly. So it seems someone thought about it, but I don't know what the status is, or where its going, or who is doing it. You'll have to look up the wikimedia folks.
Anyway, what I really want is actually fancier than what I wrote at the village pump, but I thought I'd keep it simple. I'd happily engage in a conversation with the wikimedia developers if you can locate them. linas 04:01, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify: This site runs the latest version of the wikimedia software, but the review system is turned off because it hurts performance. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:23, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, yes, it could be written as a fancy SQL query, and that would make the lights dim. Is this MySQL or Postgres? I'm guessing there are ways to make this more efficient, by using status bits of various kinds, requiring table redesigns. No matter, I didn't like the way the red exclamation marks worked anyway; they weren't really useful. linas 14:20, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The WikiMedia sites are using MySQL. I was wrong by the way: the feature that you described is called "RC patrol", it's described on m:Help:Patrolled edit, and it seems that it was turned off because anybody could mark an edit as patrolled (as you already noticed, see also this mail and replies). I was confusing it with the m:Article validation feature, which is a more elaborate scheme that is disabled for performance reasons. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:05, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, thanks for the links, I'll have to prowl around there a bit. My other bit of patrol paranoia is that it is easy to review only the most recent change; thus a "bad edit" could be hidden in the history and overlooked. Thus, I'd prefer to see *all* changes since I last looked. linas 04:01, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Linas, could you take a look at...

... what User:Enormousdude did to Vacuum energy and Zero-point energy? i think that this guy with an enormously high estimation of himself has only recently discovered WP and is crapping up a lot of pages with his own personal POV. he's getting into a lot of revert wars. Vacuum energy and Zero-point energy are two of the only articles he has modified substantively that has not been reverted. i am guessing that they have not been reverted for the same reason the John Seigenthaler Sr. article was not (no one knowledgeable has stumbled upon it to notice what is wrong). Rbj 01:15, 6 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Variational number theory

You took down the 'expert' tag from variational number theory, but I'm not able to verify any of it. The ISBN of the reference appears not to exist. There is no way to find the book of Harrison and Cheng at the Cambridge University Press site. 'Variational number theory' has no Google hits as exact phrase. I need to be convinced about this topic. Charles Matthews 21:03, 6 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jitse asked me to take a look. I've never heard of "variational number theory", although I don't do any analysis so that doesn't mean much. I also couldn't find the ISBN, I used http://www.isbn-check.de/ which uses the ISBN checksum to give suggested mis-typings too. Couldn't find the book on harvard's library catalogue either. I get a single Google hit for "variational number theory" to the wikipedia article on analytic number theory, which includes a paragraph written about a week ago by the same editor. It's difficult to say exactly where User:Karl-H is coming from. I reverted one of his edits to Riemann hypothesis last week, because it was poorly worded and appeared to be trying to say something trivial. I've noticed other edits to things like prime counting function which again were poorly written (which is always forgivable), but I didn't have the energy or time to check the material itself; it looked at first glance like it could possibly be correct. I suggest asking him directly whether he can back up this "variational number theory" thing. Dmharvey 12:47, 7 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I added a question on User talk:Karl-H. Perhaps I should have done that first, but I had just come across John Maximum (the guy who invented the maximum principle, apparently) which made me rather predisposed to suspecting a hoax. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:17, 7 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My mistake; I put the expert tag back in. I was in a hurry while cleaning the thing up; it looked plausible; and I vowed to study it later... I'm sure I've heard the term before, but not sure where. Perhaps in the context of physics, as some "low-brow" spin-off from string theory, but I am not at all sure. linas 01:17, 10 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Renormalization

