User talk:Kevincook13

Welcome!

Hello, Kevincook13! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already excited about Wikipedia, you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field when making edits to pages. Happy editing! DVdm (talk) 16:48, 8 January 2016 (UTC) Getting Started Contributing to Wikipedia The five pillars of Wikipedia • Tutorial • Your first article How to: edit a page • upload an image Getting Help Frequently Asked Questions New contributors' help page Where to: ask questions • make requests Tip of the day Request administrator attention Policies and Guidelines Neutral point of view • Reliable sources Verifiability • Citing sources • No original research What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Simplified Manual of Style • Three-revert rule Copyrights • Non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism • Sock puppetry Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The Community Community Portal • Adopt-a-user program Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • Resolving disputes Build consensus • Village pump IRC channels • Mailing lists Discover what's going on in the Wikimedia community (The Signpost) Things to do Be bold in editing • Help develop an article Maintenance • Peer review • Requested articles Join a WikiProject • Translating articles Cleaning up: General • Spam • Vandalism Miscellaneous Categories • Disambiguity • Stubs User pages • Talk pages Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Recent edit to 0.999...

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. I wanted to let you know that I removed one or more external links you added to the 0.999... article, because they seemed to be inappropriate for an encyclopedia. You may find our linking guidelines helpful in this regard. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you! Materialscientist (talk) 11:48, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Why does my link seem inappropriate? Kevincook13 (talk) 12:15, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

See wp:ELNO, item 11. Cheers - DVdm (talk) 12:24, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I read the policy. The policy refers to things that are normally to be avoided. I assume that means that the policy is flexible. Kevincook13 (talk) 13:01, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Please use proper talk page indentation, as outlined in wp:Talk page formatting and wp:THREAD. Thanks.

It is not a policy, but a guideline, and yes, guidelines can be flexible.

Now, note that our article 0.999... says:

A sequence (x₀, x₁, x₂, …) has a limit x if the distance |x − x_n| becomes arbitrarily small as n increases. The statement that 0.999… = 1 can itself be interpreted and proven as a limit:

$0.999\ldots =\lim _{n\to \infty }0.\underbrace {99\ldots 9} _{n}=\lim _{n\to \infty }\sum _{k=1}^{n}{\frac {9}{10^{k}}}=\lim _{n\to \infty }\left(1-{\frac {1}{10^{n}}}\right)=1-\lim _{n\to \infty }{\frac {1}{10^{n}}}=1.\,$

The first two equalities are in fact definitions: the symbol $0.999\ldots$ is shorthand for $\lim _{n\to \infty }0.\underbrace {99\ldots 9} _{n}$ which in turn is shorthand for $\lim _{n\to \infty }\sum _{k=1}^{n}{\frac {9}{10^{k}}}$, which can be proven to be 1.

On your personal site you say: "In order to make sense of the question, it is necessary to define the term "0.999..."." Yes, the term is defined as $\lim _{n\to \infty }\sum _{k=1}^{n}{\frac {9}{10^{k}}}$, which can be proven to be 1, so the remainder of your page is just a waste of your time. Most—if not all—things ultimately get decided here by wp:CONSENSUS (a policy), and, by experience, I can assure you that you will never find a consensus for inclusion of your wp:original research proposal in Wikipedia articles, unless of course it is mentioned in the established literature, in wp:secondary sources. Hope this helps. - DVdm (talk) 13:21, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

All I wrote on Wikipedia was "Kevin Cook's proposal". That is verifiable, and is not original research of any kind. I am simply telling the interested reader where to go to see my thoughts on the subject. I am not giving the reader the impression that my thoughts are standard. However Wikipedia policy may result in giving the reader the false impression that the standard thinking enjoys greater consensus than it actually does. Also, I am curious about possible conflict of interest for academic authorities. Their success depends upon acceptance of their ideas, yet they play a key role in determining whose ideas are accepted. How does Wikipedia guard against such potential conflict of interest, in mathematics? Kevincook13 (talk) 16:07, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

All you wrote, was an external link to your personal website, containing your personal (non-authority) fringe view on some subject—see wp:FRINGE. So it was removed.

