Talk:Stevo Todorčević

Birth place

The correct Todorcević's birth place name is "Ubovića brdo".--Vujkovica brdo (talk) 11:01, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Todorcevic's contributions to mathematics

Taken from

Stevo Todorcevic (Toronto) receives 2012 CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize

December 14, 2011 – The Centre de Recherches Mathématiques, the Fields Institute and the Pacific Institute for Mathematical Sciences have the pleasure to announce that the 2012 CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize in mathematical sciences has been awarded to Stevo Todorcevic from the University of Toronto. Professor Todorcevic obtained his Ph.D. in 1979 in Belgrade and currently holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto. His contributions to set theory made him a world leader in this topic with a particular impact on combinatorial set theory and its connections with topology and analysis.

His work is recognized for its striking originality and technical brilliance. He was an invited speaker at the 1998 ICM in Berlin for his work on rho-functions. He made major contributions to the study of S- and L- spaces in topology, proved a remarkable classification theorem for transitive relations on the first uncountable ordinal, made a deep study of compact subsets of the Baire class 1 functions thus continuing work of Bourgain, Fremlin, Talagrand, and others in Banach space theory. Together with P. Larson he completed the solution of Katetov’s old compact spaces metrization problem. Among the most striking recent accomplishments of Todorcevic (and co-authors) are major contributions to the von Neumann and Maharam problems on Boolean algebras, the theory of non-separable Banach spaces, including the solution of an old problem of Davis and Johnson, the solution of a long standing problem of Laver, and the development of a duality theory relating finite Ramsey theory and topological dynamics.

Todorcevic is an organizer of the Fall 2012 Fields Thematic Program on Forcing and its Applications.

The Fields Institute, located in Toronto, is recognized as one of the world's leading independent mathematical research institutions. With a wide array of pure, applied, industrial, financial and educational programs, the Fields Institute attracts over 1,000 visitors annually from every corner of the globe, to collaborate on leading-edge research programs in the mathematical sciences. The Fields Institute is funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, seven principal sponsoring universities, sixteen affiliate universities and several corporate sponsors.

The Fields Institute 222 College Street, 2nd Floor Toronto, Ontario M5T 3J1 Canada

I cannot see a reason for any deviations from the original text. Moreover, his excitement with Todorcevic's brilliance, P. Erdös expressed this way: "Very recently Todorcevic proved $\aleph _{1}\vdash \sideset {}{_{\eta _{1}}^{2}}{[\aleph _{1}]}$. This certainly is an unexpected and sensational result" in P. Erdos' My joint work with Richard Rado in Surveys in Combinatorics 1987: Invited Papers for the Eleventh British Combinatorial Conference by C. Whitehead, CUP Archive, Jul 16, 1987 page 70.--Vujkovica brdo (talk) 19:18, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Claimed accomplishments

Per WP:BLP, we need independent reliable sources for any but the most uncontroversial factual claims about this subject. I have removed some purely evaluative text (e.g. claiming certain results to be "major" or "remarkable") from the section, but Vujkovica brdo has reverted me multiple times. After I complained about the total lack of sourcing in this section I see that a footnote to the subject's PIMS prize citation has been added. But that raises new problems: much of the text here seems to be plagiarized from that source. At this point, given these serious problems, my tendency is to remove the section altogether, but instead I have asked for third opinions at WP:BLPN. So: would someone other than me or Vujkovica brdo care to contribute an opinion on how to resolve this? —David Eppstein (talk) 05:41, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Please, avoid personal attacks! I did not plagiarise anything. References are there!--Vujkovica brdo (talk) 05:57, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Our article: "made major contributions to the study of S- and L-spaces in topology"

The source: "made major contributions to the study of S- and L- spaces in topology" (only difference: one space)

Our article: "proved a remarkable classification theorem for transitive relations on the first uncountable ordinal"

The source: "proved a remarkable classification theorem for transitive relations on the first uncountable ordinal" (no difference)

Our article: "made a deep study of compact subsets of the Baire class 1 functions thus continuing work of Bourgain, Fremlin, Talagrand, and others in Banach space theory"

The source: "made a deep study of compact subsets of the Baire class 1 functions thus continuing work of Bourgain, Fremlin, Talagrand, and others in Banach space theory" (only difference: the names are linked)

Etc.