Hi Linas, Along these same lines, Karl-H has been making some very questionable edits to renormalization, culminating in the addition of a link to this shoddy-looking paper. It all looks vaguely plausible, and Wiki-etiquette demands some open-mindedness, but I'm really suspicious of this stuff. Are we being duped? Do you have an opinion on it? -- Xerxes 15:52, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ewww. That preprint looks terrible. It presents a garbled review of textbook basics on the zeta function. Its then followed by the introduction of an ultraviolet cutoff, but it then tries to re-invent, badly, the idea of dimensional regularization. Sigh. Both of these are texbook topics, and have been, for decades, so this looks like a garbled mess to me. linas 22:43, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I now see the problem. I took Karl-H's edits as "plausible" only because I am not up on the latest and greatest in renormalization. I had assumed that his edits described some new whiz-bang technique that was "common knowledge" to physics grad students, i.e. was broadly accepted by thier professors and was being taught in seminars. However, this seems mistaken: the edit seems based on this shoddy preprint, and as such, is inappropriate for inclusion in this WP article. I'd recommend a whole-sale revert of of his edits (taking them to the talk page to be nice), and going from there. linas 22:59, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Argh. Maybe I'm being too harsh. Upon second reading, I guess that section can stay. Here's why: (1) There are zeta function regularization techniques that can be applied to QFT integrals, and the article on zeta function regularization completely fails to describe these. I can only hope that someday, someone will come and add a description of these techniques to that article. (2) Although the section added by Karl-H looks a tad off-kilter, its not implausibly wrong. Thus, I am hoping that someday, someone who is immersed in this topic comes along, notices that the WP article is askew, and fixes it to bring it into line with more accepted norms. linas 23:10, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think the part that really trips my crazy-meter is "one may turn a non-renormalizable theory into a renormalizable one". Regularization schemes may differ, but none of them make nonrenormalizable theories renormalizable, right? -- Xerxes 03:32, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
ROTFL. OK, you got me. Of course. Since 99.9999% of all Lagrangians you can dream up are not renormalizable (e.g. any effective Lagrangian), that would not just be a feat to boast about, but would open a passage to a new world. linas 03:54, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I suppose one shouldn't laugh. Sometimes real breakthroughs are made. I cut the whole section and moved it to the talk page, so as to be polite. linas 04:34, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Esperanza Newsletter, Issue #3

The Administrator Coaching program is a program aimed at preparing Wikipedians for Adminship or helping them understand the intricacies of Wikipedia better. Recently, changes have been made to the requirements of coachees. Please review them before requesting this service.
This would be something like the Welcoming Committee, but for people who have figured out the basics of editing articles; they're not newcomers any more, but they might want some help in learning new roles. Some might like suggestions about how to learn vandal patrol, or mentoring on taking an article to featured status, or guidance with a proposal they plan to make at the Village Pump, for example. In this way, Esperanza would help keep hope alive for Wikipedia because we would always be grooming the next generation of admins.
The Stressbusters are a subset of Esperanza aiming to investigate the causes of stress. New eyes on the situation are always welcome!
Note from the editor
As always, MiszaBot handled this delivery. Thank you! Also, congratulations go to Pschemp, Titoxd and Freakofnurture for being elected in the last elections! An Esperanzial May to all of the readership!
  1. Posting logs of the Esperanza IRC channel are explicitly banned anywhere. Violation of this rule results in deletion and a ban from the channel.
  2. A disclaimer is going to be added to the Esperanza main page. We are humans and, as such, are imperfect.
  3. Various revisions have been made to the Code of Conduct. Please see them, as the proposal is ready to be ratified by the community and enacted. All members will members to have to re-confirm their membership after accepting the Code of Conduct.
  4. Referendums are to be held on whether terms of AC members should be lengthened and whether we should abolish votes full stop.
  5. Admin Coaching reform is agreed upon.
Signed...


User:Lakinekaki and Bios theory

Hi, Linas, I see you have fingered Lakinekaki as being Lazar Kovacevic (BSEE, University of Belgrade) in real life and that you have also criticized Bios theory.

This article has been created almost entirely by Lakinekaki and one ameritech.com anon in Chicago, IL. I have presented some pretty startling evidence in Talk:Bios theory that Lakinekaki is also the ameritech.com anon and thus pretty much the sole author of this highly dubious article. Even worse, it appears that Kovacevic is employed at something called the Chicago Center for Creative Development, which is apparently run by one Linnea Carlson-Sabelli, who appears to be affiliated with Rush University Medical Center. Indeed, it seems that the CCCD is the organization which has been promoting bios theory!

This seems to be a clear violation of WP:VAIN, WP:RS, and more. What to do?

Did I mention that if "bios theory" is being applied to make critical care decisions in the treatment of patients in neonatal ICUs, lives could literally be at risk?---CH 05:31, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm note sure what to say. There are several points I'm resting on:
  • The Bios theory page is incoherent and smacks of pseudoscience.
  • The page author(s) seem remarkably ignorant of chaos theory, and of prior research, and seem to want to stay ignorant.
  • Particularly irritating is the ignorance of prior literature connecting the circle map and cardiac rhythms, a connection that Bios theory claims for itself.
This is counterbalanced by:
  • One of the coauthors seems to be a legit, above-board, respected knot theorist who has wandered out of his field of specialty...
  • The long list of various coauthors with respectable credentials seems to indicate that this is not the work of a lone crackpot, but seems to be the work of a small group. Curiously, this is not unusual outside of the hard sciences. There are any number of small groups of academics from anthropology to zoology who seem to have used non-scientific shifting sand as the foundation for their towering theoretical edifices to explain the universe. Such is human nature. linas 13:53, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You for admin?