Indeed, reporting standard thinking is precisely what Wikipedia is about. Any view that deviates from the standard view, can be, perhaps briefly, mentioned in proportion to its importance, notability, and coverage in the literature—see wp:DUE. As your thoughts are nowhere mentioned in the literature, they do not get mentioned in Wikipedia—see WP:NOTFORUM . So again, as far as Wikipedia is concerned, your thoughts are a waste of your time.

Anyway, I have added a little menu here on top of your user talk page. Please take some time acquainting yourself with how things work here. Cheers. - DVdm (talk) 16:48, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! That was helpful. I have learned more about Wikipedia, looked at what you wrote, and still believe that my link should be included. Lots of people think of the term 0.999... in the way proposed by the author of the article, which fact is well-documented. Kevincook13 (talk) 20:28, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

You are of course free to believe that, but I don't see any relevant documentation in Google Scholar and Google Books that would warant including the link.

By the way, note that the word sequence is already taken—see our article Sequence. Unlike your website, the standard meaning includes an infinite number of members, whereas according to you "an infinite sequence does not have an end and is therefore not a sequence. An infinite sequence is a sequence variable." You could just as well call it a monkey and then add an external link to your web page in our article Primates - DVdm (talk) 21:40, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I believe the link should be included because as the 0.999... article now stands, it fails to inform the reader that the proposal has been made. The article as it now stands is misleading, because it gives the false impression that people who espouse the idea of the term 0.999... referring to a variable approaching one as nines are added, are unschooled children. Kevincook13 (talk) 19:38, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

The standard view on the matter seems to be that this kind of proposal is junk: the string "0.999..." is simply defined as something that is proven to be equal to 1.

Wikipedia is the place where the reader (—including unschooled children—) are informed about the standard view—see WP:WEIGHT. Wikipedia is not a place where we inform the reader that certain proposals are made—see wp:NOTFORUM: "Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought." You clearly have come to the wrong place: Speaker's Corner is over here, so to speak. - DVdm (talk) 22:01, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

My link is not original thought. The article it links to publishes original thought, which article is not on Wikipedia. Your refusal to allow the link violates the spirit of the neutral point of view policy. Kevincook13 (talk) 15:59, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Please have a thorough review of wp:ELNO item 11, wp:FRINGE, WP:WEIGHT, wp:NOTFORUM, and perhaps wp:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. Note that your addition was originally removed by user Materialscientist. If our refusal to allow the link violates the spirit of the neutral point of view policy, then by all means report us at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard. Good luck! - DVdm (talk) 16:26, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks again for helping me to better understand how Wikipedia works. I see that there is a mechanism for contesting what you have decided. That is good to know, although I am not sure I am interested in a contest. It does not appear to me that you are very interested in a neutral point of view. Kevincook13 (talk) 07:32, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

1. Wikipedia is not a WP:BATTLEGROUND, so your seeing this as a contest suggests—again—that you might have come to the wrong place.
2. I have decided nothing. All I have done is explain why your edit was reverted by someone, and why I think, based on our policies and guidelines and on my experience, that it will never be accepted here.
3. if you are convinced that I am not very interested in a neutral point of view, then do go to the noticeboard to get a fourth opinion. Make sure you point to this talk page thread.

DVdm (talk) 09:43, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I believe you about the culture here. I believe I have come to the right place. Before I start a conversation with other people about the point of view of this article, could we talk about it briefly? Can you see why I believe that the article currently does not take a neutral point of view? Kevincook13 (talk) 17:08, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

At this point I can't help you anymore. The place to go is Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard. - DVdm (talk) 17:12, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

OK, will do. Thanks for your help! == Notice of Neutral point of view noticeboard discussion ==

Hello, Kevincook13. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is 0.999... Academic and common sense POV.The discussion is about the topic 0.999.... Thank you. Kevincook13 (talk) 19:03, 16 January 2016 (UTC)