User talk:Jitse Niesen/Archive12

Parallelepiped volume.svg

Dear Jitse, your image "Parallelepiped volume.svg" is very nice, and would be very useful in parallelepiped. However, it is still misleading, notwithstanding the recent corrections (please see Talk:parallelepiped. Can you please fix it?

I also copied the image in triple product. Paolo.dL (talk) 14:49, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I replied at Talk:parallelepiped. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 16:48, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

{editprotected} at Template:Citation

Sorry to bother you, but could please you care of this {{editprotected}}? Thanks. -- Fullstop (talk) 02:10, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad to help, but I was beaten to it. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:38, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Random maths article

May I ask where your random article tool gets its list of maths articles? It has just given me Sterling Fractal (deleted last June). Is this because it remains on List of fractal topics? Thanks. Algebraist 14:06, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

It gets it from List of mathematics articles (A) and List of mathematicians (A), and corresponding lists from the other letters, so it shouldn't give Sterling Fractal. I just had a look and discovered to my surprise that the data isn't updated daily. In fact, it hasn't been updated since June 2006! So, many thanks for your message. It should start using the new list from tomorrow. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 14:18, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Your bot

Your bot seemed to be sleeping last night and missed its archiving job at AFC. I'm going to have a go at doing it manually, but perhaps you could look into it for tonight? Thanks! MSGJ (talk) 13:39, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your message. It has been fixed. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:34, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Help with Matlab

Hey there...I'm very new here on wikipedia but I have seen that you are one of the most active editors on the Matlab article. I'm now building a program using one of the Matlab free open source extensions (psychtoolbox) and one thing that I should have in it is a good random number generator, something that Matlab failed to supply - I know about the Mersenne Twister for which there is a Matlab version but I can't find the open source-can you please help me with it?--Rogelp (talk) 16:58, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I've never needed a better random number generator, so I'm not sure I can help you. I sometimes look on Matlab Central when I'm looking for code written by others. In this case, a search for "Mersenne twister" turns up a code by Peter Perkins. Is that suitable? I didn't try it. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:34, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I find the needed solution (using unifrand and the computer clock...) so now, like you, I don't need a better RNG.

Best--Rogelp (talk) 13:48, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks so much for encouraging me on my talk page. It was a positive in what can be a harsh academic world. You might visit the page for numeracy and have a look at the mathematical anxiety page I also started. I am now working in maths so anything positive has to be counted as helping me find gainful employment in my field. Feel free to reply to my talk page again. --Pete (talk) 10:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: etael equation

Yeah, I can't find my source either. Go ahead and delete it, I think I might have confused it with something else. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kr5t (talk • contribs) 03:59, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Images of Go

No problem, and my (real) name is Michelet, so everything is OK. Michelet-密是力-Me laisser un message 18:15, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Make it "Linus Michelet" then, which will be specific enough. Everybody is entitled to a pseudonym... Michelet-密是力-Me laisser un message 18:22, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Gauss-Newton algorithm

I started a discussion at Talk:Gauss-Newton algorithm in response to the rewrite of this article. Since you contributed a good part of the original article and are very familiar with the topic, I wonder if you could comment there. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:49, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Commented there. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:10, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Random maths article again

Sorry to bug you about this, but this time it gave me symmetric prime (deleted January '07). Algebraist 11:10, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. It seems like I updated the wrong file, sorry. It should work now. Don't hesitate to contact me again if you come across a deleted page. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:10, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Bot

User:Jitse's bot appears to be non-functional. The Evil Spartan (talk) 09:28, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your message. It's working again, and I set up a back-up on a different computer. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:10, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Question at Brent's method

I don't suppose you could address the problem discussed at Talk:Brent's method#D_declaration.3F relating to the lack of initialization for d in the supplied algorithm? I would assume that it should be 0 but it needs to be added if thats the case —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.6.101.164 (talk) 13:46, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Replied there. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:55, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Image:Airy plot.png

A tag has been placed on Image:Airy plot.png requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section I1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the image is redundant copy (all pixels the same or scaled down) of an image in the same file format, which is on Wikipedia (not on Commons), and all inward links have been updated.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on [[ Talk:Image:Airy plot.png|the talk page]] explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Hennessey, Patrick (talk) 02:24, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Singular value decomposition

Thanks a lot for encouraging me at my talk page. Indeed that was me who was wrong. The SVD is unique up to multiplication of corresponding singular vectors by the same factor. I simply forgot about conjunction of the right singular vector which changes phase to -i\phi of it, and then matrix multiplication yields the same result... (You may think about it as a rotation of corresponding singular spaces by the same angle in complex plane) I undid my edit. Sorry for the confusion