Hello, long time no see :) I am not sure it it was discussed somewhere before (too lazy to do digging around) but why aren't you an admin? With almost 12k edits you should be one... at least 6k edits ago :) Renata 06:09, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've been ambivalent about pursuing nomination. I sure would like to have one-click revert, but haven't otherwise wished I'd been an admin. linas 04:06, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Would you like to become one? I could nominate (well, I have a horrible admin nomination record and some consider me to be a bad luck, but I could try at least). So what would you say? Renata 18:04, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've no particular desire to become one. Seems like an obligation; not being one has not prevented me from acomplishing anything I'd wanted. linas 15:21, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough :) Good luck! Renata 15:24, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Troubling patterns of edits and what to do about them

Hi, can you drop by my user talk page? User:ObsidianOrder and User:Omegatron are very upset over my recent activity in "outing" Haisch or whatever. Obsidian is threatening to ArbCom me. ---CH 21:59, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK. FYI, I've certainly argued with ObsidianOrder before, he's had a habit of pushing pseudoscience as if it were the real thing. Its a shame that he can't devote similar energies to actually trying to find out the truth, instead of swallowing hogwash as if it were chocolate ice cream. Oh well. linas 04:11, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Thanks for the invite!

Hi, Linas, thanks for your nice invitation to join the math and physics WikiProjects! I had noticed them earlier, but I wasn't sure how WikiProjects work (still a little fuzzy) and the discussion seemed over my head (heterotic strings, branes, amd all that), so I just shut my eyes and plowed ahead with my own articles. Just FYI, the computer seemed to complain that the list of participants in the math WikiProject was too long (>47kb).

If you get a chance, could you please look over a few of my articles and let me know if I should do anything differently to conform with the WikiProjects? I'm still working on classical mechanics, most recently canonical transformation and Hamilton-Jacobi equations, which you might enjoy. WillowW 08:47, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You are welcome! To answer your questions: -- the wikiprojects are there to coordinate efforts. Thus they set the style guidelines, as to what should and should not be included, how its formatted, etc. The Physics wikiproject mostly follows the style guidelines of the (much larger and more active) math project. Then there are discussions of disputes; these often involve agressive newcomers specializing in pseudoscience. The string/brane discussion was perhaps typical: an appeal for help, although admittedly on a topic few have abilities in. Why, you make the same appeal youself, just above; the right place to do this would be at the Physics project, where you'll have more eyes and more experts. linas 15:05, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
p.s. ignore the "article too long warning" when its applied to talk pages, non-article pages, etc.
I reviewed the article on HJE and canonical transformations. Looks good, although we have a systemic problem: everything you wrore is from the perspective of an undergrad physics/engineering major. However, the best way of understanding what is "really going on" is by means of geometry, in the language of manifolds. I'm not sure how to resolve this tension; both perspectives are needed. linas 17:14, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Linas, thanks for the quick feedback! I agree that Wikipedia would benefit from having both perspectives on the HJE, but I'm concerned that they might not both fit well into one article. For example, some readers might not want the full geometrical description in terms of manifolds, since the concepts would be unfamiliar and understanding the article would likely require more effort than they could easily invest. I confess, I find concepts like cotangent bundle a little scary, although I'm sure they'd be clear if I spent more time trying to understand them. Perhaps we should have two articles, Hamilton-Jacobi equations (physics) and Hamilton-Jacobi equations (mathematics), and a disambiguation page that clarifies the differences between them? That might give enough room to have two cogent articles at different levels, without trying to do everything in one article. What do you think? I tried something simiar with canonical transformation vs. symplectomorphism. WillowW 17:54, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, I disagree. First, re the titles: even physicists use the language of manifolds now; so the distinction math/physics is false. The folks writing the textbooks are employed by physics depts. I was tempted to say that only engineers stick to the rather dry Euclidean form, but even that's not true: I've seen books on robotics that launch into algebraic varieties on page one, and holonomy by page 20 or 30. Work on both satellite motion, and space-craft inter-planetary travel also uses the modern language; I am hard-pressed to think of an application in physics or engineering that doesn't use the modern language. No, it would be a dis-service to split in this way. A better split might be to devote a single article page to each separate example. linas 18:14, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Linas, I can see why it's good to keep the article together. However, I feel that we have to keep the initial part of the article intelligible to people who have learned only multi-dimensional calculus. Otherwise, we're likely to lose >98% of our readers, since most scientists and even lay people have learned calculus but very few have studied Riemannian geometry or manifolds/cotangent bundles/algebraic varieties/etc. According to the Science Citation Index from 1980-2006, there were 2284 articles about the Hamilton-Jacobi equation; of these, only 1 (!) mentioned "tangent bundle", "symplectic form" or "holonomy" in their title, keywords or abstract; exact zero of the HJE articles mentioned "symplectomorphism" or "algebraic variety" in the same places. "Manifold" and "geodesic" fared a little better, with 54 (~2.4%) and 35 (1.5%) articles, respectively. These data suggest that >98% of scientists are using the HJE in its old-fashioned calculus-based form. So I suggest that we include the more sophisticated, modern topics at the end of the article -- do you agree? WillowW 23:51, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think you severly underestimate the intelligence of authors. I doubt anyone who publishes an article today on the HJE would not have had a good grounding in parital differential equations, and it is impossible to study PDE's without learning a good bit of geometry. Tangent bundles are not exactly complicated; this is part of the undergraduate math curiculum, with the bare basics coming at the sophomore level. All math majors and most physics majors will have at least the basic concepts down. What edits are you proposing? linas 00:10, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Willow here. It never hurts to keep things accessble. Besides, we don't want to address it to people who publish on HJE, rather, to people who want to learn about it. See also Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:28, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Aww, com'on. You know me better than that. Anyway, perhaps we should move this to the talk page of that article. The only proposal that I'd have is to promote the various examples to thier own WP articles, and leave the main article to talk about generalities, instead of diving into specifics.