This is straight-up copying. It is forbidden here. It is a major violation of proper editing behavior. It is plagiarism. This is the sort of thing that would get you failed out of school; what gave you the idea it would ever be an ok thing to do? —David Eppstein (talk) 06:56, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

I've removed it. Plagiarism won't be tolerated. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 07:53, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

It is not plagiarism if using the same wording due to the fact that the reference is given! Anyway, I put all copy-pasted text under quotes. Use a good vocabulary in order to learn what is plagiarism!--Vujkovica brdo (talk) 08:15, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

"plagiarism ˈpleɪdʒərɪz(ə) the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." - Eppstein, where I ever said that the copied text belongs to me? Didn't I give clearly reference showing where the copied text came from? Shame on you for attacking me!--Vujkovica brdo (talk) 08:24, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

If you were taking a class I teach and you did this, you'd get a zero. It is plagiarism unless you use quotation marks (otherwise you imply that you got the ideas from someone else but you wrote the words yourself). Now that you've done so, it is not plagiarism, though it probably isn't the right way to write an encyclopaedia article. I'll let others comment on that before proceeding. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 08:55, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

I think it would improve readability to paraphrase that section and shorten it. Every detail doesn't need to be mentioned and would help me (and readers in general) focus on the most important aspects if it didn't list everything. The current wording has too much jargon and I can't understand most of it (aka most readers won't be able to either). —PermStrump(talk) 09:55, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

@Nomoskedasticity I have no intention to ever take a worthless class nor I ever did it.--Vujkovica brdo (talk) 10:12, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Biographical data and academic achievements

Here

Sets and Extensions in the Twentieth Century by Dov M. Gabbay, Akihiro Kanamori, and John Woods (editors), Elsevier, 2012

in this great book, I found a lot about the great Canadian mathematician Todorcevic. The only and the great difficulty is how to describe his major achievements in plain English. One chapter of the same book, Infinite Combinatorics by Jean A. Larson, is available online here.--A. Perun (talk) 11:51, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Work

This article sounds as though it has been translated from Serbian or the like. It is also full of spam. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.147.175.160 (talk) 16:36, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm afraid the hyperbolic praise is from English-language material. It's still excessive quoting, and needs to be paraphrased and attributed in text. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 09:52, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

List of Ph.D students

If the list isn't here in the article, there is no point in having a reference for it. Mathematical genealogy is not a reliable source, but the material is usually not controversial, so it would be allowed, except that that nothing was added to the article. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 09:31, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

The above comment makes no sense to me. The link S. Todorcevic's Doctoral Students List leads to the mentioned list and every entry of that list is verifiable through Google search or by sending a e-mail message to the corresponding University library. So, the list is fully reliable although it might be incomplete for any recent or past advisory work might be not reported--Vujkovica brdo (talk) 09:48, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

New mathematical object

As for this text:

As per the RSC fellowship detailed appraisal, the discovery of rho functions, ....

(Text truncated to avoid further copyright violation.)

It is just absurd. I see no way to preserve it except to say:

According to the Royal Society of Canada, ....

and leave it as a direct quote, as it is so hyperbolic that rephrasing is impossible. It would still be a copyright violation. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 09:40, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

The article has excessive quoting, in general, but the other references to "new mathematical objects" could be paraphrased. That one is hopeless. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 09:46, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Here is even more pointless claims. Rephrasing is impossible? A new baseless disqualification of the removed paragraph. The previous one was that the paragraph was un-sourced. "It would still be a copyright violation."!--Vujkovica brdo (talk) 09:53, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Recent changes dispute

1. Based on the RSC fellowship detailed appraisal of the Todorcevic's research

The discovery of an entirely new mathematical object is a rare event that is always accompanied by a major advance in our understanding of mathematics and an extended period of exciting progress. It is with this in mind that we celebrate Stevo Todorcevic for his discovery of rho functions and the various applications they have found. The truly new objects discovered in set theory are so few that they can easily be listed by century. The late nineteenth century was, of course, the era of Cantor's discovery of the cardinals and the Cantor set. The early twentieth century witnessed Hausdorff's gap, Aronszajn's tree, Goedel's constructible universe, while the end of the century produced Shelah's PCF structures and Todorcevic's rho functions

I added to the Stevo Todorcevic article this paragraph

As per the RSC fellowship detailed appraisal, the discovery of rho functions, an entirely new mathematical object, is one out of the five in Set theory in the twentieth century. The rho functions (and the various applications they have found) are celebrated as a major advance in understanding of mathematics and an extended period of exciting progress.

The paragraph I've added was removed as "unsourced" or "spam" (two times).

2. In the same article the list of Todorcevic's PhD students was given as the Mathematics Genealogy Project for Stevo Todorcevic. The list is removed twice as not reliable. I manually checked every entry of the list and found them correct.

Are the two changes described above acceptable for you?--Vujkovica brdo (talk) 12:26, 14 November 2016 (UTC)