Merilius (talk) 20:00, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Taylor Series error approximation

Yes, the taylor polynomial page has an explanation on the error term, but for any high school student trying to learn about how to approximate the error of a taylor series polynomial won't know what it means. Math should be expressed simply, accessible to someone who wants to learn about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dspdude (talk • contribs) 01:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Of course we should try to express maths simply, but I don't see what that has to do with it. If you think that you can improve the explanation of the error in Taylor polynomial, I suggest you change it there. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:14, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

empty matrices

Dear Jitse Niesen

(I'll not write in Dutch, in case other people should read this). I saw you recently removed a part of my text on empty matrices. That's OK with me, it was probably a bit pedantic. And I like the reference although I cannot access the linked to article. But I do not entirely agree with your edit summary that the current mathematical definition already deals with this point. The definition suffices to represent and distinguish all n×k for given n and k, even if they have no coefficients, as these are represented by the (empty) map from the empty set of the set of possible coefficients. However, there is only one such map, so all empty matrices get represented by the same object, from which it is impossible to reconstruct n and k. This even holds if maps are provided with information that tells what is their domain and range (as there is just one empty set). So if one wants to construct a universe in which matrices of all possible sizes live together, and where those matrices that allow it can be multiplied, then some extra information should be included in matrix values so that n and k can be unambigously reconstructed from any matrix. That was the point of my remark. Marc van Leeuwen (talk) 18:06, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

You're of course right. I did understand that that was the point of your remark. However, I thought that the formal definition in the article, which identifies matrices with functions

$\{1,2,\ldots ,m\}\times \{1,2,\ldots ,n\}\to \mathbb {F} ,$

includes this information (using the definition of a function as a 3-tuple domain, codomain, graph). I did not appreciate that the Cartesian product $\{1,2,\ldots ,m\}\times \{1,2,\ldots ,n\}$ is the same (viz., the empty set) if m = 0, whatever value n has. To my defense, Carl de Boor is not very clear on this point (I think you can download his article from http://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/Approx/empty.pdf ).

It is a bit pedantic, but to be honest, I think the whole section goes a bit too much into detail given the context. Perhaps it's best to move it to a new article, empty matrix, and leave just one sentence in matrix (mathematics) pointing to that article. What do you think of that?

Anyway, I'll put your remark back in and added another reference I stumbled upon. It's a pity that neither reference has a formal definition along the lines of your "pedantic computer science" definition. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:45, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the article, which does not in fact discuss how to distinguish empty matrices, although it does mention their distinctiveness. As for the idea to create a separate page for empty matrices, that could be a good idea, although I fear that they fail to meet the wikipedia's notability criterion. Maybe some page discussing multiple "empty" issues could suit the purpose; there is already some of this stuff out there. I'll give it a thought. Marc van Leeuwen (talk) 20:41, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

User-script manager

Certain user's are expressing concerns with the User-Script Manager. User pages, subpages including monobook.js & monobook.css files are apparently appearing in the AFD Category, it happened to me once as you can view via [1] i stopped using the scripts from the Script Manager awhile back but apparently more user's are experiencing the same problem just thought you should be informed of the event and hope you could find what scripts or bugs are causing this to happen. Terra ^{What do you want?} 19:43, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the whole idea of the user-script manager is no longer useful now that we have Wikipedia:Gadgets. I don't feel like going through the code and fixing it, so instead I removed the whole functionality. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 19:38, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Part (mathematics)

Sure, I don't mind. Basically the sequence was: a) I went to the Part page, and saw that it was a disambig page that looked nothing like one b) There was some information there relating to mathematics, which I figured probably belonged somewhere, but not on a disambig page c) I created somewhere for this content to live

It seems to me that whoever wrote the original content thought that there was a special meaning for "Part" in mathematics, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, to me, the best solution would be if someone who knew more than me about mathematics could find somewhere for that content to live, and then link it from the Part page. But I'm not attached to anything except that the disambig page should look like the other wikipedia disambig pages; feel free to just change stuff, and if I don't like it, I'll complain.

--TimNelson (talk) 02:12, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Question about Jitse's bot

Could you take a look at WT:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation#Categories and see if I'm sane? Thanks! Yngvarr (c) 15:59, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Replied there. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 23:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

---

Thanks; Very much appreciated. Yes, I'm new to this.

--Tangi-tamma (talk) 22:27, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

RfC

I've started drafting a user conduct RfC that you might be interested in here. There's a lot of evidence to sift through and present, so I think it will take awhile to get it put together. If you'd like to participate, please feel free to do so. Cla68 (talk) 07:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)