linas 02:56, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Continued at Talk:Hamilton-Jacobi equations. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:15, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Iterated function

Hi Linas. I'm a bit worried about this edit. If x is a fixed point, then it does not iterate to something, so I think it is a bit misleading to say that "The set of points to which x iterates to is known as the unstable set". I'm not sure how unstable sets are defined when f is not a bijection, so I couldn't fix it myself. Hope all is well. Cheers, Jitse Niesen (talk) 02:10, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Right; I got sloppy; sorry. I did a zillion edits today cross-linking related articles. I changed the wording, perhaps its better now? Also: in this context, is not the inverse of f, but the preimage. Basically, the Julia set; I'll try to clarify that. (Actually, not the Julia set, but what it would iterate into, more or less.) (Maybe its time to knock off for the night....) linas 03:32, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Questions about quantum chaos stuff

Hi, Linas, I posted a few newbie questions about the quantum chaos stuff on the Talk page at Constant of motion -- thanks! WillowW 10:45, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I replied there. The point is not to get lost in quantum chaos, which is an interesting distraction, but not directly relevant. Its instead to make the clear statement that "integrable system == system with constants of motion == system with symmetries" and that "non-integrable==no constants of motion". linas 00:28, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A hit-and-run thank you

I just recently revisited an old article I wrote, many a moons ago, Derivation of the cartesian formula for an ellipse (I had nothing to do, so I figured, what the hell, right?) To my complete and utter shock someone had actually visited it (!), and even more surprising tagged it with a nice little {{proof}}-template (!!). Thanks for that :P Oskar 22:23, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome! linas 00:28, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]


B. Roy Frieden's POV-pushing edits

I have some information about this.

Note that Frieden is Prof. Em. of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona. The data.optics.arizona.edu anon has used the following IPs to make a number of questionable edits:

  1. 150.135.248.180 (talk · contribs)
    1. 20 May 2005 confesses to being Roy Frieden in real life
    2. 6 June 2006: adds cites of his papers to Extreme physical information
    3. 23 May 2006 adds uncritical description of his own work in Lagrangian and uncritically cites his own controversial book
    4. 22 October 2004 attributes uncertainty principle to Cramer-Rao inequality, which is potentially misleading
    5. 21 October 2004 adds uncritical mention of his controversial claim that Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution can be obtained via his "method"
    6. 21 October 2004 adds uncritical mention of his controversial claim that the Klein-Gordon equation can be "derived" via his "method"
  2. 150.135.248.126 (talk · contribs)
    1. 9 September 2004 adds uncritical description of his work to Fisher information
    2. 8 September 2004 adds uncritical description of his highly dubious claim that EPI is a general approach to physics to Physical information
    3. 16 August 2004 confesses IRL identity
    4. 13 August 2004 creates uncritical account of his work in new article, Extreme physical information

I posted fairly detailed criticisms of Frieden's "method" to sci.physics.research some years ago.---CH 21:54, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the edit that makes my brain pop is this one. linas 00:44, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

euler

I'm sorry, you posted a message on the main page of la:Painga prima about translating something of Euler into latin? Could you please link to exactly what you want translated, and not a discussion page? I'll be more than happy to help.--Josh Rocchio 03:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC) But better place to find me is: la:Usor:Ioshus_Rocchio[reply]

The certainty principle

Hi, Linas! You are one of a few people here, who does not look like a sockpuppet... ;-) Possibly, you noticed the strange things that happen here around the certainty principle? What do you think about them? You, usually so active and critical, are so silent in this case, that I am really puzzled. (Reply here.) Rcq 23:32, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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